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I agree that as of today 3D printers can't replace almost any commercial manufacturing technique. I think the article was meant for excitement about what may b

I agree that as of today 3D printers can't replace almost any commercial manufacturing technique. I think the article was meant for excitement about what may be coming soon. Most of the comments here sound a lot like what photographers said about digital cameras in the early 90's - low quality, poor resolution, expensive. Do you see 3d printing being able to improve in the near future to the point of being useful to you in final production? Or do you think that even with major improvements they just won't be able to keep up with more conventional means?

krschultz 15y ago
For what I do today, nothing on the horizon as of today could replace the bulk of our work. I work on industrial stuff where almost everything is metal. We do almost exclusively low volume work so the rapid prototyping is key to our design process, but very little of what we do can be done in plastics of any kind. And I think that extends to a lot of industries. Certainly if you are designing a new phone and you want to 'feel' a bunch of cases, 3D printing is a dream come true. But think of all the things it doesn't touch at all. -All chemical processes, from oil refineries to pharmaceuticals -Web processes like making paper and fabric (and even solar panels these days) -Everything related to ICs and circuit boards -Anything made of metal which extends from giant cranes and ships all the way down to bent sheet metal computer cases -Anything that is high volume -Biomedical devices and medical supplies I think it gets a lot of press because the largest impact will be on the most visible type of product - the mass produced consumer plastic product. Today these all have to be identical copies because the fixed costs are so high (molds) and the per unit costs are so low (plastic). In the future maybe we will see more variety there, but I think fundamentally people don't like choice in products in practice as much as they do in principle (thats just my opinion, but look at what has happened with the consolidation of Linux distros over time). But I think the majority of manufacturing is not doing that stuff.
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krschultz 15y ago

For what I do today, nothing on the horizon as of today could replace the bulk of our work. I work on industrial stuff where almost everything is metal. We do almost exclusively low volume work so the rapid prototyping is key to our design process, but very little of what we do can be done in plastics of any kind. And I think that extends to a lot of industries. Certainly if you are designing a new phone and you want to 'feel' a bunch of cases, 3D printing is a dream come true. But think of all the things it doesn't touch at all. -All chemical processes, from oil refineries to pharmaceuticals -Web processes like making paper and fabric (and even solar panels these days) -Everything related to ICs and circuit boards -Anything made of metal which extends from giant cranes and ships all the way down to bent sheet metal computer cases -Anything that is high volume -Biomedical devices and medical supplies I think it gets a lot of press because the largest impact will be on the most visible type of product - the mass produced consumer plastic product. Today these all have to be identical copies because the fixed costs are so high (molds) and the per unit costs are so low (plastic). In the future maybe we will see more variety there, but I think fundamentally people don't like choice in products in practice as much as they do in principle (thats just my opinion, but look at what has happened with the consolidation of Linux distros over time). But I think the majority of manufacturing is not doing that stuff.

deleted 15y ago
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