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3D printers cannot knit a sweater. 3D printers cannot carve wood. That may change some day, and we can cross that bridge when we come to it. What I see 3D pr
by betterunix 14y ago
3D printers cannot knit a sweater. 3D printers cannot carve wood. That may change some day, and we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
What I see 3D printers doing is replacing foreign labor for the production of cheap parts. "Made in China" will be as old-fashioned as sending a letter via postal mail. Toys will be printed at home, that obscure nut that your car maker insisted on using will be printed in your garage, etc. Your home decorations will be printed, and you'll be able to replace them at will.
Despite the availability of cheap goods made by low-paid child laborers in developing nations, people still pay top dollar for crafts. I doubt that will change because of 3D printers.
- thirdtruck 14y agoOn a side note, they have created a robot that carves complete chairs out of tree trunks using a chainsaw.
- noptic 14y agoDepends on the printer. Not all use plastic. Soem use a lasr to cut the modell from a solid block. You can 3D print a complete chess set out of steel this way :). This is far to expensive for home use, but I gues you could use it to create fake car parts, and sell them for half the price.
- lutorm 14y agoThere are also machines that assemble metal parts from powder by distributing powder and then using a laser to melt it, layer by layer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering (If you used laser cutting, it seems it would be hard to make non-convex parts, since you can't stop the laser at a certain depth.)