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Good to see the Economist covering 3D printing - it's still amazing to me how much most people, even close to manufacturing, aren't familiar with it at all. FW

Good to see the Economist covering 3D printing - it's still amazing to me how much most people, even close to manufacturing, aren't familiar with it at all. FWIW though - the 90% they're referring to is the delta between machining solid parts and printing them. It should be added that this is a rare use-case for 3D printing. Usually it competes more directly with injection molding technologies that often have better material usage because there is no need for support material - which goes to waste holding up the hollow areas for the types of material-saving lattice structures they're talking about. Sometimes you can get great savings, but 3D printing isn't a production materials panacea. Let's not even get into how to recycle composite materials (very energy intensive) and photopolymers (you can't).

bobds 16y ago
As far as recycling goes, it's very exciting that you can recycle plastic bottles into plastic granules/filament and use them for printing. I think we are not that far away from a self contained fabricator that turns garbage into everyday plastic parts you need.
- chadgeidel 16y ago
  It's probably going to take a little more than that, but I've always held that landfills are probably going to be very valuable property in 50 years or so. I assume there are going to be "dis-assemblers" to consume and separate "junk" for repurposing in manufacturing. It's a little dream I have. :-)
  - patrickk 16y ago
    Your vision is like a scene out of Wall-E!
Kliment 16y ago
Well, that's not entirely true. The lattice structures are internal to the object, and substitute for solid infill. Commercial FDM 3d printers use a crosshatch instead of solid fill, and the reprap toolchain has that as well as a number of cool ones like hexagonal infill. So you have lattices instead of solid walls in the microstructure. With powder printers, such as the metal printers described in the article, you can form hollow areas of any shape since the raw material itself acts as support. To get the material out they need to be open on one side, but that is hardly an issue with a design that airy. No additional material is needed. The only case where you need support is for FDM based printing with sharp overhangs. Even this can be mitigated with clever design, such as making overhanging parts with bridges (connecting walls with a stretched layer of material that spans a gap) or teardrops (closing gaps using low overhang structures, like the buttresses on gothic buildings). The main advantage of 3d printing is that it can produce structures internal to the object that cannot be made by any subtractive method, and that it makes production costs linear and design-independent. This is very cool, since it literally costs the same to make two identical or two different objects (with the same build time) and it separates cost from volume. The costs per unit are still high compared to injection or casting, but the tooling costs are essentially zero. And the costs per unit are dropping rapidly, particularly given that the FDM printers themselves are now partially self-replicating It's a very exciting time to be living in. I have three printers. The first printed the second. The second printed the third. I've made a number of things which turned from idea to design to prototype within hours to days. Then I tweak, hit print again and I've got production. No tooling, no waiting.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  How much work did it take to create a printer when you already had one, and how many custom parts?
  - Kliment 16y ago
    About 20 hours of print time, 4-5 hours of assembly time, and around 400EUR of nonprinted parts (motors, electronics, fasteners, hotend parts)
    - StavrosK 16y ago
      Oh, very nice! That's quite handy.
- michaeldhopkins 16y ago
  Did you design your printers or buy them? You should write this up and submit to HN.
  - burgerbrain 16y ago
    It sounds like he probably has 3 RepRaps.
  - chronomex 16y ago
    Kliment is active in the #reprap channel on FreeNode, so it's safe to say that he built his own printers.
  - Kliment 16y ago
    Bought the first from makerbot, was a huge pain and disappointment, but it got me as far as printing the parts for the second one, a Reprap Mendel. That one in turn printed me (and a number of other people) the more streamlined Prusa Mendel. I'm a contributor to the Prusa variant (I wrote the build documentation and the makefiles, and contributed to some of the parts), but did not design it. So yes, as others said below, I have two repraps (and one non-reprap), and I did build them myself.
tintin 16y ago
Well I'm not sure you could say the same for this example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwHgszH0aqI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwHgszH0aqI (printing a working flute, multiple plastics at the same time).
podperson 16y ago
I was a bit curious about the 90% figure, but a good deal depends on what point in the adoption process we're talking about, e.g. Use 3D printing instead of milling or whatever for prototype. Use 3D printing instead of whatever for mass production. Use 3D printing at point of use. Simple example: I bought a porcelain teapot a few weeks ago. A few days later we broke the lid. So I bought a new teapot. (The old teapot with the broken lid is sitting on a window sill above the kitchen sink, waiting for glue. A tube of glue costs a substantial fraction of the price of the teapot.) 3D printing could eventually lead to a tectonic shift away from planned obsolescence and disposable culture (which, let's face it, is purely an artifact of mass production).
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  Yea, I'm very much with you. Our goal (at my startup CloudFab) is that by making things for ourselves - or at least closer to what we want - that it'll mean less marketing driven consumer culture and people will want to keep their self-designed goods. FYI - we can print in ceramics now - so that lid is replaceable if you've got a file ;-)

bobds 16y ago

As far as recycling goes, it's very exciting that you can recycle plastic bottles into plastic granules/filament and use them for printing. I think we are not that far away from a self contained fabricator that turns garbage into everyday plastic parts you need.

chadgeidel 16y ago
It's probably going to take a little more than that, but I've always held that landfills are probably going to be very valuable property in 50 years or so. I assume there are going to be "dis-assemblers" to consume and separate "junk" for repurposing in manufacturing. It's a little dream I have. :-)
- patrickk 16y ago
  Your vision is like a scene out of Wall-E!

Kliment 16y ago

Well, that's not entirely true. The lattice structures are internal to the object, and substitute for solid infill. Commercial FDM 3d printers use a crosshatch instead of solid fill, and the reprap toolchain has that as well as a number of cool ones like hexagonal infill. So you have lattices instead of solid walls in the microstructure. With powder printers, such as the metal printers described in the article, you can form hollow areas of any shape since the raw material itself acts as support. To get the material out they need to be open on one side, but that is hardly an issue with a design that airy. No additional material is needed. The only case where you need support is for FDM based printing with sharp overhangs. Even this can be mitigated with clever design, such as making overhanging parts with bridges (connecting walls with a stretched layer of material that spans a gap) or teardrops (closing gaps using low overhang structures, like the buttresses on gothic buildings). The main advantage of 3d printing is that it can produce structures internal to the object that cannot be made by any subtractive method, and that it makes production costs linear and design-independent. This is very cool, since it literally costs the same to make two identical or two different objects (with the same build time) and it separates cost from volume. The costs per unit are still high compared to injection or casting, but the tooling costs are essentially zero. And the costs per unit are dropping rapidly, particularly given that the FDM printers themselves are now partially self-replicating It's a very exciting time to be living in. I have three printers. The first printed the second. The second printed the third. I've made a number of things which turned from idea to design to prototype within hours to days. Then I tweak, hit print again and I've got production. No tooling, no waiting.

StavrosK 16y ago
How much work did it take to create a printer when you already had one, and how many custom parts?
- Kliment 16y ago
  About 20 hours of print time, 4-5 hours of assembly time, and around 400EUR of nonprinted parts (motors, electronics, fasteners, hotend parts)
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    Oh, very nice! That's quite handy.
michaeldhopkins 16y ago
Did you design your printers or buy them? You should write this up and submit to HN.
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  It sounds like he probably has 3 RepRaps.
- chronomex 16y ago
  Kliment is active in the #reprap channel on FreeNode, so it's safe to say that he built his own printers.
- Kliment 16y ago
  Bought the first from makerbot, was a huge pain and disappointment, but it got me as far as printing the parts for the second one, a Reprap Mendel. That one in turn printed me (and a number of other people) the more streamlined Prusa Mendel. I'm a contributor to the Prusa variant (I wrote the build documentation and the makefiles, and contributed to some of the parts), but did not design it. So yes, as others said below, I have two repraps (and one non-reprap), and I did build them myself.

tintin 16y ago

Well I'm not sure you could say the same for this example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwHgszH0aqI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwHgszH0aqI (printing a working flute, multiple plastics at the same time).

podperson 16y ago

I was a bit curious about the 90% figure, but a good deal depends on what point in the adoption process we're talking about, e.g. Use 3D printing instead of milling or whatever for prototype. Use 3D printing instead of whatever for mass production. Use 3D printing at point of use. Simple example: I bought a porcelain teapot a few weeks ago. A few days later we broke the lid. So I bought a new teapot. (The old teapot with the broken lid is sitting on a window sill above the kitchen sink, waiting for glue. A tube of glue costs a substantial fraction of the price of the teapot.) 3D printing could eventually lead to a tectonic shift away from planned obsolescence and disposable culture (which, let's face it, is purely an artifact of mass production).

nickpinkston 16y ago
Yea, I'm very much with you. Our goal (at my startup CloudFab) is that by making things for ourselves - or at least closer to what we want - that it'll mean less marketing driven consumer culture and people will want to keep their self-designed goods. FYI - we can print in ceramics now - so that lid is replaceable if you've got a file ;-)