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Nerdfest [soylentnews.org] writes:

A group of students at Germany's Hasso-Plattner Institute have developed the Protopiper [core77.com], a handheld device that takes packing tape and "extrudes" it into rigid tubes (presumably with the sticky surface on the insides). It's meant to allow the user to quickly bang out 3D wireframes of large objects. While the resultant extrusions obviously lack load-bearing capacities, I'd imagine this would be useful for exhibit designers or furniture designers trying to rough out scale. And the real brilliance of the Protopiper is how "lean" it is.

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