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This is all great in theory, but in reality there are hundreds of thousands of these parts being delivered to hospitals right now, and they came from lots of pe
by blhack 6y ago
This is all great in theory, but in reality there are hundreds of thousands of these parts being delivered to hospitals right now, and they came from lots of people with lots of 3D printers at their houses, hackerspaces, and printer farms.
We can definitely talk about what would have been better and more efficient, but in the meantime people need this stuff today.
- ogre_codes 6y agoIt's not a zero sum game. It makes tons of sense for people with 3d printers to print as many as they can now because they can get them in the hands of people now. But once dedicated manufacturing comes online, that capability is going to be quickly become irrelevant. The comment I replied to seemed to suggest individuals were printing 10s of thousands of these per day which is clearly not true. Thousands of individuals are printing a few each day which is vastly different.
- elsonrodriguez 6y ago> But once dedicated manufacturing comes online, that capability is going to be quickly become irrelevant. You're right, but after this emergency all those production lines will be retooled to things that are more profitable. The upside is that this pandemic has basically created a grass roots production network to fill gaps that will always exist in traditional manufacturing. If the next world-wide issue can be at least partially mitigated by small plastic parts, that gap will again be filled by 3d printers, and we're all better off for it.