Looks like it has a infrared webcam for a face. I dunno what percentage of the snake was printed, but at this juncture it appears to be only the structural parts, no motors or electronics.
Some day, though…
And anyone who’s read “The Diamond Age” (N. Stephenson’s last good novel), the, uh, whatever they were called, the matter compilers, those were basically 3d printers. I liked how he described them as great thwacking monsters – I guess in the 80s, rotary mechanical vacuum pumps were about all that was available – the newer pumps just hum (diaphragm) or whir (turbomolecular pump) or make no noise because they’re oil diffusion, cryogenic or getter-ion pumps. And to do nano-scale engineer, those thwacking mech pumps do NOT provide enough vacuum – a turbomolecular or oil diffusion pump would be needed at the very least (to attain ‘high’ vacuum, ~2×10^-6 torr) or possibly the cryo or getter ion pump (to attain ultra-high vacuum, ~10^-11 torr), otherwise the gas molecules bouncing around in there (in low vacuum, or 10^-2 torr) will destroy or otherwise fuck with the nano-self-assembly process.
And I know, because I’ve had to study this shit – and I’ve coated things with nano-crystalline gold to make it conductive, and that requires high-vac systems filled with 10Kvolt ionized argon plasma that knocks single gold ions (a single, unattached charged atom is an ion) off of the target (i dunno why the target is where things come from and not where they go, it’s just the nomenclature) and shoots them in straight lines on to a sample, to make it conductive for the SEM analysis process.
Tags: hackers = tinkers, i, sci-fi, yes please i'd like it now, yes this is really how I amuse myself