At Technology Review last week, Christopher Mims made an interesting argument against getting too excited about 3D printing technology. His basic point: This stuff is neat, but it is still a long, long way from revolutionizing the world.
3-D printing, like VR before it, is one of those technologies that suggest a trend of long and steep adoption driven by rapid advances on the systems we have now. ... But the notion that 3-D printing will on any reasonable time scale become a "mature" technology that can reproduce all the goods on which we rely is to engage in a complete denial of the complexities of modern manufacturing, and, more to the point, the challenges of working with matter.
Let's start with the mechanism. Most 3-D printers lay down thin layers of extruded plastic. That's great for creating cheap plastic toys with a limited spatial resolution. But printing your Mii or customizing an iPhone case isn't the same thing as firing ceramics in a kiln or smelting metal or mixing lime with sand at high temperatures to produce glass—unless you'd like everything that's currently made from those substances to be replaced with plastic, and there are countless environmental, health, and durability reasons you don't.
There's some good points in here. And Mims doesn't discount the idea of 3D printing someday becoming a tool that can allow anyone to produce any object in their living room. It's just, he argues, not something that's likely to happen anytime soon.
Meanwhile, Tim Maly has posted a response to Mims' piece, also on Technology Review. His argument: Think about 2D printing. In the span of 100 years, it went from something extremely physical—involving metal foundries and expensive manufacturing processes—to something that anyone can do in their living room.
Maly also points out that desktop manufacturing involves more than just 3D printing. Other tools like laser cutters and CNC mills allow people to work with materials other than plastic. I think that's a fair point. But Maly's assertion that some materials will just have to fall by the wayside if they can't be easily used for rapid reproduction seems to ignore some of the key implications Mims is concerned about — What's best for rapid reproduction isn't necessarily what's best for the environment or human health. I'm not sure exactly where I stand in this debate. I think both Mims and Maly are making some pretty good points and predicting the future is hard in any case. But I think that point of Mims' is an important one.
Whenever we have a new technology we're pinning some big hopes on, it probably makes sense to spend a good deal of time considering what the negative consequences of that technology could be, and what we can do to mitigate them. Because everything has the potential for negative consequences.
There’s something about Mims critique – maybe its just the tone, but it has all the hallmarks of deserving a place in the pantheon of “can you believe what they said when technology X first came out. I mean, how wrong can you be?” Let’s hope!
“Computers are great, but they’re not going to change everything anytime soon…”
Anyone with any interest in technology has seen people like him, those that use straw-utopian ravings to attempt to diminish the everyday ways in which technology makes life better.
I have a question about this tech. Are all of the things that get printed out made of the same material? I have read about people making engine parts and shoes, etc. but those seem to be 2 things that would need be made of vastly different material.
I’ve seen ceramic printers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c0C8w_LdYM
And I’ve played with silver clay http://www.silver-clay.com/ (it’s silver particles suspended in a organic clay that burns off)
So there’s a lot of possibilities.
Hopefully those here with experience will give your question the answer it deserves, but until then, some things are definitely printed with multiple materials.
There have been objects with movable parts shown here on BB that were printed with a supporting layer that could later be dissolved away to free up the pieces printed of non-soluble durable materials.
Other examples have been printed with the final layers in more color than the core. My assumption is that the number of materials that could be used in a single project would be limited only by the number of heads your printing platform supports.
3D printing exists in a variety of materials, including several different plastics, from hard to rubbery, ceramics, and metals. Generally, you can only print one material at a time, plus a disposable support material. Different materials often require different machines based on different technologies.
For an idea of the materials available, check out some supplier websites, such as http://www.shapeways.com (targeted at consumers), or http://www.finelineprototyping.com (targeted at industry)
Different materials have different tolerances, size limits, and strength properties.
Strength, speed, cost, and tolerances can almost always be improved by not using 3D printing for higher volume production.
There are a variety of materials, and some can be customized to different properties. There are a variety of technologies — FDM (fused deposition modeling) is the “hot strand of plastic laid down in the manner of a funnel cake” way. SLS (selective laser sintering) is a different tech altogether, where things are built one layer at a time , but a full cross-sectional-layer of the part at a time, and multiple parts can be built concurrently — and there are others…
TL;DR: Different materials, different applications, and they’re suited to different things — ceramics are different than metals are different than plastics — and there are a huge variety of plastic rapid-prototyping options.
“VR?” Virtual reality – yeah, that disappeared right into the background. It’s just part of many things now. Probably we’ll see the same with solid printing. It’s primary benefit will be to reduce the need for artistic technique in producing 3D stuff.
This is both good and bad… I’m really happy that I don’t have to make money from my photography, for example. On the other hand, new (easier) techniques allow new art (and much crap) for more participants…….. should be fun!
“Disappeared into the background” is right on… just because we’re not fully immersed or neurally connected like in the Matrix doesn’t mean some aspects of VR are now part of everyday experience.
How much money has been made, in total, by first person shooters and MMORGs like World of Warcraft?What about the motion controlled Wii?What about augmented reality apps on the iPad or iPhone? Or in military flight simulators, or even in the heads-up displays?
I don’t know that that’s entirely accurate – it’s not like those things disseminated out of VR into the culture. Rather the opposite – some of those things (3d graphics, flight simulators, motion controls) pre-date VR. VR was about taking certain types of technologies and combining them in a particular form, which never took off for various reasons. One of which was that the component technologies were more useful in their original forms. The experience of playing an MMO may be very like what a VR experience would be, but the MMO would have existed had VR not been a concept. Augmented reality has some overlap with VR on the other hand, but will we see that become anything more than a gimmick?
VR was the interaction between the user and the graphic element. Virtual reality has actually done very well but transformed into augmented reality. Tech companies are working on tons of augmented reality softwares/apps.
It’s just virtual reality was escapism. Augmented reality kept many of the same principles, but made it useful to everyday life.
MKB, my take on would be this… to use the analogy in their argument… True, I have a nice color laser that can output pretty much anything I need on various types of paper, in pretty much any resolution necessary for day-to-day use… But when I need something silk screened on a T-shirt, or when I need large format work done (4’x4′) I still have to outsource it to hardware meant specifically for those tasks. So unless I have my own versions of that hardware, and even if I do, my color laser isn’t the end-all-be-all for every one of my printing needs, I have to defer to something other than what mostly everyone has at their disposal.
My guess is we’ll all be able to print lots of ordinary, daily-use items in the near (and far) future, but there will always be objects which, due to their material requirements or size, will have to be done with machines particular to those tasks.
Screen printing is a great analogy.
I doubt most people realize how much is still screen printed instead of digitally printed. Not only is it more economical at scale, the final product on exotic surfaces or with special effects inks can be far superior than what could be achieved with digital printing at anywhere close to the same cost.
I’m certainly not saying that takes anything away from the potential in 3d printing on small scales though, any more than the value of industrial screen printing takes anything away from the value of desktop digital printers.
I knew nothing about it until I recently had to photograph some commercial samples of special screen printing inks.The results were too good to show the effect of the inks… it didn’t look like a photo of a print, it looked like original shots of the subject, so I had to resort to building a controlled motion rig and stop-animating a light source moving across the sample to show the unique properties of the printed surface.
http://youtu.be/KRJ3fy80fbg
See, but the thing with 3D printing tech is this: it’s _excellent_ at one-off things, or complicated assemblies to take the place of multiple parts. It’s great for things for which you need, like, less-than-50 of something small and complicated.
If there’s a broad market or a need for ten thousand of that particular widget, it’s worth re-designing the part for traditional manufacturing. There are fast, _cheap_-per-unit-cost ways of making anything you consider a “daily-use item”. 3D printing hasn’t hit the point of “inexpensive for the average consumer” yet.
Virtual Reality didn’t go away. We just ditched the notion of complete immersion since it wasn’t nearly as important as improving the overall simulated experience. Sure, it’s funny to watch some of the old videos of people standing in goofy devices meant to simulate weightlessness, giant stereoscopic helmets, and whatever, but the heart of the technology (Realistic 3D engines, pseudo-AI, physics engines, and alternative input mechanisms) are alive and well, and flourishing in the gaming industry.
Sure, they put the cart before the horse by parading around on talk television offering a ‘new reality’ or ‘reality simulation’, but it’s no different than the early overestimation of the power of the internet. We’re not all video conferencing and zipping through 3D tubes with numbers floating everywhere, but we certainly have integrated it into our daily lives to the point that it’s almost transparent…
But VR was “the notion of complete immersion.” VR wasn’t a technology – it was a collection of existing technologies assembled in a particular form with the goal of complete immersion. Without the form or the goal, you don’t have VR, you have some of the component technologies being used in different, though sometimes similar, ways.
I agree. And, to me, the problem with VR wasn’t with the idea it was with the time. The prerequisites for immersive VR are only now falling into place and becoming viable (you can see this in products like the Wii, Kinect, 3d displays, and proof of concepts like omnidirectional treadmills, 360 degree projection). Fairly soon, someone will put this all back together into a compelling, immersive VR experiment and VR will deliver on the promises it made in 1994.
It didn’t progress linearly from there because people were really turned off by the poor execution possible at the time. Next time it comes, altogether, I think it’ll be huge.
I do wonder if the goal of complete immersion itself isn’t a problem, though. It may be that what we have already – large-screen monitors and a variety of input devices (including keyboards, mice, remotes, motion controls, etc) might be “good enough” (or even the ideal level of) immersion for almost all the applications VR was hoping to avail itself for, without all the drawbacks of completely immersing yourself in the simulation. (Having spent a fair amount of time playing around with VR systems in the early ’90s, I can affirm there are significant problems inherent in the form.) I think complete immersion might be useful or desirable in only a very small number of activities, with “VR” being a niche method of interaction.
Replacing tools and skills with a gadget usually just leaves you feeling empty. Tom,
http://radiotelegrapher.posterous.com/
I think there’s some middle ground:
On the one hand, I’m not sure that a desktop Make-Anything machine is in the cards anytime soon. A lot of the equipment you’d need is still going to be too specialized, too big, too expensive. Even if we do end up with an all-in-one unit capable of printing in a wide variety of materials, laying down circuitry and so forth, it’s probably not going to be anywhere near competitive (on cost, durability, environmental impact, fit and finish, etc.) with more specialized mass-manufacturing processes.
On the other hand, I think there’s a real possibility that a modestly sized workshop could soon (if not already) be stocked with enough equipment to turn out professional quality versions of just about anything, in small quantities. (Think of: automated laser cutters, 3d printers, cnc cutters, metal folders and stampers, painting booths, pcb fabbers, pick and place machines — maybe even compact semiconductor fabbers for custom integrated circuits.) There’s always going to be some overhead for making things in one-offs or small lots, of course, but there could conceivably be a largish niche for craftsmen and small manufacturers to set up shop. (Not to mention hobbyists – maybe using equipment in repurposed libraries and/or the 21st century equivalent of a Kinkos.)
I’m also intrigued by how that might intersect with other trends. Especially the prospect of the end of Moore’s law. Bunnie Huang wrote about this not so long ago.
We’ve grown to expect and even rely on products which become obsolete and get discarded in a year or three. Along with ever more sophisticated manufacturing techniques that are perpetually several steps ahead of what is even conceivable for a hobbyist. (I think even things that aren’t all that directly influenced by computing capacity are affected: everything from washing machines to clothes. There’s a pervasive expectation of cheapness and disposability/planned obsolescence.)
But what happens when the stuff coming out next year isn’t an order of magnitude faster/better than the stuff from last year? What happens if you had a laptop or a cell phone that won’t be obsolete next year, or even next decade? That could conceivably be passed on to your grandchildren? It’s depressing in a way, I suppose. But it also has a lot of interesting implications: for the level of workmanship and durability that might go into such a product, for our need and ability to repair even the most sophisticated stuff, and for the ability of craftsmen and hobbyists to make custom or unique stuff that could be just as sophisticated as anything that could come off a manufacturer’s assembly line.
I mean, they’re both right- they agree 3D printing is wildly useful, and just getting started, and they also agree that right now there are a lot of people shooting past all the wildly useful things it can do and proposing one relatively dubious notion- that it will replace the drive to Target. That’s really what it comes down to. On one hand, there’s no near-term way to fit the capacity to work with all the variously useful and attractive substances of modern life into a single box, and on the other, even the most maker-y person alive is only excited to exercise so much individual creative industry on the object around them, and if they share a taste in something with even small groups of people, conventional stamping/casting/cut n’ join manufacturing and shipping is astonishingly good at delivering gobs of said product at near-material-cost to your corner store or your mailbox., and the only things that printing it yourself adds to that scene is time and limited choice in materials.
Now before I get branded as the guy that predicted airplanes couldn’t fly, I think it’s gonna keep getting cheaper, and kids will have an Easy-Bake Oven version for making collectible toys, and companies with short runs of specialized parts might invest in printers or CNC instead of inventory, and somebody will probably do a printed concrete house here shortly, and so on and so forth. It’s incredible stuff. I’m just suggesting that maybe, just maybe, the degree of ubiquity might be akin to a MiG welder or a table saw instead of a cell phone.
case in point. article on the testing of house printing from 2008.
http://www.physorg.com/news139161727.html
Also: While I think some skepticism is healthy, Mims doesn’t seem to address the fact that, even today, plastic is not the only material that can be printed. At least at the industrial level, metal sintering is actually quite capable and sophisticated these days[1]. And even hobbyists/artists have played around with 3d printing in ceramics, glass, etc.
It’s my understanding that one of the primary barriers in play blocking the wider spread of some of this stuff is not so much the technical difficulty, but patents. A lot of critical processes, like laser sintering, are still tied up. Once those expire, we might well see folks Makerbot Industries move WAY beyond squirting warm plastic out of a little low-res nozzle.
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[1]: I believe many e.g., aircraft parts are already made this way, as it has various advantages over more conventional techniques. I even recall reading something about the Navy contemplating the possibility of replacing much of the typical stock of spare ship and aircraft parts on carriers with 3d printers and a supply of metal powder – though I can’t recall if that was actually an immediate prospect, or more of a “Popular Mechanics” flying-cars-in-every-garage type of thing.
Boeing is using 3D printing for some military aircraft parts (that are in use), but I understand the military itself is still experimenting, as are other aircraft makers, with making parts this way.
It won’t reach the same state of public notice until someone invents an oxymoronic term for it as Jaron Lanier did for Immersive Simulation.
It may not be ready this year or next, but the change is coming……
I wonder when I read about rapid prototyping on bOING boing if you guys realize this technology has been around for 20 years and is widely used in industry. It is already seamlessly integrated. It still requires hand work to acheive high quality surfaces, but most things go through a rapid prototype stage before going to manufacturing. His complaint that it is not yet used to “print everything” is a straw argument.
Also, do you realize that you can print things that could not be made any other way? The run of the mill 3d printed object on Boing bOING does not come near taking advantage of what can be done with RP.
Yes, one can print directly in metal, rubber, plastic, or in color. It is not suited, yet, to mass production, but is unmatched for one-off custom items or prototypes. This is where the future is, in one-off manufacturing. Don’t expect it to solve problems we have already solved. It will be, and is, used for what it is particularly good at.
Moore’s Law is always going to be with us in some form. The rate may slow from two years to ten years or so but we’re not likely to see advances in computer innovation going static in our lifetimes. Advances in 3d printing are going to depend on some pretty fundamental advances in nanotechnology but that will happen eventually.
This is a really cool and interesting possibility for our technology if it can become common for household use. I remember seeing a piece on the 3D printing industry on television a few months ago where they actually went through the steps it takes to scan and create a 3D object using this type of technology. Trying to predict how fast things like this will progress in the future is difficult and I can see how Mim’s and Maly’s perspective on this concept can differ. I think it will ultimately come down to whether or not its possible to make this type of technology cost effective for the average person in the long run and how it could be marketed. I guess only time will tell how this all pans out.
I think the current limiting factor on arbitrary, automated construction is AI. If I was sitting at a computer controlling a fairly basic robot arm, there’s a lot of things I could make that aren’t possible with a 3d printer. I could, for example, make myself a sandwich out of bread and sandwich parts. We’ve reached the point where it’s software, not hardware, that’s the real limiting factor.
As for 3d printing, right now, we’re building sandwich making robots – and they’re not, for example, compatible with ham. Their limitations are baked into their design.
Once AI progresses, we’ll be making robots that can build things in ways humans can (through manipulating a variety of simple tools to wonderful effect) and ways they can’t or won’t (applying precise heat, pressure, or fluid flow in precise patterns over the course of hours endlessly). Once software can use tools in reasonably creative, various ways, we’ll find that software can produce amazing results from the hardware components that are already viable.
And, of course, any sufficiently careful robot arm that can hold an extruder is a 3D printer by default, too. There was some cute play I found a while back with people turning little hexapod robots into CNC machines by adding a drill and some software- spin up, squat down, lean to the left, two steps back….voila, milled sculpture.
I can’t agree with this Mims guy. At all. There are SO many things that are made of plastic. The current sub $2000 printers aren’t printing smooth objects, but the ones that are currenty $15,000+ are printing smooth objects, even made of multiple fused types of plastic (regid, almost glass-like all the way to soft bendable rubbers.) If you were paying attention in the days that color printers (or even printers and copy machines themeselves even further back) were new, their price-tags were also very similar, if not more. In just a few short years, the prices dropped, the quality of the pictures produced increased and the cost to operate, as well as the size of the printers decreased. What it should be compared to is paper-printing.
Virtual reality is not what you compare this to. That was entertainment. This is utility. Pointing out that many things use metal and other substances doesn’t discount how useful a 3D printer printing plastic is. It’s like saying you shouldn’t buy a computer because it doesn’t cook and clean for you! In five years I’m going to fork over $2000 to $4000 for a 3D printer that prints much smoother objects than the current low-end ones do. I will do this because the day I get a new phone, I will go into a 3D program, model, and then print my own dock for my phone. Later I’ll notice that I lost my measuring cups while trying to make food. Print new ones of those too. I got new business cards that are a weird quirky shape and I want to protect them. I’ll print a custom sized container for them and look all the more professional. While I can see most plastic objects as being frivoulus, they are still items we desire. Phone cases, toys, containers, small furniture (someone’s already made a small shelving system as proof of concept) are things that we spend money on and would probably benefit from customization. I can hardly see it as a passing fad. Maybe it will stick primarily to hobbiests and the DIY crowd, but there’s too many amazing things that people could produce. Heck, with such potential someone might find a utility for it we haven’t even imagined yet.But still, I personally think it will eventually be a household item. Kid buys action figure off of Amazon, prints it seconds later. He breaks it, then he prints it again. No more kids crying over their broken toys. That alone will drive a bunch of sales.
Edit: As far as health, the cheap plastic crud we currently import to from china will be compacted down into plastic cubes, and by us printing those little plastic forks at home will be more efficient as far a space goes. Also, laws in many countries will push for these printers to be as green as they can be. Meaning those practices of the factories producing plastic stuff for wal*mart will slowly fade away. It will be better for the environment. Also, you buy something at the store, think it does one thing, actually does another. So you just throw it away. With printing it, you will get a full preview of it before printing, and could modify it to your liking before making it. Thus making it less likely to end up in the garbage. (also the potential for repairs because you can replace broken parts easily, vs. throwing away and buying a new one)
I always thought VR was overrated and I’ll readily admit that 3-D printers at this point in time are not even close to being consumer grade (as an owner of an Orca v0.30). But, what this time reminds me of is the time 30 years ago when I first saw (and eventually programmed) a Heathkit H9.
How far we’ve come since then, it’s a beautiful thing.
And the speed of change is exponential, I think. Ten years ago I was working with multi-core servers that cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Five years later you could buy the same technology for less than a grand. My phone has more CPU than my desktop 10 years ago.
I really think that the energy that is going into the development of various 3d printers is actually going to follow that path and in 10 – 15 years everyone will have one that will be easy to use, much better and will look nothing like they do today.
“When it finally started selling in 1981 after some initial delivery hickups, the price for the 2.52 GB refrigerator-sized IBM 3380 started at $81,000.” http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/18/amazing-facts-and-figures-about-the-evolution-of-hard-disk-drives/
Today, about 30 years later, a drive with 1000 times that capacity sells for what, about a hundred bucks? That’s nearly a million to one improvement in cost per GB.
There was a time when it cost tens of thousands of dollars to burn 700MB of data onto a plastic disk with a laser. Today, I saw one on Amazon for under $11.
I’ve made replacement parts for things with my Thing-O-Matic which I’d otherwise have to discard, saving myself hundreds of dollars and reducing waste. I’ve designed useful things (and some not-so-useful things as well) and shared them on thingiverse.
Couple that with things like the Kickstarter filabot project so people will be able to shred, extrude and reuse plastic and things to come look pretty cool from where I stand.
I believe the largest thing that seperates VR from 3D printing is accessibility. When lawn mower man was out, it was exorbitantly expensive to even dabble in VR, but right now I can buy a 3d printer and use it, even in a somewhat limited way, for the price of a nice bicycle.
In 1982 with fan folder dot matrix printers could you have imagined in 2012 we’d have color printers for $50 that print photo quality (on the right paper)?
I’d say today’s tech looks pretty close to ready for anything that’s one piece. Kitchen Utensils, flatware, plates, bowls, containers, lamps, some furniture etc. Also parts as shown in this video
http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_harouni_a_primer_on_3d_printing.html
It’s not hard to imagine that in less than 20 years time (given acceleration of change) we’ll have the equivalent of today’s ink jets vs yesterday’s do matrix printers. (or Apple II vs iPhone or film camera vs a Nikon D4, etc….)
I’m far more interested in the less selfish applications of the technology, such as manufacturing practically unbreakable replacement bones from titanium. It’s not as though the presence of smaller printers has in any way contributed to a resurgence in zines, as Boing Boing no doubt recognizes.
Plastic, you can not find a worse building material in regards to the environment.
Yea yea yea… As long as we don’t start hearing “the debate is over” again I guess we can allow Mim to speculate on fear of this fascinating new creative technology to bring all kinds of virtual reality objects into existence.
Blogged about this here http://printedworld.blogspot.com/2012/02/are-we-being-too-one-sided-and.html
There’s much to be said about the future of 3D printing, but in the end this technology is just one variable in the equation that determines our future. (edit –>) Material versatility, production time, and resolution are just as much factors as sheer coincidence: a “killer app” for 3D printing may be lurking but we may or may not discover it and use it.
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
EBM, SLM and SLS can manufacture parts from polymer, ceramic and practically every engineering metal. If you buy a Mercedes in 2012 about 40 parts are made by SLM.
People seem to think 3D printers are just Makerbots, which are neat but the real machines use an electron or laser beam.
The problem with this argument is that aside from some niche augmented reality applications and immersive video games there have never been any killer apps for VR. On the other hand the need for a device that can print any object you might need is pretty much what everyone wants.