3D printer trading cards from the future

Make is knocking out some fabulous "3D Printer Trading Cards (From the Future!)" -- lovely contractual design fictions from a world gone made for additive manufacturing.

I had a dream that I found a box of 3D Printer Trading cards from 2012 at the Seekonk Speedway Flea Market. When I awoke I realized that might be a good way to introduce some of the 3D printer makers who will be exhibiting at the Maker Faire Bay Area next week. I’ll be posting these all week in no particular order; collect them all!

3D Printer Trading Cards (From the Future!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: 3d printing • design • happy mutants

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IndexMe

I would buy them but prefer everything in microns or mm please! Sorry for quibbling they are otherwise very cool looking.
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

I wish I could set a long-future alarm for when repraps are actually, you know, affordable. Not only will that be when I will likely get one, it will also be when millions of others do, and the 3d printing revolution will actually start.

Until then it’s just technoyuppie dick-waving, frankly.
- Tynam
  
  I wouldn’t think of it as that long into the future; renting as opposed to owning one is affordable now, and the rest is likely to reduce in cost for the usual mass-takeup reasons. I’m guessing a decade… with significant changes in industry due to 3d printing revolution long before them.
  
  (At last year’s UK games expo, I saw a space wargame being played with custom-printed miniatures, including some awesome designs that could never have been cast. When a marginal consumer leisure item can be custom-designed per person instead of mass-produced – and for only about 10% more than the mass-produced casting – the future’s here.)
Purplecat

The generation who would be collecting the 3d printer trading cards would completely miss the concept behind them.

“Some of these mass-produced cards were considered more valuable than others? All based on a conspiracy to restrict the availability of some of them?”