Utah Teapot: Ambassador of 3D Printing

The Utah Teapot is one of the iconic shapes of 3D, as I said before when this puppy showed up on Thingiverse.  And while any CS geek I show this to goes into proxysms of glee, I was surprised at how positive a reaction I got at my Saturday morning coffee clatch, which consists mostly of retirees.

Although most of these people aren’t technologists, they do like a good gadget now and then, and my parametric prints were well received as “neat”.  However, the teapot really got me some unexpected enthusiasm.  The Utah Teapot is an icon of 3D for a reason: it’s instantly, unmistakably recognisable as a teapot.

To this group, making things like gears and hex grids and suzanne the blender monkey might be interesting, but something that is instantly recognisable as a plastic teapot, that’s cool.  I’ve given away four of them now, and I plan to bring a few more in next week as well.

The hardest part about being involved in experimental technology is often dealing with how unimpressive it can look to outsiders.  One of my favorite quotes from the excellent Replicator blog is this one about Spore’s figure print service:

I brought it into my office and all the engineers said “whoah, cool!” and everyone else said “why is it so dusty?”.

Having non-engineers ask me if they can have one of my prints, in a known melieu like this one, that’s, well, cool.