Join us below at 12:30 P.M. EST on Wednesday, November 28, for a live 30-minute online chat with editor and tech maven Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing and MAKE magazine, who will discuss what you might do with a 3-D printer, a machine that can copy the specs from a digital computer file to fabricate a solid object, layer by layer.

Frauenfelder will answer questions about whether 3-D printers will become a revolutionary new technology, like the personal computer or smartphone, or remain a toy for hobbyists. Will a 3-D printer ever be able to function as a digital hardware store, printing out new parts as needed? An alternative scenario: it might just spit out cheap plastic tchotchkes. The theme of this chat was inspired by a skeptical blog post by Scientific American senior editor Gary Stix, which drew several contrary reader responses. We invite you to post chat questions in advance below.

Frauenfelder is editor in chief of MAKE magazine and co-editor of the collaborative blog Boing Boing. Along with his wife, Carla Sinclair, he founded the bOING bOING print zine in 1988, where he acted as editor until the print version folded in 1997. While designing bOING bOING and co-editing it with Sinclair, Frauenfelder became an editor at Wired from 1993 to 1998, and he then became the "Living Online" columnist for Playboy magazine from 1998 to 2002. He was interviewed on Comedy Central's Colbert Report in March 2007 and June 2010.

3 Comments

1. 1. SeanRhys 12:44 PM 11/28/12

   Not obvious as a chat window but - I'm interested in producing dentures with the printers. Are there suitable materials for this use?

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2. 2. Dave X 02:20 PM 11/28/12

   Looks like only about the last seven minutes of the chat is visible, about 50% are thank-you-goodbye.
   
   Doing it on Twitter with #sciamchat20121128 might have been better for posterity.

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3. 3. krissmaraj 05:44 PM 11/28/12

   Are there indications that a free open format for creating and saving templates for use in any model printer will be available?

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