Metro

‘Invent’ of the season

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It’s the weird-science gift of the season.

Maker Bot’s Thing-o-Matic — a device that takes in two-dimensional computer images and creates actual 3-D objects — is not just a big-ticket novelty item that fabricates toys, boxes and Stephen Colbert busts.

Nick DeJesus, 14, has found plenty of practical household uses for the futuristic machine.

He output a new latch for a busted door.

“The possibilities are endless,” said the Bronx teen, holding three latch prototypes in his hand. “Anything you could think of, you could make.”

His Maker Bot, shaped like a hollow wooden box and called a “printer” by its manufacturers — three geeks from Brooklyn — sits next to the laptop on the desk in his room.

Tiny tchotchkes are everywhere: a Yoda head, a starfish, a red heart-shaped box, and a working neon green whistle.

Comedian Colbert, who tested out the product on his Comedy Central show, had joked that the country would no longer need China for “plastic crap.”

But DeJesus thrills in the pragmatic uses. He created a blue cellphone cradle, and spent pennies, and less than an hour, to make a chopstick holder for the kitchen.

The $1,200 printer connects to computers through a USB cord. It takes 2-D images transferred to 3-D software, then translates them into code for birth in the third dimension.

When the process starts, molten 225-degree plastic squeezes out of a nozzle and onto exact coordinates on a 5-by-5 plate heated to 110 degrees. The new object has the plastic feel and lightness of a Lego.

The less complex an object is, the quicker it can be printed. A realistic bust of a human head takes hours.

The home-schooled sophomore printed a small circuit board in minutes, and plans to use it — with Play-Doh — to conduct electricity.

He has printed shoe-holders, which clip onto the laces and hold his sneakers against the wall of his home.

His designs even earned him an internship at Maker Bot, which is based in a Dean Street warehouse in Brooklyn.

He works with Bre Pettis, Adam Meyer and Zach Smith, who met in Pettis’ “geek clubhouse” that sits next door to the warehouse.

After years of trying to build the home printer, they finally managed it, and quit their jobs.

Pettis, a former schoolteacher, said it helped kids invent, learn to fail and try again.

“If we can instill that in the next generation, we’ll have a better future.”