

Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing - judegomila
http://www.judegomila.com/2012/12/manufacturing-renaissance-with-3d.html

======
nakedrobot2
I see the same breathless optimism here as in the dawn of the WWW in the laste
nineties. People with little to no understanding of what 3d printing is or its
limitations, making wild extrapolations that don't take much reality
(especially the social, legal, and political implications) into account.

The fact is, we do not have any idea where 3d printing will take us. The idea
that we'll all have 3d printers in our home is possibly a bit silly.

That said, I also have a huge optimism for the future of 3d printing. But
these use cases thrown around by people often just sound silly to me.

~~~
ambrop7
> The idea that we'll all have 3d printers in our home is possibly a bit
> silly.

I have a 3d printer at home, or at least a half-assembled one :) You can get
one for yourself at <http://reprappro.com/> . The smaller one is only around
$669.

~~~
dagw
I don't think price will be the limiting factor, rather the fact that most
people won't think of a realistic use for them. Look at photo printers,
they're getting cheaper and cheaper yet sales are declining since they just
don't make financial sense for most people. Most people I know (even many
professionals) get many or all of their photos printed by third parties.

------
wdrevno
IMO, we are still a ways away from 3D printing being as disruptive as a lot of
people think (at least for home use).

From owning a 3D printer and doing prints for friends in my engineering
classes, I think people still greatly underestimate how high touch 3D printing
is today.

For example, look at the makerbot google group:
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/makerbot>

Even looking at Shapeways (an online 3D printing company with really expensive
machines), they still deal with quality control problems for the average model
someone uploads.

------
jayfuerstenberg
I wonder if LEGO can stave off the doom 3D printing presents since blocks are
the easiest the things to replicate.

They do a lot of tie-in based LEGO sets that I believe are protected by
copyright. However, their basic blocks lost their patent last year so it's
open season for those!

[http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-
day-l...](http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-day-
lego.html)

~~~
stevenrace
Part of the success and 'feel' of LEGO are due to the close tolerances -
~.01mm. This is an order of magnitude (or two) greater than my RepRap
Mendelmax on it's best day.

However, it will be a great boon to the LEGO community - as they will now have
greater access to non-structural, unlicensed parts such as guns [1] and the
ilk.

[1] <http://www.brickarms.com/>

~~~
jayfuerstenberg
True. I read once that only 4 bricks in a million are defective.

Who knows, LEGO's .01mm accuracy might become the mark by which 3D printing
measures itself someday.

~~~
olefoo
I'd bet that day comes by the end of the decade.

------
DVassallo
> Extreme future 3D printers will print entire planets or create new suns for
> new colonies.

I can understand the printing of rockets and jet engines, but can someone give
me a hint into understanding the printing of planets and suns?

~~~
DigitalSea
I presume after the economy of scale kicks in, we'll be able to buy our own
planets and suns from Walmart for next to nothing. A sun in every home. In all
seriousness though, being able to print planets and suns, that is one of the
craziest things I have ever heard.

~~~
evoxed
It's a silly idea but at the same time not _totally_ unrealistic if you assume
that one, it's not something we could necessarily start today, two, it isn't a
task that could be completed in any 'worthwhile' timeframe, and three, that
the raw material for such a venture existed and could be harvested in some at-
least-minimally efficient way.

Once we have some sort of solution to the materials problem, it sure would be
fun to throw out a couple of linked, self-replicating devices into space and
check up on them in, oh, a thousand years or so. Hell, bury our best AI
somewhere in the core and maybe by the time it's discovered we'll have a
created the next Big Thing. I wonder how long it will be before machines can
'meditate' (usefully of course, hibernate doesn't count)...

------
zeteo
Pure hype. It's interesting how a technology that is in fact revolutionizing
manufacturing (CNC milling) gets very little attention compared to one that
will, by all reasonable accounts, only ever be useful for prototyping or very
limited production runs of small objects. A CNC mill in every house would be
much more disruptive than a 3D printer. It would give people the ability to
make actually useful objects (door knobs, hinges, car engine parts etc.) out
of materials (wood, metal etc.) that are far more abundant, strong and cheap
than 3D printer substrates.

~~~
leoedin
3D printing techniques are becoming more and more relevant to manufacturing.
There's plenty of shapes that you simply cannot make with a CNC mill - RF wave
guides, topology optimised brackets etc. Additionally, there's materials which
are uneconomical to mill - principally titanium.

The main issues with selective laser sintered titanium as a manufacturing
process are speed and surface finish. Speed is increasing, and people are
making progress with surface finish. CNC milling (which is an incredibly
wasteful process) is just a small development from traditional manufacturing
processes. 3D printing is the disruptive technology in the room.

For very high scale components stamping and injection moulding will almost
certainly remain the most cost effective manufacturing process. For lower
scale stuff (especially weight concious things like aircraft parts) SLS 3D
printing will almost certainly start to dominate the market in the next few
decades.

~~~
briguy
I have extensive experience with both CNC milling and 3D printing. I feel that
3D printing is disrupting Product Design/Development vs. actual Manufacturing.
Anyone with an idea can now make functional prototypes and proofs of concepts
with the click of a button. As you wrote, in perhaps 10 years time, we will be
able to get the size and surface finish from 3d printing required to make
limited production parts that have certain characteristics (weight, shape,
containing reentrant angles, etc) not feasible from CNC milling/turning, etc.

------
yk
There are three interesting blog posts in this one. I would suggest the titles

3D Printing @ home

3D Printing @ labs

3D Printing @ Star Trek

( Furthermore I think a symbol for 3D printing should be invented. The @ is
slightly too 90s.)

------
majmun
call me when 3d printers would be able to print itself from materials found in
nature.

