How Open Source Hardware Is Driving the 3D-Printing Industry

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 3, 2012 @10:04PM from the an-end-to-the-lego-knockoff-compatibility-wars dept.

TheNextCorner sends this quote from ReadWriteWeb: "Open source software has been a key player in all kinds of disruptive technologies — from the Web to big data. Now the nascent and growing open source hardware movement is helping to power its own disruptive revolution. ... As 3D printing, powered by Arduino and other open source technologies, becomes more prevalent, economies of scale become much less of a problem. A 3D printer can print a few devices — or thousands — without significant retooling, pushing upfront costs to near-zero. This is what The Economist calls the 'Third Industrial Revolution,' where devices and things can be made in smaller, cleaner factories with far less overhead and — significantly — less labor."

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Material costs - material generally by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-03 22:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

Currently, the cost of materials for most 3D printers is quite high. That makes 3D printing uneconomical for most purposes.
The other problem is that most useful things are made of more than one material. Consider even something as simple as a toaster. It requires a good conductor, a resisting conductor, an insulator and structural material. So, even something as low tech as a toaster is well beyond the ability of 3D printers to make at all and especially to do so economically.