The Explosive Growth of 3D Printing 213
MojoKid writes "If you've ever attended a World Maker Faire, the first thing that strikes you is how organic the whole scene is. Inventors, creators, and engineers from all walks of life have their gadgets, science projects, and creations on display for all to see. Some of the creations you see on display range from downright amazing to completely bizarre. One of the big attractions, a technology area that has experienced explosive growth, is the land of 3D Printing. MakerBot took the open source RepRap 3D replicator project mainstream back in 2009 with the release of the Cup Cake CNC machine, then came the Thing-o-Matic and then a little bot called Replicator. With each iteration, improvements in process and technology are bringing better, more capable 3D printers to market, from MakerBot's new Replicator 2, to new players in the field like Solidoodle, Up!3D, Ultimaker, and Tinkerines. To watch a 3D printer in action is like witnessing art, science and engineering all working together in glorious unison."
Guns (Score:3, Insightful)
Pity that there is now a bunch of lunatics trying to make printable guns. The world will not be a better place when everyone and their dog can download and print their own guns.
Only one question... (Score:4, Insightful)
How long will it take before all the legalese crap breaks loose?
Sooner or later powerful people will want to appropriate this while shielding and litigate the rest of us.
Re:Guns (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the technology improves substantially, 3d printed guns are going to succeed largely in stimulating the market for guns that you can operate with multiple missing fingers...
Re:Guns (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps if your citizens were better armed, stories like this would turn out better:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2010/11/mexican-marines-reconstruct-death-of.html [borderlandbeat.com]
``Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.''
--- John Stuart Mills
If your government doesn't trust your honest citizens w/ military grade weaponry, then you've only yourselves to blame.
Re:Guns (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guns (Score:4, Insightful)
Pity that there is now a bunch of lunatics trying to make printable guns. The world will not be a better place when everyone and their dog can download and print their own guns.
Are you implying you'd have to be a lunatic to want to make a gun?
Re:Guns (Score:4, Insightful)
They already can. Metal-printers are not cheap though.
Also strength difference between sintered "technically a metal, but barely" vs (metalurgically) forged and heat treated specific alloy is a whole nother thing.
Re:Mid/long term speculation... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've thought that obvious places for this would be:
- local car dealer --- in the shop where they could print up small trim parts rather than having to maintain inventory / having them shipped
- local hardware store (w/ integrated 3D scanner) --- scan the thing-a-ma-bob which they customer brings in, be directed to a particular aisle / shelf if in stock, if not, print up a quote to have a replacement printed / milled.
The problem is the run time on these devices is rather lengthy, making it hard to run one profitably --- look at the charges at www.ponoko.com --- they're all way higher than the intrinsic value of the bits to most people. The original laserprinters / inkjets were competing w/ offset printing and mimeographs which were a lot less convenient and significantly more expensive on a cost-per-page basis for short runs. The VCR was competing against Cable TV or the classic movie projector, both of which were far more expensive.
I've been contemplating a milling machine (for woodworking) and would love to have a lasercutter / engraver though.
Re:Guns (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Mid/long term speculation... (Score:4, Insightful)
An insightful observation, but I'd add that you need to factor in the reprap factor. If it goes makerbot, meaning no self replication, then you've got it, but if it goes reprap, meaning self replication, then things could get weird. If my laser printer could print another laser printer...
I'd say the best reprap analogy is livestock farming. Yes it reproduces itself to a first approximation for free, but its going to take up time and some specialized supplies, lots of specialized knowledge (although in the olden days every peasant knew everything about chickens, or thought they did, anyway), and space, and smell (molten PLA is not as stinky as molten ABS, both pale in comparison to the smell of a laser cutter exhaust or chicken droppings, but...). Admittedly for most people, chicken is what comes in little wrapped trays at the supermarket, or more likely the fast food drive thru...
My metal lathe can make another bigger lathe, but that's pretty rare in the hobby because its a lot of work, worse than printing reprap parts...
People who predict desktop manufacturing (Score:4, Insightful)
Are full of crap. While such a thing might be possible in the future, current 3D printers just make plastic models. Now that's nice and all, and there's plenty of uses for it (industrial prototyping is a big one) that is far from household manufacturing. They can't work with metal, never mind electronics. You don't just go and print out a cell phone or something.
The only market that might possibly be threatened is the 3D miniatures market. Though I don't know how good they do at colour (all the ones I've encountered are monochromatic) so you might still need to paint things. Aside from that, there is little in the commercial space they threaten. They are extremely cool toys, but little more than that.
In terms of home manufacturing if they gain the ability to work with metal, particularly multiple metals, which would require a major change in how they operate, then they could produce more useful items. If they made metal and plastic parts on a fairly fine scale, they could manufacture many every day items. However unless they could either work on the micro/nano scales that electronics work on, or in some other way make use of it (like be loaded with various kinds of chips to use) their market would still be really limited.
They are nifty for making examples out of a somewhat weak plastic (it isn't super fragile but it isn't high impact) but a universal constructor they are not.
This is just the beginning ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember the Altair 8800. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800 [wikipedia.org]
The Altair was a pretty primitive and useless computer by today's standards but it was really the first personal computer. Looking at it, you wouldn't have predicted all the ways personal computers have changed our lives.
The 3d printers we have now are primitive and fairly useless. Almost nobody 'needs' one. What about thirty years from now? I'm guessing than many people's lives will be transformed. Many tradespeople will see their industries upended. Old style sign painters had to face competition from unskilled bozos with personal computers and a vinyl cutters. Skills that took a lifetime to learn no longer provided a competitive advantage. The 3d printing revolution promises to be similarly wrenching.