07.16.12
Chronicles of Annoying Pests
Occasionally I run across futurist pabulum claiming we’ll soon be manufacturing everything we need at home, all due to the revolution in 3D printing. Just think of all the people in China, and everywhere else, we’ll finally be able to put out of work for good!
Not in our lifetime.
However, today comes news of a “hacker” who has used his 3D printer to make a working key to Chubb handcuffs. And, because he is motivated by the pure milk of human kindness, he will upload the digital blueprint to his handcuff key to the Internet later in the week. (If you read it all the way through, the article seems to stupidly maintain you can make assault rifles this way, too, a meme ignited and chased around by the tech nerd fanzine crowd over a year ago.)
Forbes’ Andy Greenberg reports that the security consultant, who goes by the name “Ray,??? used a 3-D printer to cheaply produce plastic versions of the keys to high-security handcuffs manufactured by the English company Chubb and the German company Bonowi. Ray’s plastic keys easily sprung open both firms’ cuffs.
This is a serious problem for handcuff makers …
How would [anyone] get such access? Well, Ray has one answer: According to Greenberg, “he plans to upload the CAD files for the Chubb key to the 3D-printing Web platform Thingiverse after the annual lockpicking conference LockCon later this week.???
Ray says his goal is not to undermine police, but to make them aware of their handcuffs’ vulnerabilities.
Yes, soon 3D printers will be in every apartment and household.
“Finish” for 3D printers from 1200 to 2500 USD: “fair to poor.”
Now, for $11,000, you can have excellent. Or you can stick with dropping a grand and some for a trinket maker, like this. You’ll be making your own Cracker Jack prizes in no time at all.
Over a year ago DD blog briefly mentioned Harrison Harmonicas, a manufacturing startup in Rockford.
Many news outlets flipped over Harrison. Readers and tv news viewers were informed, was using revolutionary 3d manufacturing to make ridiculously priced $180 blues harmonicas.
How’d that work out?
The company went out of business a year after it opened.
From the Rockford, Illinois, newspaper:
ROCKFORD — The number of complaints filed with the Illinois attorney general’s office against the now-shuttered Harrison Harmonicas continues to grow, driven by unhappy customers who ordered the company’s Rockford-made harmonicas and never received them.
Harrison Harmonicas folded about three months ago and informed customers that it was “no longer able to continue as a company??? via email …
Brad Harrison, founder of Harrison Harmonicas, made a name for himself when he won the 2008 Stateline FastPitch Competition, a contest for local entrepreneurs organized by Rockford’s EIGERlab. He went on to win $40,000 at the Innovate Illinois entrepreneur competition.
Harrison gained international press for being the only U.S.-based harmonica manufacturer and for his B-Radical harmonica design.
Harrison Harmonicas worked out of a space at EIGERlab, 605 Fulton Ave., but Harrison moved back to Chicago and took the company with him in May.
EIGERlab officials haven’t heard from Harrison since then.
Now get to work making your artisan handcuff keys. Plus, nothing impresses the ladies so much as telling them you made your own plastic handcuff key with your 3D printer. You’ll need to comb the poon out of your hair, yes sir.
A website full of cheap plastic tinker toys, unsightly plastic sculpture and trivial plastic widgets made expensive by milchtoasts and their 3D printing presses. They stockpile plans for 279 worthless plastic knives!