West of Nothing

11. 3D Printer Fail

After lunch Mason shifted from video analysis to construction of 3D models of the X-Bot which could then be scaled up and printed out. You could do a lot with a software simulation nowadays, but there was still no substitute for a physical object.

Work was already under way on the next experiment: a remote operated manipulator that could be lowered into the bell to position sensors and equipment. The device was Doogie's invention and had to be shipped from his laboratory outside Chicago. He referred to it fondly as the pterodactyl.

Over the course of the afternoon, Mason found himself getting pulled into more discussions and even asked for favors. His attention to the minutest details made him useful as a quick reference, a sort of natural language video search. "Hey, anyone remember when the X-Bot held up that piece of glass to its eye?" someone might ask. "Yeah, give me a sec..." Mason would respond, dropping whatever he was doing to zero in on that particular sequence. Amazed, they would say, "How'd you do that so fast?" To which he could offer no explanation.

Mason had always had an exceptional memory, not photographic by any stretch, more scrapbook-like with really good cross-indexing. It wasn't the sort of thing he could show off at parties or even impress instructors with, but it did have its advantages. Over the course of many marathon sessions in the fab-lab, he had witnessed other hacker-makers, some just as obsessive as he was, run up against problems they seemed helpless to get past. But that seldom happened to Mason. Armed with an Internet connection and Google, he could follow a bread crumb trail of hunches and half-formed impressions until, from seemingly out of nowhere, he experienced a sense of deja vu, as if his subconscious were telling him, This is just like that other thing from before. Some called it inspiration. In Mason's case, it was more of a reflex.

This memory reflex wasn't infallible though. Even when it worked, it happened in its own time, which was often nowhere as fast as he would have liked.

"You doing all right there, kid?" Skunkworks asked. "You've been pounding away at your keyboard like you mean to hurt it."

"Sorry," Mason said. "I wasn't distracting you, was I?"

"Naw. I'm used to working around lunatics and loud machinery. Is it anything an old school aeronautics engineer could be of help with?"

"Know anything about 3D printing?"

"Not a goddamn thing. When I got my degree, we were still using slide rules and scale models."

"I guess things have changed a bit. It's all done in software now." Mason displayed his screen where a grid-laced object floated amid a profusion of toolbars.

"Still looks like a scale model to me," Skunkworks said. "That's a section of a leg, isn't it?"

"Right. I'm trying to reconstruct it so I can model its movements better. But I can't get the file to interface with the 3D printer. The drivers are installed and it's all gelled up. It printed out the test figure just fine." He held up a plastic soldier a couple inches tall. "But when I try to print out a leg segment, it just spits out these errors about invalid nesting parameters. I think it's trying to use an inside-out slicer instead of a bottom-up one."

"Ever used this program before?" Skunkworks asked.

"No. It's way out of my price range. I usually use these free ones called Blender and Slic3r. I've watched some video tutorials though. The basic functions are pretty much the same."

"And the 3D printer?"

"Not this particular one. But it's top of the line. It runs circles around the MakerBots in the university's fab-lab."

"Expensive ain't always better," Skunkworks said. "You know what the most popular assault rifle is?"

"The AK-47?"

"I bet you only guessed that because it's the only one you've heard of."

"You've also got your MP44, M16, M4 Carbine, and the G something or other." Mason didn't bother mentioning his gun lore came by way of first person shooter games like Call of Duty.

"Anyway, you're right about the AK-47. The Kalishnikov was invented at the end of World War II, and it's still the most popular assault rifle today. Why? Because it's cheap, reliable and does a damn good job at firing bullets in the direction you point it."

"I think I know where this is going," Mason said. "If I want to pound in some nails, I should probably just grab a hammer instead of futzing around with a super-duper deluxomatic nail pounder."

"That's one way of putting it."

"How would you have said it?"

"Stop dicking around with all this fancy shit."

"Your way does have a poetic ring to it. So how do I go about getting my hands on a MakerBot? I didn't see one in the Storeroom."

"You send an email to the North Pole and the big man puts one under the tree for you. Here, I'll show you how this email thingamajig works."