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.'"

Comments

Implications are obvious

[AKAImBatman]

What will it mean when 3D fabricators become cheap and common?

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. ;)

Re:Implications are obvious

[MrNaz]

I humbly disagree.

The reason it has happened that way in the past is because creating and replicating audio and video are relatively easy once they are digitized. The sensory data (sound saves and light waves) lend themselves well for digital reproduction at close to perfect quality. Duplication can be done perfectly, with no loss in transmission.

That is not the case with physical reproduction, and I doubt will be for some time. These 3d scanners are good for only what their ads say: prototyping. There will not be a day when you will be able to scan copy and duplicate even a nut or a bolt in your garage anywhere near as cheaply as it can be done en masse at a production plant simply because the mould, tools and materials are too expensive on a small scale to be feasible. Now I know about the "never say never" line in technology, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that while the productive capacity of the home user will scale up, you will never get to the point where manufacturers of physical items will be squeezed out the way manufacturers of virtual goods (music, movies etc) have been. There's a fundamental difference between copying Britney Spears' latest warblings and copying a Ferrari.

Re:Implications are obvious

[AKAImBatman]

These 3d scanners are good for only what their ads say: prototyping. There will not be a day when you will be able to scan copy and duplicate even a nut or a bolt in your garage anywhere near as cheaply as it can be done en masse at a production plant simply because the mould, tools and materials are too expensive on a small scale to be feasible.

I agree and yet I disagree at the same time. I agree that scanning is an imperfect process that isn't likely to improve sufficiently in the next few decades. However, when a modern engineer is developing a part, does he still use a pen and paper to design the diagram? Of course not! The object is designed in detail in a CAD program. Those CAD drawings are then used in manufacturing a mold to spec.

Now consider for a moment, what happens when you take that 3D model and feed it into a 3D Printer? In theory, at least, the printer will be able to reproduce the object with perfect quality. In reality, the printer will be limited by its design (as most manufacturing methods are), possibly requiring the 3D model to be tweaked for the printer. However, most parts are created with similar limitations in mind (e.g. a plastic part is likely to be in two pieces with open ends that fit together) making the models very easy to transfer over to 3D printing.

Now I don't disagree that there will continue to be significant differences between what someone can manufacture in the home and what can be manufactured in an industrial environment, but the gap will close. It has always closed and will continue to close in every industry in existence. Today, we can develop high-quality prints of photos from digital negatives with an in-store machine. We can print and bind nearly any book with an in-store machine. We can press a CD or DVD with a color label with a simple machine. We can quickly produce a custom PCB board with a simple machine. These things have come down to the consumer scale, even if machines that can do even better exist.

The same will happen with 3D printers. You're going to have everything from a home machine capable of printing toys, widgets, and useful household items; you're going have large machines capable of printing houses and ship hulls; and you're going to have everything in-between. I for one can't wait for the day when I can print my own customized CD shelf or cup holder. :)

Re:Implications are obvious

[CastrTroy]

However, the fact that I can print out 2D images at home does not stop me from going to the local print shop when I want something printed. They have the advantage of economies of scale, so even with their mark-up, they can do a much better job for cheaper. For simple black and white text, a home laser/inkjet printer will do, but for more complex color photos/documents, then I would definitely take it to a print shop or photo centre. And if I'm going to print off 1 million copies of a book or magazine, I'm going to use an industrial quality printing press. I think the same thing would happen for 3D printing. For very simple object where tolerances for quality are low, you could print them at home, for more complex objects that you just need a small run of, take it down to your local 3D printing shop. And for situations where you need hiqh quality and mass production, you're still going to see large manufacturing facilities.

Re:Implications are obvious

[smellsofbikes]

Yes-and-no. Replicating a Ferrari GTO is still going to be very expensive using a 3-d printer (it's not even possible right now, and will probably always be very expensive) but the really essential thing is: 3-d printers can make things *differently*. You don't need to be able to design a part that can be cut on a four-axis mill. You don't need to sand-cast an engine block with all the weird water passages. You just print it with all those things already in place. You can put tapped holes in blind locations, should you want to. Instead of an engine having 20,000 parts it might have 2000 -- just imagine, for instance, printing a crankshaft, a big fat one that has almost no bending under torque, along with the shell bearings, the piston conn rods, the maincap bearings, all in one go -- no conn rod bolts, no cap bolts, nothing. Yeah, so you can't replace conn rods or bearings when they wear, but if you can just print a new engine, why bother trying?
What I'm trying to say here is that if we were still blacksmithing and someone built a three-axis CNC, this is the equivalent of saying "but they won't be able to mill something that looks like my wrought-iron-and-wood wagon wheel!"

Ecological footprint?

[pzs]

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

Won't someone think of the IP?!!!

[ArchAngelQ]

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).

Humans aren't wired to behave that way

[brunes69]

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.