The Next Big Idea to Change the World? 3D Printing
startupceo.co.za
startupceo.co.za
Would love a simple blog with their creations!
For example, I think 3D printing as a method to rapidly make metal casting and injection molds (either directly printing the molds or via lost-material casting) is potentially more impactful to manufacturing than direct 3D printing. The truly big innovation of 3D printing and, say, "table top manufacturing / fabrication" systems won't come because such devices will be immanently practical for home use. Instead what I think is more likely is that the ability of hobbyists and tinkerers to experiment with them will lead to an explosion of innovation. Meaning: better tools and techniques for automating and simplifying the process of transitioning from design to manufacturing.
Of course if were talking about a 3d printer that can print me up a soda or an iPad that's a different story. But, if it's just little plastic objects well, that's stuck in the realm of knickknacks / Junk IMO. And I suspect most people will quickly get to that point after the first cheap 3d printer shows up.
It could really revolutionise some things, like home appliances. The little plastic latch on your appliance break? Print out a new one. The plastic flap that keeps your battery in on your digital camera break? Print out a new one. Suddenly a lot of devices might be much more 'repairable' now.
For things like appliances most manufacturers already sell replacement parts for cheaper than you could "print" them yourself, without the problems associated with printing it yourself.
For things like consumer level electronics, the manufacturers could sell replacement parts, but they'd prefer people replace the entire item. If the camera manufacturer won't sell a replacement flap, it's unlikely they'll give out the original CAD files for people to print their own.
Two- Competitive forces will favor companies which support this approach.
Kinda like open source won the desktop? No wait...
In terms of the process, sure. But the product is vastly different; '2D' printing just generates a new encoding of the same information you've already got stored electronically, and when everyone has PCs and smartphones and tablets, a physical encoding of information is rarely a necessity.
But 3D printing actually creates a functional physical object that corresponds to a design; it's not merely a re-encoding of the information itself, so there's a huge value-add with 3D printing that isn't at all present in document printing, even if the current iteration of the technology is limited to producing small-scale uniformly plastic parts.
Or alternately how long will it take until we can print an iPad?
Like all other manufacturing technologies.
But this pushed hard on testing processes. Industries like software, that can avoid testing(through bugs and reuse and good testing tools) seen an innovation boom.
But industries where testing is hard, seen troubles in innovation. Pharma is a good example of this with the small amount of new drugs in the pipeline, even thought there's tons of "prototypes".
So i wonder,is there a need, and how can we automate and simplyfy the need of physical product testing ?
Let's look at this popular hundred dollar coffee maker: http://amzn.com/B004SOZVQ2 which one could order within seconds and have it delivered within two days.
Just from the picture, one can see it has at least two dozen parts made from seven different materials ranging from injected molded plastic, stainless steel, glass, as well as electronic components.
It would be incredibly time consuming and wasteful to print each of these pieces with a 3D printer.
As others suggested, you could print a custom injection mold for each component, but then you would need the injection molding machine, several different kinds of raw plastics, and some means to get rid of the unused, potentially toxic, materials.
Okay, to complex. How about a simple toy, like this ten dollar Nerf gun. http://amzn.com/B0002UP0IA
Again from the picture one can see seventeen different pieces all different colors and at least three types of plastic and a least one metal spring.
This gun could be made with 3D printing technology, but it would waste an incredible amount of material and would take a fair amount of time. You would still have to order the darts and spring separately.
I could see someone wanting to make this themselves; those who like legos, model trains etc.
3D printing can be world changing for hobbyists. The rest of us have already had our world changed by modern manufacturing, global supply chains, and online retail.
Spend 100$ and wait a few days, or spend a few bucks and wait a few hours?
The question is whether a coffee maker can be made from less materials in a way compatible with cheap 3d printing, and there is no reason to believe it won't be possible.
And that is fully automated and quickly reconfigurable manufacturing.
Today, to manufacture something like an iphone or a car you have to set up an assembly line, you have to spend a lot of time designing the manufacturing processes of the device. The process of creating a whole supply chain and an assembly line to make thousands of devices is very, very different from what it would take for someone to make a single prototype. And this is why there aren't millions of companies making phones and cars and whatnot, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of resources to manufacture anything.
But this will change. As manufacturing becomes more automated and as the tooling for automated manufacturing improves the interface between manufacturing sub-contractor and product designer (say, foxconn vs. apple) can potentially become purely software. Meaning that instead of having to hire a bunch of people to oversee setting up a manufacturing facility you simply upload a few files containing CAD diagrams, specs, wiring info, etc. And instead of being optimized for producing many thousands of products after extensive reconfiguring of the manual labor intensive assembly line the factories can be optimized for producing as few as a handful of finished items.
How does that change things? Well, it might mean that manufacturing can be more closely located near consumers. If you have a dozen identical automated factories spread across the world then you can simply produce the same item out of each of them. Also, if there is less latency in spinning up / spinning down the production of a given item then it could mean that production could be more "on demand" than the norm today. If a factory only a few hundred kilometers away can be spun up in a matter of hours in order to produce some item and can add thousands of units that could be on the shelves in a matter of hours then it's much less necessary to overproduce.
Also, if a tiny company can leverage automated manufacturing firms for production then this could result in a sea change for all manufactured goods. Boutique manufactured goods could become the norm rather than the universal, mass produced goods of today. What happens when a company could crowd source a new smart phone model for only a few tens of thousands of dollars with a team of only a few designers and engineers and still produce hundreds or even thousands of devices with the same production quality as apple's iphones? And, of course, what happens when you can start revving the design of an item not just on the scale of years or months but on the scale of weeks or days?
And, of course. What happens when you start making factories that can produce factories?
All of these things are near certainties within the next 5 decades if not far sooner.
The revolution is coming.
In the long term (30-50 years), "replicator" technologies could appear, and then game over there's some major disruption coming.
However, for the type of machines today, better democratization means easier prototyping, which combines with hackerspaces / TechShop, open hardware, etc. are already allowing hardware startups to emerge - a movement that's gaining steam rapidly.
For the mid-term, cheaper prints comparable cost/materials-wise with injection molding, this could still do some pretty amazing stuff with flexible production, but we'll still need assembly lines with chips, etc.
Maybe if we can get conductive inks to be responsive enough for digital electronics, we could print circuit board inside and just pick-n-place the ICs. Also, by this time we may have a more modular approach to hardware where only a few thousand components are needed to make 99% of devices - then Kinkos-scale production would be possible. Timeframe: 10-20 years?
What do you guys think?
If we do, then perhaps it is possible to make the manufacturing processes simple enough within this time frame to bring the costs down to the point where these types of companies would be commercially feasible.
I think the first step for the kinko[1] vision would be to largely automate the development and test costs. Maybe arduino is one path to this.
[1]I think it would make more sense as a centralized source who prints designs coupled with rapid shipping, not as a kinko.
Agree with [1] - that's partially already here with ProtoMold, Sunstone Circuits, Ponoko, etc. - centralized makes sense when you have economies of scale, but my comment was that this scale can actually be driven lower via technology.
I think that development / test costs are a big deal, but maybe the "automate" part is more in the EDA sense of the term - than "sudo make me a sandwich" where your design is compiled directly.
3D printing is a toy so far. I don't see how it will ever be more than that.
Sure, folks promise better materials soon. But its actually hard to make metal things well. That's why its done in large factories with expensive presses and stamps and things. You're not going to recapitulate that in your living room.
I'd love to be wrong. But so far, lumpy plastic toys is what we see. Why? Because that's possible at low temps/pressures and with cheap tooling.
Yes, computer technology improved rapidly. How is it relevant to 3D printing? Why do you think 3D printing will evolve as rapidly as computers did?
The only flipside is that customers can see the real thing much earlier and do not understand that at least two or three more engineering disciplines are involved in turning a prototype into a product.
I think the potential for the home user and tinkerer is enormous and that can only be good. Companies that can afford in-house 3D printing are also the ones least likely to address niche markets or crazy ideas.
Development board - check Operating system - check Enclosure - ?
For example, you will never be able to print a spare part for your car, just because of materials requited.