These damn buckyball deskdot neodymium magnet balls fit together in all sorts of arrangements -- aren't there whole math courses at MIT dedicated to ways of packing spheres together? Even cooler when they want to stick in various configurations more than others. So how about a 3D printer, or arranger, that placed balls according to whatever configuration a software had figured out would be the strongest, most solid, most elastic, most adaptive, etc, in order to make up a virtual object with variable properties.
-- JesusHChrist, Jan 24 2011

Magnetic doo dads http://www.youtube....watch?v=-JpM4A4657k
[JesusHChrist, Jan 24 2011]

Isn't that what's happening in a standard laser sintering machine, at a small enough level (atoms)?
-- DIYMatt, Jan 24 2011



random, halfbakery