a machine that makes itself.
A couple of years ago, my friend Chip (photographer, machinist, and Dean of the Yale School of Art), said to me, “The milling machine changed everything. It was the first machine you could use to make another one.” Think about how that changes things, because it changes a lot.
There’s a fairly lively community of machinists out in the world who trade plans. So the milling machine of 2005 is clearly derived from its ancestors in the 19th century, but it’s evolved — and I really mean evolved, like, by natural selection — substantially.
I’ve always wished I had a milling machine. But they require skills I’d need to learn on top of thousands of dollars of equipment, that, unlike a computer, is dangerous and big.
These guys want to fix that problem. This thing means that I could have this doodad sitting beside my computer, and when I think of an object I want to make, I design it, and this thing poops it out. If I don’t like the way it’s pooping them, I download an upgrade to the machine, print out the upgrade, install it, and then it works better. Just like software.