Coming for dinner? Let me just print something up.

Sorry I'm going to geek out here for a moment. Have you ever heard of 3D printing? Well, once you do, you'll probably be as obsessed with the idea as I am.

Okay, I'll fill you in on what it is. Imagine an inkjet printer that is about 5 feet tall and slightly more advanced than the one you have at home. You feed it 3D drawings of stuff and it basically creates the object by depositing very thin layers of a powder that resembles the cross section of the object and then binds it with a liquid before depositing the next thin layer of powder on top. The result is a resin object just like this:

The purpose of the 3D printer was to really shorten the amount of time needed to create a prototype. If you were inventing something or developing a machine part, you would typically have to send drawings to a prototype-maker who would take days or weeks to come up with a replica of your design. Not so much anymore! Now you just plug in a 3D drawing and one of these suckers will pop right out! It can create objects in one vertical inch per hour. I was reading one article that said that the US military is using 3D printers to create replacement parts for the Hummers in battle. Can you imagine? Say you weren't excatly paying attention and you accidentally ran into the side of your garage (hypothetically speaking, of course) and you happen to need a new front fender. All you would need to do is get the drawing, input it into the printer, hit "print", and wait for it to pop out. It's freaking magic!

Now 3D printing is taking off in all sorts of directions! Imagine every house having one and it's able to replicate forks, spoons, plates, cups, books, clothes, jewelry.... the possibilities are endless! You could have anything you wanted simply by pressing a few buttons. What if tomorrow you're like "Man, I really, really want a gargoyle." Voila! Gargoyle!

The process would use recyclable materials that would accept items that you were no longer using (hello dirty dishes!) to create new ones. Where was I going with all this? Oh yes, so I was reading on the popular techy website Engadget that 3D printing is now moving into the food industry. Some kids over at MIT have developed a food printer that mixes flavors to replicate what you ordered. Being someone who really loves to cook, it might be a bit of a let down to have this thing magically put dinner on the table, but I might be swayed.*

*What would really be sweet would be if it also generated a hologram of Gordon Ramsay to prepare the fake printed meal.