The 3D Economy: Forget guns, what happens when everyone prints their own shoes?
reason.com
reason.com
And even if you can print your own plastic salad bowl or plastic shoes or plastic furniture, people are still going to prefer ceramic bowls and leather shoes and wooden furniture, since they offer a more pleasant user experience. If plastic stuff does become more popular and growing numbers of goods are going to be printed out of plastic, it will cause the price of plastic to go up, since plastic is made from petroleum, a non-renewable natural resource.
I also suspect that long-term exposure to vaporized plastic and tiny airborne plastic particles in your home is not going to be great for peoples' health.
Let me stop you right there.
3D printing is in its infancy. Much where plastics were in the 60's and 70's, where the car was at the turn of the century, and where the printing press was in Gutenberg's time.
I implore you, DO NOT make the mistake of underestimating this technology. I do not say this as a fanboy. I say this as someone who has watched production parts be built for aircraft out of titanium, printed from powder. Parts that are in aircraft engines flying right. now.
But it isn't just metals (laser sintering). Plastics. Food. Human cells! (3D printed kidney and bladder, respectively: http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidn... ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nqw1yjyKEs).
TL;DR You are going to be amazingly shocked at the advances this technology makes in 5-10 years.
EDIT: This was a CNC mill conversion I performed ~2 years ago at a 3-day class in Michigan. Total cost to me was ~$3K for the mill, the parts, and the class. I didn't have the space for it, so I sold it to someone who consults to auto manufacturers. Its now on a production line as part of a process to build keyfobs for a major auto manufacturer.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jHg2yrWqd8
I understand its not technically 3D printing, but the manufacturing technology now accessible to your average person is incredible.
All that aside even in situations where you truly need things to really be clean you don't need an actual clean room, just a 3d printer with a "clean" enclosure within the build volume area.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabricati...
So while I think 3d printing is interesting, I don't think it's going to result in the end of the the existence of corporations as everyone stops doing business with them and DIY's their every need, as this article seems to envision.
As far as manufacturing is concerned, most plastic household items haven't been manufactured in the U.S. for a long time.
It seems more realistic to ask:
> How much of our economy is actually based on the kinds of objects that can be printed?
...since ceramics, metal, rubber, and circuit boards can be printed. The "printed circuit board" is not even a new concept. And when you ask it this way, it really does seem like the potential for societal disruption is huge.
Sure it may disrupt some industry: Boeing may start to use a 3D printer for airplane wings, Intel may use one for CPU cores and Nike may use one for sneakers. What I don't see is everybody having a magic 3D printer at home that can print airplane wings, CPUs and shoes. I'll believe that when I see one.
http://www.dezeen.com/2013/08/02/cubify-launches-free-to-dow...
The printer costs around $3K.
http://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/03/3D-printed-shoes-by...
That kind of printing by retailers seems like a more likely incremental step towards major economic change than having it all work off of home printing. We don't make anywhere near enough purchases out there of 100% plastic items, or where plastic could be a viable replacement.
Those already exist today. You can have a tailor make you a suit, and it's a special thing only for you.
Most people don't want that, they want to wear what their friends and idols wear, so it's not feasible to shift production to 3D printers, so that they print the same thing over and over again. Our current system requires no further investment.
Having a machine that, given the correct fabric, can print an arbitrary design would enable clothing stores to completely eliminate most of their factories, warehouses, delivery costs, standing inventory (much of which is thrown out or sold for a pittance), employees, and a significant percentage of the size of their stores. They will be able to react to fast-changing fashion trends instantly with exellent efficiency. They will be able to keep and reuse old designs more or less indefinitely. Sure, machines will be printing a lot of the same thing over and over again at any given time - but the thing they're printing over and over again will be what's popular and selling right there and right now, which is very difficult to predict months in advance and for every location. That, combined with the huge reduction in overhead, will allow the first mass-market retail store to figure out on-demand printing a huge advantage over its competitors.
Not to mention that it will fit the customer as close to perfectly as measurement and design allow, so the product itself will probably be of significantly higher utility than what you can get in the average mall store today.
if I had a machine that would tailor me an outfit after a 3d scan or equivalent, i'd use it primarily. Instead, at the moment, I must employ a tailor.
I'm thinking the best application for me might be furniture. It would be really cool to flip my apartment every year by melting down my old stuff and printing new.
Maybe a bike but it'd have to be one of those chainless designs.[0]
But past that, I'm at a loss for what I'd make even with a magical instant printer. There are very few things that I use or want that could be made entirely of plastic.
I've wanted to get a 3D printer but I feel like it'll end up going unused like my Raspberry Pi. Once in a while it'd come in handy but its not going to change my world.
[0]-http://cdn.trendhunterstatic.com/thumbs/chainless-bicycle-nu...
Broken spatula? Print a new one. Friends coming over for drinks? Print some wine glasses[sic?] and plates. Half of a leftover chicken? Print a tubberware case the perfect size for it. I'd print perfectly sized cabinet inserts for all of my utensils. Outside of the kitchen, I could make bookshelves and cabinets that are only as big as I need them to be. There are lots of custom organizational things that I could make.
Currently I buy all of these sorts of things from stores, so they are never quite optimal. If I had a shop I'd be making this stuff myself out of wood, but I live in an apartment. Of course I don't have room for a car-sized printer either...
Ok, so finally, I have my vessel and I pour in some milk. And then I watch as the milk mysteriously disappears.
Turns out that the print is not quite watertight and the milk oozed between the inner wall and outer wall of the cup, where there is a honeycomb-like space. (Most objects are not quite solid, in order to save material.)
After washing it out, I figured I'd use it for pencils or something. But you know, you can never quite get the rancid milk out of a porous plastic object.
At this point, I won't be quitting my day job to be a 3d designer, but I will say that I've had $2000 worth of fun and learning, so that was worth it. The printers at this point are pretty much able to print things that quality of something you would get for free in your breakfast cereal.
For the first person to make it that hasn't simply used the output of somebody else's 3D scanning process on a complete device (eg construction from multiple photographs or "scan" from a smart-phone or holding it in front of a kinect-life device and turning it around).
Someone somewhere is CAD'ing these pieces up. The cost of doing that will be passed on to the consumer. If the manufacturers provide the models the cost of the 3D printed piece will be more expensive than replacing the whole part. If a manufacturer invests the time into making sure their component library can be 3D printed they will make sure 3D printers exist in dealerships. Huge overhead costs are involved here.
1) people aren't manufacturing, they are producing for themselves and close friends, so volume isn't a cost factor as much as it would be in a production scenario.
2) printing allows for us to get away from standardized pieces for the sake of homogeneity and production cost. These sorts of manufacturing techniques finally allow for the prioritization of artistry rather than the adherence to standards for the sake of cost, as it's putting that decision into the hands of the consumer rather than the business interest.
3) 'design as a cost' is dropping drastically with the advent of tools that allow us to digitize objects into virtual models near instantaneously.
it reminds me of ordering a car from the factory in the sixties.
Back in those days you could order a car with as few options as you wanted. If you were a racer you could order the economy car with the big engine, no radio or ac or carpet/headliner/backseats and have practically a drag car from the factory. Production cost savings of course nixxed that idea of one-off production cars.
Maybe these kind of technologies can allow for those sort of unique configurations without ruining bottom lines too terribly?
A dramatic cascade to doom that conveniently assumes free and untaxed raw material. No, it's better to keep the existing power structures in place.
The whole article sounds like a call for regulation based on a fear of change. Like it's the first time the market has faced technological evolution and doesn't know how to adapt.
No it doesn't. It sounds like anticipating and fearing a call for regulation based on a fear of change. Kind of the opposite.
It's the opposite.
The article is hypothesizing that regulatory capture will lead to major policy fights against decentralized manufacturing. In fact, that's already the case due to widespread patents that prevent a lot of 3D printing competition -- beyond some recently expired patents, which subsequently allowed a tidal wave of new upstarts to come about (on Kickstarter and so forth). In case it's not clear, the article is not in support of an increase in corporate protection that they're (logically) presuming. One would assume the publication is full support of 3D printing having mass adoption and becoming freer.