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More 3D Printer News
tallackn writes "The New Scientist website has an article that tells of a 3D gadget printer which will allow fully assembled electric and electronic gadgets to be printed in one go. 'The trick is to print layer upon layer of conducting and semiconducting polymers in such a way that the circuitry the device requires is built up as part of the bodywork.' When the technique is perfected, devices such as light bulbs, radios, remote controls, mobile phones and toys will be spat out as individual fully functional systems without expensive and labour-intensive production on an assembly line."
Not to mention that they will cost several times more than their so-called "labor-intensive" counterparts.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I bet that the "toner" for printers like this will be a tad more than the average laser printer toner.
Anyone want to bet against me?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"because we all know how expensive it is to mass-produce lightbulbs."
:P
Way to miss the point.
Am I correct in understanding that lightbulbs contain a vacuum or at least a different air pressure? If so, can I take that comment to mean that they can create a vacuum inside the printed lightbulb, or is that a seperate process?
Not really that big of deal, but that's damn cool if they can.
Thats the polite term for it. Waste is what it is. And given the current recycling rate, don't expect any relief. Even the author of the article refers to the "throwaway society."
Over-exposed schoolgirl victim of high-tech bullying
It wouldn't suprise me if the process ocured in a vacuum in the first place. In that case it becomes difficult not to have a vacuum.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Of course making calculators and light bulbs with this device is stupid and unprofitable. The real power of this device will be to allow designs and products that cannot be manufactured by any other means. Eliminate the parts of the product that are only used to hold the pieces together. Eliminate complexities and potential sources of problem from manufacturing components seperately or by seperate processes. Consider a cell phone made by this method... It would be a single chunk of plastic. Completely customizable color and shape and button layout. Waterproof, impossible to tamper with and nearly indestructible (the circuits are embedded in the plastic and the buttons are just flexible or touch-sensitive areas of the sealed shell).
I imagine the real bugger with this, assuming the technology ever works and takes off, would be the cost of the file you print from! Imagine the complexity of the information required to print a working gadget, like that. And there'd also be some charge for the labor needed to design the file in whatever CAD-esque program becomes available for it.
What would be cool is the open source community eventually embracing it. Imagine scenarios like this:
Hm, can't find a friggin flashlight when I need one. Guess I'd better print one out...
Can't afford the one from maglite.com, cool as it is... What to do?
Ah! Of course! Download the open source flashlight from opengadgets.com and print it out.
Replicator.
Now watch this drive.
Current industrial production methods are pretty advanced and efficient. What would be nice is a _drastic_ drop in the cost of the 3D rapid prototyping printers. That would be cool. Think about it, design & print your own cool stuff. Great for hobbyists that want to have "print" the body of an RC car or whatever other models (use yer imagination). Or maybe you can "print" out a copy of a book properly bound and all (if the DMCA gets overturned).
yes, and future upgrades too.
Soon hardware will be protected by copyrights not patents. The patent office will become a museum.
Instead of waiting around 20 years for a patent to expire expect to wait "n + 99" years for the copyright to expire.
Seriously, though, anyone have any ideas as to what widespread application and refinement of this technology would mean to the entire labor force? The economic impact of this could be devastating inside a mere 20 years without changing labor's basic place in economics.
Hum. This argument came up shortly after the invention of 'Spinning Jenny', when enraged workers destroyed the first industrial machines.
Fortunately, they were not very successful in stopping the industrial revolution, and 200 years later we live, relativly speaking, in extreme prosperity, and with similar or lower unemployment rates. This is because whenever old lines of work disappear, new ones seem to appear.
The key to a strong economy is _not_ to stop innovations, and to maximize the amount of labor needed for a given job. And as for labor's basic place in economics, it should be noted that in present day US, only 10% of the work force or so have industrial jobs.
Tor The economic impact of efficient production is not devastating; quite the opposite.
The lightbulbs they're referring to are more like LED's, the kind that light up when you press a button on the TV remote you just printed out.
:)
An LED wouldn't be a lightbulb, now would it? Since it's not a bulb at all? So does it really matter if the story isn't read? If it calls it a lightbulb, it's incorrect. Which means the original poster who pointed out the issue of the vacuum issue still has a perfectly valid question. If the thing can print out a lightbulb, as the slashdot blurb says, can it create the vacuum too? If it's not a lightbulb, then either the original story, or the slashdot blurb, or both are incorrect.
Not to nitpick, mind you.
A 3D printer is always going to be more expensive than a production line (why don't they use laserjets to print books?).
However it could be extremely useful for fabricating spare parts where it would be time-cosuming/costly to get them (on a battle field, in space etc.)
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
The idea of the current system is not to replicate complex devices like hard drives, but rather cheap, low-performance items like TV remotes, radios, etc. With items like these, the performance and failue issues of the "flexonics" would be much less of a problem. (Circuit switching speed isn't exactly essential when flipping channels, and when was the last time you resoldered a busted capacitor on your $10 AM/FM?)
I'm sure the cost of a system like this would make it impractical for home use, but it could replace assembly lines for many cheap items. When the costs drop, you may even see them in stores...instead of (over)stocking a couple hundred cheap universal remotes, Wal-Mart will just "print" them, or any number of other gadgets, on demand. And in the future, who knows? Advances in technology may make it practical to use "flexonics" or some derivative for creating more complex circuits. Perhaps one day we *will* be printing our own computer hardware...
DennyK
Since this is something I've known was coming (and no-so-patiently waiting) for a couple of years now, I feel I can put this in context and draw a few conclusions.
Everyone wants a Replicator. The things we see on Trek, in Science Fiction, resonate with us so deeply because it's all stuff we really, really want. That's the best purpose of SF, to show you a nice shiny concept and have you go "Yeah. I'd love one of those." and then (for some people) spend surprisingly large amounts of time trying to make it happen.
Go back through history. We've always wanted Magic in our lives, and any technology sufficiently advanced...
Matter Replicators are coming. The technology began when we started carving things from wood, and will reach it's zenith when we finally get true nanotech in maybe a century. But there are many milestones along the way.
One we've been living with for a decade now is the Laser Printer, which is essentially a personal Replicator for books. This is an improvement on the old Gutenberg press, which was the industrial equivalent. Never forget that... the modern laser printer would effectively BE magic to Gutenberg. One look and he'd probably break down and cry with awe and joy.
Of course, then he'd get very angry at the entire copyright situation we've put ourselves in. He'd marvel at our stupidity, inventing a machine that can churn out books faster than you can read them, and then Not Allowing ourselves to use it.
Most of us now own a device that can, in minutes, 'burn' a data storage media capable of holding more information than exists in the human genome. How cool is that? What we did for books, we also did for audio and video media. And then the same copyright issues closed in to hold the technology back.
Again, CD burners started as multi-thousand dollar devices that only companies could afford. Microwave ovens followed a similar course into our homes. (though being devices that only convert food from cold to hot, they strain the replicator analogy a little)
We are slowly surrounding ourselves with specific-purpose replicators, while trying to create all-purpose ones.
It seems fairly obvious to me that these multi-thousand dollar 3D printers used by industry will eventually drop in price, and soon enter the home, to be played with by hobbyists around the world. And the moment that happens, be prepared for some rather large changes.
First, expect to see the whole Intellectual Property issue hit another level. Controlling the reproduction of physical objects is what the Patent system is best at, remember? Imagine a world where your personal replicator will only produce licenced objects after the appropriate payment has gone back to a commercial entity. There are a lot of powerful people who want that to happen.
Then consider the other side, some guy in Guatemala who designs a series of 'patterns' that, if you print them in your 3D printer and assemble the parts, makes another 3D printer. An 'open' printer. When that happens, a wave of change will sweep across the world like nothing we've ever seen.
The first 'industrial revolution' created factories and warehouses and supply chains. The second one (coming soon to a theatre near you) will mostly tear it all back down.
Replicators will change the way we percieve physical 'products' in a way we can't predict right now. Will we start keeping most of our 'things' in data storage, printing them out (and then recycling the materials) at need, so our homes are nice and empty? Will we become pack rats, filling our rooms with pointless crap? Probably both.
Any new view which sees physical products as transient and temporary will be another blow to capitalism, (and materialism, for that matter) which is only kept honest by the transfer of 'real' commodities. What happens to the law of supply and demand when scarcity suddenly cannot possibly exist for a large class of consumer products? We may be facing the end of capitalism as we know it. The only way to keep it in it's current form is to engineer scarcity back into the model, which as the copyright wars show us, is only possible through totalitarian control of each consumer's tools. I don't think we want to go there.
Yes, 3D printers require processed raw materials (the polymer inks) which initally will have supply/demand issues, but those will dissapear quickly as millions of individuals prototype and play with recycling machines, or automated chemistry sets. In the medium term we might even co-opt nature's replicators and make a few strains of yeast which excrete the relevant polymers (or precursors) after eating recycled waste. There are many paths.
None of this can happen without computers and the Internet, and without the intellectual freedom to use them.
The great thing is, it seems to be pretty much inevitable. Whatever the precise mix of technologies turns out to be, these devices are going to forever change our relationship with the physical world.
I'm ready. Are you?
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
Just because I'm a pessimist...
So, any ideas on what will be the first virus payload that targets such a device? I can just imagine the mayhem that would occur if such a thing were to become a common appliance.
Ooh, I know, print an autonomous spycam that networks with any other such camera or wireless network in transmission range. Easy enough to build, give it some insect-level AI and you might never know you were infected.
The ability to deply a wide variety of physical objects into my home at will, for anyone able to break into my computer. Hmm, I think I'll be leaving mine off, unplugged and locked up in the basement unless I really, really need it.
sig fault
Imagine a 3D scanner, capable of determining how an object is made (let's say, a Rolex watch). The technology presumably is feasible, what with Xrays, NMR etc. Given sufficiently advanced technology, this scanning could go to the molecular level.
After having scanned it, and stored the 40Tb "image" on my hard disk, with a *more advanced* 3D printer, I could theoretically churn out exact replicas.
Are we going to see the crackdown we're currently seeing with Digital Media extended to solid objects?
And what would happen if you scanned a live animal? Would the copy you create live?
Oh my brain hurts with the implications
* * *
As you probably understand, in this setup nothing will have to be done by us, people. In theory, that is. But one fact is: important things like a houses, food and transport (not the smallest part of the cost of most other things) will become very very cheap. And after that, I don't know.
0x or or snor perron?!
The process of replacing labour has beeen going in for centuries already - as a previous poster said, since at least the Spinnning Jenny. At that time, most use of human labour was simply as a brute force machine - a source of muscle power. The canals and earleir railways were built by tens of thousands of men with shovels. Later, we invented power machinery to dig for us. Did those men go away? No - some became controllers for the power machines, we build more railways etc. because they were cheaper, and some got to run the railways, and the factories the railways made possible and...
Virtually *nothing* we do nowadays would be recognised as "work" by the standards of 1800. As people are freed from one class of labour, we find another use for them. Some of it is pretty menial - burger flipping. Some of it is pretty complex - network administration. But if we free up people from one sort of labour, we will invent another sort with which we can usefully employ skills (new skills) to make our lives better - and pay the workers.
While I am relaxed about the long term solutions, there are transitional problems if things change to fast. If this new gadget were to come in overnight, the transitional problems would be appalling. But if it phases in slowly - as it will do, because initial implementations will be expensive, and the designs won't be transferred, we can easily soak up the change.
Mind you, it just increases the lead of the developed world against the poor countries. Doesn't hurt the poor countries, just widens the gap - and hence increases the resentment of the poor at the wealth of others.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
My biology is a little rusty, but this seems like a big step in the direction of being defined as alive:
from http://www.geog.ouc.bc.ca/physgeog/contents/9a.htm l
If a device like this does come to the point where it can replicate itself, then it would seem to satisfy points 1, 2, 3, and 5 IMHO.Who is going to play mad-scientist and program in 4, 6, and 7? Would such a device be "alive"? The lines will blur...
Just some rampant speculation...cheers. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Welcome to the outskirts of the Singularity.
/articles/art0134.html (remove any introduced spaces) gives one projection of what this means, but there are others. The inability to project what will happen is an intrinsic part of the porcess.
This is a mere ghost of what lies ahead. The future will be quite different from the past, as many of the curves have entered the steep part of the ascent (well, with an exponential curve that's a statement that's hard to quantify, I suppose I mean that they are starting to curve upwards when drawn on exponential paper).
This is not all good. But it's not all bad. What it is, is different. http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.