
The 3D Economy: Forget guns, what happens when everyone prints their own shoes? - x43b
http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/24/the-3d-economy
======
greenyoda
How much of our economy is actually based on the kinds of small, plastic
objects that can be printed? It doesn't seem to be significant compared to
other sectors of the economy, like housing, vehicles, electronics or food.
Yes, anyone will be able to print their own iPhone cover, but we won't be able
to print an iPhone in the foreseeable future.

And even if you can print your own plastic salad bowl or plastic shoes or
plastic furniture, people are still going to prefer ceramic bowls and leather
shoes and wooden furniture, since they offer a more pleasant user experience.
If plastic stuff does become more popular and growing numbers of goods are
going to be printed out of plastic, it will cause the price of plastic to go
up, since plastic is made from petroleum, a non-renewable natural resource.

I also suspect that long-term exposure to vaporized plastic and tiny airborne
plastic particles in your home is not going to be great for peoples' health.

~~~
Sanddancer
You're mistaking what home 3d printing is now to what home 3d printing will be
in 10-20 years. Technologies such as Selective Laser Sintering and the like
can use a much more versatile set of materials, such as metal and ceramic, to
create a wider range of products. Also, 3d printers can use non-petroleum
based plastics, like Polylactic Acid, which are renewable. Yes, much like the
microwave didn't replace the conventional oven, 3d printing isn't going to
totally destroy retail. It is, however, going to make things a lot more
interesting.

~~~
_delirium
I think the bigger point though, is that even if it _did_ totally destroy
retail, retail just isn't a very big part of the U.S. economy: 6% of GDP. And
some of that is not even selling physical goods to begin with: Amazon selling
Kindle books is part of the retail sector. Manufacturing is bigger, but still
not huge: ~12% of the economy. And manufacturing of things that end up in
consumer homes and therefore potentially subject to people saying "screw this,
I'll make it myself" is a relatively small fraction of that.

So while I think 3d printing is interesting, I don't think it's going to
result in the end of the the existence of corporations as everyone stops doing
business with them and DIY's their every need, as this article seems to
envision.

~~~
greenyoda
And most of retail is probably stuff like clothing and shoes and electronics,
not plastic bowls. I just don't see home-printed items having a large impact
of on employment the retail sector in the near future.

As far as manufacturing is concerned, most plastic household items haven't
been manufactured in the U.S. for a long time.

------
_delirium
I guess it's used only as an example, but we are _really_ far away from being
able to 3d print shoes. Or toothbrushes for that matter. Shower-curtain rings
and toothbrush handles, yes. I suspect the author of this article has not
spent a lot of time looking at the technical side of 3d printing: it's not
some kind of magic replicator that can produce arbitrarily complex compound
items out of arbitrary materials.

~~~
hershel
3d printed women's shoes are here today:

[http://www.dezeen.com/2013/08/02/cubify-launches-free-to-
dow...](http://www.dezeen.com/2013/08/02/cubify-launches-free-to-download-
shoes-you-can-print-overnight/)

The printer costs around $3K.

~~~
api_or_ipa
There are only so many ways to wear a solid plastic shoe. I can't really see
the common woman (or man) replace a significant part of her wardrobe with this
printer.

~~~
NoPiece
Crocs built a billion dollar company on plastic shoes. I think they are
actually a foam resin, so you are right about rigid plastic shoes, but a
slightly softer more flexible 3d printable material would be practical and
useful.

~~~
georgemcbay
Yeah, even non-exotic 3D printers like the RepRap I have (cost: $650) will
print things like nylon and ninjaflex (which is quite flexible after
printing). As others have mentioned, this is still the early days and things
are moving very quickly.

------
hibikir
There are many kinds of 3d printing that would be amazing, but that we are
nowhere near close enough to doing. First we have to see the same technology
working well in factory environments. For instance, imagine a machine that
manufactured clothes in place, tailored to your size, by just scanning you and
taking a base design. Say goodbye to all the complex inventory problems that
you find in clothing retail today, all while increasing sales, because in
other stores, what they have might nor might not fit you well.

That kind of printing by retailers seems like a more likely incremental step
towards major economic change than having it all work off of home printing. We
don't make anywhere near enough purchases out there of 100% plastic items, or
where plastic could be a viable replacement.

~~~
JetSpiegel
Printing clothes on demand will never work.

Those already exist today. You can have a tailor make you a suit, and it's a
special thing only for you.

Most people don't want that, they want to wear what their friends and idols
wear, so it's not feasible to shift production to 3D printers, so that they
print the same thing over and over again. Our current system requires no
further investment.

~~~
easong
Getting a tailor to custom-make your entire wardrobe is wayyy outside of the
financial capabilities of almost everyone except the very very wealthy today.
In the 40s one might as well have said that handheld calculators will never
work - we can always have the women ("calculators") down the hall crunch the
numbers for us!

Having a machine that, given the correct fabric, can print an arbitrary design
would enable clothing stores to completely eliminate most of their factories,
warehouses, delivery costs, standing inventory (much of which is thrown out or
sold for a pittance), employees, and a significant percentage of the size of
their stores. They will be able to react to fast-changing fashion trends
instantly with exellent efficiency. They will be able to keep and reuse old
designs more or less indefinitely. Sure, machines will be printing a lot of
the same thing over and over again at any given time - but the thing they're
printing over and over again will be what's popular and selling _right there_
and _right now_ , which is very difficult to predict months in advance and for
every location. That, combined with the huge reduction in overhead, will allow
the first mass-market retail store to figure out on-demand printing a huge
advantage over its competitors.

Not to mention that it will fit the customer as close to perfectly as
measurement and design allow, so the product itself will probably be of
significantly higher utility than what you can get in the average mall store
today.

------
justin66
Short answer: everyone will be wearing really shitty shoes?

------
nroose
To me, this is one of those hypothetical possible eventualities that I don't
pay much attention to. It's very likely that for the foreseeable future,
printing shoes will be more expensive and result in lower quality shoes than
the manufacturing process. Sure, some people will want to imagine their own
shoe styles, but most won't want expensive low quality shoes.

------
mentos
If you had a 3D printer that could print objects up to the size of a car in an
instant, what would you make?

I'm thinking the best application for me might be furniture. It would be
really cool to flip my apartment every year by melting down my old stuff and
printing new.

Maybe a bike but it'd have to be one of those chainless designs.[0]

But past that, I'm at a loss for what I'd make even with a magical instant
printer. There are very few things that I use or want that could be made
entirely of plastic.

I've wanted to get a 3D printer but I feel like it'll end up going unused like
my Raspberry Pi. Once in a while it'd come in handy but its not going to
change my world.

[0]-[http://cdn.trendhunterstatic.com/thumbs/chainless-bicycle-
nu...](http://cdn.trendhunterstatic.com/thumbs/chainless-bicycle-nulla-
minimalist-bike.jpeg)

~~~
Crito
I would look into replacing at many things as possible in my kitchen with
printed items.

Broken spatula? Print a new one. Friends coming over for drinks? Print some
wine glasses[sic?] and plates. Half of a leftover chicken? Print a tubberware
case the perfect size for it. I'd print perfectly sized cabinet inserts for
all of my utensils. Outside of the kitchen, I could make bookshelves and
cabinets that are only as big as I need them to be. There are lots of custom
organizational things that I could make.

Currently I buy all of these sorts of things from stores, so they are never
_quite_ optimal. If I had a shop I'd be making this stuff myself out of wood,
but I live in an apartment. Of course I don't have room for a car-sized
printer either...

~~~
salgernon
My espresso machine has a feature where it will suck up milk through a tube to
make foam. I figured to print a conical vessel to hold the milk and ensure
that the tube would always be submerged to the bottom. Took not too long to
design using openscad and print a few (the first was too small, the second
failed to print halfway through. When the material doesn't adhere it ends up
glob bing onto the end of the print head and makes a huge mess.)

Ok, so finally, I have my vessel and I pour in some milk. And then I watch as
the milk mysteriously disappears.

Turns out that the print is not quite watertight and the milk oozed between
the inner wall and outer wall of the cup, where there is a honeycomb-like
space. (Most objects are not quite solid, in order to save material.)

After washing it out, I figured I'd use it for pencils or something. But you
know, you can never quite get the rancid milk out of a porous plastic object.

At this point, I won't be quitting my day job to be a 3d designer, but I will
say that I've had $2000 worth of fun and learning, so that was worth it. The
printers at this point are pretty much able to print things that quality of
something you would get for free in your breakfast cereal.

~~~
ijk
This is one reason why foodsafe 3D printing is yet another technical wrinkle.
Shapeways added foodsafe-rated printing a while back, but just for ceramics,
which may end up being the cheaper foodsafe compromise for the near future.

------
Hominem
I tried on a pair of 3d printed shoes the other day. We have a long long way
to go.

------
hosh
Oh. Did someone in the media finally figure out _this_ implication?

------
krick
Sounds like luddism come again. Remind me, who won the last time?

------
darksim905
People will have uncomfortable feet, duh.

------
mahyarm
A 3D printer/scanner would of came in handy when I snapped a plastic part in
my side mirror on my car. Had to basically get a full replacement mirror
because they didn't sell the bottom plate individually. Can't wait until auto
repair shops start using them.

~~~
bsilvereagle
Imagine the cost on that. There will be labor involved to CAD your specific
piece, then materials costs, and then machine time. And if the original CAD
model failed in some regard you run the risk of being charged twice for the
CAD labor.

~~~
Sanddancer
This is assuming the mechanic is using their CAD workstation to design the
part. However, what will most likely happen is that the mechanic will
subscribe to a 3d printing service, much like they do already for keeping
their automotive diagnostic readers up to date. That service will have the 3d
models already made, so that one part of an assembly can be printed on an as-
needed basis.

~~~
bsilvereagle
> That service will have the 3d models already made

Someone somewhere is CAD'ing these pieces up. The cost of doing that will be
passed on to the consumer. If the manufacturers provide the models the cost of
the 3D printed piece will be more expensive than replacing the whole part. If
a manufacturer invests the time into making sure their component library can
be 3D printed they will make sure 3D printers exist in dealerships. Huge
overhead costs are involved here.

------
joering2
Invention of the internet: Forget 411 phoneline, what happens to libraries
when everyone can access books from their home computer?

------
lamby
The cobbler's children have no shoes..

------
jhprks
How about glasses (frames)? smartphone cases? there are tons of small
accessories that can be printed which can save hundreds or even thousands down
the road with a 3d printer.

~~~
salgernon
The problem is that plastic molding is already cheap if you're creating a
standardized size. The real issue for 3d printing custom objects is that the
design is not free. Yes, once a design is done, great. But if you're going to
be making a million of them, then more traditional processes are going to be
cheaper.

~~~
serf
yeah but..

1) people aren't manufacturing, they are producing for themselves and close
friends, so volume isn't a cost factor as much as it would be in a production
scenario.

2) printing allows for us to get away from standardized pieces for the sake of
homogeneity and production cost. These sorts of manufacturing techniques
finally allow for the prioritization of artistry rather than the adherence to
standards for the sake of cost, as it's putting that decision into the hands
of the consumer rather than the business interest.

3) 'design as a cost' is dropping drastically with the advent of tools that
allow us to digitize objects into virtual models near instantaneously.

it reminds me of ordering a car from the factory in the sixties.

Back in those days you could order a car with as few options as you wanted. If
you were a racer you could order the economy car with the big engine, no radio
or ac or carpet/headliner/backseats and have practically a drag car from the
factory. Production cost savings of course nixxed that idea of one-off
production cars.

Maybe these kind of technologies can allow for those sort of unique
configurations without ruining bottom lines too terribly?

------
zimbatm
> Once the retail and manufacturing carnage starts to scale, 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.

A dramatic cascade to doom that conveniently assumes free and untaxed raw
material. No, it's better to keep the existing power structures in place.

The whole article sounds like a call for regulation based on a fear of change.
Like it's the first time the market has faced technological evolution and
doesn't know how to adapt.

~~~
fennecfoxen
> The whole article sounds like a call for regulation based on a fear of
> change. Like it's the first time the market has faced technological
> evolution and doesn't know how to adapt.

No it doesn't. It sounds like anticipating and fearing a call for regulation
based on a fear of change. Kind of the opposite.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Yeah, it's Reason magazine, a long-running libertarian media outlet. I
seriously doubt they're seeking more regulation.

