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.<p>Almost all the reasons in the article are problems with the current price, size, and reliability of 3D printers.<p>Someday, there will be a machine that will whip out objects so easily that you'd use it to make a doorstop.
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.<p>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).<p>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).<p>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.
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].<p>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.<p>Most products for the time being(once through the DFM process) will still get produced using traditional methods (Injection Mouldings, Castings, etc).<p>[1]<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability</a>
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.<p>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.
Disclaimer: I have only hobbyists knowledge of CAD and 3d printing<p>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?"
Printing hasn't replaced book-publishing, so there's little reason to think 3D-printing will replace traditional manufacturing.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>More striking arguments are unfortunately point in time statements, about the current capabilities of technology and the market maturity.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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?<p>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.
<i>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.</i><p>-- This was interesting aside
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.
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.<p>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.
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..<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.