Discussion on:

Could 3D printing spell the end of our throw-away culture?

How about posting links to some of these printers? I've seen demo's of the smaller ones, but haven't been in the loop on their development...

Russ

Indeed, if things can be made cheaper and faster, doesn't that encourage throwing things away? Don't like the way something came out? Toss it and print a different one.

...the same technology can be used to disassemble items made in an assembler and recycle their 'ingredients'. But this may be way more difficult and probably need something more like nanotechnology to accomplish.

They are using it to print circuits using some kind of laser-gas deposition, or something like that. The person explaining it to me was talking too fast for me do completely digest it, but I know the technology is available, it is just a matter of putting it on a print head, and figuring out how to develop the materials to feed the printer.

I think it will add to the throw away attitude, but the comments on the end in parts storage, will revolutionize the junk yard. Their won't be as many yard sales on unused industrial parts, which end up in the junk yard anyway. Come to think of it, this factor alone will make manufacturing anything way more profitable, and the factories store warehouses will be relieved that they no longer have to track and inventory that cr@p! It really will be revolutionary.

Shades of Star Trek!

...as landfill.
Of course, if the dyes for the 3D printer are generic, then they could be made such that they are cheap to reclaim.
But again, that would just speed up the throw-away culture.

In automotive and home appliance repair (and doubtless others - those being the two I've encountered in the last few months), it's impossible to buy a replacement part - an assembly, yes; the actual broken part, no.

There are good reasons for this - mostly the cost of making, storing and shipping individual parts that costs a dollar or two to make are much greater than the actual cost in materials and energy.

However, the above analysis does not take into account the labor (read time) to disassemble, diagnose, replace and re-assemble something - nor the increased skill level required to do so.

In short, 3D printing offers some relief to the throw away culture, but in practice probably limited to the DIY, 'home mechanic' type of person - IMHO.

...less waste in the development but higher waste from consumers buying the product on a faster cycle. I think its a wash at best.

Getting rid of commercialized Christmas would save the most costs.
If the focus on one day a year went away then most of the warehousing and peak production limits would go down.

Second is re-localize production centers instead of having them all in China.
Save all the mega-ships wasted transporting socks...
Maybe 3d printing could help some of that. sell people the program instead of the object.


I have 2 laser sheet cutting machines, fundamentally 3d printing, they still don't supplant conventional hard tooling in high volume. In low volume they are king.
Between them and computerized press brakes.

Parts might cost twice as much but it avoids the ~$10,000 cost of hard tooling.
So when part total exceed 10k+ and laser cost per part is 2$ generally the part cost for hard tooling is half.

The trade off is that its expensive to change the hard tooling and much cheaper to change the laser/pressbrake.

If a dev knows he can print a part to test any time at a relatively low cost, what is the benefit of testing with a software version before committing to the expense of the hardware version?

Unless it is possible to discard printed parts by disassembling them, as Too-Tired mentioned, devs will be throwing away MORE, not less.

...since higher quality components would last longer, and given that quality has been cut down to help bolster "profit" it shouldn't have to be the customer to make up the difference in cost this time around...

...and paying technical people fair wages since most customers/consumers don't care for how things work in the first place... if we do value labor, of course, as it creates all wealth... (don't blame me for that quote, non-socialist republican Abraham Lincoln said "labor creates all wealth"...)

As 3D printing gets more common, so too will the tendency to replace, rather than repair. Why print a replacement part when you can print the whole next generation and throw the old one away?

First - all materials and artifacts produced can be recycled

Second - you reall won't want to keep buying more raw material when you can reuse

And if this isn't the case for home and office, then for the first time large scale recycling will work!

I have seen 3D printing and it has tremendous potential. I don't see ecology as one of them. "I'll print a new one." does not lend itself to save it, don't lose it, or even use it until it wears out.

Many pumps use press fit bushings and many automotive parts use welding and other transformitive processes to handle the heat and pressures. I see 3D printing as a tool to do mockups but it is a very long way away from producing parts much less complex assemblies that require a variety of manufacturing processes. Is this an article or a press packet from 3D printing manufacturers?

After all technology in 3D printing has progressed to some level of sophistication (I'm not sure what that level might be) I would expect HP and the other big guys to begin acquisitions of European 3D printer firms. The trick will be determining when to acquire; before it becomes too valuable, but after a great deal of the R & D has been completed. The products aren't valuable but obviously the technology is increasing in value.

This could certainly see some very lucrative transactions. Good way to make a fortune, even betting from the sidelines.

Your comments made me think of Kodak and Polaroid. They didn't react quickly enough when digital cameras became popular. Compare their response speed to that of the companies that made film developing equipment for retail stores. They sold big box retailers and drug stores new systems to print from digital media long before film manufacturers got the message. I don't know if the traditional print guys will be able to break out of their established roles any quicker.

piracy will be a concern, especially in countries whose piracy rates are only 3~5x higher than the US's, but the double standards in rewarding those pirates would make an article and conversation in of itself...

If piracy is rampant, if IP theft is rampant (even on Android and iOS), then it will exist with 3D printing as well... and noting pundits saying "the rise of the creative capitalism age", to see creativity stolen - especially if the thieving comes from the little guys like me or others - it doesn't do us much good in the end either...

How will this aggravate IP theft? I'm missing your point.

Instead of just illegally copying and duplicating music, movies, and documents with inexpensive PC technology, it will now be possible to easily copy and duplicate patented parts as well.

But if say, you needed a special part for your car, it would be ok to fabricate it.

If existing law were to apply, you could do so if you independently programmed the printer to create the part for your own use. If you were to get the "drawings" for the part from a third party who was not authorized to sell the part, then probably not. If you were to sell the part you created, that would probably be against the law.

Currently its not illegal to use the measurements of a part to duplicate it for your own use, say as a replacement - even if that part is patented.
It is illegal to duplicate many parts and distribute them, if they are patented, also to duplicate one single patented part and give it to someone. The problem lies with the look of the part. If the duplicate is identical, its an illegal copy, if it doesnt look like the original, but does the same job then its simply third party.
Manufacturers dont prohibit third party parts because they cant, but they can and do try to make it difficult by using aesthetics to influence the design - this they can then patent as a 'look' and stop copying, which is why our hardware is expensive and looks like it does instead of being cheap and really useful.

3D printers will probably do away with patents, or change them radically. Its more a matter of copyright when you're talking plans for things.

Charge a nominal fee for buying the device to help make up for losses in copywrite(IP). Just like they did with TIVO.

Agreed - the IP and patent issues is a problem if the pirated item is going to be mass produced and become a competitor to the real product. Will consumer standard 3D printers really be capable of competing on that level? I wrote a post on this topic recently and have links to some good articles at http://twolittledotes.com/2012/07/26/3d-printing-a-brave-new-world-or-a-geeky-fad/

I don't see how it would be easy to copy. You'd have to have some way to 'scan' the part, including any internal structures. Then you'd need software to convert that scan into printer instructions. Maybe the software would be readily available, but I can't see the scanner being an affordable device. You'd basically need a desktop X-ray or MRI scanner.

There will be ways to scan existing parts, or anyone with minor drafting skills will be able to program them. (Early in my career, I was supporting machine shops who were early adopters of interfacing PCs to CNC machines)

Once a drawing exists digitally, it's just a matter of time before it's disseminated on the web.

And if this still seems far-fetched to anyone, just consider than half of what goes on over the web today was inconceivable to even "visionaries" a mere 20 years ago. Believe me, this will happen.

I doubt the printing or scanning will be affordable to the consumer in this decade.

...it already is. Low end machines cost a few thousand dollars, it was stated in a Washington DC TV news segment about three months ago. Not sure I'd make a camshaft using one yet, but I have heard anecdotally that someone made a barrel for a weapon and fired it 200 times without a problem - have no idea if true and tend to doubt it myself.

There's a company online where you can submit your drawings, choose your material, and get the item. All (relatively) inexpensively.

Check out Shapeways. I've had some stuff from there. VERY interesting...

Some very accurate and expensive, others less so.
Some software that can do the drawings from scaled images also.

One can, today, upload a series of photographs (for now, mostly limited to pictures of people) to a web site (unfortunately, I don't have the link), and have them converted into a 3D model that can be readily printed. Instructables includes a few projects on home-brew laser scanners (limited, of course, in capability, but how long before these "home brew" devices start generating reasonable results?).
Trying to gauge where 3D printing is going by reading the popular press is going to leave one behind the times (and unlikely to make a killing in the stock market on this technology). Have a look at what's going on in the "early adopter" community (i.e., the hobbyist that isn't waiting for someone else to come up with things), the medical community (dental prostheses are quite readily printed much easier and faster than traditional methods)...

- real thin.
Component carpaccio.

The same material that was used in the first place, can, in most cases, just be recycled back through the printer.

Where the machine is a throwaway price, and the ink costs a fortune? At the moment, no, the 'feedstock' is fairly primitive. No DMCA chipped ink cartridges, yet.

@Palmetto: re throwaway, I'm hoping that 'don't like the way something turned out?' will feed back into 'turn it back into feedstock and reprint it'

Wouldn't you need some sort of chipper / shredder / liquidifier to turn the finished product back into raw material? Maybe there would be some sort of franchise business where people sell back printed parts, the business turns them back into ink in bulk, and resells the raw material at a mark-up.

All of this assumes the finished product is recyclable at an affordable cost.

Already being worked on- in the Open Source community. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rocknail/filabot-plastic-filament-maker/

Your 'home grown scanners' post above also sounded like an open source project.

What materials would you need to make anything? Could designs be structured around standard-defined materials, with materials research going into conforming to these? And what would the materials be - a matric with some gaps between properties like hardness, flexability, conductivity and insulation (heat, electricity) and transparency?

Would you be able to recycle yourself, i.e. process unwanted goods made out of standard materials to return these to the supply, much as current "green power" home technologies seek to put back into the grid?

The technology would need to improve a great deal before it reaches a to the consumer point. The 3D printers I have seen "print" (build up would be a better description) plastic in layers until the shape it reached. A 6 inch toy car needs 10 hours to print. As for the end result being able to take heat, caustics, or pressure. Not so much.

Now my dentist does fabricate crowns in house. My mouth was scanned. The scan went into a CAD program. The dentist shaped my new tooth. The program has templates and shows the thickness of the enamel and when it it too thin to work. They choose a porcelain blank in the right color and from a set of preset sizes. The blank and the file get fed into a 5 axis milling machine and it cuts a new tooth. Scanning, about 10 minutes. CAD, 20 to 30. Milling under an hour. For the patient it is one visit not two. It was an expensive set up and two days of training, but it beats the week lab time. Paid for itself in under two years.

As much as I love the concept of 3D printing, and I would love to have one at home.
I can't help but wonder what will happen to the makers of all those widgets that can now be printed at home?
How many employees will be without a job because I don't have to buy that widget?

You indicate the positive aspects of new high tech jobs created, but the virtualization of manufacturing opens up a huge opportunity to automate, and thus remove skilled jobs currently in manufacturing. There's a bigger social impact than we can forsee at this time if this really takes off. That said, I'm a big fan of this technology and there are breakthroughs and related R&D concepts that appear almost weekly now.

of the possibilities around this. Sounds like it will be huge game changer.

Thanks for the info Peter

Think about what this could do to giant corporations' stranglehold on innovation and advancement, if it becomes advanced enough and available enough for "the common person" to own and utilize it.

If you can't imagine it on your own, read Cory Doctorow's short story "PrintCrime", freely available on the internet.