Look gorgeous, but “4D printing”? Come on, be serious.
Maybe it’s because they’ll be printing 3D objects in the future?
Clever solution for doing more with the limited volume of a 3D printer. Not sure how generally useful it will or won’t be, but it certainly opens an interesting set of possibilities.
Actually, I can sorta see why they picked that term – they’re folding 3D objects in order to fit them into the printer, and if they were doing it with solid rather than flexible/hinged objects they’d have to fold through a 4th dimension to make that work. “Not really, but by analogy…” I’ve seen worse uses of the term.
Ooh, now there’s a thought: This could produce somewhat more solid objects if the hinges had a catch or detent designed into them to hold them when they’d reached the desired position. That would risk it locking too early, before other parts had swung into their final positions, but… Might be worth exploring. (Meanwhile, I guess if you want something solid-ish you need to glue the hinges after expansion.)
Yeah, I’m just too much of a nerd to let this “4D printing” shit slide. Maybe “3.5D”? We already have “2.5D.”
Oh and also — that dress looks cool, but does anyone actually think it would be comfortable to wear?? Hmm, I guess you’d probably want to wear a slip, which would help…
[pi]-D?
If Dr. Cooper is right, our universe is made up og 11 dimensions anyway, so technically… no, wait, this means 4D is a rip-off!
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