Tools under consideration

Whenever I take a happiness inventory, the area that turns up right under having sex with girls (apply here) is MAKING AND BUILDING STUFF. Not so much having stuff, or even keeping what I make – the process. So anyway, here are some tools I’m looking at, roughly most expensive to least.

3D printer / scanner combo
The ultimate power: turn atoms into bits and back again. The low-cost 3D scanner of the moment is NextEngine, at $2995, and I think it would be just fine for my purposes.

For the printer, I’m a huge proponent of the RepRap project, but it’s not meant to do fine detail. Z Corp printers get in the game around $20k, color at $40k, but Desktop Factory is doing a mono printer for $5000 (assuming it ships) with $1/cubic inch material cost and a high degree of detail.

RED Scarlet
$3750 for the low end kit, and it’s still pretty ferocious…not to mention it can be configured as a DSLR for taking stills.

Cintiq drawing tablet
I can barely draw, but there are times when I’d like to be able to directly manipulate art assets. For that there’s the 12″ Wacom 12WX Cintiq tablet, $999.

A pico projector
As a writer I’m constantly giving pitches, and I think being able to take a phone and a little projector out of my pocket to show people what I’m talking about would be extremely useful. I’m leaning toward getting a WowWee Cinemin when it ships, but they’re all based on the same Texas Instruments tech so it almost doesn’t matter.

A cutting plotter
A CraftRobo can precisely cut paper to an amazing degree of accuracy – I’ve seen some insane paper models made with these things.

LiveScribe
The pen records all your strokes AND ambient audio – this would have helped me a lot in college. You do need to use special paper, but I think you can print it yourself, and there is a mac version of the desktop client. As it stands I scan a lot of what I write down (in bulk, with a ScanSnap) so this might actually save me a step.

Dell Wasabi
In the wake of Polaroid, Dell has come out with this fun little photo printer. The sheets cost about 50¢/each. It doesn’t work with the iPhone, which is a drag, and I’m sure they’ll discontinue it and the paper at some point in the future. But I do like the concept.

Has anyone used any of these tools? Am I missing anything?