He probably made the same claim when 3G was being released.

"What do we need 3G for, I'm just happy on my 2G connection!"

Stellar 9/11, that's what happens. The founding of the Galactic Empire and the war against the Outer Rim separatists.

At least I can complain to my own government and vote out politicians. Where do I go to complain against the UNs policies?

5000 pages a year.

I think you might want to reevaluate that comment.

You don't cool the track down, you would cool the vehicles themselves, and you could probably cool them enough with dry ice along with "refueling" for some lengthy races.

Well he did get a lot of PR so that is debatable.

Oh what would Slashdot be without people such as yourself and misleading statements.

I'm sure it will be a great app.

I was going to post up some snide remark because you linked a google search, but then I started reading the pictures... LOL...

I would gladly pay for this, would be nice if NASA could fund itself in ways other than just congress.

Of course it's not impossible, you have to have the right kind of tooling to cut aluminum like that though.

Nothing really, the machines themselves however are calibrated to cut at .0002" or better repeatabily. Most of the stuff we make is actually within .001-.002", high quality injection molds. One of our best machines will easily cut to within .0002" consistently, pretty amazing and expensive machine.

You're right though that the typical hobbysit will be fine around .015", you can make a lot of well functioning parts at those tolerances, and you can achieve even better tolerances via secondary operations.

As far as modifications go, I would say it's difficult to create such a system currently since these desktop CNC Machines are a relatively new area. You'd have to balance cost with performance which isn't easy. Most likely any modifications will only be compatible with a limited set of machines. Once well defined performance expectations are set, going about creating a modular system might be easier.

We use air to cool carbide tools against steel workpieces already. It's actually the preferred method since the steel becomes more ductile at higher temperatures. However Aluminum gets hot very fast, you want it to be as cool as possible or else it gums up the tooling. Air isn't enough unless you're cutting very very small amounts of aluminum per pass. Plastics can be cut with air, but you have to be careful not to cut too quickly or else the plastic will melt instead of cut and things will get nasty very quickly. It really depends on the material which you're using.

Yes it is.

There are a variety of methods used currently which use powdered metal. DLMS and SLS are the names of two of the most common ones currently.

http://www.eos.info/en/news-events/press-material/videos-animations.html is one such manufacturer of the machinery, they have a pretty nifty video up on their site.

Here are some youtube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLxve3ZOmvc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88BPmL8cGAo

The biggest problem is time, these machines are slow so they are rather uneconomical for mass production.