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The Modern Ease of 3D Printing
An anonymous reader writes "What will it mean when 3D fabricators become cheap and common? A NY Times article explores the ease of copying objects by scanning them with NextEngine scanner and sending them to 3d 'print shops'. The experiments were done with Legos because most of the things around his office were protected by copyright. What will happen to the economy for engineering when we can just download a pirated description of a machine and 'print' it out? 'The world is just beginning to grapple with the implications of this relatively low-cost duplicating method, often called rapid prototyping. Hearing aid companies, for instance, are producing some custom-fitted ear pieces from scanned molds of patients. Custom car companies produce new parts for classic cars or modified parts for hot rods. Consumer product makers create fully functional designs before committing themselves to big production runs.'"
"one trick for making models of dark shiny objects is to coat them with a cloud of white powder"
Great, so now when I'm in the tech room doing blow and the boss walks in I'll have a reasonable excuse: I'm prototyping my nose for a prosthetic. Never mind that not even a disfigured maxillofacial surgery patient would want my nose, but hey, the boss doesn't know that.
I hate printers.
When you think about it, modern society is moving more and more to the production of "intellectual property" (i.e. an idea as something you can own) rather than the production of physical goods. A modern individual has the capability of mastering their own music and movies, post-processing and distributing their own photographs in both digital and physical form, creating their own PCB-based electronics, designing their own Microprocessors, building their own vehicles (airplanes are a big one!), and many other tasks that used to require massive resources and tens-to-hundreds of emlpoyees.
Each time a task went digital, society was temporarily disrupted while the new technology was integrated. Then life went on, except that society was now capable of greater production than before. The implications of 3D printing technology are the same. The value of goods themselves will be reduced to the cost of initial development. Once that development has been achieved, unlimited copies will be possible. So the average consumer will see a reduction in costs, and the average producer will see an increase in profits.
"Piracy" will continue to be a problem, but it will be just like today. If producers offer a good value for the price, the majority of consumers won't bother with piracy. If producers are dumb enough to resist the change (*cough*I'm looking at you music industry*cough*), then they can expect that piracy will run rampant until they do offer such services.
Then life will go on, but just a bit better than before.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
In most cases, from the examples I've seen, the rapid prototyping tools can't currently create a durable item, nor can they create moving parts to any great degree. The items are only made of a single material that is not exceptionally strong. Of course, it's possible that I'm as out of touch as usual.
There's a reason why Star Trek didn't have our economic system - in a world where almost anything can be replicated, goods based economies become impotent.
As 3D printing becomes more common, there's going to be a lot of fighting between entrenched manufacturers and "pirates" (just as there is now fighting between entrenched media and "pirates") but in the end, the technology always wins out.
Perhaps this will pave the way to a new economic system...
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
"The experiments were done with Legos because most of the things around his office were protected by copyright"
Um, the Lego folks might want to have a word with him...
cause they've sued over block duplication before
Great! I bagsies the first one to make a life size anatomically correct Jenna Jameson
The RIAA and MPAA will get lots of company from corporations protecting the "intellectual property" of their screws.
There's more to it than this.
The NextEngine scanner can only do 6" scans, so we Canadians will have to wait a few more years before desktop penis scanning is the norm.
Trolling is a art,
I want one of these!!! Stop sounding like the MAFIAA, and think of the good that this sort of innovation can bring. New capabilities for the common man, how horrible!
As an engineer who has dealt with rapid prototyping technologies for over 15 years, I have seen a lot of these technologies evolve.
Until the transporter is invented, I don't think we are in any danger of seeing things copied in the real world on the scale that we see them copied in the digital world. The fact is, there are still severe limitations on the mediums that rapid prototype items can be produced from, and they are still quite costly to have made. Even a small part, say the size of a disk drive, can cost a couple of hundred dollars for a physical mockup.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
It is not just the hated RIAA, MPAA, and the software behemoths, that will be complaining of copyright infringement. Designs of material things will become targets too.
Various fashion designers are already being hurt — once they design something nice, they have to compete with (high-quality) knock-offs. The knock-offs are not produced by 3D-printing machines, but rather by hard-working laborers abroad. They can make them cheap, because they don't need to pay the genius designers — simply steal her/his designs.
Get ready for passionate Socialists arguing, that it is "not the same as stealing" — as if that's relevant, as if being "not exactly stealing" makes it acceptable somehow.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
http://www.nextengine.com/todd/decimation/deci-stu dy-2x.jpg
m ages/fig1.jpg
http://www.solidworks.com/swexpress/pages/feb06/i
Ok, First think that goes through my mind when I see these pictures... How did he get his head on this little platform ?
I wonder what is the turnover rate among new employees at Next Engine ?
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
One cool application of rapid prototyping I've seen is "invisible braces." Essentially a mold of your mouth is taken, then a computer model is created of where you teeth should be. A series of hard plastic mouth molds is then created that "morphs" your mouth from the reality to the desired. The molds are created using the rapid prototyping.
:)
Here's the company site. No, I'm not a shill.
Maybe we will see a return to craftsmanship and individually crafted items. 3D printing is really the final stage in mass production - the same thing, reproduced over and over, rather than adapted to the wants or needs of a particular user. Imagine a world where you go to your local computer/car/furniture shop to discuss exactly what shape you'd like, what colour, materials, etc. Or, if you're happy with the same item as everybody else, it'll just keep getting cheaper.
I believe the answer to that is entirely up to the manufacturers, isn't it? It's not our responsibility to keep their business model profitable.
...but is it art?
Read Cory Doctorow's overclocked which is a collection of short stories. Relevant to this technology is Printcrime and After the Siege. The stories are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license so give them a look.
Not "Legos". Can't we have a little respect for the coolest toy ever?
"What will it mean when 3D fabricators become cheap and common?"
Oh teh nooeess!!! People will be able to make cheap, non-functional copies of stuff from soft plastic!!!!
"What will happen to the economy for engineering when we can just download a pirated description of a machine and 'print' it out? "
You've been able to do that for many years now. Just find a decent set of CAD drawings for the machine you want and "print" them to a CNC mill. Or lathe. Or CNC plasma cutter. Or whatever, not that I'd expect hacks from the NYT to know about any of that. Making a true, functional copy of anything worth while requires knowing a lot more than jsut the external dimensions. What material should be used? If it's made from aluminum then is it going to need to be anodized? If it's metal then does it need to be hardened or annealled? And I won't even go into the obviousl issues of programming electronics.
He claims he used Legos for the article because they were the only non-copyrighted stuff in his office. More likely Legos were the only things in his office that were simple enough to duplicated and made functional. Even something simple like a pen or pencil is too complex.
New Technology Could Lead To 3D Printers
3D Printers To Build Houses
A 3D Printer On Every Desktop?
What's up with that? When any of these products pass the vaporware state, then it is newsworthy. Until then, it seems like someone is really interested in free publicity for non-existent or non-affordable products.
A modern individual has the capability of mastering their own music and movies, post-processing and distributing their own photographs in both digital and physical form, creating their own PCB-based electronics, designing their own Microprocessors, building their own vehicles (airplanes are a big one!), and many other tasks that used to require massive resources and tens-to-hundreds of emlpoyees.
I can grow my own food, too, and have done so. What happens when someone copyrights corn's DNA? Monsanto has already patented genetic sequences, and sued farmers who grew food contaminated by Monsanto's GM crap.
Have none of you ever seen Star Trek? We are rapidly heading in that direction. 3D printers are the first step toward the "matter replicator". What happens when these 3D printers are microscopic, printing molecule by molecule or atom by atom?
-mcgrew
The thing about assuming piracy would be rampant with such a system is forgetting that there is still cost of materials for the machine to build the "copied" objects. The economy won't just disappear, like Star Trek TNG claims.
Besides, much can be copied TODAY, by engineers (mostly in China! haha) And what is the solution to THAT problem?
I do cringe at the thought of having to obtain licenses to produce simple art sculpture or replacement parts for something I own which is broken. The big IP creators will want DRM schemes and official licensing!
I don't know, NextEngine's scan of Han looks like he didn't make it out of the carbonite in one piece. This scanning technology could use a little work.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Good God, think of the paper jams. They're bad enough now, but imagine having to sit there picking pieces of a blender out of the printer ...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Something like a left-side car chassis part that you need based on a flip of a right-side piece, could be easy to copy. Since it's a smooth, uncomplicated, single-material object that has to be symmetrical to the other half of the car. Stuff like on Star Trek, i.e. cooked + prepared food, is still a LONG ways off.
stuff |
In regards to "downloading pirated 3d models" it shouldnt be a problem. Because 3d printers, aren't actually making full functional objects. They're creating 3d models of what the object looks like but entirely made out of plastics. So it's not like you can scan your computer and tell it to just make a dup, it doesnt work that way, unless you want a real-world size plastic replica. *shrug*
In my view, any revolutionary new technology has to try to not to destroy the planet any more than we are already.
Widespread 3D printers will probably mean that we buy less pre-fabricated items from shops, which will reduce shipping. However I presume the energy efficiency (and whatever the equivalent of a toner cartridge for 3D) will be a lot worse per unit for a home printer than a mass production unit. What about waste products? Will this encourage the throwaway society even further?
It also reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuGvPhglGEc
which might be a nice idea, but it's an enormous use of energy for something we can do perfectly well without a machine.
Peter
Seriously here folks. The level of paranoia over the whole IP issue is really getting out of hand. It's an as yet unsolved problem, yes, but why in the heck is it more important than the practical, useful application of such a shift in a new(ish), exciting technology?
Rapid prototyping/3d fabrication is becoming cheaper. You know what that will allow, more than anything? It'll allow competition by the little guy, to produce their own items and test them without the expense of the full production process for a lot of different things. That will mean that skill at design and meeting the real needs of customers will become more attainable by more people, and overall costs will go down.
It's like the commoditization of computer hardware that happened in the late 80's for the consumer sector, and late 90's for the mid-range server sector, and what's happening to the software sector right now. Who's allowed to feasibly compete for customer's money will become a more level playing field, which will cut into the biggest producers profits somewhat, as more people compete, but the big players that adopt the technology will ultimately win out over the big players who don't, and the little guys will generally stay little, with either have a few breakthrough big boom companies, or the few big growers get squashed/eaten if enough of the big players catch a clue fast enough. The latter happened with the hardware market, the former is happening with the software market (google).
One of the reasons I wrote the piece is because things are getting pretty cheap. Not Game Boy cheap, but something that's in line with the historical cost of photography. We're not at the introductory price of a Kodak Brownie (supposedly $1 in 1900), but we're near the price of early cameras when adjusted for inflation. The NextEngine costs $2500 new and the print shops will build items for about $70-$200.
We're getting near affordability for the "prosumer" who might want a hobby. I can imagine that these devices might be very useful to model train hobbiests, artists, and others. One artist I know builds Joseph Cornell-like boxes filled with historical scenes. They're great, really.
And I mean the Communist utopia, not the grim reality of the attempts to build Communism forcefully.
As some old-timers may know, Marx was pointing out, that social order(s) are a product of the production capacity. As the humans' ability to produce things (food, clothing, vehicles, houses, anything...) evolved, so did the social orders. This is the part of his teachings, that no one really disagrees over.
He then argued, that Communism — which Soviet People were busily building, supposedly, while living under the less perfect Socialism — will become possible, when the means of production evolve even further, to the point where Communism's principle of distribution of goods: "From each by their ability, to each by their needs," — will come into being.
Ironically, it is the Capitalist societies, that are quickly approaching that benchmark. More and more things are given out free or for next to nothing to more and more people. Officially "poor" people have cars and TV-sets, and are entitled to substantial give-aways of food...
TFA discusses a major "harbinger" of yet another possible production increase, which promises to allow goods to be produced closer, to where they will be used (presumably, delivery of raw materials will be easier/cheaper). Hurray!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
When it can replicate complex biological objects (eg a piece of food) or electronic or mechanical objects that work then maybe. Until then it'll just be high tech woodwork.
The biggest economic boom in the history of human kind.
After the information age society is going to move into the replication age and manufacturing is going to shift from the factory back into the home. But the factory infrastructure won't go away - instead it will retool and go big. Mile long ships, mile high buildings, air ships as big as cities that have cities in them are just some of the possibilities. Society will become an invention service society.
One other thing. When invention commoditizes, the patent system will die - Just like the information age forced the commoditisation of information and the death of copyrights, and the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of labor and the violent death of the plantation system. That is why it is so important THAT WE MUST KILL PATENTS!!!!! Think about it, you can't control information with physical force, but with invention you can. That is why the death of copyrights will involve lots of lawsuits but little physical violence. That won't be the case when killing the patent system. WE MUST KILL PATENTS NOW BECAUSE IF WE DONT THERE WILL BE AWFULL VIOLENCE.
We've been using rapid prototyping and CAD in the jewelry trade for more than 5 years now.. Desktop printers are available for $30k and high end production boxes for as little as $80k..
The hardest part of this has been finding ways to keep older, traditional, craftsmen involved in the process while at the same time streamlining production and reducing costs.. Like any new tech there are those that will adapt and find new business models and those that learn to say "Welcome to Wal-Mart"..
Death and poverty like me so much, they've brought friends!
Rep-Rap The open-source rapid prototyping system.
In 10 years boyfriends everywhere will be wondering why their women spend so long upstairs in the bedrooms with the printer going all the time.
1) Manufactuers use the printers to create parts for mass production :-)
2) Smaller manufacturer get cheaper copies of the printers and use those to create entire devices (piece by piece)
3) Robotic assembly takes over at large Mfgs and the entire process is automated at the top level, and then at smaller levels
4) Eventually an Ikea-like store is created where parts are created as needed, eliminating warehouses for kit-based home assembly
5) personal 3D printers reach the masses and people download couches from the Ikea-like retailer, then from more complex retailers (far future)
6) TRANSPORTER invented and this repeats.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
If and when a 3D xerox machine is avaialble, would it be considered a self-replicating Turing machine?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I create 3D models and then Rapid Prototypes, and the current state of the art in RP parts is OK for light duty checking of looks and fit.
If you need higher strength and toughness like is commonly expected from Polyethylene to Polypropylene to Polycarbonates, and particularly when it is in thinner sections, current RP materials don't even come close to the physical properties of finish injection molded parts.
In terms of accuracy and surface finish RP models will not be able to match the smooth accurate even surfaces of molded parts, as RP models are created in discrete layers, layer by layer. Until those layers could be brought down extremely small (meaning enormously increasing processing times), the surface finish will always be "rough".
You get what you pay for.
This technology has been around since Stereolithography was first produced around 1986. The prices haven't gotten any cheaper since then. Some methods are slow enough to take days while the quicker ones are limited in the materials they can use and then not to be as dimensionally accurate. If they are not dimensionally accurate enough many things like tolerances on fittings could be produced as interference fits instead of clearance fits and such. And discounting that, the cheapest rapid prototyper starts around 30k USD and only uses starches. They also need to be post-processed hardened by wax... Not all of the methods are "office friendly" to boot. Many use powder and liquids that are messy and not always safe. The nicer machines run upwards of 800K USD and are limited to parts less than 2x2x2 feet.
There is quite a long time before we need to be worried about these things - the past 21 years proves that it is a slow, hard to develop technology.
of nanotech
Reminds me a bit of Neal Stephenson's novel, Diamond Age.
And the worst part? You need to assemble it yourself once the printer finish printing, and it comes with a warning label, "Substance may contain toxin and not suitable for human ingestion".
But even if it were complete vaporware, if work is progressing on it--and /.ers can point out how much longer it's likely to be vapor, then it is of vast service to me, as a reader, to know about it before it's in production.
If this is just something you're not interested in, then don't bother reading the article or comments.
I hope people will realize and accept this, without us having a bloody court holocaust.
34
When the fabricator can fabricate a copy of itself, then comes the revolution.
The ability to cheaply produce miniatures in almost any quantity that a home consumer might need or want right in one's own home would be a boon to players of miniatures games everywhere.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
http://www.emachineshop.com/demo/index.htm
nahh.. that won't happen in our lifetimes..
2 0/2257252
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
But why would printing car parts ever be cheaper than just stamping metal? Sure maybe you could make arbitrarily shaped fiberglass-like parts (which is why it's called rapid prototyping, but if you are going to mass-produce it, how much would it cost to make a mold or die when compared to the total cost of all the raw materials?
And you remember what he said about that..
'It will be the last machine which will ever be made'
First Star-Trek isn't real. I'm sorry, but neither is the easter bunny. If anything can be duplicated cheaply people will only do the stuff they enjoy doing, but no work will be done. Society will stagnate, innovation will come to a halt, and the social consequences will be immense.
Yeah really! Why, it's just like if people could freely duplicate software. There would be no motivation at all to improve it, and innovation would come to a halt! Oh wait.. what about Open Source...
Humans are not wired to behave the way in which you describe. People get bored doing nothing. All you have to look at for am example of this is the number of people who are perfectly financially secure who return to work anyway, because they are bored with retirement.
People's brains needs stimulus. Even if you consider games and other entertainment - if no one makes new entertainment, then the current supply will be quickly exhausted, and the populace will become bored again. At that point, they will start doing creative things they enjoy.
And none of this would "stifle innovation". What about all the dreamers who want to explore space and beyond, or to understand how the physical universe works in more detail? These people will always continue research and innovation - the difference is they will be able to innovate HOW they want and WHEN they want, without being constrained to rules of artificial scarcity or need for essentials, since all their materials would be "free" to them via their replicator.
Really, replicator instantly solve a vast amount of global issues. You no longer have hunger. You no longer have theft since there is no value in stolen objects. You no longer have a "drug problem" since everyone who wants rugs can replicate themselves into a stupor without harming anyone else, and darwinian processes will quickly weed people with those addictive tenancies into oblivion. Likewise, there will be little need for war since there are no resources to argue over, and even if there were you would be assured of mutual destruction since anyone can replicate any weapons they can imagine.
It means we can look forward to a bleak future characterized by a distinct lack of non-convex shapes.
To me, it will mean that we can, with amazing efficiency, create useless trinkets that a sales person can give to a prospective client to say "look at this cool chain link, it was made using a printer!" as a leadin for "Now, since I've awed you with unrelated technology, can you please place an order for 5000 units of pancake batter?"
Not just plastic
.004" to .007" thick.
http://www.bathsheba.com/sculpt/process/
In part:
To start with, the design is laid down, one layer at a time, in stainless-steel powder held in place by a laser-activated binder. You can see the layering on the finished pieces, it is the source of the characteristic texture of my work. Each layer is
The steel granules are so fine that they feel like very heavy, cool flour. During the build the extra unbound powder supports the piece, so no extra structure is needed to handle undercuts. The powder is very flowable, it's not caky like cornstarch, so removing this extra supporting powder from the finished model is quite easy. It slides off with a little shake and a light brush, and it can be poured out of interior spaces.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Because the inventory costs of the 10s of thousands of parts per model line of car are a touch too high. If all the e.g. solid steel parts could be stored on a computer and printed as and when needed, then there'd be no problem at all with stocking things and it would drastically reduce servicing costs.
because most of the things around his office were protected by copyright.
You can't copyright a functional mechanical part. That's why there's a third-party auto parts industry. The author of the original article (free link) apparently has a desk full of promotional items, some of which might be copyrighted designs. That's the only reason he has copyright problems.
The article is really just a product review of a low-end 3D scanner. Not a very good one. Sounds worse than the low-end Roland scanners.
3D prototyping is still an expensive way to make mediocre parts. Most of the people enthused about it don't really have a clue about how manufactured goods are made. Making homogeneous solid objects in quantity is an incredibly cheap operation.
The real breakthrough with this technology is making objects with internal structure. The gecko robots from Stanford are made by loading up a stereolithography machine with several materials of different properties (flexible, stiff, conductive, insulating...) and building something that's almost organic in nature.
these devices to file download.
You need materials, and assembly. SO there will be a significant cost to producing things. Probably more to make it your self then to buy it.
When someone invents a matter converters then run on trash, then you can draw the comparison.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There was a great presentation at ETech about this. For more information on this kind of thing check out the RepRap Project.
That was the games-workshop screaming in terror!
Serves those bastard right, to.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Much of the foundation of our society and economy is based on false or inflated notions of value. In reality, there are only 4 limited resources: matter, energy, space, and time. All true value flows from these things. All those fancy objects we own are just chunks of matter, and we value them so highly because access to the facilities to make them is restricted.
Really, the current state of things is more artificial. And every time technology helps factor out one of the artificial notions of value, we regain some perspective.
and if the people don't want to grant that privlege, well...too damn bad.
"genius designers"
that is laughable. Most things these "genius designers"
make are completly impractical in the real world. Sure, they look good one night on the red carpet, but that is it. How many of those desiugns do you see in stores where 99% of the population shop?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A fascinating book on the subject, talking a little about the tech, but also making the point the eventually, the tech will enable you to acquire physical objects that are essentially "open source," or rather, "open design", and all you would need to buy in the future in order to have an endless stream of consumer products is a vat of plastic.
If you wanted to have a car, you probably couldn't print that out at home, you'd have to go to the 3D Kinkos. Imagine if you could just download a car off the internet, customize it for yourself (with ample help from enthusiasts, like Linux today), and print it out.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
a 3D printer is the best tool for burglars: just get the key for a few minutes, scan it, and presto, free entrance to the owner's property.
Apparently the only car they will actually be able to copy is an Element since it is about 98% plastic. I don't want a "rapid-prototyped" car part!
There's two useful file formats for sending models to a 3D prototype machine -- the STL format, and a simplified variant of VRML.
The STL file format was specifically designed for these purposes and is both simple and topologically strict (no wacky one-sided surfaces, etc). However, it was designed before any machines supported color output, so it entirely neglected color and color textures. So, fabricators like Z-corp adopted VRML in a simplified form to transfer color and texture to their modelmaking machines.
[Semi-blatant but still interesting plugs]
A couple of years ago, at the request of one of our customers (LGM, in Minturn Colorado) we added STL and VRML-for-STL output to the Scene Express output module of our Visual Nature Studio 3D landscape modeling tool. There are some free sample 3d STL landscape files that you can download and check out (or even build, if you're really bored and have too much money lying around. The technology is pretty amazing for making 3d maps models (more) for visitor centers and museums and golf courses and such, though we really need machines that can make a bigger model in one piece. Right now big models have to be made as small (like, 12"x12") pieces and tiled together. LGM has a big CNC mill that can carve a big model out of styrofoam, but it is all monochrome. It has to then be hand painted/textured/landscaped and populated with models, trees and buildings (which are sometimes STL-fabricated too!).
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
"Some assembly Required"
Almost all of today's popular items are complex devices, having numerous parts, requiring complex assembly.
One might be able to "print out" a sculpture or a new case, but one will not be able to "print out" a completed iPod. At best, one could print out the parts and have to assemble them.
And then, one has the problem of programming.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
'Piracy' will occur for commodity items, or rather production will no longer be centralized. More along the line of trying to patent horseshoes when any blacksmith could make one. Or trying to police dress patterns on the web as a path to profitability. Stopping "pirates" from trading last years fashion sounds laughable doesn't it? Of course, the trick is introducing new dress fashions so fast that pirates are always out of vogue. How would you do this? Custom fabrication systems!
The trick is that 3D printers and their ilk allow for a much higher level of customization than is possible in mass production. Just as most bulk items got very curvy in the 80's-90's due to advances in CAD software, in the near future items will be increasingly tailored to the specific customer. My friends won't want a shoe precisely matched to my foot, for example. And while they might want a copy of one of my anime figurines, they would probably pay for one in a different unique pose or the like.
The real money will be in the software necessary to mediate the customization, or the fully detailed 3d CAD models. Also, expect proprietary/open source battles to erupt as well.
And Voila, you have all the *parts* that make an engine, but they still will need to be assembled into an engine, which is not an insignificant process.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Don't forget that the printers will be cheap, but it will cost a fortune to buy the ink.
Your ratchet set could be reduced to the handle and one standard template socket. All other sockets would just be scale models of the one you have. The same concept could apply to all redundant tools in your garage. Can you make me a 72% crescent wrench?
Feh. That's easy. Producers of the original machines will just use the same highly successful methods the RIAA used to stamp out copyright infringement of music.
Next question...
La Vida Vegas
I've been using rapid prototyping machines of various sorts for 4-5 years now. I've been working with the NextEngine scanner since its introduction less than a year ago. Before that, I've used Coordinate Measurement Metrology (CMM) devices, calipers, datasheets, and a little artistry to reverse engineer parts and assemblies. Here are my impressions:
We are not even close to the sort of society described in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age , where everything is manufactured on the spot, rapidly and on-demand, from constituent atoms. I can see how we can get from the current state-of-the-art to that eventuality, but it is still a long way off.
The quality of the parts one can get from a rapid prototyper are just that: prototypes. Depending on the prototyping technology, manufacturer, and capital cost, one can get parts with minimum feature sizes of 0.025" - 0.005", with comparable dimensional tolerance, with part costs of $0.50 - $40 / cubic inch, and build times of tens of minutes to hours per cubic inch. I apologize to those who are metric-only. These kinds of parts usually require at least some post-processing, usually to improve the surface finish or strength. Some post-production machining may be necessary to firm up critical dimensions (for instance, reaming out and/or tapping holes).
The options for finished metal parts are slim. What can often happen is that the rapid prototyped parts are used in mold-making (e.g., for investment casting). There are now a few machines that can create metal parts by melting or sintering metal powders, but they are frightfully expensive, the resulting parts require post-processing on wear surfaces, and the material strength is significantly less than cast or machined metals.
With regards to the NextEngine scanner: it is a fine piece of work. It allows complex objects, particularly ones with compound curving surfaces, to be brought into a computer faster and more accurately than building a CAD model from scratch. It isn't all automatic, and a fair bit of polishing is needed to take the output of the scanner and make usable parts (either reproductions of the original part, or else parts designed around the original part). It is a lot easier than other laser scanners I've worked with, but is not within the realm of an Average Joe. Even though we aren't there yet, we are getting closer. Rapid prototyping and reverse engineering are invaluable tools that seemingly remove the boundaries between what can be designed, and what can be manufactured.
I can see how, in the very near future, rapid prototyping will become more like rapid manufacturing of one-off parts. For instance, being able to create a custom metal implant, like a skull plate, overnight. This kind of thing canbe done now, but it is far from common, and doesn't have one-day turnaround. Another for instance, mentioned by others, is "printing" out an out-of-stock part for an old car. I don't think your average mechanic will be doing that anytime soon, especially since you'd still need a machine shop to do the post-processing. But, a local or regional job-shop, with a legit (i.e., not stolen) database of part models from Delphi an others, could get your mechanic that hard-to-find part in a short time period.
These are exciting times, and the future will only provide more opportunities.
Hmmm. I think the wrong "what if..."'s are being asked. The right, what if... is "what if human behaviour had no limits to it's freedom?" Would we have a utopia, or if not "hell on earth"? At least a damn inconvienent environment to live in. I suspect that no one will be able to come to a consensus, and by the time we do have a clear answer it will be too late to have anything but regrets.
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My captcha is "corrupts". Hmmm...
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Perhaps it's now only a matter of time before people start giving out CAD designs for free. These designs will be usable for creating all kinds of interesting things. Initially it might just be a design to make plastic chopsticks, but going forward people will open source component designs, which can then be reused in true 'object oriented design' fashion. You'll grab the design of nuts and bolts, electrical engines and cute little tires and since they're all open source you're free to combine them into a toy car. Then you release your toy car design online.
There's also digitalization: as we reinvent the world open source style we get 3D models of everything as a side effect. Computer games will be faster than ever to create because if you need to model a realistic garage you can just grab the open source models of walls, doors, cars, wrenches and everything else. It'll be like the perfect 3D model library since each object will be designed to work in real life and thus is the perfect counterpart 3D model at the same time.
A question that's even more interesting is when we'll see the first self replicating virus. It's first step is to create a 3D printer which know to print more 3D printers of the same type. Although driven by a computer program deep down, the virus is almost completely similar to natural viruses and bacteria in the way it replicates. What we today call an "anti virus program" may in the future be an "anti virus killer robot", as it needs to destroy physical copies of the virus.
Dude, that is such a completely wasteful scenario.
First, as has already been mentioned, in most cases the burglar doesn't need to duplicate the key - they can just keep it and use it. Returning your key to you and using their duplicate might be worthwhile if they felt the need to catch you off-guard - like waiting until you're away on vacation (if your key is recovered, you might not think it worthwhile to change the locks - while if the key is not recovered you're more likely to change the locks.) - but otherwise there's not a lot of good reasons to return that key, and a few reasons why it might be a bad idea.
Second, using 3-D scanning and printing to generate a duplicate key? What a phenomenal waste!
- Most keys are based on standard blanks - which means if you get a blank you just need to reproduce the notch pattern to generate a working key. As a result the means for duplicating keys is very cheap - it's just a guided grinder tool. So fabricating the entire key is pretty much a waste of time.
- There are easier, quicker ways of taking an image of a key than scanning it. Think low-tech. Seen "Night at the Museum"? You can make an impression of the key in a mold material (a user-friendly RTV mold rubber maybe, though clay or wax might work just as well for a one-side mold) and then castings made in the mold could be copied to a key blank. I expect you could even do this with a good photograph of the key: turn the photo into a black-and-white image, with black on the key areas and white elsewhere, and use it to either grind a blank by hand, or use metal etching to produce a flat key with the notch pattern on it, and then copy that copy onto a blank.
- Don't forget the time-honored tradition of lock-picking, either. Mechanical locks are rather limited in the security they can offer.
- And then, let's remember that you don't need a key to enter someone's home. Most people don't have alarms (if they do, then the key's not going to help you with the alarm), but even when they do, the house itself is generally not a fortress. Windows can be broken, doors can be cut or broken, etc. If someone thinks it's worth their time and the associated risks in order to get in, they can get in.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Sounds like a good topic for a sci-fi book. Perhaps future space-yards will simply be a vast repository of consumables attached to a large fabricator and assembly machine.
Heck, cars are already being put together in a large-part by machines, if they could "fab" the parts that might greatly reduce the cost/time of production even more. Still, in a zero-G (or low-G) space environment they might be able to do things even better. The first country to build one can rent it out for creation of satellites and spacecraft. The major considerations would be putting it together and getting the consumables up there.
This also leads me to wonder, how does the durability of machinery in space compare to that on earth. Does lack of gravity affect lubrication/friction/wear? How about the lack of particles (or at least lower amount) in the atmosphere to jam things up? How about the low temperature?
Aaaand .... go!
New technology could lead to a 3d printer on every desktop that can build a house?
GREAT!! Now I can make Lego pieces instead of paying the very very high price for a set! Will Lego now need to license their interlocking mechanism?
I'm a model kit hobbyist so this is rather interesting to me. Basically the model kit industry has been dying, gradually, for a while now, due to a variety of reasons. Basically, once upon a time, a model kit was a very cost-effective way to deliver a product that was superior to anything pre-made off-the-shelf. But manufacture of pre-made items (toys, etc.) has become a lot more sophisticated and the results are more intricate and more accurate. For that reason, among others, consumer expectations are changing - expecting less work and better results. Plus I think the manufacturers' expectations have changed, demanding higher volume of sales for a product to be worth their while.
Now, in the mean time, scratchbuilders' methods are becoming more efficient, and more automated. Computers and 3-D software are a big help when people make things on their own, even without a 3-D printer. It's becoming more common these days for people to design parts for a garage kit on the computer and use a milling machine to generate the actual parts. There will, no doubt, come a point when home-printing makes injection-molded kits and resin garage kits cease to be viable. As a model builder I find this to be an interesting scenario, but also a little scary in that I like my hobby and don't want the practice of it to end. I mean, what kinds of things will we see, once the technical obstacles to creating and distributing a model are removed? But, on the other hand, if people can just print parts, does that mean they're not going to be sculpting them any more? I'm sure people will still sculpt and build things, but I feel like the process of building models is getting taken farther and farther away from the process where the modeler makes things. At what point can one no longer claim to have "made" something?
'Course, 3-D printing is one thing - painting is another. Even if you suppose home 3-D printers are going to be able to do color - it'll probably be some time before they're able to match the quality of today's vinyl figures and die-cast toys, let alone current hobby-painted models or future mass-produced toys. How long will it take for color 3-D printers to be able to create good metallic effects? Kandy color schemes? Pearl effects? Smooth gradients? Precisely-controlled gloss/matte application? Fine recessed, darkened panel lines or faux rivets? Paint chip effects? Current home color printers tend to have a lot of visible color dithering when you're working in scale - even homemade decals for something big like a 1:350 Starship Enterprise have visible precision problems on the line edges, and clearly visible color dithering for any colors that the printer can't match exactly. In terms of model kits there's also the question of the precision with which the parts are replicated - if you're doing something along the lines of a Gundam internal frame, for instance, the parts have to be fairly precise or the joints won't work right. There are ways around that (for instance, making the "working parts" standardized, and sold separately - like aftermarket polycaps are today) but I think this is an area where injection molding by companies like Bandai will continue to enjoy a comfortable advantage for some time.
I'm sure eventually home printing will solve all those problems, too - but in the mean time, I guess the future outlook for the hobby is a period where kits die and home-printed kits take over - and if home-printing is affordable it could mean a new boom for the hobby. Hobbyists would buy "kits" just like before, except manufacturers would find it much less costly to release a kit (and releasing a kit in this way would be cheaper than producing a completed or "toy" version), so things like Star Trek model kits would see a comeback, and series like Babylon 5 or BSG would get a lot more kits released. Limitations in home-printing could mean that the products would be more crude, at least until home printing gets really, really good. And then, the ease of letting the 3-D printer do all the work will pretty much kill off the hobby again, and people will either buy pre-completed items or accept the best their 3-D printer can do as "good enough"...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
If 3d printers are able to work with steel, I'm betting a lot of people will manufacture weapons.
I envision that this could bring to hardware, what free software already is for software. Good times!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
You want to really stretch your brain...
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Ask yourself, what would Nintendo do if they could build a game machine incorporating a 3d printer?
Custom trophies from virtual games.
3d avatars like the "Mii" that you can actually hold.
"PC LOAD METAL"? What the fuck does that mean?
Sounds like something he was talking about in 1980, with 'cottage industries' and personal CAD/CAM systems.
If the history of printing on paper is anywhere near analogous to the future of rapid prototyping, the cost of prototyping something, even if you pirate the design, will be higher than the cost of just buying it. This is still true for printing. Even with a laser printer, printing only in black and white, the cost of paper and toner alone printing one-off is a bit more expensive than just buying the paperback book. And this doesn't get you binding or a cover. Print-on-demand provides a compromise, but costs are still higher for a 1-off than the cost to print 10,000 - 50,000 copies of a book.
Similarly, it's going to be extremely expensive to "print" a metal circuit board; whether your conductor is copper, silver or gold, the material won't be cheap in the small quantities an individual may use. For moving parts involving steel, there are "printable" fabrication techniques, but they involve lots of heat, which, in turn, requires lots of power thus driving up the cost.
It will be "doable" but it will still be cheaper to go shopping for the thing itself. It will only make sense when the object is one's own design. For that there are already beginning to appear "service bureaus" (for example, check out www.tangibleexpress.com) which take your design and produce the part, driving down cost by printing other people's parts at the same time. When, or if, rapid prototyping becomes cost competitive with current mass production techniques and processes, you should well be able to figure out what mass-producers will be adopting, thereby making mass production even cheaper.
...if the price of scanning and printing drops. Mod your Palm? Your iPod? Your game console? Your mouse? Your laptop? Your car's interior? Special mods for the handicapped, or for your near-sighted grandmother? The possibilities are astounding.
Yeah, especially the mirrored screw holes are a blast!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
"Yeah really! Why, it's just like if people could freely duplicate software. There would be no motivation at all to improve it, and innovation would come to a halt! Oh wait.. what about Open Source..."
Open source hides it's cost of production. It doesn't eliminate it.
"Humans are not wired to behave the way in which you describe. People get bored doing nothing. All you have to look at for am example of this is the number of people who are perfectly financially secure who return to work anyway, because they are bored with retirement.
People's brains needs stimulus. Even if you consider games and other entertainment - if no one makes new entertainment, then the current supply will be quickly exhausted, and the populace will become bored again. At that point, they will start doing creative things they enjoy."
The issue of reward is the point. Being driven to create is only one half. Being rewarded for being creative is the other half. No one wishes to be taken advantage of, even in a Star Trek utopia. Besides your cycle of excitement-boredom doesn't address several issues like quality or equitablity.
"And none of this would "stifle innovation". What about all the dreamers who want to explore space and beyond, or to understand how the physical universe works in more detail? These people will always continue research and innovation - the difference is they will be able to innovate HOW they want and WHEN they want, without being constrained to rules of artificial scarcity or need for essentials, since all their materials would be "free" to them via their replicator."
A transporter/replicator wouldn't eliminate scarcity. What would be scarce might change, but not the elimination of. And the issue of reward still remains in a world were exclusives don't exist.
"Really, replicator instantly solve a vast amount of global issues. You no longer have hunger. You no longer have theft since there is no value in stolen objects. You no longer have a "drug problem" since everyone who wants rugs can replicate themselves into a stupor without harming anyone else, and darwinian processes will quickly weed people with those addictive tenancies into oblivion. Likewise, there will be little need for war since there are no resources to argue over, and even if there were you would be assured of mutual destruction since anyone can replicate any weapons they can imagine."
You're assuming that the worlds problems are mostly issues of scarcity. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I think by the time we have a "usable" system of 3d printing, we might also have molecular precision. Which is going to make this far, far more interesting of course.... :D
MNT FOREVER!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
i'm fucking so god damned tired of the fucking 3d printer stories.
why the fuck would everyone need a cheap piece of shit desktop printer? i'd much much rather the 10,000$ office xerox thank you kindly.
dumb. shits. everywhere
That's exactly what I thought.
If 3D printing ever gains a home user base, it will be among hobbyists. Usable, durable things are tricky. Toys, decorative items, and scale models are another story. I've heard of 3D printers that could make things out of chocolate, so specialty candy making is also possible. Ditto jewelery making. This is essentially a new tool for doing things like sculpting and modeling that have been done by hand for a long time.
Imagine, rather than searching for some hard to find model in exactly the right scale as the ones you have, that you can download it, scale it to the correct size, and make it yourself. Maybe even paint it. It took me over a year to find a 1:12 scale shotgun once, so this is a very appealing idea to me. (Although, that might be a little small for the current technology. I've never seen a rapid prototype product in person.)
I think it will take several technological advances before we see these in average households, if we ever do. It seems to be gaining ground with tech enthusiasts. But it's only a matter of time before it gains ground with other hobbyists.
From the Who Needs VC Department comes an amazing development from Cornell. The Fab @ Home poject has developed a desktop fabricator that will sell for under $2500. For those of you not familiar with these devices check out the video- they are a marvel to watch! And it's opensource!! The standard version of their Freeform fabricator - or "fabber" - is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400 (£1200). It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials. Full documentation on how to build and operate the machine, along with all the software required, are available on the Fab@Home website, and all designs, documents and software have been released for free. details and videos avalable at: http://docinthemachine.com/2007/01/10/fabricator/
Society will flourish and innovation will reach unparalleled levels of ingenuity. Your days will be filled with activities that interest you. With your food, shelter and material needs provided, you would no longer need to work a job you hate or barely tolerate just to survive.
This is without a doubt the hardest concept for people to understand. Too many people are tied to the concept of money and like the horse wearing blinders in a race, they simply can't see any other way of living. It's alien for them to even contemplate an existence where you don't have money and are unable to understand how a society like that could possibly function. What they fail to understand is that while some people will pick a career because it pays well and they can make a lot of money to be comfortable, most people pick a career because it genuinely interests them.
I know a few mechanics, construction workers and plumbers who have those jobs not just for the money
People have motivations for doing things beyond money. There will always be someone to do the "work" because there are always people who derive pleasure and fulfillment in knowing they are helping others.
Replication technology would free society from the mundane trappings of everyday life and open up the world of culture, education and innovation to anyone.
No longer would money or lack thereof be a determining factor in deciding your future and dreams. If you wanted to be a Doctor, you would now have just as much chance as anyone else to learn. Want to be a musician, replicate an instrument and start practicing; spend as much time as you want. Want to make a movie, look on the 'net for a group of other people with the same dream, replicate the needed materials and go make one. Maybe you want to design a new car, go ahead and do it then head down to the local "large scale" replimat and test it. Write the great Canadian (or American or *insert country of choice here*) novel. Learn to code and then write that video game you've always wanted to play; ask like minded people for help if you need it. Collaborate on the new CPU design you'll need to play your game when its finished. Exercise your artistic side and design a new outfit or use your analytical side and work on the cure for cancer.
Or don't do any of those things. Do whatever your want. That's the point. Replication technology would free you to be all you can be, to live up to your maximum potential (or less if you so chose). There is no limit to the kinds of scientific, medical or cultural enhancements people would come up with if they didn't have to spend 3/5ths of their day going through the motions simply trying to survive.
Think and use your imagination a little bit, open your mind and broaden your horizons; you'll realize there could be so much more to life than working for survival and replication technology is what we need to give us the freedom to get us there.
Pete...
When it comes to sci fi I'd rather watch Battlestar Galactica then Star Trek, but I've seen enough trek shows to know this 3d printer thing (used to be called a Santa Claus machine in the 80's and early 90's by Radio Electronics, aka Popular Electronics, the magazine had a few other names) is going to be the biplane of the replicator. There's a few hobbyist who made these things with an fish tank, 3 axis cnc table positioner, and some plastic hardened by focused laser beam, which was the wright brother's plane.
as with any change it'll be a little bit of both, mostly death to the current model. but keep in mind instead of going to the store to buy a set of plastic pieces to glue together, you go to the store buy the model kit, it now includes, a cd and the plastic you put in the printer. you make the same type of plastic parts and glue them together like always. now if you also want you get an editor (i.e. autocad) make a few mods and put in more detail in the cad drawing to get more detail from the model. paint as always.
oh yeah, now that you have the cad drawings you can scale larger or smaller. also, if you get really to dreaming you can say get the 4 engines you need from the 1:72 scale of an F15 and put them on the back of a lambourgni 1:32 scale (I think) anyway you also have extra unused plastic to add other items on the car (now two seater sports space coupe) to make your own sci fi show that you didn't want to do in CGI because it took you less time to build the physical model then it would have taken you to create the thing in a CGI program. it's more options for we consumers.