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How Open Source Hardware Is Driving the 3D-Printing Industry
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."
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.
The loss of jobs need not be a bad thing in what is quickly approaching a post scarcity society. Ultimately, perhaps even within the next few centuries, we're going to see a situation where the abundant resources in our solar system are harvested and processed by mostly automated engines, providing an excellent (upper middle class) quality of life for everyone on earth. There is no physical reason why this should not be the case.
Pollution and environmental concerns would be very minimal with adequate management, energy is abundant, and if anything providing a good standard of living reverses population growth.
The main difference between that and today, other than a general longer, healthier, better life, would be the types of toys you get to play with if you excel. Obviously not everyone can have their own private ocean liner, there's only so much ocean, so artificial scarcity will need to be introduced by either fiat or economic acrobatics. Overall though we are I believe on the cusp of a golden age.
Check out RepRap and MakerBot
It's still not mass producing - it's custom desktop fabrication. It's like laser printing in the 80s... very slow but nice quality. So in the near future it's still mostly for prototyping or small scale runs.
Good point. If and when enough people have access to these printers, and if they are sufficiently standardized, you will not need mass production anymore. Or rather, the product is still produced in mass, but in many small fabs or even on the desktop, as opposed to requiring a single massive factory in China. It's distributed production. The point is that it's not necessary for these printers to become so fast that they can produce thousands of products per hour. If you're printing at home, you will probably print only a few items every day at most, and you'll be able to afford wait times of an hour or so.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
...but that's about it in my experience. We had some disappointing results with 3D-printed components at work: they had poor mechanical properties and were permeable to water. We now use a rapid CNC-ing firm (http://www.firstcut.com/) that can produce one-off components cheaply and get them to us inside 3 days; plus they have a fantastic range of proper materials (ABS, nylon, aluminium, etc.). For the time being, we're staying put with CNC.
can now be printed by anyone, anywhere, with a gadget that sits on their desk.
instead of having to trash the toaster and buy a new one, or find a used one on ebay, or go order one for $20 + shipping + processing from some faceless megacorporation that probably doesn't even realize it makes toasters.
There's a lot of other machines out there. On the CNC side there's the Mantis, a small desktop-sized milling machine for making circuit boards but it can also cut foam, wax, chocolate, etc. Most people seem to drive their Mantis with motors and electronics made for RepRap printers.
There's even a milling machine made out of standard LEGO parts (aside from the milling bit). It can mill 3D shapes into floral foam.
Need a stronger, faster mill? Build Your Own CNC Router has a lot of information, so does CNCzone.com.
The RepRap and other low-end 3D printers are toys. I see those things at TechShop all the time, but they're rarely used. All they can do is produce plastic trinkets.
Around $50K, the machines start to get good. Shapeways makes usable plastic parts. What the industry needs is a $2000 machine that really works. There's slow progress in the industry; 30 years ago the high-end machines were as crappy as the RepRap.
All these processes are incredibly slow. As in hours for one small part. It's inherent in laying down a 3D part in thin layers that it will take time. That's why Shapeways charges about $50 for a 1 ounce part. Injection molding is orders of magnitude cheaper and faster. This technology is not going to replace mass production.
The point of 3d printers... make no mistake, within the next 10 years 3d printers will bring about the downfall of some very heavy industries.
Yes, right now they're limited, most people who would build such a thing (and i am one) are going to print things in (not that cheap) plastic but we already have printers capable of printing many different types of materials (including conductive) and in 5 years, those reprap's will be something there will be very big lawsuits over. Much like the digital media industry, the industry will have to cope with the change, they might win a few lawsuits, but they'll ultimately have to adapt. Consider what a 3d printer will give you in a couple of years:
- glasses (possibly even the lenses for them)
- fixtures (lights, power points, cases, things that other things hang on - this list is endless)
- crockery (plates, etc - theres no reason you could extrude a clay or clay substitute thats safe to eat off/drink from)
- Phone cases
- its hard to actually come up with a decent list thats compelling cause its just so wide ranging
With a minor amount of electronics, you can add to this:
- phone docks, keyboards, stands of so many different varieties, control devices....
Who'll benefit form this? The people who get on board... the guys who go "hmm, im just gunna make a iphone dock interface you can print an object around rather then making an entire iphone dock" - thats the industry of the future boys - selling electronics that you put inside objects people can 3d print... there isnt one yet, but mark my works, and heed this well as a prediction - in 10 years, this will be a major (or at least up-and-coming) industry. We'll even see a regulation and dmca like laws come into effect.
But look around you and take a SERIOUS look at the things around you and think, how many of these items could be printed? you'll be blown away by the things you could easily replace with something you can print yourself. The sad fact is people dont really notice until you have one, then you look around and see a whole bunch of industries destined for the scrap heap as people start printing their own items rather then running down the shops to pick one up.
sitting in front of me, i look and i think "my mouse, my keyboard, my glasses, my 3 hard drive cases, my phone stands, my mouse pad, my cup and the spoon thats in it. all my pens (sans ink)... i could go on".
The point is, the point people miss, isnt that 3d printing an object is in any way, shape or form more economical then buying the mass-produced equivalent. The point is that i can "have it now" (and have it my way)... much of what we do now and what the internet provided (and what content producers have fought hard to stop) is the "have it now" philosophy. Thanks to scale, prices of printing an object will go down, very far down. PLA and ABS (the main things people tend to use with the repraps) arent cheap, but that'll change. 3d printing isnt about "hey, new mass manufacturing process" cause its just not economical at that and never will be, its about not needing one in the first place, if everyone has a 3d printer (or access to one), whos going to make phone cases when people can just print their own?. The secondary point is you can build things you just cant buy or easily make or you can take a phone case and customise it. I dont know how many times i've wanted a lather or a router or whatever and even then thought "i probably wont be able to make it anyway"... well now i can and easily.
So right now you can do one of two things, look at 3d printing and see its potential or go "meh" and you'll miss out (even if missing out is simply the opportunity of being involved), but i believe that 3d printing will be one of the biggest and most disruptive techs to hit the world and when it does hit with full force it'll be one of the most important things we'll see - possibly even more important then computing. My point is make no mistake, what 3d printing can and will do will change life as we know it in