Just Slightly Ahead of Our Time

jameshowison writes: "We're doing a presentation at the O'Reilly P2P conference next week on what happens when you merge the technologies of P2P with those of 3D printers or 'Fabbers'. If you thought the record companies were pissed off, wait till manufacturers realise that P2P will affect them too!" Yum, tasty wheat.

Comments

Very much ahead of our time.

[Donald Kerr]

One of my girlfriends works at a rapid prototyping workshop, so I've seen some of these "fabbers" in action. In my experience, I really can't see the manufacturing industry are going to be too worried by them. Fabricator machines are useful for prototyping of products, but they really aren't suitable for the production of the finished product.

Fabricators are slow. Very slow.

There's a limited range of materials you can use in them - the idea of a Rolex fab mentioned in the article is a fairy tale. The fabricator can't just magically produce gold and diamonds and incorporate them into a shiny new replica Rolex Oyster. Fabricators just aren't designed for making luxury goods like this, or for making anything which requires a non-trivial variety of materials.

Basic economics tells you that fabricators aren't a threat to the manufacturing industry. Real manufacturers benefit hugely from economies of scale, allowing them to buy raw materials in bulk and use faster and more efficient machinery. By trying to make things yourself, you lose these economies of scale. It wouldn't be worth your while trying to cheat Bic out of a few pence by trying to make your own ballpoint pens. The industrial revolution happened for a good reason!

Items produced by a fabricator don't have the durability of properly manufactured items.

There are countless other reasons why fabricator technology isn't a threat to manufacturing industry. This presentation is just jumping on the peer to peer bandwagon, but it really isn't realistic. Only when we have Star Trek-esque replicator technology will this sort of thing approach viability, but I am sure that replicators will also prove to be financially unviable.

--

Not very convincing reasons

[OlympicSponsor]

"Fabricators are slow. Very slow."

Computers used to be slow too.

"There's a limited range of materials you can use in them..."

Most consumer goods are made of a limited range of materials as well. Nearly all children's toys, for example, are plastic and/or wood. Besides, why couldn't I fab myself a VCR minus those parts that need to be "handmade" and then install those myself later?

"Fabricators just aren't designed for..."

Here's your basic flaw. No, fabbers aren't designed for that NOW. But what about 20/50/100/150 years from now?

"By trying to make things yourself, you lose these economies of scale. It wouldn't be worth your while trying to cheat Bic out of a few pence by trying to make your own ballpoint pens."

This reads like FUD from the manufacturing industry, circa 2101. Sure, I might lose economies of scale (although dirt, air, water, wood and sunshine are all pretty cheap--not to mention the fact that I might buy my materials from a co-op or something)--but what do I GAIN? I can make a device that works EXACTLY how I design it. I can download Joe's design for a water heater, tweak some parameters and have my own custom machine that exactly meets my needs. The point of fabbers isn't saving money on pens. It's control over the devices in your life. It's also about opening the field of design (if not manufacturing) to everyone, just like the Internet opened up the fields of music, writing and programming.

"Items produced by a fabricator don't have the durability of properly manufactured items."

This almost solely a function of the materials used--which could easily change in the future.

Honestly, your whole post reads like some intelligent-but-fuddy-duddy from the early 70's explaining why this new-fangled "desktop publishing" won't work. "Sure, a computer and a printer are useful for creating a manuscript--but who wants to read dot-matrix?"
--