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The next 3D printing revolution

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48 pointscstross15 comments

"What am I missing?"

Well, mostly I would criticize that much of the analysis is based around the cost of making clothing. But buying basic clothing (t-shirts, simple pants etc) is cheap, even from a developing country perspective these days.

In the developed world, we pay for brand, for design, to be fashionable. The price we pay for a garment has only a slight relation to the cost of making the garment. As such, the economics of printable clothing is not going to make a major difference.

In fact it's worse than that. Fashion is often used as a signifier of wealth. If the world discovers that it's expensive to make hand-sewn clothing, and cheap to print it, you can bet your bottom dollar that the wealthy people of the world will only wear hand-sewn garments. These are the people that set fashion, which means that every 20-something fashionista will be looking to copy them, which means that they too are going to have hand-sewn garments. It's the future equivalent of the fact that today's rich and famous don't show up to the Oscars in a jean and t-shirt (well, unless they're trying to make some kind of ironic statement, and even then you can bet that it'll be a designer pair of jeans and t-shirt, costing in the hundreds of dollars)

I'm not hugely fashion-conscious, but I have friends that sit in a bar and tell me whether or not the girl two seats up has a real Versace handbag, or a cheap knock-off (it's scary - enough to make me never buy a knock-off!). If you know what you're looking for, you can see the difference, and people that care about fashion do know what they're looking for.

Ah, but what if some highly influential celebrities/1%'ers have equity in the 3D printed clothing? What if these influencers had their own 3D printed clothing lines, and they pushed the idea? When there is money to be made...

Thats a huge 'what if'. And it's also assuming that there is money to be made with 3D printed clothing in the fashion industry.

Well, the wealthiest - the Oscar red carpets of the world - do wear hand-sewn, one-off custom-designed couture. That opens up a whole marketplace of cheaper knockoffs "inspired by" it, as well as the original designer's ready-to-wear line.

As an overlap between the two worlds, tailoring to make an off-the-rack garment fir properly is also something that a certain wealth level take for granted - when I was recently shopping for clothes in Nordstrom, it was assumed I was going to get them tailored for the perfect fit.

But buying basic clothing (t-shirts, simple pants etc) is cheap, even from a developing country perspective these days.

Clothing is cheap but it's often manufactured in highly unethical working conditions. Factories burn down or collapse, killing hundreds of workers and maiming many more. It's a really terrible situation and I'm sure many companies would love to have an affordable means of automating this problem away.

I'm always fascinated by suggestions that one solution to unethical working conditions is to eliminate the jobs entirely.

Every job is slated for automation eventually. The idea that jobs are a good thing to have around is widespread but wrong, in my opinion. Jobs are a relic of the pre-automation era of civilization.

but you can get a customized 3d printed piece really quickly.

Really interesting. Also, please s/I infer that that/I infer that/, ftw.

Personally I have a really hard time with the suggested future scenario: looking at clothes on a screen/magazine/shelf is at least one order of magnitude more "meh" than trying them on, for me. But perhaps the store could also have some kind of "generic medium" pre-printed editions that you could try on.

Of course, perhaps that doesn't make sense at all, since with the magically super-fitted Clothes of the Future, the fit will be so fantastic that trying something non-fitted stops to make sense for typical designs. It'll be interesting.

I don't see why I would want to print every t-shirt I am going to wear, and there are lot of considerations too.

The first one is material: If I am going to wear something I certainly don't want it to harm my health. Having possibly toxic plastic on me all the time is a thing I would very much like to avoid. Pure wool just can't be replaced.

The second is the actual final shape. Ok maybe the shirt would fit better if it was printed, but surely wearing something that fits your skin is not always flattering or desirable. There are days you need more room for extra garments too.

The last thing is that I really hope its durable, which silly string is not. If it's durable enough I can see it having a very big success in all other areas discussed.

The point on dress patterns not scaling linearly is an important one, especially in the plus size range. It's also true that proportions vary even within the same dress size. I'd love to see Stross' model of the store-as-scanner, made-to-measure clothing come true -- though I've seen a startup which measures body proportion in the comfort of your own home, so maybe the stores would be more for final fit and finish, if the cost works out.

Mind = blown. This could mean: 1) No shopping needed: you print your clothes in the morning 2) No need to wash your clothes. You can dissolve them, clean them chemically and reprint you clothes.

This could affect a lot of industries and companies...

Have you seen this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKZuPPjoxHQ#t=201

Question, is it possible to print something like chain where nothing holds up the other parts?

Depends on the method used to print.

If you use selective laser sintering (which is what Shapeways uses), what you do is keep on adding layers of a fine powder, then us a laser to fuse them together in the places where you want your object. The powder supports the object, so things like a chain are entirely possible to print. When you're done, you drain the powder away and have your completed object (which you may then do further finishing on like sanding or painting).

Other 3D printing methods like extrusion may be able to do so, if they have two nozzles and can print both the final material and some supporting material that could be melted or dissolved away.

yes you can print assemblies (http://blog.stratasys.com/2011/02/24/3d-printing-creates-fin...)

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