Why 3-D Printing Isn't Like Virtual Reality
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
"Something interesting happens when the cost of tooling-up falls. There comes a point where your production runs are small enough that the economies of scale that justify container ships from China stop working. There comes a point where making new things isn't a capital investment but simply a marginal one."
The West can return to manufacturing if it becomes a function of the creative class. This could be a major trend for the next decade.
My concern is that if this technology truly is revolutionary but does not carve out a sufficiently large piece of the pie for the traditional parasites (e.g., distribution moguls and IP lawyers) it could very easily be outlawed. (Probably not effectively, but note the number of people who are in jail today for replicating a plant.) This will be hard since 3D printing potentially increases wealth with much less involvement of money. So how will they take their slice of pie?
If it really is a disruptive technology, there will be plenty of cases where the economic advantages eliminate someone's job. I'm old enough to remember discussion about US factory workers being replaced by robots. Factory automation turned out to be far from the main threat to US factory workers' jobs.
There is no such thing as threat - a factory worker who cannot compete MUST be selected out, and replaced by something that is cheaper. This is for the betterment of all, at the expense of the said factory worker. This is called reality and those who choose to prevent efficiency is only retarding progress.
Now, of course, the said factory worker isn't obsolete - they should "skill up" and do something that currently isn't achievable via low paid labour, or machines. This is where value is derived, and should be encouraged (ala, re-education).
This guy puts it better than me: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-inc...
Also, I think it's a bit cruel to expect former factory workers to just "skill up" and become programming ninjas or whatever. Not everyone is born with the same cognitive assets.
Apart from the dubious economics of a Guaranteed Minimum Income, such a program would maintain the role of institutional intermediaries in our lives just as self-sufficiency again becomes possible.
Future homesteads will lose bids for natural resources because big actors will be able to exploit these resources more efficiently due to economies of scale. I'm for basic income.
Analogously, suppose AI and voice recognition progress to the point where all telephone calls to companies are handled cheaply by computer rather than being outsourced to humans in India. You wouldn't call this the West's "return" to the call center industry; you just say the need for the industry had been eliminated.
I can, however, imagine a scenario where you are kind of right. It could be that 3D printing requires a moderate size industry of 3D-printer servicemen who need to be physically present. In this case, the jobs could move back to the wealthy countries simply because the printers can't be remotely serviced. Nevertheless, this still requires a contraction of the manufacturing industry: if it didn't require substantially fewer resources be devoted to manufacturing with 3D printers, we wouldn't move away from the build-it-in-China model.
Now I think its the 1% who are Eloi. They live in an artificial paradise as the heads of monopolies and old-guard businesses, but every once in a while, we eat one of them.
OK, now I see that there was an inline link http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27526/ to an article called "Why 3-D Printing Will Go the Way of Virtual Reality". This article's only mention of VR is the claim that "3-D printing, like VR before it, is one of those technologies that suggest a trend of long and steep adoption driven by rapid advances on the systems we have now." Which is not really about VR at all, only saying that VR is an example of a technology which was not adopted at the rate at which its promise would imply.
So reading between the lines, collectively these authors would seem to imply that 3-D printing, whatever its merits and limitations, as a technology must have almost nothing to do with virtual reality. Otherwise, these authors surely would have mentioned it.
Interesting how the term "virtual reality" predates the term "linkbait" by many years.
If anything, 3D printing will be exactly like VR in the sense that it will have an initial burst of excitement in the mass media, followed by a long steady march toward ubiquitous, banal, take-for-grantedness.
Chucking a solid block of metal into a 5-axis CNC mill and having it grind out an arbitrary shape from a CAD drawing is the future.
I don't see any way of getting parts made out of the requisite materials with the requisite strength and resolution with "3D printing" technology. It's great for novelties, like the service which takes your WoW data and prints up a statuette of your character. But for serious fabrication, good old machining is still the best bet, coupled with high technology and cheap garage models with advanced safety protocols that let hobbyists grind out small to medium sized parts at small scales.
As a bonus you can recycle the shavings.
Obviously you are talking about the present, not the future.
I believe that 3d printing metals is the future, recycling your shavings is not a bonus, it is a serious problem when you waste from 50% to 90% of your metal blocks, not only if you use expensive metals like titanium, but also when you need to wear expensive tools and a lot of time and toxic lubricants to get it done(you need the lubricants to make the ultraslow process fast).
In 5 axis CNC you also have the problem of having to design the order of the operations and grab positions.
The good thing about 3d printing is that you have the geometry, you print it, you are done, no hassles, very small waste.
Of course, once you have the main geometry done, you could use 5 axis CNC to make it perfect finish, just wasting less than 0.5-1% of the material weight and time.
3-d printers don't need to be nearly as rigid as machine tools and can be much lighter as a result. Machine tools have a limited set of operations because the cutter head has to reach what it is cutting without interference. Complex parts require can require several tool changes as a result. Printers can create overhangs and cavities that would be very difficult or impossible with machine tools. 3-d printed objects also don't need to be clamped down while working, which makes setup much faster.
Though machines and setup are still very expensive, the raw materials in 3d printing can be very cheap compared to steel or aluminum. (And more advanced materials are available if you need greater structural integrity.)
Mills are significantly more dangerous than printers as well. Even with "advanced safety protocols" mills have heavy rotating components and very sharp cutters backed with powerful motors (otherwise they would be pretty worthless tools.) The products that come out of them often have sharp edges that need additional operations to clean up. Printers can get hot or pinch you and require respect, but I think they are significantly less scary.
I could see a world where 5-axis CNC mills were much more pervasive, but I don't see them in every garage.
I'd like to see a rebuttal to your argument though, why is 3-d printing better than a "5-axis CNC mill"?
* How complex an object each technology can produce. Both technologies have various limitations in the shape of the objects that can be produced. 5-axis CNC is limited by the need to find an angle for the arm to hit the shaving point and by the size of the shaving head. 3d-printing is limited by the need to additively deposit on top of existing layers.
* How expensive is the manufacturing equipment. Accurately aiming a high speed, high torque spinning arm in 5d is not particularly simple mechanically and it's likely to require expensive calibration. 3d-printing is much simpler mechanically and easier to calibrate.
* How fast the production process is. Neither process is particularly fast, both are far behind injection molding.
* Strength and strength/weight. 3d-printing has a possible edge for strength/weight because it can print hollow objects.
Not really, you can use another material as support, then dissolve it.
"How fast the production process is. Neither process is particularly fast, both are far behind injection molding."
Well, if you consider that injection molding usually require WEEKS or MONTHS to get the first matrix mold done, then 3d printing is super fast.
Another issue is raw material. For a mill, you need to keep around various sizes and shapes to subtract from. With additive manufacturing, you use the same uniform feedstock of filament or powder for everything.
Think about the 2D printing analogy -- while almost everyone has a 2D printer in their home, early every morning, while we're still asleep, a car drives by our house and hurls a poorly printed bundle of paper at our front stoop containing the day's news. There's no reason that we COULDN'T each print a personalized copy of the day's newspaper at home, but the fact is that we don't. Likewise, I'll bet that most of HN have given up on printing their own photos at home, and just do the sensible thing and upload them to Shutterfly, or Target, or WalMart, or any of the other sites that can deliver high-quality photo prints to your door for pennies.
I just don't believe that the average user will take on the technical knowledge, space, upkeep and supply costs to run a 3D printer in their house. But, I can see the day when every Kinko's, or the equivalent, is equipped with one of these babies.
I'm in my 50s and I haven't subscribed to a newspaper in 10 years. Most of the young people I know, in their 20s do not read physical newspapers and many of them don't watch broadcast television. Newspapers are fast dying out, and TV stations are starting to sweat. (I've worked in and out of broadcast TV for the last 15 years or so.) Demographics are defiantly skewing to older people, and even those are dropping.
They don't print photos at home or at photoshops. They look at them on their computers or phones. These days the only time I ever print a photo is for my 96 year old father; he has vision problems looking at screens. Until recently he was perfectly happy to look at photos on his desktop PC. In fact a major project I did for him was to scan in boxes and boxes of old photos. (Many of which I've recently had to print out again into books.)
Now I do know lots of people, guys mostly, who have wood shops or car repair tools. I'm not really talking about technical people. Mostly guys in their 20s - 50s. And when I go to the hobby stores these days I see all sorts of interesting "making" stuff aimed at women. One company makes a CNC paper cutting machine that is very popular with scrap bookers. They have recently expanded into a machine that creates elaborate cake decorating layer. And some of the polymer clay craft systems are very suggestive.
People have always been makers, that's part of what defines people. One of the advantages to making is that you can make whatever you want. If you can make it.
Five years later you have the Apple][, the Atari ST and the IBM PC. Ten years later you had a Macintosh. Thirty-five years later we were walking around with supercomputers in our pocket.
Extrapolating the adoption of 3D printing based upon today's home kits is definitely short-term thinking. Better to consider what a $500,000 top-of-the-line Objet printer can do and imagine it in you home 15 years from now, in the space your microwave takes up.
We do. We print ON A COMPUTER SCREEN a personalized newspaper at home. Once we read it (we don't need it anymore) we make it disappear.
You should try it, it is magic!. :-)
"I just don't believe that the average user will take on the technical knowledge, space, upkeep and supply costs to run a 3D printer in their house. "
The same thing was said about cars or computers before. The biggest users of my 3d printer are non technical women and girls! They love it to make cooking , shower and closet hooks, for making their own earrings, bracelets, rings, and necklaces, things for the garden and cute flower vases.