I'm definitely throwing this design into the 3D printer! It may not be good for wood, but it will surely be useful as a building block for small plastic pieces.

On a side note, here's a puzzle cube the poolcleaner clan printed. I think the design came from Thingaverse.

From what i understood, he wasn't complaining that the finished joint could be separated and reorientated - that's the whole point of the joint. The problem is that the joint is made by chopping bits off and gluing them back on, so the joint is only as strong as the dab of glue you used to put it back together.

Payback's got a great point though, with a 3D printer it might be possible to put it to good use. I say 3D print these type of joints as sockets into which you stick some wood or metal. A bit like old fashioned tents or gazebos that have plastic sockets to connect the poles. Could be a good way of building large amounts of shelters very quickly, maybe for things like the huge refugee camps we've got going right now due to western imperialism in the middle east.

New printers now often contain half full ink cartridges to avoid people buying new printers instead of cartridges.

For us interested in photo quality print: Large, expensive ink jet printers are often much cheaper per page than cheaper printers - and you often save the extra cost of the bigger, better printer after a couple of ink refills.

Upvoted for the shameless dig at libertarianism!

Consumer printers seem like the lightbulb cartel of the computer industry. They know we need them and they know how to make them last, but those two two things are somewhat incompatible when profit is the only measure of success.

Of course this is all the evil governments fault and could in no way be addressed by offering subsidies to companies which avoid such abusive practices....

......filthy filthy socialism.....!

It was always inevitable that the printer industry would shrink significantly as things become more digital, but it's always baffled me that they responded to that by making it harder and less desirable to print things.

Hardware is worse than it was 20 years ago, the drivers are much, much worse, and ink is more expensive. At this point we should have had rock-solid printers that you top up once a year from a litre (or bigger) refill bottle.

But hey, free market, right?

I hate (end-user) printers, hated them 25 years ago and I still hate them today. Haven't printed anything in colour in years. Want colour? Get a pack of crayons.

I have a Samsung full colour laser printer.

I bought it brand new for less than the cost of replacement cartridges.

When it's final out of toner, I will throw the printer away and buy a new one.

It's just cheaper that way.

Well. It's on purpose, obviously. Money is made on service and ink cartridges, far moreso than the printer sales!

I have no evidence, but I submit this video as people's exhibit A.

Your video, MIT lab amazing 3D printer.... using molten glass, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Of course not, but alongside iOS updates which tend to slow the phone down I think it's a very intentional 'nudge' to upgrade the phone. With iPhone/iOS being something insane like >70% of Apple's profits (I think it's higher now) they really have to keep this kind of practice up to keep sales growth chugging along.

People will usually second hand the old device if they can. The more shameless practice is with printers that will arbitrarily stop working after a programmed number of prints.

I mean I think it goes without saying that Apple has the capacity to come up with a coating that doesn't scratch. It's not just Apple of course, if you split electronics by durable and regularly replaceable you find things like appliances are more durable that gadgets.

Certainly variable friction there. I've no idea if it would be in the range we'd need for something like this.

Sadly, it doesn't sound like something a home hobbyist could do much with...yet. Give 3D printers a few more years, and we might be able to try this out.

I've watched much of the clip at 1/4 speed and learned a little. SPOILER ALERT.

The marker vanishes are now definitely obvious. The first time he slips it into his vest. The second time he flips it to the back of his fingers then drops his hand behind him and discards it.





So, the vest definitely does come into play a lot. He also pushed a card into the lower opening in his vest at about 3:45 while misdirecting by spinning a card in his other hand.



That's all good and fine, but other things are not simple sleight of hand.

At 5:10 with his back turned he shows us the signed card with the hand behind his back. Then in full view he simply turns the card against his back. Then his other hand raises up from the other side of his body to reveal the "same" signed card. (The one that was in view, btw, he tucks up into his vest at this point, keeping in hand the blank that was paired with it.) The only possible explanation for the same card being in two places at once is there must be multiple copies of each signed card, which means he has stooges who sign the exact same way every time or he has a technological advantage like others have mentioned (tiny scanner and printer).

The other thing that confounds is how he has a signed card in one hand and a stack of cards in the other. Then in full view the tall stack shrinks down to (approximately) one card and the single card grows into a stack instantaneously. I guess there must be some kind of technological solution to this as well, but I don't know how a functional stack of cards (and not just the appears of a stack of cards) could collapse and appear... unless they aren't functional and it's a trick deck that can easily expand or shrink to look like a deck or single card.

At 6:00 when he just shakes the bag and the signed card inside changes to the other signed card, I think he just flips the bag around with his shake motion and that the single card is printed on the front with one signature card and the other signature card on the back.

That's the only thing that makes sense... which again requires a special scanner and printer setup... I guess.

I was providing a more "technology tailored" way to fool us and how it might create a great magic trick. I also love magic tricks that make use of self-created "magical" devices (his vest counts towards what I'm talking about).

As I mentioned there are probably quite a few ways to do this trick and I wholeheartedly agree with you that the most likely way the majority of this was done was via misdirection and cues. As it is true with almost everything, the simplest answer usually is the truth.

I however, became interested with he kept moving his hands (and the "cards") to the same spots or moving them, repeating, the same movement over and over again right before the "change" or flip occurred (with other things as well like the smoke--and yes, I know it was more than likely misdirection--but, sometimes smoke is just smoke ).

That is what made me think of a scanner (mostly because I'm a computer/engineering/physics hippie and I have seen scanners that can be made to look exactly like that mat; but I also have learned a bit of magic, with that instead of becoming an amateur magician I instead learned about magic and it's history instead). But, like you said and I also said above in my comment, this all can/could be done through many various schemes. Using differing ways of that same scheme/idea, the same mechanics and/or devices, with sleight of hand and a lot of misdirection (very well done too, simply because there was so very much of it needed--which Penn & Teller commended him on in their own way).

His jacket for example is obviously HIS engineered creation. It has a lot of hidden and secret functionality; in fact it may have been the underlying foundation that allowed the whole trick to work so well (you never know just what exactly is the magician's biggest helper in many tricks). That is what I love, personally, about magic is the engineering and love--the workmanship--that can go into it. Every great magician definitely has that engineering facet to their personality; they all know how to create a device that gives them just what they need. I've seen so many magical devices and how they were used and how they're made as well and I must say, it is a terribly interesting thing to learn about and see done. Sometimes you have devices made just to perform one extremely small function, just to add that little bit of "panache" to a trick...

Every magician--good and average--however do have or need one thing in common no matter what, and this refers to what you talk about (and this magician may be leagues ahead of others, making all tricks completed in that same manner seem simple and mundane compared to what he can accomplish with the exact same, extremely fundamental, aspect to magic; pulling off tricks that almost all magicians would believe to be impossible using such a standard fare of abilities and methods): agility and sleight of hand. With this comes the uses for that "god-like" speed and manipulation. Use that with engineered tools (not necessarily what I mentioned--the scanner, printer, and ink method--but, things easier to craft and more likely to be used like his vest) and it can suddenly make any of the simplest tasks (or even tricks that other magicians perform) we do everyday, extraordinary if not miraculous.

I thought I'd add my idea, because I like to figure these tricks out as well; as I'm sure many of you are as well.

Overall, if I was Penn and Teller, I'd be most impressed with his ability to keep his showmanship intact while obviously needing great concentration on the trick at the same time--not to mention he keeps showing superb sleight of hand the whole time.

So many magicians are just amazing to watch. The tools they create (which can be so complicated that you'd never believe that someone would create such a thing or something fairly complicated to complete one very easy task) sometimes never let their presence be known--if done right. But in other cases you know there is "something" helping the magician, but you can't begin to imagine what exactly he has created or what exactly it is accomplishing for him.

I do wish they'd give us a general idea how these tricks are performed, without destroying the "magic" involved. Just tell us general things, like "misdirection and a magical device", etc... They don't need to explain it into it's minutiae.

I'll always love magic and the amazing use of the mind and the body to create illusions grand and small (or "magic" that just tests the limits OF the mind or the body; feats, as it were).

When the body and mind work together in perfect unison to create such wonderful uses of sleight of hand, feats, and "magical" devices...these are the type of people that will continue--hopefully for as long as humans exist--to create magic as real as it can get. Waking up the child inside us all!

/length

There were a lot of different tricks in there. A part of me really wonders if the mat on the table is a "printer/scanner" and that "marker" is extremely important. There may be a time-released chemical that helps all of this go down (meanwhile he may actually have a small printer on his body somewhere). When the smoke appears that is when the "card" is doing it's chemical thing (as you could smother one card with this chemical making it fully black, but then the printer could change the chemical pattern again as it is scanned and therefore reset the card with the other signature...).

The truth is, I have no idea how it was done, but I think what he is wearing (and possibly what is underneath--not to mention the pockets that are very hard to determine their location or size), possible chemical reactions used in a few different ways, a slim printer, and a slim scanner. Plus all of the sleight of hand tricks you did or did not catch...

If true, he used some fairly complicated technological prowess, besides his agility to get this done. But, for ages untold the creations made and used by magicians are just as important sometimes as the act.

This would also be THE perfect trick to give Penn & Teller the slip, as they may have never ran across anything like this (I've run into tech that could easily do lots of this--scanner through things, etc; it just depends on what is in that pen exactly...think of it kind of like invisible ink, but it need not stay that way and it more than likely can be made to "dissolve" as some sort of inert gas).

Everything was done here flawlessly, even the music feed into the act making it harder to catch.

Phew, that is long enough and I may only have 50% or so right on this one.