For all the ooh-aah auspices of 3D printing, we seem to have collectively forgotten that humans made pretty sophisticated 3D things by hand once-upon-a-time. Really. And so in a stroke of genius, students from Rotterdam’s Piet Zwart Institute fashioned an “analogue, human-powered 3D printer” to remind us of just that. Part of the Altered Appliances series we wrote about last week, it is essentially a hand-cranked meat grinder fed with homemade dough and reminds us of a deliciously lo-fi version of the revolutionary 3Doodler.

While the project is more tongue-in-cheek than anything, it does provide a compelling counterpoint to 3D printing fervour. Will CNC and DIY 3D really bring about as big as a disruption to the product landscape as many predict? Bust out the Play-Doh and give it some thought.