3-D Printers

Appearance: 3-D printers have two components, a cauldron and a head. The cauldron is a sealable metal drum that melts and mixes the materials it is fed into a homogenous slurry. The head is fed by the slurry, it consists of two rings to locate the coordinates of a printed component in lateral and azimuthal space. The innermost ring is lined with “hoses”, tiny motile fibers able to make detailed changes and additions to a project. The head can be plugged into any computer with the relevant outlet. A quick download provides this device with the necessary application to work the printer. There is some variety in the build of these printers, the size of the head for example will vary a great deal, though this has more to do with space convenience than price. The cauldron is the most expensive part, and the very poor may buy cheap second-hand printer heads without heads. For printers without cauldrons, a slurry may be purchased, most of these are cheaper up front but more expensive than recycling in the long run. The very cheapest of these slurries are very affordable, but produce much lower quality tools. Use: 3-D printers are a cheap technology, owned by even most of the poor. Because owning one is far cheaper in the long-term than buying the technologies, tools, toys, and utensils of various sorts that they can synthesize. Even before the great darkness they became a cheaper and cheaper household necessity, overthrowing many old industries. The founders of Skeyer brought a great many of these printers, of the highest quality available at the time, so they have become even more of a casual necessity. Since the advent of feudalism, they have become an implicit necessity in many jobs, particularly engineering jobs where workers, though provided a stipend that is enough to buy tools, are not given their own, and know that the smartest purchase is the printer. Their only weakness is that they cannot change matter fundamentally in the way the Essence can, they can only rearrange existing plastics and metals.

Significance

Technology

Rarity

very common, owned by most