
There’s no money in 3D printing - iamwil
http://voxelfab.com/blog/2013/01/theres-no-money-in-3d-printing/
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evincarofautumn
I use the arrow keys to scroll when reading web pages. This site uses
JavaScript to add behaviour to the arrow keys for a reason I cannot fathom.
Web developers, please avoid JavaScript at all costs. Unless you know
precisely what you are doing, you will only mess up a user’s experience.

As for the actual article, this:

“3D printing will be poised to suck the value out of manufacturing.”

Sounds like a good thing to me. If we make all our own jobs obsolete, then our
economic model will have to change so that we don’t starve to death in the
ensuing abundance and leisure.

Of course, just because manufacturing and, say, agriculture can be done by
automatons doesn’t mean they _should_ be. Even if some can’t fathom it, a lot
of people genuinely enjoy getting their hands dirty. Will they be allowed to
farm for pleasure when the robots do all the necessary farming?

~~~
mistercow
Another annoying "feature" of the page is that ctrl-f is overridden to take
you to their FeedBurner page. Why that would ever need a keyboard shortcut is
beyond me, but assigning it to ctrl-f is just crazy.

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PJones
And it breaks the back button when it does it.

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columbo
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needful_Things>

I see the future of 3d printing as the golden era of the service industry.

I want a semi-portable laptop with a mechanical keyboard and e-ink display.
This would be my ideal rugged travel laptop for doing work. I really like how
e-ink looks when I write code and I like the clickity-clackity of my
mechanical keyboard. But I don't want this to be some hodge-podge mixture of
almost-fitting components. It should open and shut like a car door, not a
cardboard box.

I also have a strange clothing size, everyone does for that matter. Maybe I'm
a 1/4 inch between the sizes. My shoes never fit correctly and my hats are
either too tight or too loose.

I also want to design my house in a specific way. Right now my bookshelves end
a foot before the wall when I would really like them flush. The same for my
couch, coffee table and television.

I also want something to hold all of my daughter's drawings, a nice ornate
book with her name engraved on it, maybe I'll even pay someone to take some of
her drawings and carve them into the book itself.

How many wants do people have that can be serviced when you are willing to
take someone with talent (a 3d designer) and a universal making machine? My
dream e-ink laptop is worth $2000 to me, the parts are probably in the
ballpark of $250, that leaves a nice profit for the designer. My little book
for my daughters drawings would be worth a few hundred.

If all you can do is print out forks the maximum amount of money you can buy
is related specifically to the number of forks you can sell. However, if you
can build the random things that people want that they cannot find in stores,
well you'll have a very sustainable business on your hands.

~~~
smokel
A downside of customizing products is that you have to think about and
describe what you actually want. Personally, I would prefer somewhat less
freedom of choice, and more free time :)

An interesting read might be "The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz (2004).

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rogerbinns
You are assuming customisation remains static. One solution I can think of is
a site (eg bestforks.com) that has 2 fork choices - you pick one and you are
done. (The web means that you can show different catalogues to each user.)

Another solution is that they figure out the customisations automatically. For
example stand in your room (eg kitchen) and take panoramic photo/video. Based
on that it is possible to figure out appropriate colours, sizes and other
design criteria (eg sleek/simple versus ornate). Again it can offer you one or
two right choices.

Yet another brings people back into the process. You have a
"design/customisation consultant" and they make the choices/customisation for
you.

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jivatmanx
"Just a little heads up. In the long run there is no money in 3D printing."

It's a basic principle of economics that all mature, competitive market
segments have 0 profit. I thought this was common knowledge.

The generalized nature of 3D printing is what can/will make it so competitive,
as opposed to manufacturing equipment which is very specialized to a specific
industry, and therefore much more likely to be monopolized by a single
company.

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dan-k
This article is poorly thought out and has little-to-no conception of the
difference between theory and reality. For example, many things cannot be made
in smaller pieces and then assembled, so size could become a huge barrier to
adopting 3D printing for something like, say, construction. Not to mention the
energy that such a machine would use. 3D printing will lead to lots of changes
in design and democratization of production, I'm sure, but there's still a
bigger picture that's completely absent from this article's consideration.

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bradshaw1965
This...

Well, theoretically such a machine could be worth billions but actually you’d
probably sell a few to research institutes and then one to a commercial
company and then it is game over for you.

sure sounds like

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

I've got no predictions on the future world wide market for 3D printing, but
big predictions on future tech are usually wrong.

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kybernetikos
Not really. He's not saying that there would only be a few of them deployed,
he's saying that once you've deployed a few, those few will be used to make
more, and you won't be able to sell yours for more than the cost of materials,
since anyone who has already bought one from you can undercut you.

I think this will not be a real problem for a really long time, but it's
actually an audacious vision rather than a too limited one.

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bradshaw1965
You're correct in the quote being the inverse in intent. It's still a big call
on a nascent tech. Big calls on nascent tech tend to be wrong.

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zhouyisu
There's no money in 3D printing, and also, no money in everything since
everything can be made by this Universal Making Machine. This article's
argument is nonsense. If the Universal Making Machine is made, not there's no
money but money can be abandoned. One can use this machine to get anything he
want, so why we need money anyway?

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evan_
Raw materials would still cost something, or at the very least electricity
would cost something. Services would still cost something, and you can't print
an internet.

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waterlesscloud
"you can't print an internet"

Why not?

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forgottenpaswrd
I disagree completely. This is like saying that because mainframes were being
replaced by personal computers, there was not going to be money with them,
when in fact the opposite thing happened with Apple being one of the biggest
companies in the world.

Computers like the Rasperry Pi cost now $45 and are more powerful that million
dollar IBM machines of the past. The same is going to happen with expensive
industrial equipment like laser cutters, 3d printers or metal discharge model
making tools as patents expire.

Different quantities, different margins, but a business after all.

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greggman
I think the guy has a point but I agree it's premature. It's like saying their
us no point in making printers for computers because eventually we'll be a
mostly paperless society.

His point seems correct that ultimately you'll just use the 3d printer you
have to print another 3d printer. But that day is a long long way off. There's
at least 10 or 20 years ahead for companies to make money selling 3d printers.

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ukoki
"There's no money in 3D printing"

I'm skeptical. For example, developing seeds is another industry potentially
vulnerable to the "customers could become the producers" dilemma but Monsanto
is doing pretty well. Similarly you can use Microsoft products to download,
crack and freely reproduce Microsoft products - but they're not doing too bad
either. I wouldn't underestimate the combination of legislation, monopolies
and/or powerful branding.

All it would take is for your Acme 3D Printer to have its own a Acme 3D
Template Store and a large market share.

~~~
amalag
Monsanto is not a good comparison because they force you to buy seeds from
them the next year. You are not allowed to collect seeds from the plants you
grow and they will sue you. And our judicial system agrees with Monsanto
because we think DNA is patentable. This will hit the supreme court in
February.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled that "once a
grower, like Bowman, plants the commodity seeds containing Monsanto's Roundup
Ready technology and the next generation of seed develops, the grower has
created a newly infringing article."

Learn more:
[http://www.naturalnews.com/037589_monsanto_saving_seeds_farm...](http://www.naturalnews.com/037589_monsanto_saving_seeds_farmers.html#ixzz2H8Nfro7c)

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Zenst
I disagree with the articles conclusion. It does make some good points about
costs and how a dedicated tool is better but if we just go back a little in
time and look at laser printers and other types of home printing over using a
comercial print shop and you see alot of parralels, ink cost being one that
still holds with us today, even with `major` players in the feild.

Another way to look at this is people today spend alot of money on craft tools
and materials and we even have dedicated shopping channels for such products.

Finaly I think if you look at the cost of lego brick and the respective volme
of 3D ink, then I suspect you will see that 3D ink works out very comparable
and cheaper in many area's. People spend a lot of money on Lego and with that
alone the market for 3D printers has a place. Not saying rip of Lego bricks
but that people like to play and create things and whilst Lego is targeted at
children it still endures with many a adult.

Initialy with the costs of a good printer that can use robust 3D ink we will
see your local printers embacing the new avenue and many other outlets
offering a 3D printing service. The home consumer market will grow, costs will
drop but. As I said with the initial introduction of laser printers and other
printing types, initial they were expensive, but only got better and cheaper
and permuated into more purchsing budgets/needs over using your local print
shop.

With markets most people will work out the direction and then end up dooming
it all as it does not happen as quickly as they can think about it. Markets
are funny slow beasts that operate on various timelines and with new
technology the initial market is the niche that opens the crack or not into
larger markets. I certainly see a larger market given the ever expanding craft
market and with the same insight into how laser printers started and ended up
at, let alone coloured printing, which was many years ago the work of a
dedicated print shop.

ALso worth remembering that industry today has milling machines and flow-jet
which will take a solid block of metal and turn it into your defined shape. 3D
printing is not metal and with that is targeting different markets and we are
a long way from the univeral replicator perception most seem to think 3D
printing is. That is a long way off, heck how long has it taken to get the
perfect monitor, close but still not there as a ideal. But they sell and with
that the ability for somebody to print out a 3D object be it a chess set,
replacement part for some broken plastic bit in a product that you can't
replace without purching the entire module/section. Many DIY tasks would have
a use for such an item, even customised plastic washers, so many usable area's
even with todays technology.

So that is why I disagree with the conclusions as they are based upon a ideal
with todays limitations impossed and not taking into account printing
technology adoption within markets historicaly, let alone the bleed over
markets in craft, DIY and many more others will probably be aware of.

For me the acid test is when you can print out a plate, knife and fork and use
them to eat with practicaly and saftly as good as disposable cutterly today.
Then we have a robust enough technology that consumers will start to embrace
if the price is right. I also expect the 3D-ink's will follow inkjet prices,
but the printers will carry a margin until the saturation is at the level
which enables a large company to make enough margin on the ink over the
printers. It will be when all printers end up offering more or less the same
functionality at various price points at comparable levels to other
manufacturers.

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zachrose
I thought the remark about Mexicans was rather tasteless.

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wlievens
This is all very theoretical, but makes no sense in reality. This guy should
take a look at the complexity in manufacturing for instance an image sensor,
and then think twice about his "universal maker".

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cbennett
haha, very much agree agree. his initial arguments about a 'universal printer'
diluting the market in time seem to hold more water in the realm of
hypothetical machines than real ones (for some reason the mental image of
self-replicating Universal Turing Machines with a printing functionality came
to mind :P)

in reality, there a number of principles in the realm of material physics that
might constrain a machine simply 'printing itself'. In the near and medium
terms, 3D printers that transform 3D CAD renderings into smaller objects will
command a real market niche. In the long term, we will be talking about
molecular fabrication (matter compilers a la "Diamond Age")-- but that is a
whole other ball game :p

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wlievens
Yes indeed. I work in the image sensor business (writing test software) and it
surprises me when I hear that it's often times next to impossible for a sensor
design to be reliably produced in _another fab_.

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zeynalov
I'm dentist. Dentists pay dental labors billions of dollars yearly to print
their teeth. Did you hear about CAD/CAM teeth? We don't model teeth manually
anymore, we use 3d printers instead. There are also other industries where 3d
printers are used intensively.

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pixl97
I guess that means there is only a market for one lathe[1] and one milling
machine[2] since when you buy one, you can then make your own.

Anyway, a universal machine maker would likely run of nano technology, and
once we reach that level of technology, all bets are off. The game changes and
suddenly a lot of businesses are buggy whip manufactures.

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe>
[2}<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_machine>

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digitalboss
The money made to be made (and saved) is based off the prototypes of products
created using 3D printing that are mocked up and tweaked, before the designs
are handed over to a production line to mass produce.

3D printing has created a useful and affordable process for
engineers/creatives/etc to mock up products that would've otherwise been very
expensive to outsource, especially with the back and forth between vendors to
modify designs.

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RRRA
I think we've already heard this type of argument about the world needing 3
computers or that the FOSS world is not going to make any money or ... come
on...

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jstultz
It seems to me that the same logic could be used to argue that there is no
money in software. I think we can all agree that's pretty bogus, right?

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czbond
The author's arguement makes grand leaps of logic that sound great - but won't
hold up in the short term of the next 10 years. In 30 years, the price of such
a service will become a commidity - like our ink jet printers today. The
author uses language that could easily be used in the same vein as describing
the creation of the Earth as a non-event.

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DanBlake
Rather silly article on many fronts. Not everyone has enough cash to get the
machine. Those who do, can profit off their downpayment by renting or selling
the goods it makes.

To say that model wont turn a profit is silly. Its a rather old business
model...

(landlords, rentacenter, new car leasing, etc..)

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justincormack
There is a much more interesting set of scenarios about how 3D printing might
work out economically here <http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/>

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pazimzadeh
But you have to get the raw materials for somewhere. Who will be the Akamai of
3D printing?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies>

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dccoolgai
That's like going back to 1971 and saying "there's no money in computers".

~~~
fixedd
You can use SOFTWARE to copy SOFTWARE, so noone will make any money on it.

~~~
kybernetikos
Yup. In the absence of government sanctioned monopolies, software _will_ tend
towards free, and it's already amazing what software you can get for free.

There'll always be niches, where people will make money creating bespoke
software, but the kind of software that everyone uses will eventually be free,
because once someone creates something free and sticks it on github, it
doesn't get lost, it can only go in one direction - better.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"because once someone creates something free and sticks it on github, it
doesn't get lost, it can only go in one direction - better."

Well, it could follow different directions, like "bloated", or like GNOME
"better for us, but not for you", or "easier to maintain, but slower"

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InternalRun
So much cognitive dissonance in this thread...

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frogpelt
Don't we already have enough discarded plastic floating around the earth
without giving the whole world access to their own miniature plastic
manufacturing plant?

