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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
"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...
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,
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.
This has been changing. Modern printers use much stronger materials based on resins similar to those used in Legos. So if you need a plastic part, you should be able to print one of reasonable strength. For example, I could see a huge market for toys on demand much in the way that books are slowly moving to print on demand.
It's fairly rare to be able to create a moveable part in a single mold. Usually, you create a variety of parts, then assemble them. When this starts to catch on with consumers, I imagine you'll first see products coming in many parts with "some assembly required". Later revisions of the technology might include robotic assemblers that construct devices in a manner similar to how PODs are now able to print and bind nearly any book. While the precise assembly options may not be comprehensive, model developers will know the limitations of the machines and attempt to modify their models so that they're more easily assembled by the robotics.
Also, there is an issue of scale that needs to be considered. There's nothing preventing a larger 3D printer from printing in concretes or metals. In fact, there was a story here a few weeks ago about a 3D printer that could construct a house in a few days. But why stop there? Ship hulls, car bodies, air foils, and many other items which are so large as to be difficult to mold could conceivably be printed instead. In many cases it may even be advantageous, as the part will be producable as a single object with no seams or rivets. This can potentially strengthen the object overall. Chemical agents can also be used to treat the object for better strength and endurance.
Obviously, the technology is just getting started. But it has been making great strides in the short time it's been available. Give it a decade or two more and the necessary material injection techniques and production methods will get most of the bugs worked out.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There are a wide variety of technologies in the marketplace and each have their advantages. Alas, I couldn't write a survey. The Z Corp models look flashy in the pictures because they're in full color, but they're probably not the strongest.
Some of the other systems from companies like Dimension or Stratasys use stronger plastics but can't produce multicolored items.
Some can produce fully working items right from the printer . They deposit two types of material: one soluable and one insoluable. After the thing is printed, you wash away the soluable stuff and the gaps open up. It's amazing. I've played with fully adjustable crescent wrenches that are built with almost the same precision as the ones from Sears. The plastic isn't as durable as metal, but you can certainly build things with the wrench. I'm told one of the cooler demonstration items is a bicycle chain that's fully assembled after the wash.
In some sense, these pre-assembled machines are better than traditional manufacturing techniques because you can build working items inside of sealed shells. There's no ship-in-a-bottle paradox because everything is built from the bottom up.
In most cases, from the examples I've seen, the rapid prototyping tools can't currently create a durable item
From my purchasing experiences in the past decade, it seems most items are not durable anyway. ;-)
-InnerWebFreud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
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.
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
They'd... make armies of half-man, half-flies?
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.
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.
Rep-Rap The open-source rapid prototyping system.
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.