
3D printing could reduce raw material needs by 90% - joshrule
http://www.economist.com/node/18114221?story_id=18114221&CFID=162367227&CFTOKEN=74435751
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nickpinkston
Good to see the Economist covering 3D printing - it's still amazing to me how
much most people, even close to manufacturing, aren't familiar with it at all.

FWIW though - the 90% they're referring to is the delta between machining
solid parts and printing them. It should be added that this is a rare use-case
for 3D printing.

Usually it competes more directly with injection molding technologies that
often have better material usage because there is no need for support material
- which goes to waste holding up the hollow areas for the types of material-
saving lattice structures they're talking about.

Sometimes you can get great savings, but 3D printing isn't a production
materials panacea. Let's not even get into how to recycle composite materials
(very energy intensive) and photopolymers (you can't).

~~~
Kliment
Well, that's not entirely true. The lattice structures are internal to the
object, and substitute for solid infill. Commercial FDM 3d printers use a
crosshatch instead of solid fill, and the reprap toolchain has that as well as
a number of cool ones like hexagonal infill. So you have lattices instead of
solid walls in the microstructure. With powder printers, such as the metal
printers described in the article, you can form hollow areas of any shape
since the raw material itself acts as support. To get the material out they
need to be open on one side, but that is hardly an issue with a design that
airy. No additional material is needed. The only case where you need support
is for FDM based printing with sharp overhangs. Even this can be mitigated
with clever design, such as making overhanging parts with bridges (connecting
walls with a stretched layer of material that spans a gap) or teardrops
(closing gaps using low overhang structures, like the buttresses on gothic
buildings). The main advantage of 3d printing is that it can produce
structures internal to the object that cannot be made by any subtractive
method, and that it makes production costs linear and design-independent. This
is very cool, since it literally costs the same to make two identical or two
different objects (with the same build time) and it separates cost from
volume. The costs per unit are still high compared to injection or casting,
but the tooling costs are essentially zero. And the costs per unit are
dropping rapidly, particularly given that the FDM printers themselves are now
partially self-replicating

It's a very exciting time to be living in. I have three printers. The first
printed the second. The second printed the third. I've made a number of things
which turned from idea to design to prototype within hours to days. Then I
tweak, hit print again and I've got production. No tooling, no waiting.

~~~
michaeldhopkins
Did you design your printers or buy them? You should write this up and submit
to HN.

~~~
Kliment
Bought the first from makerbot, was a huge pain and disappointment, but it got
me as far as printing the parts for the second one, a Reprap Mendel. That one
in turn printed me (and a number of other people) the more streamlined Prusa
Mendel. I'm a contributor to the Prusa variant (I wrote the build
documentation and the makefiles, and contributed to some of the parts), but
did not design it. So yes, as others said below, I have two repraps (and one
non-reprap), and I did build them myself.

~~~
michaeldhopkins
Thanks. I was thinking about getting a Makerbot. I'll look into these others.

~~~
Kliment
Strongly advise against the Makerbot products. They cause the highest amount
of headaches and are riding on mindshare and marketing rather than quality.
Have a look at [http://repraplogphase.blogspot.com/2011/01/death-of-
sub-1000...](http://repraplogphase.blogspot.com/2011/01/death-of-
sub-1000-desktop-factory.html) for how it came to be this way.

------
yxhuvud
This claim seem about as believeable as the claim that computers would create
the paperless society.

~~~
steveklabnik
The biggest thing that people forget when dreaming about 3D printers is that
it doesn't making something from nothing: the materials have to come from
somewhere.

Even once we get a printer that's easy enough for 'normal' people to use
(hard) and a way for them to design the prints that go in the machine (hard)
and we make them small and reliable enough that it's acceptable for normal
people (hard) you _still_ have to have a big vat of plastic or whatever lying
around, and feed it into the machine.

We've got a long way to go before 'a printer in every home' is reality, if it
ever does.

My thoughts: it's like water. A big pipe of raw materials. Just imagine how
long that'd take...

~~~
rbranson
I think we are moving away from ownership and towards a more utility/service-
oriented society, so I don't think a 3D printer in every home will ever become
a reality.

~~~
KiwiNige
These guys are working on it: <http://reprap.org>

An open source 3d printer design with the goal being to use it to print all
the parts for then next printer.

~~~
marshray
It may be the problem is that we end up with _too many_ of these things self-
replicating all over the place like rabbits!

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pgroves
>Mr Schmitt says it should be possible for a robot builder to specify what a
servo needs to do, rather than how it needs to be made, and send that
information to a 3D printer, and for the machine’s software to know how to
produce it at a low cost.

This is where I will shamelessly plug my startup, DesignByRobots. The overview
of the technology is here: <http://designbyrobots.com/2011/01/17/first-post/>

~~~
pgroves
sorry, server went down. google cache here: <http://bit.ly/gPjVr9>

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jobeyonekenobi
For me, the point of interest comes from locking down a blueprint distribution
model. Everyone can print certain items depending on their access to raw
materials/power/specification of fab, but depending on how much they pay for
the 'blueprints' will be the difference between generic and premium branding
with every tiny difference in between.

~~~
marshray
Why would someone pay more for "premium branding" on something they print on
their own machine?

Granted I don't understand why people pay more for branded clothes either.

~~~
wmf
The point of premium branding is in fact to prove that you can afford to pay
more. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good>

------
iwwr
The cheapest professional machines run into $50K unit prices. A RepRap will
set you back under $1K, but it's not very useful at the moment.

~~~
bobds
They come a lot cheaper than that. The biggest cost is the proprietary
materials they use, I'm guessing it would easily add up to more than the cost
of the printer over time. Servicing costs should also be pretty high.

I've compiled a list of most cheap printers (slightly out of date, I am going
to add more soon): <http://punkmanufacturing.com/wiki/>

As far as usefulness, the open-source printers are not that different from the
cheap commercial machines. A well-tuned RepRap should have comparable
accuracy. The printing materials are a lot cheaper, as well as the parts
(which you can print) and servicing costs. The commercial printers have better
resolution, better materials and better software, at least at the moment, but
I think that's going to change.

~~~
steveklabnik
Most of those materials are reverse engineer-able, though. This has a
significant impact on the big manufacturer's bottom lines... they derive most
of their profit from materials, just like regular printers.

I'll just leave this here: <http://open3dp.me.washington.edu/>

Specifically: [http://open3dp.me.washington.edu/2009/10/plaster-based-
powde...](http://open3dp.me.washington.edu/2009/10/plaster-based-powder/)

See how cheap that is? Crazy...

~~~
bobds
You can probably get a spec-sheet for their proprietary materials if you ask.
You might have to reverse-engineer cartridges with security features though.

The Fab@Home guys are trying out various different materials, since their
syringe-based extruder allows more flexibility than the RepRap.

<http://fabathome.org/wiki/index.php/Fab%40Home:Materials>

As far as cheap materials go, it doesn't get much cheaper than garbage
plastic.

<http://reprap.org/wiki/Recycler>

~~~
steveklabnik
> You can probably get a spec-sheet for their proprietary materials if you
> ask.

Or you could just go here (this is my old startup):
<http://marketplace.cloudfab.com/fab_facts> (click through for every datasheet
on every machine and material)

