“Rides are a lot of fun, Perry. Your ride, it’s amazing. But I don’t want to ride a ride for the rest of my life, and Landon is a ride that doesn’t stop. You can’t get off.” (140, Makers)

This week my observations of the CST made me question the feasibility of my own design, as well as those of my classmates. The constraints of working in a very basic program like TinkerCAD and using porous PLA filament are starting to manifest themselves. Particularly projects that are based around musical instruments: how can bearings/beads be added to a percussive shaker that will materialize as a solid object with no hinges in which to place the beads/bearings? How can a 3d printed flute adequately carry a channel of air through a porous material as well as maintain its structure in a material that is heat sensitive while receiving a channel of air? How can a 3d printed PLA bell create a ringing noise in plastic rather than metal? Possibly these items could be prototypical in the PLA format and could later be rendered in metal by a business like shapeways? How do businesses like Shapeways develop strongholds on the commercial industry of 3d printing? How close are we to a commercial metal 3d printer?