My son now makes his own Pokemon figures using Amorphium virtual scultping software and takes the file into my university lab to use the RP machine and make his character out of plastic. Not 10-20 years, but today.
It is not that they are slow that is the threat. Consider that about 1 million households may eventually have fabbers. Production, then, would be in parallel and all 1M would produce parts at once. So, even if a part took 24 hours (not likely with today's fabbers which produce in less than 12 hours), that's 1M parts/day. Just like MP3s on Napster.
The other issue of quality parts will be solved - you can count on that. Today the parts can be made of all kinds of plastics, wax, some metals and some ceramics. The main issue is part homogeneity and density which give a part its strength.
So, my view is that in 10 years this will have happened and we can download the part description of a fuel injector for our 2009 BMW and make it in our garage and download the installation video and go for it.
The AirForce is very interested in this technology as is NASA because it is tough to take a full parts inventory on a 6-month cruise or multi-year space trip. In this case, all you'd need is raw material and a CD-ROM library.
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My son now makes his own Pokemon figures using Amorphium virtual scultping software and takes the file into my university lab to use the RP machine and make his character out of plastic. Not 10-20 years, but today.
It is not that they are slow that is the threat. Consider that about 1 million households may eventually have fabbers. Production, then, would be in parallel and all 1M would produce parts at once. So, even if a part took 24 hours (not likely with today's fabbers which produce in less than 12 hours), that's 1M parts/day. Just like MP3s on Napster. The other issue of quality parts will be solved - you can count on that. Today the parts can be made of all kinds of plastics, wax, some metals and some ceramics. The main issue is part homogeneity and density which give a part its strength. So, my view is that in 10 years this will have happened and we can download the part description of a fuel injector for our 2009 BMW and make it in our garage and download the installation video and go for it. The AirForce is very interested in this technology as is NASA because it is tough to take a full parts inventory on a 6-month cruise or multi-year space trip. In this case, all you'd need is raw material and a CD-ROM library.