
Perspective on 3D printers from a mechanical designer - graeham
http://www.graehamdouglas.com/3d-printers-are-not-the-future-of-manufacturing
======
tlb
Imagine this article, but in 1977 and replacing 3D printer with computer. It
would have been wrong, because computers improved rapidly and got cheaper,
smaller, faster, lower power, etc.

Almost all the reasons in the article are problems with the current price,
size, and reliability of 3D printers.

Someday, there will be a machine that will whip out objects so easily that
you'd use it to make a doorstop.

~~~
ekianjo
Nope the article does not focus so much on price. It says 3d printers are
getting cheaper and cheaper. But his points are valid: just like it does not
make sense to carve your own furniture for everything, it does not make sense
to do 3D printing for everything in your house either, because you need
different kind of materials for different kind of purpose and no 3d printer is
going to be able to reproduce every kind of plastic used around you. Plastic
is not just plastic, there are thousands of different polymers used in
different industries. Not all of them could be used in a 3D printer setting
(some can only be molded under high pressure and high temperature).

I may be wrong, but I think you are falling into the typical false
technological assumption that a new technology will revolutionize everything
just because it becomes available. I mean, look at computers. Even though they
are becoming ubiquitous there are not computers in every object we use every
day. A lot of our home equipment is still based on "stupid" electronics
because it's good enough in most cases.

3D printers will become more common, more reliable and cheaper as the market
develops, but when you can order something on Amazon for 3 dollars and have it
delivered at your door in one day, there is a strong competition as to what is
the best/most effortless way to get the thing in question. If your goal is to
make unique objects that you cannot find anywhere, then, sure, 3d printers are
the future, but most of us are living in environments where many things have
been standardized, and products fitting these standards are readily available.

~~~
ippisl
>> If your goal is to make unique objects that you cannot find anywhere, then,
sure, 3d printers are the future

In reality, uniqueness is overrated. Given a really large pool of objects to
choose from(which are manufactured in mid quantities) , there's not a lot of
consumer need for unique objects.

The largest market consumers do need unique objects is the healthcare market.
But the economics there are totally different. for example 3d printing of
dental crowns existed for a long time , but it doesn't(yet) captured the
market with lower cost solutions(although it certainly has the power to do so,
technically).

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mercuryrising
3D printers are a bit odd. In their current form, I will whole heartedly say
no one will use them (short of the tinkerers and creatives). It's not like
email where I can go on and connect with someone. It doesn't give me something
that I didn't have before. I can't print the expensive things in my life, I
can print stupid things like cups, cases, boxes, clips, holders, etc. Light
things, cheap things. I can customize them, that is the huge thing 3D printing
allows - customization. Short of that, it doesn't have any of the fancy
flashery that electronics do.

This isn't to say that it won't happen, but it needs a new spin. It needs the
'killer app' that makes people want it. 1 Kg of ABS plastic (1.75 mm in
diameter) is ~$30. PLA is more expensive, but it is renewable (~$45 / kg).
It's not free to make stuff once you have one (it will last for a while, but
you'll still need raw material).

They are slow, at least for 1D printers (filament printers are parametric
printers, we move our nozzle in a line that gets longer with time). SLA
printers are faster, way faster. They print planes at a time. They also can
have better resolution. The trouble with them is that the liquid material is
significantly more expensive as they are UV cured (so they need special
handling, and whatnot).

I've been trying to think of something cool for what could be done with the
situation (as it would get me a lot of money), but it's a hard problem. We're
spoiled by how luxurious electronics are, how precise they are, and how little
we have to think about how well they work. Little electro-mechanical things
would be cool, and I could probably hand out a lot of personalized presents,
but do I really need one in my house? Yes. Do my parents need one in their
house? No.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_> I can print stupid things like cups, cases, boxes, clips, holders, etc.
Light things, cheap things. I can customize them, that is the huge thing 3D
printing allows - customization._

Yes, you can print all the cheap low-value add things we currently outsource
to China and other low-wage countries, but you can also _personalize_ them.

That's a potential recipe for major disruption.

~~~
adrianhoward
_That's a potential recipe for major disruption._

I can get a personally engraved iPod in a startlingly short period of time.

Lean manufacturing has been pushing towards the idea of pushing different
things off the end of a production line for years. They'll carry on doing
that. As the technology improves they'll integrate 3D printing type
technologies into the supply chain.

Personalisation is certainly interesting - game changing in some instances
almost certainly.

That doesn't mean that it's going to happen via 3D printers in your home. I
find it hard to think about any kind of personalised object that I'm going to
need urgently enough to print _now_ gosh darn it, rather than wait for next
day delivery. Especially at the ongoing cost of another box taking up space in
my house.

I might have one coz I'm a sad techie who loves fiddling with stuff... but
that's not a mass market. That's in the order of magnitude of the home-CNC
machine/lathe market.

I can imagine technologies that might hit a mass market. For example if
printing and disposing of kitchen mugs / saucepans / cutlery / etc. becomes
cheaper/easier/smaller than buying / storing / washing them up then I'd buy a
3D printer like a shot. That kills a major pain point for me. But nothing like
that is even vaguely close.

I've yet to see any problem that will persuade 'normal' people to get a 3D
printer in the home that's anything close to an implementable reality. I'd
love to get educated if I'm wrong ;-)

~~~
SkyMarshal
I'm thinking more ~20 year horizon than next five years. I don't know if 3d
printers will advance at the rate that transistors and microchips have, but I
expect in ~20 years they will be able to do some interesting things.

------
briguy
For the present time, 3D Printing is NOT revolutionizing the actual production
of end products. However the decreased pricing and increased availability (3D
printing has been available for a very long time at a high cost) of 3D
Printing machines IS revolutionizing the very important part of the product
life cycle....Design For Manufacture (DFM)[1].

Rapid Prototyping, Kanban, lean, agile, and other concepts that are
revolutionizing software development were all concepts that developed in the
Manufacturing world many years ago. 3D Printing is a very valuable tool for
rapidly validating and testing designs....release early and often, get
feedback, validate, etc.

Most products for the time being(once through the DFM process) will still get
produced using traditional methods (Injection Mouldings, Castings, etc).

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability>

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grannyg00se
I've paid for some prototyping runs on a 3D printer of very high resolution
(16 micrometers x,y,z if I recall correctly) but I can't imagine wanting to
own one. Unless something comes along that drastically changes their
usefulness I think they will remain in the realm of the hacker's tool box.

It's not a matter of price coming down, or size, or speed. There's a lack of
use cases. There's just no large scale need for everyone to be printing out
their own custom widgets.

~~~
ht_th
Not given our current way of life, indeed. Then again, our current way of life
is based on the premise that things take time, effort, money, transport, and
so on to get into our homes. But why would I need clothes, extra chairs,
tableware, tools, and the like if I could just print them when I need them?
What if it would become more economical to print common objects instead of
having durable items? I would argue that there currently isn't a need because
we organised around the idea of durability.

An interesting example in this discussion: Why do a lot of fast-food
restaurants use disposable tableware and coffee shops disposable cups?
Disposable cups don't make sense if it is impossible to make disposable cups
that cost nigh to nothing. If you want to take coffee on the road, just stop
at a restaurant, or take a thermos can from home. There is just no need for
anyone to have disposable cups, that's just wasteful.

Once these cups became a possibility, however, the use-case of a coffee to go
became reality. And with some interesting changes bubbling through society to
boot, I think. Compare train stations of a century ago with train stations of
today, for example. Or canteens in many a factory with those of 50 years ago.
Or your office: where has the coffee lady gone?

------
jhuckestein
Disclaimer: I have only hobbyists knowledge of CAD and 3d printing

The author may be a mechanical engineer, but he certainly isn't an
entrepreneur. The interesting question is not "Does it make sense for everyone
to have a 3D printer now?" but "What kinds of things become possible once
everyone has a 3D printer in their home?"

~~~
miahi
You are putting the cart before the horses. The first question is "why would
anyone buy it?", and if you don't give an excellent reason for that, you will
not see a 3D printer in everyone's home. And this makes your question about
possible things as useless as a designer's contest (where most of the prizes
are awarded for physically impossible designs).

------
arikrak
Printing hasn't replaced book-publishing, so there's little reason to think
3D-printing will replace traditional manufacturing.

However, I think he underestimates 3D printing's potential when he says its
only for people with design skill. Some people may want the ability to print
3D models they find online, just like people print some PDFs nowadays. In
fact, this could be much more useful.

~~~
jorleif
This was exactly what I was thinking as well. To take the analogy further,
computers are still used to a ridiculously large extent to prepare paper
documents, and the software has become relatively easy to use with a little
training. Similarly, I believe, there could be 3d-shape editors for regular
people that make the design process for certain kinds of objects easy (such
as, connectors, lego-like blocks etc.)

------
chubbard
Every point he makes is absolutely correct, and I think comparing them to
computers as a rising technology is apples to oranges. For one computers made
most of its improvements exponentially because the number of transistors
doubled every 18 months. 3D printers don't have an equivalent part, like the
transistor, that just simply scaling up makes things perform better. The
things holding back are outlined in his article: limited choice of materials,
lower quality of the part, slow print times, high cost for mass producing,
inability to mass produce, etc. All of this will improve with time, but it
won't be on the same time scale as computers.

Now there are somethings I don't think he discussed that change manufacturing
because it requires imagining a different way of working. These are the more
transformative changes that might have no previous equivalent to compare them
to.

For example, the ability to have a de-centralized, agile work force. My wife
worked for a company where the M.E. were in the states, but software teams
were in Europe. They were constantly sending manufactured parts with people as
they physically traveled between offices. It was far cheaper to do this than
ship the boards and cases of manufactured products to the team. However, with
a 3D printer they could email the CAD drawing to the other office and in a day
they could print it out. This is a big change in how fast things could be
turned around, and save $1000's of dollars, allowing them to iterate faster.

Another change is 3D printing molds for doing injection molding. Some rapid
prototyping shops already do this today. Creating the molds is time consuming,
but 3D printing gives you faster turn around. And also more complex molds.
This plays to 3D printings strengths low cost for low volume one offs. The
quality of the part could be a problem, but hopefully that will improve with
time.

I agree with what the author said, but I see the real limit right now is our
own imagination for how 3D printers enable us to do new things we can't do
now. This is where I see 3D printers are like computers as making something
that was impossible before possible. These are much harder to predict. In a
way it wasn't just computers that transformed us as much as the internet.
Maybe there a companion technology that changes much of these assumptions
made.

If we find a problem that 3D printers do better than anything else some of his
assumptions could really change. For example, his assessment of 3D printers in
homes right now is 100% accurate, but there might be some application we
didn't see today for which 3D printers push into the home without significant
changes to technology.

~~~
graeham
Thanks for your thoughts, you brought up a few points I hadn't thought of. I
haven't worked in a international corporate environment but the collaboration
ability is an interesting advantage. Printed injection molds are also
interesting. I had a project that involved this but it ended up getting
shelved before this step so I don't have much original or personal commentary
on it.

I am hesitant on the argument of getting excited about 3D printing for as-of-
yet unthought of uses. Its a fine argument for science exploring but if we are
imagining the future or if I were an investor in 3D printers, a more concrete
vision of how A becomes B is needed.

~~~
starky
Very fast turn around, low quantity molds (~25 parts) is one of the few
extremely promising possibilities for rapid prototyping. For speed you just
can't beat the speed that you can get with this method, you can have fully
functional parts in your hand a week after sending the model. You can turn
around different hardnesses and colours in 2 days. I've used it, and it is a
fantastic resource for experimentation with a part.

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endoself
This fits with things other people who have worked with 3D printers have told
me. I would have liked to see longer timescales described though. How many of
these points are going to change soon or not-so-soon? I've heard that prices
aren't going down quickly enough to make it economical for everyone to have a
3D printer in their homes in the near future, but it would be nice to see what
other people think and to know about other issues blocking widespread
adoption.

------
utopkara
This article isn't saying that 3D printers aren't important, it actually
acknowledges that they are already revolutionizing and democratizing the way
new products are developed.

More striking arguments are unfortunately point in time statements, about the
current capabilities of technology and the market maturity.

I am not saying that the CNC manufacturing will progress by leaps and bounds
towards bringing $100K prototyping machines down to $2K in the next few years,
but with increased focus on improving the lower end of the spectrum, and
pushing its limits, we will actually find new uses for them as well.

I also don't believe that the ordinary person will go about designing their
own parts. However, there will be a good market for people to hire designers,
or for small time designers to collaborate to improve open source products.

e.g. One of the biggest ways that I see 3D printing and CNC in general as
being important in producing parts replacements. How many times have you
needed a broken or missing part for the affordable furniture that we buy from
IKEA, Walmart, or Target?

As we use 3D printed pieces, we'll have to use materials which will perhaps be
weaker, or in some cases unnecessarily strong but expensive. But, it will be
fine, because it will do such amazing things we will not care.

------
001sky
_As an aside on Kickstarter since I brought it up, it is interesting they
recently banned virtual renderings of design projects. Rapid prototyping
allows for moving from virtual models to prototyped models easily, quickly,
and cheaply. The problem is that the prototypes in no way prove the company is
ready to handle the demands of transitioning into production, or that the
prototype has had any reliability testing._

\-- This was interesting aside

------
sicxu
There are lots of things in the toy, art, and spare part category that can use
the 3D printing technology. Just like many other technologies, 3D printing
will be adopted by designers, hobbists first. If there is enough demand, it
will show up in shared workshop such as Kinko. It may or may not make into
every home. Who knows. It really depends on if there is any killer app that
drives the demand.

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jared314
There are products that can use the customization and one-off nature of 3D
printing. You just have to think back to before mass production made
everything the same.

I still like the example of clothing. Clothing may be good enough now, but
people like it customized to them. Put a 3D photopolymer printer, 3D scanner,
and some brandname designer in a shop in SF and watch a new trend appear.

------
ansible
I've been thinking long and hard about getting a 3D printer recently. After
doing some research on the kind of things that can be constructed with the
low-end devices, I've decided against doing it. The things which these devices
can make aren't very useful, because the material properties are just not that
good with regards to overall strength, temperature range, etc..

I'm now looking at my options for 2D printing, such as cutting parts out of
plywood, acrylic, and such. However, the lower cost CNC machines have a very
small work area.

I'd really like to get one of those position-correcting routers as in the
recent MIT video, or something else which would allow me to easily work with a
4x8 foot plywood sheet.

~~~
graeham
Second the "build your own" CNC. A good friend recently made a 2x2 CNC that
does a great job on wood and Halloween pumpkins for about $600. He did most of
the structural pieces out of carbon fiber so it looks awesome but took some
time. If you're building it yourself, it really doesn't cost that much to make
a bigger one as structure and belts are not the expensive parts.

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evv
One of the greatest, long-term advantages of 3D printing I see is the ability
to localize manufacturing. Figure out how to print materials we can make
domestically, and suddenly stop importing thousands of products.

Imagine small local factories, filled with 3D printers and robots, run by
skilled workers. Such factories would be capable of manufacturing thousands of
different products for the people nearby on an ad-hoc basis. This could
eliminate shipping costs, reduce waste, would make recycling easier, create
jobs, increase GDP, etc.

~~~
ISL
Don't forget reduced inventory cost. No need for an auto parts store to a
litany of rarely-purchased plastic parts if they can be printed at will.

Customization is the early killer app, but a world opens up as the material
quality and speed improve.

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truebecomefalse
I'm so very glad, in a selfish way,that there is so much pessimism toward 3D
printing. More money for the cunning.

