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Perhaps 3D printing will never be quite as fast, but it won't end up mattering very much? The article did alude to one possibility - that demand for mass custom

Perhaps 3D printing will never be quite as fast, but it won't end up mattering very much? The article did alude to one possibility - that demand for mass customizability would alleviate any speed disadvantages. A practical example might be: Let's say I need some chairs. I can go down to Ikea and pick up one of 5 mass produced chairs they have and be done with it in half a day. Or I could browse through designs and reviews online, pick something I like and have it arrive a week and a half later when it's done printing (or have my neighbourhood or home printer take that long...)

hosh 14y ago
A bigger advantage for 3D printing has more to do with onsite, personal manufacturing, of which "mass customization" is a secondary benefit. Many of the objections the industry insiders use to describe additive printing are more or less the same arguments people have made about homebrew computing, back before the Steve Wozniac showed off the Apple I and IBM got into the game. Why would you use personal computer? They are slower than the minicomputers and mainframes. They are "craft" machines for hobbyists. Ideally, we are moving to a future economy where you "buy" a product by purchasing a license to a design, and then having your household printer produce the product. If it is for something larger or requires more exotic materials, you might place a print order at the neighborhood Kinko's, Ace's Hardware, or print co-opt.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Ideally, we are moving to a future economy where you "buy" a product by purchasing a license to a design, and then having your household printer produce the product. Speaking for myself, I don't want to live in a future where you've done what it's going to take to enforce those licenses.
  - hosh 14y ago
    Generally, I think ubiquitous, cheap, personal manufacturing is a good thing. If we have a number of Open Source products we can print out. That will substantially lower the cost of living for everyone. Hopefully, the vast majority of retailers will turn into service providers. There may still be folks who want to license designs out. Nobody trusts a corporation to enforce their DRM mechanism because they get to be the final arbiter of what is "fair". What is fair is always good for the corporation, never mind the user. They may die and kill off access to those goods. The other extreme is hypocritical, simply because we run our digital goods through hardware -- all resting on the notion of allocation of resources. Besides, content creators want to eat, too. A reasonable compromise is to have the DRM enforced by someone other than the seller. An escrow service is an improvement, but is not much better. And no one wants to depend on the government to host DRM servers. A peer-to-peer DRM might work. Bitcoin is an example of a technology that can be modified for this: http://codinginmysleep.com/exotic-transaction-types-with-bitcoin/ http://codinginmysleep.com/exotic-transaction-types-with-bit... The mediation is done peer-to-peer. You can, for example, sign a bitcoin contract saying you are lending an ebook to a friend, and have it published elsewhere. Granted, this would all be on an honor system -- if you can play back media, then you have access to the content, no amount of clever algorithms or coding can change that -- but so is much of the enforcement for civilized interaction. A small group will "cheat", the same way there are breakage in a retail store. If the voluntary participation of such a scheme benefits everyone involved and is not too inconvenient (centralized DRM servers that crash or gets taken down when the company dies, or requires a constant internet connection), I think most people will go for it. It's best we experiment this kind of transaction with digital products, before 3D technologies get good enough that people start buying design licenses for goods. Better yet, we make sure we have Open Source versions of products that people can download and print out.

hosh 14y ago

A bigger advantage for 3D printing has more to do with onsite, personal manufacturing, of which "mass customization" is a secondary benefit. Many of the objections the industry insiders use to describe additive printing are more or less the same arguments people have made about homebrew computing, back before the Steve Wozniac showed off the Apple I and IBM got into the game. Why would you use personal computer? They are slower than the minicomputers and mainframes. They are "craft" machines for hobbyists. Ideally, we are moving to a future economy where you "buy" a product by purchasing a license to a design, and then having your household printer produce the product. If it is for something larger or requires more exotic materials, you might place a print order at the neighborhood Kinko's, Ace's Hardware, or print co-opt.

CamperBob2 14y ago
Ideally, we are moving to a future economy where you "buy" a product by purchasing a license to a design, and then having your household printer produce the product. Speaking for myself, I don't want to live in a future where you've done what it's going to take to enforce those licenses.
- hosh 14y ago
  Generally, I think ubiquitous, cheap, personal manufacturing is a good thing. If we have a number of Open Source products we can print out. That will substantially lower the cost of living for everyone. Hopefully, the vast majority of retailers will turn into service providers. There may still be folks who want to license designs out. Nobody trusts a corporation to enforce their DRM mechanism because they get to be the final arbiter of what is "fair". What is fair is always good for the corporation, never mind the user. They may die and kill off access to those goods. The other extreme is hypocritical, simply because we run our digital goods through hardware -- all resting on the notion of allocation of resources. Besides, content creators want to eat, too. A reasonable compromise is to have the DRM enforced by someone other than the seller. An escrow service is an improvement, but is not much better. And no one wants to depend on the government to host DRM servers. A peer-to-peer DRM might work. Bitcoin is an example of a technology that can be modified for this: http://codinginmysleep.com/exotic-transaction-types-with-bitcoin/ http://codinginmysleep.com/exotic-transaction-types-with-bit... The mediation is done peer-to-peer. You can, for example, sign a bitcoin contract saying you are lending an ebook to a friend, and have it published elsewhere. Granted, this would all be on an honor system -- if you can play back media, then you have access to the content, no amount of clever algorithms or coding can change that -- but so is much of the enforcement for civilized interaction. A small group will "cheat", the same way there are breakage in a retail store. If the voluntary participation of such a scheme benefits everyone involved and is not too inconvenient (centralized DRM servers that crash or gets taken down when the company dies, or requires a constant internet connection), I think most people will go for it. It's best we experiment this kind of transaction with digital products, before 3D technologies get good enough that people start buying design licenses for goods. Better yet, we make sure we have Open Source versions of products that people can download and print out.