In a universe in which I'm increasingly convinced that everything in the world will soon be produced by 3D printers, certain creations continue to impress me. A group of Stanford students have modelled and printed a working video game controller using one of the machines as seen on Computer World, probably just because they can.
There's a video below showing off the design, printing, and use of the 3D-printed controller, which admittedly looks pretty rough. It's hardly a finished commercial product but, crucially, it does in fact work. The students created a custom 3D printer head named Rabbit Proto to properly print the controller.
Whether or not this becomes viable in the future for big companies to use for controller production (which I doubt, since there are much more high quality materials available), there are potentially some very interesting implications.
If the technology penetrates the average household in the future, 3D printing could solve problems for those who can't use traditional controllers. Those with physical handicaps could have custom controllers created for them, for instance, even if a 3D-printed device can't fully replicate the functionality or features of a first-party controller.
Printing a replacement controller may be possible, too, or creating a controller to use for PC games. Perhaps I'm being too optimistic on the future viability of these devices, but if it's possible to create them at all, it's not out of the question that people could be printing some in their homes when 3D printers become more ubiquitous.
The biggest obstacle would likely be the technical know-how to put the controller together, which you can see requires some knowledge of wiring and similar skills. In the right hands though, I'd like to think some of the uses I mentioned are possible--see the process yourself in the video below.
