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The Pirate Bay Wants You To Really Download A Car
- sliverstorm 15y agoThe million dollar question: are people expecting to print assembled cars? It seems infinitely more feasible if you print the car part-by-part, but that kind of kills it for anybody unprepared to assemble a car! (I know, I know, taking it far too seriously)
- sp332 15y agoI know that GM (and probably others, but I know GM for sure) has large, accurate, and very expensive 3D laser printers. It focuses lasers into a vat of resin and creates a heat-tolerant and reasonably strong car part, that can be added to an actual car and test-driven for a while before disintegrating.
- rwmj 15y agoNo, but I would like to print car parts. For example, the bit of plastic that fell off the back of my rear windscreen wiper in the carwash, which undoubtedly would cost me $$$ to replace, could easily be printed by me at little cost if I had the plans for my "open source car".
- pndmnm 15y agoI spent a ton of time years ago making molds for some of the hard-to-get plastic parts for an unusual car of mine so that I could produce my own spare parts. Simply being able to print them would be amazing. Of course, many of those parts might have physical requirements (elastic deformation tolerance, heat resistance, et cetera) that would not be met by 3D-printed materials, so it's not a panacea.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoSure, but it might still be more cost-effective to print a shoddy non-critical part. I bet rwmj doesn't care if the wiper widget falls apart in six months if he can print another one. (Which makes me wonder how recyclable printed parts can be made.)
- cschneid 15y agoPrint mold. Use actual material you want. (win?)
- justincormack 15y agoThe initial use of 3D printers was largely to produce parts that could then have moulds made from them. Moulds are pretty cheap and depending on the materials it is easier to print the part to copy than the mould, although both can work.
- joesgarage 15y agoLeno prints his own car parts (to replace hard-to-find parts, not to save $$$): http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/jay-leno/technology/4320759 http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/jay-leno/technology/432...
- kennu 15y agoFirst you print a robot that will then assemble your car. Although you might need another robot to assemble the first robot..
- pavel_lishin 15y agoYou should read Asimov's "Insert Knob A in Slot B". edit: fixed story title, it was knob, not tab.
- jashmenn 15y agoDo you have a link to this story/essay? I'd love to read it but I'm having a hard time finding anything authoritative about it.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoMy mistake, it's actually "Insert Knob A Into Slot B", and it's here: http://dpaste.com/692782/ http://dpaste.com/692782/
- simcop2387 15y agoI think because he's got the name off slightly, it's Insert Knob A In Hole B. As for finding a copy of it, well you should be able to do that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insert_Knob_A_In_Hole_B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insert_Knob_A_In_Hole_B
- Zephyr314 15y agoYou can already print a machine that prints other machines, but you still need a human to make the first one (for now). http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2010/06/04/a-makerbot-self-replicates/ http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2010/06/04/a-makerbot-self-repl...
- BHSPitMonkey 15y agoActually, you need a human to assemble and wire up all of them, not just the first one.
- majmun 15y agoIf you can print car parts that means that you mastered nanotechnology. and assemblying it would be no problem, it would probably assemble itself. by printing car factory first.
- forgottenpaswrd 15y agoToyota asked me 1500 eurs for a little piece of plastic that held the front bumper. Now I know how to make it myself on my printrbot.
- forgottenpaswrd 15y agoThe same way people organize to make an OS like Linux, people will organize to make cars.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- teamonkey 15y agoI was going to make a joke about 'crashing' but it's actually a serious issue. What happens when people can freely build complex objects like cars where a 'bug' or unofficial 'patch' could potentially cause a risk to public safety? Is anyone culpable? How would the regulations work? Could they be enforceable?
- icebraining 15y agoSome people already build their cars (and car parts), 3D printing just makes it more accessible. What happens is that you have to license the car in order to be able to (legally) drive with it. I suspect the licensing costs will prevent self made cars from becoming common.
- HPBEggo 15y agoIt seems to me that, in many cases, getting one's hands on the materials necessary for printing a car would make things prohibitive for the individual. Still a very interesting idea, but I'm not seeing something like a car being printed without some major economic shifts.
- pwg 15y ago> It seems to me that, in many cases, getting one's hands on the materials necessary for printing a car would make things prohibitive for the individual. Seventy-five years ago (1937), in the era of cellulose film, your statement would have been identically applicable to the equipment and materials necessary for recording a "motion-picture". Move forward seventy-five years to 2012, and you can walk into just about any store, and for a small amount of money walk out with a "motion-picture" recording device, affordable by an individual, that can record a "motion-picture" every bit as good, if not infinitely better, than what the "professionals" had to work with in 1937. Seventy-five years from now (2087), 3D printing just very well may have advanced to the point where it would be quite feasible to "print" a car, and at a price perfectly affordable to an individual.
- HPBEggo 15y agoThis is exactly what I said?
- DougN7 15y agoInteresting idea. So you go to a download site and grab the latest offering from Ferrari... Everything of value is then IP -- ie the plans and design. Does Ferrari bother selling it's designs if they can be downloaded from a torrent? How does Ferrari stay in business at that point? I've never taken "open source" like this to the logical conclusion before, where anything physical can be constructed if you have the materials and a 3D printer...
- swombat 15y agoLet me get this straight. We propose a society where scarcity is a thing that only exists in fiction and history books, where all physical items can be copied at will, where the idea of "owning" a physical thing is as pointless as the idea of "owning" an idea is, where (as a natural consequence) world hunger is probably a thing of the past, as are poverty, industrial labour, and many other things we take for granted... And your first question is "How does Ferrari stay in business?" Worth noting that this is more or less the same thing as what's happening with art at the moment. I could paraphrase it as: "We propose a society where information scarcity is a thing that only exists in fiction and history books, where all information (sound, video, text, etc) can be copied at will and instantly all around the world, where the idea of "owning" a bunch of bytes is as pointless as the idea of owning the shape of a cloud in the sky, where (as a natural consequence) education, art, civilisation and all those things that make mankind worthy of existence are infinitely more powerful than before because of their ubiquity and availability to all, and your first question is... How does Sony Music stay in business?"
- nrp 15y agoThis isn't really about printing a car, in the short term at least. This is a response to the kinds of DMCA takedown notices that Thingiverse has been getting lately, on Warhammer figurine models for example. http://groups.google.com/group/thingiverse/browse_thread/thread/599c4e60f459af8f http://groups.google.com/group/thingiverse/browse_thread/thr... This sort of thing will only increase as 3d printers go mainstream.
- HPBEggo 15y agoEssentially anything that can be made of plastic or other, similar materials could be printed in the near future, assuming it doesn't have to meet any rigorous engineering standards. I, for one, remember watching a video of a man printing and playing a number of different instruments. They didn't work perfectly, but the definitely played.
- asmithmd1 15y agoDoes copyright apply to physical object? I understand a sports jersey has to be licensed because it has a copyrighted logo on it, but if there is no trademark or logo on a physical object I don't think you can copyright it. Of course patent laws apply and there is such thing as a design patent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent I would think unless an object is covered by a patent, design or functional, it is fair game to print out
- onemoreact 15y agoI think copyright apply's to sculpture.
- asmithmd1 15y agoThat would make sense. I would bet there is some kind of functional vs. ornamental test. Yes you can copyright a sculpture, but no you can't copyright the bolt pattern of a fuel pump to prevent others from making a replacement part. If that is true, then I would think a figurine is more ornamental than functional.
- flatline 15y agoCharles Stross' Rule 34 dealt with this concept: fabricators with DRM that only allowed them to print legitimate items, and a thriving black market of hacked fabricators and illegal or unlicensed designs. Good stuff - futurism, but perhaps the not-too-distant future.
- jrockway 15y agoxkcd's take: http://xkcd.com/305/ http://xkcd.com/305/
- wmf 15y agoI think that idea appeared 15 years earlier in The Diamond Age, although people were setting their sights higher then.
- lukejduncan 15y agofantastic book; and the first thing I thought of when I saw the original article
- majmun 15y agothis technology of 3d printing and self-replication is probably postponed consciously because it means the end of todays economy system. and danger if it goes out of control. I mean printing guns and stuff like that.
- nhaehnle 15y agoThe parent comment is perhaps a bit too thin on content and too much on the conspiracy theory side (edit: it was grayed out when I wrote this reply), but it does touch on an interesting question: is our progress limited more by technology, or is it limited more by socio-economic factors? Consider that a toy steam engine was built by Heron of Alexandria around 2000 years ago, and yet nobody got the idea of harnessing it to replace human labor. Perhaps this can be explained in part by not-quite advanced metallurgy, but what about the fact that society back then relied on very cheap slave labor? What role did that play? Think about what the business model for making 3d printers pervasive could be. If you manage to do that, you might become the next generation's Bill Gates. Too bad I don't have an answer there...
- dwiel 15y agoThe guys at open source ecology might not have the business model, per se, but I think they're headed in the right direction. Rather than selling the 3d printers (and related technologies), 'sell' a community which requires of you only 4 hours a week of work to participate and all it takes to join is whatever it takes to transport your body there. Maybe its not 4 hours a week, but 8 or 2 - either way its not going to be much and it will only get smaller.
- forgottenpaswrd 15y ago"Consider that a toy steam engine was built by Heron of Alexandria around 2000 years ago, and yet nobody got the idea of harnessing it to replace human labor. Perhaps this can be explained in part by not-quite advanced metallurgy," Exactly, it is explained by not quite advanced metallurgy and tools. The steam engine works thanks to the small tolerances industrial lathes gave us that let a cylinder to carry a piston without fluids getting out. Watt had to create himself special tools for the creation of his engine. I have a link somewhere in my browser but zotero search is bullsh*t.
- icefox 15y agoBoard games are at an interesting cross. On the one hand they don't usually require tight tolerances for their parts so 3D printers seem a perfect fit for printing board games. On the other hand you have board games moving to the digital devices like tablets. How will things play out?
- bayleo 15y agoThere's already a number of board games out there where you are essentially buying the rulebook and are asked to provide your own game pieces (pennies, figurines, whatever). Yes, they're very easy to pirate, but they usually have a low enough price point that piracy is not a huge issue.
- teamonkey 15y agoI'm watching Games Workshop with interest on this one. They make a large amount of their income on selling tiny, expensive plastic figurines and are notoriously litigious. They stand to lose out big time if people start fabbing their own models.
- Fargren 15y agoSome people already make their own molds out of miniatures and use the to build their own. It's a lot harder than printing them, though.
- icebraining 15y agoThere will probably be some of each, but to me the most interesting are the possibilities that hybrid models offer. Apps that connect to common personal 3D printers for the pieces and then have a digital board on the screen that recognizes their position.
- phogster 15y agoAre any 3d printer companies public?
- mrcharles 15y agoSomeone needs to figure out how much it takes to get one of these made. I think I'm probably going to order one. I'll do it later tonight if I remember, if someone else doesn't do the heavy lifting first.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- MrMatters 15y agoThe way they talk about spare parts, sneakers, etc. makes me wonder how we would ever be able to store all of that material. Maybe there will be ways in the future, but with that much variety in things they think we'll be able to print, literally how will we be able to keep it all stocked? Printer ink is hard enough for some people. Of course, this entire thing is about how stuff we take for granted now seemed absolutely ridiculous in the past, so I won't dismiss it.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoShhh! You're not supposed to think about that :-) You are correct, of course. One of the things I find amusing about the breathless talk about replicators is that people conveniently ignore such mundane problems as maintaining material inventory, the various types of material in any nontrival product and the ability of the consumer to evaluate the quality of a design they downloaded off the net. If I give you a design for a new replacement part for your car how do you know it won't cause more harm than good? Now we've moved the concept of malware into the physical realm. 3D printers are certainly an exciting technology with a bright future. But it's just another manufacturing method that's better in some ways than what's popular now, and worse in others. But saying that doesn't get pageviews.
- firefoxman1 15y agoSo...just looking really far down the road here, but it seems that a common theme among lots of films set in the future is that currency is a thing of the past. If you could print any physical item, especially if you could pirate the plans, then there would hardly be a need for a currency because everything would almost be free. The only way to make money would be to either produce the printers or create new products and sell the plans.
- madamepsychosis 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity
- firefoxman1 15y agoOoh, thanks for that. Edit: That wasn't sarcasm. I appreciated the link. No need for downvoting.
- ljf 15y agohi (didn't downvote you but just fyi) its likely you were downvoted for a ccomment which didn't add anything.
- firefoxman1 15y agoWell, actually that comment has since been upvoted back to neutral lol.
- ljf 15y agohi (didn't downvote you but just fyi) its likely you were downvoted for a ccomment which didn't add anything.
- backprojection 15y agoWell, presumably you could print the next generation of printers using the previous generation. You'd still need to pay for the energy/raw materials to run them though. Maybe if LFTR works out, energy will be next-to-free also.
- wtvanhest 15y agoThere is no doubt in my mind that this step must be taken, but I'm fairly certain that as the number of parts and types of material increase any cost benefit from 3d printing will be wiped out. Sneakers for example would be really tough to just print out and assemble due to all the different types of parts. Scale in assembly continues to beat out lack of scale. It could change, but I think 3d printing is better for custom applications rather than mass market goods.
- paulhauggis 15y agoThe same government forces that protect a company's IP protect employees in a union. Many times, companies can't automate certain jobs (not just in the US) because it would mean one less job for a person and the wages are artificially inflated. Wages are usually high because of scarcity (IE: not anyone can do it). Unions, like copyright, allow workers that would normally get paid $8/10 to get $20-30 an hour because of government sanctions. However, many people here on HN hate copyright but are pro-union. Doesn't really make any sense.
- throwaway64 15y agoUnions are a voluntary arrangement, copyright is not. Please do not address the "HN Hivemind", that has a strong tendency to be a straw man argument that does not really address any specific points, or anyone.
- paulhauggis 15y ago"Unions are a voluntary arrangement, copyright is not." oh? can GM kick say "no unions"? I will address the "HN hivemind" when I see fit. Especially when it holds true.
- losvedir 15y agoI'm really excited about the potential for personal 3D printing. One thing I wonder, though, is how much would actually be made that way. It seems like economies of scale are such that the current model is more efficient for most products. You still need the raw materials and the energy to construct the object. Wouldn't large factories specialized for certain products be able to produce them faster, cheaper, and in larger quantities, and by such a margin that doing so and then shipping them still requires fewer resources than everyone individually printing their own? They're really cool for prototyping or in certain niches, but I can't imagine it taking over all manufacturing.
- jxcole 15y agoI wouldn't cash your chips in yet. We don't really know what's possible in the realm of personal manufacturing. Theoretically, if it costs a certain amount of materials and energy to produce something, producing it in a smaller factory will cost the same but require more fine grained control of the instruments. I don't think that makes it impossible, just challenging and interesting. Also, there is a hidden cost to re-tooling factories for new products that goes away if you can create a factory that can produce anything with the same tools, so you can save there as well.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoproducing it in a smaller factory will cost the same No, it will cost massively more. The factory that builds millions of the same thing has access to pricing and supply chains that are completely out of reach of the factory that builds 100. This is so different that there is really no reason for the smaller factory to build the same thing. They will likely compete on turnaround time, quality, or something the large producer can't do. Any of these will drive their costs even higher.
- joshu 15y agoThere are open-sourced cars: http://www.local-motors.com/ http://www.local-motors.com/ I've driven one! http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/5741482536/in/set-72157626642540489/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/5741482536/in/set-7215762... ... same car that was on top gear, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn6rvj08__0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn6rvj08__0
- Estragon 15y agoSuper exciting, but at $75K for the privilege of taking a week to assemble your own car, it'll be a bit out of my price range for a while.
- joshu 15y agoI've driven a lot of different cars, and this one was... interesting. Probably too much for a daily driver.
- blhack 15y agoI can confirm that the local motors guys are really cool. They were at maker faire Phoenix a few months ago, and I think they're pretty involved (or at least supportive of) the hacker community in Phoenix. (And by that I mean Heatsync Labs, which is a magical place)
- jmodp 15y agoWhat you'll be able to download real soon, if not already, are LEGO blocks. I wonder what LEGO is planning to do about it.
- jamesgeck0 15y agoLEGO bricks are made to fairly rigorous standards. I suspect DIY bricks would be closer to existing knock-offs: very much like LEGO bricks, but they don't necessarily fit together "just so" all the time.
- justincormack 15y agoThey are out of patent protection, which is why there are already clones. However there seems to be some copyright protection still on some bricks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group#Trademark_and_patents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group#Trademark_and_pa... But it would be lovely, just printing out new blocks for the kids...
- ilaksh 15y agoTechnology is at odds with capitalism. We need to upgrade our belief systems and our societal structures. See also a related issue http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
- Sukotto 15y agoCory Doctorow has an interesting take on the ramifications of this in his (2006) short story Printcrime which is slightly too long to post here. Go read it. It will only take a couple of minutes. http://craphound.com/?p=573&title=PrintCrime http://craphound.com/?p=573&title=PrintCrime
- repsilat 15y agoCory's novel Makers[1] deals with the same thing in longer form. 1: http://craphound.com/makers/download/ http://craphound.com/makers/download/
- Dove 15y agoI remain convinced that coming up with a fair and practical method for dealing with intellectual property is the most important question of the age.
- cabalamat 15y agoThe solution will probably be to largely abolish copyright and patents.
- ZeagleFiend 15y agoI oppose the concept of Intellectual Property as we know it. It is something up with by the entertainment industries to line their own pockets, and it stymies progress and good art. For the majority of human (art) history, no such concept existed. Ideas were communal (for instance see Bach's famous "Goldberg Variations", which borrowed a lot from popular songs of the time). In what sense is an intangible idea property at all? In what sense do I "own" a riff if I randomly strum it out one day on my guitar? It didn't create it. It existed prior to me playing it. It has been shown the monetary incentive is not required for great things to be produced. Projects like wikipedia are testament to this, as is the immensity of excellent fiction, music and other art that is available for free on the internet. The concept of Intellectual Property is outdated, and the world needs to realise this as it adapts to deal with the incredible implications of the developing internet.
- gurkendoktor 15y agoThis is a thread about printing cars and your answer is "whatever, kill the RIAA"? This proves that the whole discussion has been reduced to meme-pingpong. Have you considered that you are not paying for materials when buying a car, but also for R&D?
- ZeagleFiend 15y ago1. Your reductive analysis of my comment inculpates you, not me. "Whatever, kill the RIAA" is not what I said at all. 2. I was reply to someone who was talking about intellectual property as a concept. Thus, I was engaging in discussion with him, not with the thread in a more general sense.
- shrub 15y agoThink about printing a car when we have point to point instantaneous transportation (beam me up, Scotty)? Perhaps cars will become just another form of entertainment. Perhaps the cost of recycling the material your boat (used to be your couch and XBoxen-5D) into a car via some futuristic process will be negligible, such that it would resemble downloading an MP3 today (after all, you do need some sort of storage medium that you bought to hold the MP3).
- sbov 15y agoCars and 3d printers? That's short term thinking. Just wait until we have the technology to print people. That's when people will really get pissy about pirating.
- kaybe 15y agoI'm looking forward to it. It is one of the major angles on recreating organs for transplantation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissue_engineering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissue_engineering http://www.createitreal.com/index.php/en/organ-printing/principle http://www.createitreal.com/index.php/en/organ-printing/prin...
- sbov 15y agoI look forward to that too, although I was thinking something more similar in use to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dated_a_Robot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dated_a_Robot
- AdamFernandez 15y agoIn this likely future you won't really download items 'for free'. You will still need the raw materials (plastics, metals, thread, etc.) that you would have to pay for. You will simply download designs/blueprints that your printer/fabrication machine can manufacture. You could probably get a bulk shipment delivered to your house of these materials. Or you could just go to 'resources' depot and pick them up. Granted there are many issues that would arise regarding pirated and trademarked designs. Research, development, marketing, and other costs go into the price of these products when they are sold to us. The disruption this could cause corporations will make our current worries over music, books, and movies seem trivial. Then again, imagine open source product designs. Platforms for creating physical designs that can be sold, and unparalleled product customization. It should be very interesting.
- VBprogrammer 15y agoI really like this idea, but with current technology its a non-starter. 3D printing would need materials which improve in orders of magnitude upon the strength, the heat resistance, the hardness and the printable accuracy. Not to mention that the materials must be available in a reasonably abundant supply. I do however think there is probably scope for 3D printing small replacement parts (I'm thinking of things such as plastic pump impellers etc) , if not at home certainly at a main dealer. I doubt this would come cheap but that might be balanced against the reduced turnaround times and ability to maintain a smaller supply chain.
- joshu 15y agoYou can print a wide variety of metals, as well as use them for molds for casting. There's also 6d CNC milling etc. I bet you could manufacture a car if you wanted.
- Serentiynow 15y agoRecently added to ted.com : Lisa Harouni: A primer on 3D printing: http://www.youtu.be/watch?v=OhYvDS7q_V8 http://www.youtu.be/watch?v=OhYvDS7q_V8
- nazar 15y agoI am wondering, if something in that "printed" car fails to operate and leads to a crashes with lethal resolution, who will be to blame? The printer manufacturer? The plan developer? The material provider? I really don't want to see that coming in future, I better go and by a car from Toyota and put all responsibility on them rather than have myself doing all the hard work.
- yesbabyyes 15y agoI think RepRap et al could have a huge impact in poorer countries. Spare parts for out of production goods can be impossible to find, and replacing an old (regular paper) printer or something like that is a big cost. Imagine a small factory in every village. :-) Fablab is also a very interesting project. They provide free access to 3d printers, scanners and other equipment, provided you share your design. GPL IRL!
- justincormack 15y agoEasy maintainability is a general policy in third world countries already though, eg India makes 1950s design british motorbikes and cars (Norton, Morris Oxford) because they can have replacement parts made by low tech means. However 3D printers potentially do make more kinds of materials buildable, especially when combined with printable electronics.
- benvanderbeek 15y agoI apologize for my lack of imagination, but what does this mean? "We’ll be able to print food for hungry people. We’ll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal."
- iamwil 15y agoResearchers have been able to print organs from tissue. You basically have a gel medium for the tissue to grow in, and then you spray human tissue (stem?) cells into the medium, layer by layer, and given enough time, they'll grow into an organ. By that notion, it's not too infeasible to print your own food. If you can print organs, you can probably print muscle meat, or plants. But this sort of thing is a long long ways off.
- benvanderbeek 15y agoMakes sense, thanks for connecting the dots while my imagination was not working.
- lancerp 15y agoHow do we feed the programmers, artists, and designers whose work appears on this site? As a distribution platform Pirate Bay is absolutely amazing, as an ethical business, not so much, Pirate Bay is making money from ads.
- mrcharles 15y agoIt costs about $80 to get the pirate bay model made. I have one on the way!