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The 3D Economy — What Happens When Everyone Prints Their Own Shoes?
cold fjord writes: "According to Reason, 'Last May, Cody Wilson produced an ingeniously brief but nuanced manifesto about individual liberty in the age of the ever-encroaching techno-state-a single shot fired by a plastic pistol fabricated on a leased 3D printer. While Wilson dubbed his gun The Liberator, his interests and concerns are broader than merely protecting the Second Amendment. ... Wilson is ultimately aiming for the 'transcendence of the state.' And yet because of the nature of his invention, many observers reacted to his message as reductively as can be: 'OMG, guns!'... But if armies of Davids really want to transcend the state, there are even stronger weapons at their disposal: toothbrush holders, wall vases, bottle openers, shower caddies, and tape dispensers. ... In many ways, it's even harder to imagine a city of, say, 50,000 without big-box retailers than it is to imagine it without a daily newspaper. So perhaps 3D printing won't alter our old habits that substantially. We'll demand locally made kitchen mops, but we'll still get them at Target. We'll acquire a taste for craft automobile tires, but we'll obtain them from some third party that specializes in their production. Commercial transactions will still occur. But if history is any guide, more and more of us will soon be engaging in all sorts of other behaviors too. Making our own goods. Sharing, swapping, and engaging in peer-to-peer commerce. Appropriating the ideas and designs of others and applying them to our own ends.'"
I have to imagine that the climb to that level of 3D printing (assuming we ever get there) will be so gradual that society will have plenty of time to adjust.
3d printer frames and lenses will break the global eyeglass monopoly
That is an interesting idea for sure. I'm not sure if we could ever really get to 3D printing that could print something that durable; arguably a tire goes through even more physical wear than the guns that have been printed so far.
It does leave me to wonder though if we could print a tire straight on to the rim. Then the whole matter of mounting is no longer an issue - although balancing likely still would be. Could a service truck with a 3D printer print a new tire for a motorist in comparable time - and with better safety - than what it takes to put a space saver spare on from the trunk?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So if I understand this correctly, thanks to the 3D printer we will soon have access to affordable items made of plastic.
Wow, it's difficult to even imagine what the world will be like!
I gave up Inkjet printers years ago because of the cost, I can't see how 3d printers will have cheaper cartridges...
Unless 3D printers can start molding metals, rubber, paint, and various other base materials then this is a non-issue. The article reads like 3D printers are going to become Star Trek replicators and somehow end the concept of branding. They're useful for fabricating small unique plastic parts, not making a stove, Benz, or Macbook Pro.
It's an interesting thought experiment, but the simple fact is that every time peer-to-peer X begins to gain momentum, it is quashed by the State, at the behest of corporate interests. Money is power, and their power is absolute.
We live in an economy of mass production because it is way, way cheaper per unit to produce stuff in very large quantities. Even if 3D printing should become the way of manufucturing in the future, we'll still go the big-box retailer for our shoes and get a 3D-printed one from the shelf (or order them online) rather than printing them at home.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
Go hand in hand.
Don't worry, the government will get involved much earlier. Since the shoes that you've 3D printed can be argued to be more valuable than the raw material, they'll just tax the difference.
How do you get to be a submitter to Slashdot? This article and summary have no actual content.
"If history is any guide" we will continue to do what we have done up to now. Honestly what a wasted article about nothing.
Seriously before we go off in a discussion of how 3d printing will change everything, it'd be helpful to first understand how modern things are actually made, currently. When people talk about printing car tires, I just laugh. They don't have a clue what's inside a tired. I highly recommend watching "how it's made." then we can talk about what 3d printing is good for. I think 3d printing will revolutionize things but maybe not in the way most people think.
Creating moulds, tooling, prototypes, one offs, that's where 3d printing is hitting its stride. Or maybe structural plastic manufacturing. But complicated items like tires always will be complicated involving many materials and many construction techniques and steps.
Liberty is NOT defined with a gun. Liberty is defined by not needing one.
How can anyone be free when they are so frightened of their neighbours / townspeople / countrymen that they only way they can feel safe is with a gun.
Living in that cage of fear and paranoia will NEVER be freedom or liberty.
3D printing won't replace traditional manufacturing, any more than home laser printers replaced commercial printing. It enables NEW BEHAVIORS that are different, and any replacement is indirect. What 3D printing does is enable people to make unique, personalized things that can't be mass produced. So, for example, the e-NABLE project (http://enablingthefuture.org) lets people affordably make prosthetics custom fit for each individual, at a cost of $50 (in materials) instead of $thousands for commercial prosthetic hands. And that's a perfect application of 3D printing because each patient's needs are unique, and 3D printing can provide a cheap solution that's financially accessible to millions of people who can't afford the commercial options.
But if something can be mass produced, with millions of identical injection molded widgets sold cheaply, it makes no sense to 3D print it, because mass production is astoundingly efficient, and 3D printing adds no value.
That's why 3D printing guns is strictly a PR tactic to promote a political agenda by associating it with a sexy new technology. In reality, 3D printed guns are terrible guns, and expensive to produce. High quality guns are extremely efficiently mass produced so they are cheap and widely available, and if you want guns that aren't mass produced, people have been making guns in their homes for 200 years. Heck, you can make a better "gun" than a liberator with a piece of wood and a drill, and people have been making them forever. The reason people don't use "zip guns" any more is because they're dangerous, and real guns are so cheap. The "Liberator" is more dangerous to the user, and more expensive.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
I thought you were going to say they would print gold bars!!! But wait, then you would need gold to print gold. We've got a conundrum...
What happened to supermarkets when people started being able to grow their own food?
Thanks for all the stuff, Foxconn, but we get our gadgets from Pirate Bay and MEGA now.
I really hate these kinds of articles. Foxconn mainly makes electronics like iPhones. There is no way to 3D print an iPhone. The glass can not be printed, The circuit boards can not be printed. The chips can not be printed. Lets get down to reality. 3D printing can make plastic objects and metal objects from a very limited range of material. Most objects we buy use other materials. Where they work they work very well but there are more things than can not be 3D printed than can. Many items that can be 3D printed are still much more economical to produce using conventional methods. For example a stainless steel mixing bowl can be 3D printed but it would take quite a while on a very expensive printer to make one and then would need to be polished. Using presses one could stamp out hundreds in the same time. Just because one can does not mean it is economical.
This whole "3D printing will change the world" meme is just stupid. Will some things change? Sure. Will a significant portion of manufacturing change? Not likely.
We've had the technical capacity to make durable metal items with numerical lathes for a long time, however it remains a skilled job. For the time being home 3D printing is more or less limited to making fragile plastic stuff. I can't see how that will soon start a revolution.
even if the economics make it worthwhile to print my own stuff, there are some items that will need to be trusted for their safety and or performance characteristics.
you won't catch me printing my own car tyres (or even my car) if i can't trust the printer to have the necesary reliability and tolerances and the design to be safe.
for these requirements we will still need a way to trust the source of designs and the actual manufacturing device, individuals will therefore be able to aquire money/status/chicks/guys/food/whatever by being a) skilled and knowledgeable, b) in possession of 'industrial' printers.
one might imagine that once a design has been proven then only the proper printer is necessary and the requirement for skill and knowledge in design becomes less important. but i envisage a world in which 3d printing allows for greater and greater customisation of our possessions, at which point 'one size fits all' designs become insufficient and the need to consult with the local guru arises.
snake
...in the same way 2D printing = "paperless office".
Remember how photo printers put photo shops out of business? Not exactly. If you want prints, it's usually cheaper to go to the local drug store or box store and print them out there than it is to buy the special paper and ink yourself. It will likely be the same with 3-D printing. If you don't do it all the time (and most people won't), it will be cheaper to print your designs at a local shop. They'll have the large high-quality industrial printer that you can't afford, along with a wider choice of materials than you could stock.
What it will do is cut into the profit margins for mass-produced items. They will have to compete with the price of printing out your own design, not just what other companies are charging. That will eat into the profits of retailers.
the freaking Crocks are easy as hell to replicate over and over and over. We were playing with the foam and decided to make some silicone mold's of a brand new set of crocks for my wife and I was able to make 2 more pair for her.
Shoes that are better than the crap you buy at the store are not hard to make either. Cobbling is actually pretty easy, most people can pick up the leatherworking within 30 days.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
People (=masses, as in democracy) tend to buy from the cheapest source. A home-printed 3D object is not going to be cheaper than a mass-produced trinket imported from China, at least not for a long time.
Niche is perhaps in manufacturing specific custom shapes that cannot be satisfied by mass-manufacturing.
Interestingly enough, perhaps Apple users will be the seed market - they are people with money and willing to spend a lot on expensive novelties.
This is all crazy stupid wrong. The only thing "new" here is the term "3D printing" itself. Commonly-available hand-tools meant that anyone could build a table in about day. Few people do. Commonly-available home power tools meant that anyone could build a nice table in about an hour. Few people do.
Right now, odds are that ten people within walking distance in your residential neighbourhood can build your dining room set for half the price that you paid. Again, you won't ask them to and they won't offer.
Society doesn't progress based on what's possible, nor based on what's easy. It progresses based on what influences individuals. Today, that's their feeling of safety. You don't want a table that won't fall apart. You want a table that someone has promised/guaranteed/warranteed won't fall apart. You want someone to sue, someone to blame, and someone who loses money when you aren't happy.
That's why distributors exist today. There's no longer an actual distribution need. Any manufacturer can easily ship your dining room set to you at way less than the cost of target's warehousing and customer service. So much so that often it's drop-shiped that way to you even when you do buy it from target. But the manufacturer doesn't want to deal with you, and target is trained to ignore you -- that's what they get paid to do. That's why they exist.
None of that changes with 3d printing. Just like it didn't with 2d printing, I'll have you note. When was the last time you heard of someone who 2d printed their own wedding invitations? Or billboards? Or big vinyl banners? Or bus bench ads? Or any reasonable number of business cards? You 2d print things today that in the past who'd have hand-written -- like mailbox ads for baby-sitters, lost dogs, and scrap metal collection. Yes, it's more convenient to 2d-print it at home than it was to hand-write it. But that's the only change.
3d printing will be the same way. If you build something today, it'll be easier to build it tomorrow. That's true of all technological advances. But if you don't make shoes today, you won't make shoes tomorrow with a 3d printer -- I promise.
The population of the planet is predicted to peak around 10-16 billion people. Every one of them needs a toothbrush. At some point in the distant future, resources might become so abundant that most personal property can be produced using something like Star Trek's replicator; however, not in my lifetime.
3-D printing might make more sense for some products than traditional manufacturing. If you have an old car that is long out of production, producing parts in a printer might make more sense than tooling a factory to produce a limited run of a part for an old car. Anything that people need in the millions though. . . it just does not seem economically competitive to manufacture on demand.
I do think the retail landscape will change a lot. As the negative impact of personal automobiles become more of a crisis, people will do a lot less offline shopping and will simply have products delivered. I think that manufacturing centers will spring up to produce certain goods on demand, some locally, but eventually much of that will be produced centrally too (in large factories on cheap land) and shipped out to you.
And, of course, for smaller, less complicated things, 3D printers in the home might move out of the realm of hobbyist into the mainstream, the way many people have a professional quality printer (laser or inkjet) in their home these days, but I don't see most common products being produced on demand. Large factories tooled to a specific product will still be the most efficient way to produce things on a large scale.
Timber and nails have been widely available for centuries (or millenia), but they have not put furniture factories out of business yet.
IN THEORY, factory-manufactured homes would be this huge step forward over built-on-the-spot. Buckminster Fuller devoted endless hours to the subject, and imagined deployment by zepplin or helicopter, dropping off the whole Dymaxion House. Robert Heinlein wrote sharply about what a car would cost if GM sent a team of automobile assemblers to build it in your driveway.
IN REALITY, the cheapness was a hidden sales-killer. Only those with the tightest budgets live in manufactured homes, with their constraints on shape, their reputation for short service life, and they are disparaged as "trailer trash".
Printed alternatives for factory-made products will have some compromises. I'm not aware of an ability to print leather, so the shoes, for instance, will probably be *visibly* printed shoes that will be known to cost less...and come with a stigma because they will "look cheap". ANY kind of clothing that can be seen to be made a cheaper way will always carry a stigma. Jeans in the early 70s went quickly from being chic because they were cheap and proletarian and showed anti-consumerist, non-bourgeois "hippie" values to...designer jeans that cost as much as the most conspicuous-consumption choices.
"Conspicuous consumption" is not regarded as a moral sin until it hits truly comical levels (see, Saddam's palaces or much of the Hamptons) within its own culture. Dr. Robert Frank of Cornell has devoted a lot of study to the subject, is one of the best even-handed reads about income inequality; showing that you have a little money, or just really take pride in appearance, is not a bourgeois evil, it's a constant in every society through history. Adam Smith wrote about there being some decent level of clothing below which even a tramp would not be seen on the streets of Edinburgh...he wrote in the 1700s when that level was better than half the population could have afforded 200 years earlier, because fabric production was already much-mechanized. Whatever is the cheapest way to make anything is in any culture is always going to "look poor" and carry stigma.
Printing cups and bowls? Could do, but notice that people actually keep two sets of china? You might print the kid's tableware, but you won't put it out for guests. Might was well put out placemats with the sign "we're poor".
People spend a lot of money on: homes, cars, appliances/electronics, furniture - as capital assets. And clothing and other items much on display for status as well as use, as consumable assets. Notice that none of these things are going to be popular as home-printed products. I'll happily buy a home printer, there's loads of things they will do: a box of just the right size to fit a storage space, a replacement part. I just walked around the house and came up with the TV trays, the TV stand, my CD cases, the picture frames, bookends, and a whole lot of containers. All acceptable if plain and utilitarian. Everything else, I'd want it to look like it wasn't produced the cheapest way possible.
Business as Usual, During Alterations by Ralph Williams.
http://variety-sf.blogspot.com...
You have to be nuts or in an impossible hurry to print casual keepsake photographs with your inkjet printer on photopaper when you can get infinitely nicer one for pennies from Winkflash or Apple or whatever.
I'm sure the same will be true of 3D printing, hobbyists and pros will print their own. The rest of us will go down to Kinkos and pick up our completed part.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Ugh, we've heard this before. Remember how to internet was supposed to "revolutionize" our shopping? I don't order very much at all off the internet. Plus, 3D printing machines currently rely upon plastic. YOu can wear solid plastic shoes, but I'm not.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
the problem is instant manufacturing. It won't be a 3D printer in your home, it'll be one at the store. That'll be doable in my life time. Heck, some officemaxs already have 3D printers, and there's a little commune of hobbyists doing 3D printing too.
It means the end of an entire industry of logistics, shipping, etc. That combined with automation (most factories employee less than 100 people unless they're paying subsistence wages) is going to cause huge social upheaval.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And it will always be better to run IT as a centralized system on a mainframe than it will be to give people personal computers.
These things go in cycles. There are some things which will be much cheaper and more efficient to 3-d print; lots of small plastic bits that break and render a larger item useless, like the brackets on my $50 folding chair, or a doohickey on a plastic toy. Put the old one together, put it in the scanner, replicate one without a crack in it. There's not enough of those little parts to repair to warrant a centralized, economy-of-scale market for any specific item, but there is an economy of scale in having a cheap replicator for lots of little things that can break like plastic handles and so on.
Power generation may see a similar shift; it will be more economical for those who can to install solar grids or methane fuel cell systems at home than to rebuild the whole power grid.
We just don't know when specific markets will make gain in distributed as opposed to centralized distribution.
And what do you think will happen when 3D printers advance and CAN use those other materials that the majority of our products are made of?
Nothing at all because the the old way will still be cheaper and faster. Plus you can't 3D print the material properties. There is a reason a wrench is cold forged in a press instead of cut out on a mill. Cold forging causes the atoms to arrange in a way that is stronger than the metal billet it started out with making a stronger wrench.
And it will always be better to run IT as a centralized system on a mainframe than it will be to give people personal computers.
And after decades of giving people personal computers, now we're moving to small handheld devices and a large centralized 'cloud' for storage and distribution.
I plan to buy a C/CMYK 3D printer so I can manufacture a custom dashboard for my ZR-1 interior and I am looking for ways to make the printer pay for itself (the price tag on the printer approaches the original MSRP of the car). I would not do shoes though because 3D printed shoes would be much like Crocs. Ick. Friends don't let friends wear crocs.
"That's a nice pair of crocs" said no one, ever.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
3D printing can create some good stuff, but it still won't be an Apple, or a Ferrari.
Design brands like Ferrari will probably start selling licensed 3D models, probably DRMed for a single print.
They already sell "non-car items" like: "Watches, Clothing, Accessories, Collectibles, Home & Office, Sunglasses"
You want "Mahjong Ferrari in carbon fiber?" Only $2,091.00
http://store.ferrari.com/en/ho...
or 3 Ferrari pencils for $28.00
http://store.ferrari.com/en/ho...
It's no big stretch to imagine all kinds of designer product models for sale, just with a little molded logo in one corner.
I await patiently for the day when '3d printing' 'Selective Laser Sintering', or whatever it will be called is available for a reasonable price, and can be applied to metals, and ceramics.
I envision a day where my workshop contains every metal of reasonable price, in powder form. Then I will be able to produce any alloy simply by adding the right amount of powder to my '3d printer'.
Once we can make materials that are smooth, and precise enough to be used as bearings, and once we can print semiconductors we will have little actual need for centralized manufacturing, other than for efficiency, or convenience.
Already 3d printed cellulose has been done; no more stockpiling toiletpaper for TEOTWAWKI!
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tektro...
This is the molded skirt with numbers underneath. I don't know why he calls them "remanufactured", he made them from scratch, you can even tell the notch was hand-filed.
There are some 3D printed feet and knobs that I can't find pics of right now...
Mostly random stuff.
Are there 3D printable materials that allow air to pass through them? If not, we're all gonna have some smelly-ass feet if we're wearing 3D printable shoes.
You could always put holes in the uppers for ventilation, but in Chicago's winters, you're gonna have wet feet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The 3D printing hype is a little optimistic in ways but there is more to the notion of small scale production than 3D printing. CNC machines are very main stream in industry and the cost is well within the reach of Middle America. The cost of automation is coming down and is much more accessible than it used to be.
I would also like to see a move away from big box stores. It would be nice for a change to be able to walk into a store (camera shop, hardware store, and other more or less specialty stores) and talk to some one that knows what they are talking about.
People can (and some do) brew their own beer too, or buy from local microbreweries.
But I don't see Coors or Anheuser-Busch going out of business anytime soon.
-- Alastair
Unless the difference in efficiency drops to the point where the transportation costs are greater.
"holds like glue"
If you apply glue to lego, it'd be less useful.
Ha ha. You think you can buy the materials for the same price that Lego buys it?
I guess neither you nor the mod read the next 5 words: "These things go in cycles."
No, people are producing low quality plastics with the same general dimensions as traditional products, but with much lower quality and less choice of structural characteristics, for more money. But they can do it themselves, so they're having a lot of fun with it.
There are a lot of things you could easily do right now that you don't, and not because of laziness. Like power generation. You could generate your own power, right now. No new tech is needed, everything is on the mass market. Generac will happily sell you a generator sufficient to power your entire house. You can even get them so that they feed off of the natural gas line, and thus you don't need a separate fuel contract. What's more, this isn't rare. Generac sells these all the time as backup generators to people who live in areas prone to power failure. People drop 4-5 figures to have everything set up so that when line power dies, they stay powered. On the bigger side of things, data centers buy huge ones to make sure their computers never go dark.
Ok well these places already have generators. They are installed, ready, and capable of providing power. So, they go off the grid right, generate their own energy? No, basically never. Well why not? Why spend the money for the backup and not just use it all the time? Because it is cheaper to buy line power. Those generators, impressive as they may look, cannot compete with the behemoths that produce line power. The massive plants with multi-stage turbines just do a much more efficient, and thus cheaper, job of generating electricity.
This holds true for just about everything. You find that the cost to produce something at home, using equipment of that size, is just not near as cheap as producing it in large quantities using big industrial equipment.
So perhaps we will see the day when 3D printers truly can print anything (I'm somewhat doubtful, it would really take a technology advancement so much as to be a completely different thing) but it is likely to then be a luxury, not the way everything is done. You would be able to have your 3D printer/replicator/UC/whatever print you something and have it right away, but the cost in doing so in terms of materials, energy, and so on would result in a product more expensive than if you ordered the same thing from Amazon. So those that have money might use it for convenience, or to get things more to custom spec, but mass production is still likely to be the thing.
CITATION NEEDED
You link says no such thing. In fact it says quite the opposite that these are only used for non drivable scale models.
hell yeah...I can't stand this "maker"/3D printing hype bullshit.
it brings out the worst of the breathless, crazy-eyed, crack-headed PR & marketing drivel that is ruining our industry...
look at the breathless "futurism"-style description of "what we'll do" in the future!
The people who write this stuff are idiots.
I appreciate that they are in a round about way helping to promote our industry, but it doesn't stop there.
People believe the hype. Then they expect the products to deliver on the ridiculous version of reality in the fantasies of the Marketing idiots who put this shit together. It's a vicious cycle of idiots misunderstanding technology and telling things to each other.
We in the tech industry need to get on top of this crap...we need to call out PR idiots...and get them the hell away from cameras or a microphone or twitter account
Sort of like ValleyWag called out this psycho at Yahoo...his job title is...no joke ***Digital Prophet***
Thank you Dave Raggett
Ubiquitous printers didn't replace commercial printing - but it sure as hell altered the landscape. Thirty years ago even my small town (20k in that era) supported three full time small scale printshops - and now there are none. (Heck, I earned my high school graduation trip working weekends in Mr Flynn's printshop.) When my dad finally retired in the mid 90's, he was the last small printer in a town of a quarter million.
I suspect 3D printing will be just like the microprocessor (the PC) and the web... it's not the big guys that will be hurt, but the little ones.
We already have the technology to machine form custom shoes. Sadly, very few if any people know how to run these machines any more, and there has been almost no demand for the service for the last 100 years.Technology allowed us to mass produce shoes that fit well enough and custom made shoes went the way of the Dodo.
I have no doubt that thousands of hipsters will throw tons of money at the opportunity to use this "new technology" which was already invented over a 100 years ago.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I honestly believe that my great great grand children will not be seeing the revolution described in this article. Sure in a couple of hundred year but talking like it will occur in any time soon is stupid.
Someone adds a heater to the printing head prints glass
How do you print glass next to rubber. The rubber would burn. Also printing glass requires slow cooling or the glass will shatter. The issue is the printing of different materials that require different methods next to each other. You might be able to print some components but then you have to put them together. Most phone users do not want to be electronics technicians. The average person is not going to buy multiple printer for thousands of dollars to make complex things.
But the point is EVENTUALLY those issues will be addressed and we will be printing things as complex as iPhones; glass and everything.
maybe in a few hundred years when we can manipulate quarks and bonds but not any time soon.
> We live in an economy of mass computing, because it is way, way cheaper to perform a calculation on a mainframe than a microcomputer on your desk.
I disagree. If that were true, nobody would build Bitcoin-mining rigs. They'd just lease server resources from EC3.
Look what happened to aGPS the moment phones blew past a gigahertz -- the round-trip time it took to query the remote server after taking a reading from a local radio exceeded the time to just calculate it locally, and the idea of offloading the math to a remote server just quit making sense.
If we all had gigabit fiber connections to the internet and you could get the latency down to under ~50ms, it *might* be viable to offload OpenGL rendering tasks to remote server farms and simply stream it back to a Chromebook as h.264 instead of spending $2,400 on an Alienware gaming laptop with high-end discrete graphics card. At least, for games not involving hair-trigger reflex actions. But by the time we get to that point, Android watches will probably have a 3GHz 16-core processor, and will probably be able to do realtime raytracing at any meaningful resolution, color depth, and framerate the display is capable of.
That tyre is still in prototype stage, and I doubt the specialised materials involved could be 3D printed with current technology anyway. Even if they could, you'd never be able to do it is quickly as you could with moulding techniques.
> I can print a set off for $1
Maybe, but it would be a pretty shitty set. $1 worth of plastic *might* be enough to print 5-7 blocks...
From the article:
Bentley cars have come to stand for a way of doing things. 3D printing allows for an extremely quick turnaround for design and prototyping
Notice they say nothing about tires that provide "better, longer lasting, provide a smoother ride". Also notice they say "design and prototyping" and not production. Sure you can 3D print a tire on a hub there is no way it will be a complete functional long lasting tire.
Here is their list of items that can be created with their "rubber like" material;
Exhibition and communication models
Rubber surrounds and over-molding
Soft-touch coatings and nonslip surfaces
Knobs, grips, pulls, handles, gaskets, seals, hoses, footwear
Notice that functional tires is not on the list.
The final nail in the coffin is that there are no metals on the material list.
People "printing" their own consumer products as a general practice isn't likely to present any threat to existing business models for at least another generation or so.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
from your link
(*) The fit will likely never be as tight as real legos. Those are *tough* tolerances to match. Lego Corp are (i've heard) the masters of injection molded plastic
Now, if you don't really care about the toy aspect of legos--tiny reconfigurable bricks--
sure, you can just make a large hunk of plastic to take the place of dozens of bricks-- but that's a different kind of play.
There's already the "zip guns" made from bits of untraceable hardware so I see this 3D printing of guns as something that has been deliberately blown up from a non-issue to a deliberate challenge to bring on regulation and hobble the 3D printing environment.
The thing that especially makes me think of that is that the example printed gun is made from a material that is less strong than many types of wood and even less suitable for gun construction.
Either that or it's just attention seeking or more "OMG terrorist" phobia.
It's not cheaper to mass produce.
Err.. sorry? Last I knew, it was cheaper to turn on the tap than it was to open a bottle of Evian.
The materials cost the same.
Ah, no, not really. That's just not how it works in the real world. Go read up on Economies of Scale for some rather desparately needed 101-level learning on this topic.
Alternatively, you can convince us all by trotting down to your local supermarket and coming back with a single pound of beef - but at the level of quality and price that McDonalds pays for it.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
The local fabshop is printing a lot of stuff, and orders once a year to keep costs low.
From TFA
the government carnage will soon follow. How can it not, when only old people pay sales tax, fewer citizens obtain their incomes from traditional easy-to-tax jobs, and large corporate taxpayers start folding like daily newspapers? Without big business, big government can't function.
This is so childish! Indeed, many things in government will cease to function if nobody pays for public goods. Roads, schools, justice... how will that be provided with 3D printing?
Uhh, nanotech was 90's, not 80's, and it is, in fact, amazing. We didn't have the computing power for good VR until recently. Brick and mortar stores have declined greatly. I do a large percentage of my shopping online.
You sound like a broken, bitter old man. What is wrong with you?
Who needs to print glass when you can print high res e-ink that can simulate glass?
When you talk about creating entire armies in the context of discussing 3d printing, my brain immediately went to those plastic green army men that kids used to get in stores for like a buck for a bag of a hundred or so.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
K Eric Drexler wrote The Engines of Creation in 1986. Whatever you think is called "nanotechnology" today isn't even close to what is described in that book.
Mostly random stuff.
You're officially insane. How does this foe/friend crap work here?
Mostly random stuff.
Ahahaha... you thought the cost of producing something was the same as the cost of the materials
What a laugh.
No, the cost of something is the labor, equipment cost, power/energy use, time involved, production capacity, and the cost of materials. And injection molding has 3D printing beat in all those areas, except (and probably not even except) the raw material cost.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I can hear the Brontitall foot soldiers approaching (painfully) now...
Unless you're buying ABS by the *container ship*, you'll never match the price LEGO gets
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I am talking about the touch screen for the smart phone. I am pretty sure that can not be simulated with e-ink.
That was because centralized manufacturing was the only mechanized way to produce shoes.
If I can print my own inventory then I don't need the big factory.
Will localized production ever be cheaper then centralized manufacturing?
There are variables.
1. Scale... centralized manufacturing only works if you're making a lot of something. For small production runs it is less efficient.
2. Centralized manufacturing tends to require a great deal of shipping, duties, and often waiting. All of that ends up costing something. It might be as low as 5 percent of the sale price but it is often as high as 15 percent.
3. Then there is value in customization. Making a lot of something means everything has to be generic. Small production runs... possibly as small as production runs of "1" can make the product more valuable because it is one of a kind. That might mean the product is more valuable to the buyer, it might mean you can access niche markets, it might mean you can effectively have a larger inventory... always saying "yes I can have that for you in an hour". All of that is valuable.
I could go on... but the point is that for centralized manufacturing to be superior it has to overcome all those variables. As you pointed out, it did overcome them and has overcome them for generations. However, what it was overcoming was the old method of manufacturing which was by skilled craftsmen and took a lot of labor per unit to produce. THAT was the problem. If we're printing the object then the labor is going to be much lower per unit. And if its low enough... and the cost of the machine is low enough... then it might easily overcome the systemic hold of centralized manufacturing in many segments of the economy.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We live in an economy of mass computing, because it is way, way cheaper to perform a calculation on a mainframe than a microcomputer on your desk.
In areas where there really is mass computing (i.e., heavy number crunching), this statement is actually true.
Most of the arguments against 3D printers are essentially the same as though used against early microcomputers. Yes, those early microcomputers were never going to change the world, but their descendants sure have.
Microcomputers slaughtered mainframes in the marketplace because there was not widespread network for information transfer that mainframes could benefit from. Now we have this network and people are moving towards centralized computing facilities (the "cloud"). For physical goods, such distribution networks have been in place even longer so there's no economic benefit from switching to hyperlocal manufacturing.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
... would mean that we could achieve that state of independence where everyone could 3D print. There would be an abundance of the necessary resource for printing, and the act of printing would be good for the environment. There would be fewer shoe manufaturers but people who were drawn to that field, would become designers or consultants. Not everyone of course. Some would become involved in the new industries that grew up around 3D printing e.g. cobblers might disappear but 3D printer repair people would rise in prominence.
Extrapolate to any other industry 'threatened' by 3D printing.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
3D printers will never replace cheap mass produced plastic. Never. There is simply no way that you could possibly save any kind of money, nor time, by 3D printing mass produced one-cent-a-dozen plastic junk. So you will certainly never print a water bottle, a lego brick, a cellphone cover or anything else that you can pick up for a few cents in any store.
No. 3D printers will be the nemesis of a completely different market. What torrents did to content, 3D printers will do to "designer" stuff: Enable people to multiply something that costs a fortune cheaply. Anything that costs more than its material warrants will be a target for 3D printers.
The one market where I foresee a veritable battle that makes the battle MPAA/RIAA vs. torrenters go pale in comparison is the battle the car industry will wage against 3D printers. Because the basic premise is the same: An industry that relies on selling something that is dirt cheap to mass produce at high prices, due to fixed costs that need to be recovered, versus its user base that so far could only grin and bear the prices and now can far easier either manufacture their plastic spare parts themselves or have them made by friends. The stakes are much higher, though. Way, way more jobs are on the line here, and the car industry has way, way better ties with politics than even the MAFIAA can dream about.
The content war was ugly. But this one will probably be far worse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Okay so these thingies will be able to print anything, so what would the economy be like? Well you'd download the latest template from the Internet and when you start to print your printer says, "GLOP OUT". So you go down to your local GLOP POD store and purchase the glop pods you need. Because the Starter Pod that came with your printer was only 30% full (joke's on you!).
There are glop pods for EVERYTHING. Almost-metal, almost-plastic, almost-wood... items manufactured with these bear an uncanny resemblance to the materials for which they are named, but manage to have no redeeming materials-strength or durability advantages to the originals. But you made it yourself. And it only consumed half the GLOP POD. But they're cheaper by the dozen.
And the food! There are three types of glop food pods available: Strawberry, Broccoli and Steak. Oops, I just printed a shoe out of Steak! Ha ha. I just printed a plastic hamburger!
Why do I get the impression that hundreds of years of applied materials science, chemistry and the economy of scale in manufacturing 'durable' goods, is being frivolously marginalized, and that the folks who are most excited are those who envision themselves running a GLOP POD store?
I would use a 3D printer to construct simple, rectangular stackable enclosures in which I would re-mount the electronic innards of my routers, external hard disks and modems, to replace the oogly rounded ugly non-stackable JUNK plastic art deco shapes that are produced today that look like stupid alien egg sacs.
How's that for 'customization'? Hrrmph.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
what will happen when everyone not only has the ability to manufacture everything they need, but also an inexhaustible and independent source of power?
Hint: it ends very, very badly.
There's an amazing technology called "seeds".
These "seeds" grow into actual, eatable food.
Even better, they're solar powered and the feedstock is water.
And to top it off, one of the things these "seed" machines can manufacture is more seeds!
Thanks to this technology, the future will be filled with people who grow their own food, and things like supermarkets will become a relic of the past.
I'm still wondering why Exxon, et. al don't get heavily into solar, tidal, etc. They've got to know what they're peddling will run out one day. Why not just corner the next market? They certainly have the resources.
Similarly, yes, folks will print more and more things on their own, but the end of the consumer chain is always the most expensive.
Today, printer ink is ridiculously higher in cost than petrol (try over $2,500 for a gallon of Black). For 3D, it's still pretty much all plastic filament. Five pounds of ABS white can run up to $50. Say, a couple of bookends if you're lucky.
Printers of tomorrow will be able to use many more raw ingredients as input. Right now it's all lamination, laying down layer after layer of the plastic filament until your object is complete; but down the road they'll act more like proteins, simply re-arranging supplied atoms into a new configuration and spitting them out the 'tray'.
Thus, the big winner will be the company that sells easy access to what you feed the printer.
And yes, DRM will creep into the hardware, ensuring the more-or-less law-abiding of us don't print bombs and such, though of course that will never stop the truly determined.
So sure, down the road you'll be able to print a house. But buying enough cartridges at the Depot will break you.
How would they do that? If I buy fabric and make clothing out of it, I may get taxed on the fabric purchase, but I don't get taxed on the value I added by making the clothes.
Anybody remember the publish on demand scare of the 80s? Given the ubiquity of quality printers with finishing capability, book stores would just be a little place with a l out of blank paper, a printer or two, and a lot of books on hard drive that they would print up on demand.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but teach him to 3d print a fish. ...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Plus furniture for such "aliens" to sit on: http://science.slashdot.org/st...
Even without DNA manipulation or 3D printing, AI and robotics are rapidly taking us "where no one has gone before". Although, that perhaps ignores slave holding elites throughout the ages, although slaves still had to be managed and could easily revolt?
In many ways, I consider Amazon to be a lot like a 3D printer -- just a very slow one that takes a couple days to print almost anything. Except I don't have that many replication ration units compared to a post-scarcity society, so I still have to make hard choices, plus I feel bad that many people in society can't access the Amazon replicators, which reduces my enjoyment plus makes society a riskier place to be. And I can't easily unprint stuff when I am done with it or want to store it.
By me from a decade ago on funding to create a Star Trek society: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
Practical aspects: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
Political ones: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...
Education ones: http://www.pdfernhout.net/post...
Economic ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/medi...
Others: http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...
With enough energy (such as from LENR someday perhaps, or hot fusion, massive solar, or thorium otherwise), almost everything become easy to recycle or clean up, like via huge mass spectrometers used to separate different atoms.
http://www.freeenergytimes.com...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Others who make related points about abundance as well as its challenges to conventional economics:
http://worldtransformed.com/
http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
http://www.thelightsinthetunne...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
etc.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Oh NO! We aren't to the extremes of technology imagined in science fiction after only 28 years!? Well, then fuck, I guess there is no such thing as technological progress. Imma go buy a donkey and start plowing with a stone furrow.
Would you bet that it couldn't ever in the future, even with a billion years of technological progress?
Awww, are you butthurt there, Luddite?
Before you go running off to cry about it to your control panel, why don't you just wipe your tears away and shut up?
I don't think e-ink is the same as glass. You're amazing.
Mostly random stuff.
My point is that you are wrong about the timeline. You brought up extremes, presumably because you don't like being wrong, or worse, corrected. PS: In information processing, we're already well beyond anything sci-fi thought 28 years ago. Go ahead, read some 3 decade old sci-fi. You're amazing.
Mostly random stuff.
I don't care what technology there may be in a more than couple of hundred years. This 3D printing hype is like Aztecs talking about having space travel in the next year. The hype needs to tone down.
We started with mainframes (cloud). Then went to PCs (local), then PCs with Citrix (cloud), then PIII+ PCs (more powerful than servers at the time), now we are headed to virtualizations and cloud. It'll swing the other way later. We've done cloud before. That we called in "mainframe" once before, and "thin client" later doesn't change the fact that cloud computing is very very old.
You missed the woosh.
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