3D Printing no longer just for Rapid Prototyping

[Cain]

3D printers are the shit.  They're kind of the real world equivalent of what Terry Pratchett said about dwarf tools in one of the Discworld books.

"All a dwarf needed was a hammer, a forge and raw materials.  With that, a dwarf could make complex tools.  And with complex tools, a dwarf could make anything."

John Robb was who I first heard of 3D printers from, and if he's even halfway right, the implications for these are nothing short of incredible.  Make them affordable and you're going to have a manufacturing DIY revolution.

[Cramulus]

Is open source and the public domain bad for the economy?

I don't think so, but this argument is coming, isn't it?

Once this thing starts to pick up, I have a feeling that manufacturing companies are going to shit themselves. And they're going to do their best to frame this as a sort of antisocial, economically destructive behavior. They don't WANT you to be self reliant, they want your wallet plugged into the machine, no?

[Cain]

Everyone is going to shit themselves.

Imagine what would happen if a template for, say, the latest Reebok trainers was put on the internet, in a world where 3D printers are affordable and in most homes.  It'd make movie and music piracy look like a drop in the ocean, compared to the coming flood.  The only people who are probably happy about this are the ones who own the raw material and resources necessary to make the stuff.

[Cramulus]

this makes me so excited.

i was going to post, "it's too bad you can't just 3D print an entire book", and then I facepalmed and realized that there are already 2D printers for that. 

[Disco Pickle]

Everyone is going to shit themselves.

Imagine what would happen if a template for, say, the latest Reebok trainers was put on the internet, in a world where 3D printers are affordable and in most homes.  It'd make movie and music piracy look like a drop in the ocean, compared to the coming flood.  The only people who are probably happy about this are the ones who own the raw material and resources necessary to make the stuff.

exactly, the manufacturing companies that want to survive will have to move toward creating of raw materials, or proprietary designs and code that works with machines THEY manufacture.  Like video games, they sell you the code for your product you want to create and license it for only so many runs before the machine rejects the code.

Of course, this wont stop the open source guys, but you'll probably find your higher quality products and materials making someone a nice profit if they can get into it early.

[Cain]

Yeah, early adopters generally do best, even with systems like this one.  I believe there was a study done recently which showed that music companies would've actually probably made a slight profit if they had bothered to take up a proposal from Napster, instead of shutting it down.  And of course, when Napster went down...well, it's like when an organized crime group is removed from a system.  Small networks split off from the main one and go underground and become nearly impossible to track, until they blossom into giant networks.  Like The Pirate Bay.  I can see the same kind of scenario playing itself out here, because all the available evidence suggests in the past 10 years the people in charge of enforcing copyright laws have not learnt much, and in fact have regressed in some ways.

Personally I'd be looking for the Open Source produced stuff, as with my computer I have no problem with 99% of open source software out there (a word processor on a par with Word 2007 would be nice though.  Open Office just doesn't cut it).  But as the current market shows, there is plenty of space for open source and licenced products, definitely.

[Don Coyote]

Is open source and the public domain bad for the economy?

I don't think so, but this argument is coming, isn't it?

Once this thing starts to pick up, I have a feeling that manufacturing companies are going to shit themselves. And they're going to do their best to frame this as a sort of antisocial, economically destructive behavior. They don't WANT you to be self reliant, they want your wallet plugged into the machine, no?

Yes they will and yes they do.

[Jasper]

Cain:  Tried KWord?  It is pretty okay.

[Cain]

I haven't, but I'll give it a go, thanks.  I think the last time I looked at it was a couple of years ago and it was kinda dated, but I see now people are actively developing it again.

[Elder Iptuous]

haven't seen this link here yet.:
http://www.thingiverse.com/

also, just so that it's clear... the materials used in this are pretty limited yet.
most of the 3d printing is done in ABS.  rigid plastic.
the guy at the hackerspace yesterday spent the evening trying to tune his machine to use ALS plastic, which is a corn based plastic (biodegradable transparent stuff... he had difficulties)

i think were still a good ways out from printing a shoe...

an example of what's immediately possible, is one of the fellows there had some Bose headsets that he likes, but a piece on them became broken.  they are apparently pretty pricey and he likes them, but Bose said they were unable to sell him a replacement part.  So he's going to model it up and have the fellow with the printer spit one out.  i wonder how that would go down in court if the component became available on the web.  and Bose bitched about it....

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My daughter has some kind of small toy printed on one of those.

[Requia ☣]

also, there are pretty cheap ones available these days....
hell, there are open source homebrew plans on the intarwebs.
there's been a few threads about this technology before.

Where, how much, and how much detail do they get?

[Disco Pickle]

also, there are pretty cheap ones available these days....
hell, there are open source homebrew plans on the intarwebs.
there's been a few threads about this technology before.

Where, how much, and how much detail do they get?

according to the rep-rap site, it took them about $500.00 to build the first one, and it could replicate 30% of its own parts (maybe more, not watching it as I write this)

the next gen they're making to replicate something like 80%??  check the website. 

but really, after you build one, you can replicate it for whatever it costs in the plastic they use and the metal guide posts which I dont imagine will ever be very replicable, but are fairly cheap if you buy it buy a good stock of it, sell them to your friends or hobby types for 50 bux and you'll have your money back in no time.

it's new tech though, and I'd wait until someone designs one that can use material other than plastic without having to have factory floor space.

What would be awesome would be getting together a bunch of people who understand the tech and it's capabilities and them all going in on purchasing one of the higher tech ones, pooling for warehouse space, and sharing machine time making useful things from nothing but metal dust and plastic.

turn around and sell what you're making, be it custom or every day useful stuff, dump all of the profits for the first 5 years back into the company and purchase a new one every time you have the money for it and space.

eventually, everyone who invested has their own machine and is pumping out their own stuff for personal use and sale.

market flood eventually, yeah, but if you have a machine that can make almost anything you want from (hopefully) cheap raw material, it wouldn't matter really.

I'll put up the first $3000, who else is in?

[Don Coyote]

Make spookah god statues and sell them to smelly pagans. Instant market.

[Requia ☣]

Plastic is all I really want (the kinds of things I want to make are things designed to be looked at, not to be functional), the bigger question is the kind of details the self kits can make.