A post by Scott K. alerted me to this amazing project by Keenan Finucan on Thingiverse.
If it really works, it is the first realization of a new age of typewriter production using 21st-century technology, as I imagined in the last chapter of The Typewriter Revolution. Others have made 3D-printed parts such as knobs and type elements for Blickensderfers and Selectrics, but this is far more ambitious.
The Mignon was produced by AEG (later Olympia). It is arguably the best index typewriter ever designed. It was fairly fast, and reasonably popular in the Weimar Republic. This is a relatively simple, but still far from trivial typewriter project for an experienced 3D-printing aficionado.
What will come next? Probably single-element machines, rather than typebar machines, are best suited for 3D printing. But they could have keyboards instead of relying on an index and pointer. Will it be a Blick? A Postal? A Crandall? I can’t wait to see.
pretty cool. we’re moving closer to a full-on “real” qwerty typewriter built by 3D tech. could very likely happen this year.