How 3D Printing Will Save American Manufacturing

&#62; and there is no nation on earth with the inventiveness found on such a massive scale as in America.<p>Citation needed? This sentence and the next just made me stop reading. It's borderline supremacism. Whether the rest of the article has valid points or not such a sweeping statement can not be taken seriously.

Breathless speculation penned by yet another 3D printing evangelist with less consideration of material science than your average ant. Wake me up when you know what Young's Modulus is.

I guess I'm not convinced. Can someone explain the utility of 3D printing beyond rapidly building prototypes? Can it really reach scale and quality to do mass manufacturing? And what types of products could not in any way be manufactured with 3D printers? Which could?

The big question: how long will it take for this form of manufacturing to achieve the cost effectiveness of current methods? The bottom line for everyone, including consumers, is cost. Don't forget about quality control.<p>Let's also not assume that we will always be the most innovative. We have to make sure that the current and next generation of students get the quality education they need in math and science to keep us dominant in Tech. Interesting article but lots of assumptions and unanswered questions.

Forget AutoCAD, use Tinkercad (<a href="http://www.tinkercad.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tinkercad.com/</a>) which lets you do solid modelling in your browser using WebGL.<p>(I have no association w/ Tinkercad; just think it's very cool technology w/ WebGL in the front end and Go in the back end.)

First cab off the rank is affordable laser cutting. I've got several projects i'd love to do once that becomes feasible. Then CNC mills, and 3d printing... the future is bright!

This could put IKEA out of business.<p>I wonder how long it'll be until companies start suing.

When will a 3D printer print itself?

Sorry no, the reason for the decline of American Manufacturing is due to the miss-use of horizontal integration as opposed to vertical integration within in manufacturing..I cite SpaceX as an example of vertical manufacturing/engineering..