The new injection moulding

In the 50's and 60's there was a large increase in the availabilty of cheap tat from the far east. This came about from cheap injection moulding technology, that became affordable and allowed manu's to fill the world with little plasticky things, often with rough edges that would break after a short time.

Obviously the technology improved - as did the ability of people who designed stuff for IM manufacture. So today there is less tat and more high-quality IM produced stuff around. To the point where nobody cares, or knows, what the process was that created all the stuff they surround themselves with.

3D printing is similar. As it's still in the novelty stage, the attribute "3D printed" is often promoted more than the actual thing that was produced. Whether or not you consider the stuff to be cheap (or expensive) plasticky tat is up to the reader. However the technology still has a way to go before it matures to the point where nobody, except the maker, cares how their new "thing" was produced.

The one thing I can see that stands in the way of 3D printing is the speed of production. It still seems to be a slow, rasterised, process. Adding one thin layer after another. While the low speed of the "printer" lends itself to making high-precision parts, it's pretty hopeless at making them by the million. Until the process can match the speed of other manufacturing processes, it will always be a high-cost, niche technique. Great for one-offs, but useless for making a billion keyboard key-caps a year.

Who will be the first

idiot to secure a Darwin award for using a firearm with a chamber created by a 3D printer?

Extremely Loud BAH!

Yeah, this is the way to report on a technology still in its infancy.

Use comments from academics and fellow journalists (who like to coin three-dollar words to make ordinary concepts sound more clixby) and politicians (and their catspaws, government agencies) who don't know the difference between star trek and real life.

This is my view. Imagine a time when this technology has moved out of the garage and into the home. Can we find an analogy...sorry I can't. Imagine you drive a classic car, say a Thunderbird or a TR3, and you break a tail light filter. Imagine being able to order the pattern off the web and buy a kit of the raw materials which your handy-dandy universal fabricator (rather optimistically named by some large corporation) will, before your very eyes, work up a replacement for you.

Not as exciting or controversial as "me build gun in garage!" but that is where the future will bring us, in good time.

All the rubbishing of hyperbole cooked up by fellow journalists is, to be honest, a bit masturbatory. Of course the hobbyists are keen. Did you ever try talking to someone who makes and flies model aircraft? That doesn't mean the technology won't live up to the hype given enough time.

I'll finish up by saying that I started my working life in a machine tool manufacturing plant in the UK where we made hydraulic, multi-spindle machines of great quality. What management refused to believe was that the new Japanese machines would steal our market from under our noses. After all, theirs were single spindle, made of plastic rather than iron and steel and were controlled by these new-fangled "microprocessors", which were not durable in those days. Do I have to spell out how that ended? The road where the factory used to stand is still named for the company. I doubt anyone who lives nearby knows that, though. The factory was history before most of them started school.

Games Workshop Space Marines, old Airfix kits

more than i could have ever imagined maybe ?

Nice article, but a bit americanocentric?

As a EU-member-country citizen I've come to enjoy a more globally diverse perspective provided by the Register.

However, I've become increasingly irritated due to the incessant US references; by the point Thomas Jefferson (!) was mentioned I think I had a light reflux. I was expecting Pilgrims and the Mayflower next.

Honestly, this is even more eggregegious given the author is UK-based. Perhaps the professor was misled as to the nature of the Reg's readership (which AFAIR did become more, but by far not exclusively, American) ?

Suggestion

The immediate users will be game aficionados, think chess and all the games that require figures. Figures with character or aesthetic quality are especially valued. There will be twenty versions of Napoleon, perhaps 50 beautiful princesses.

These will be produced by artists and sold by post. Then the artists will put files up for sale over the web. Enthusiasts and games clubs will have printers, Salute is coming soon ( http://www.salute.co.uk/salute/salute-2013/ ) , we should see if 3D printing is there.

That is not earth shattering, but it is a commercial start.

No one knows where this will lead. Come back in twenty years, perhaps tourists will buy their souvenir of Pisa emailed to home to save having to carry it

PLA

PLA, one of the most common materials, is biodegradable.

Make-on-demand as needed - versus make-a-million-and-hope-we-can-sell-em.

The Professor has given us some useful context ...

I liked this treatment of the issues. What the prof has done is remind us that there is a long history to technology innovation, and that there MAY be some lessons from which we can draw in that history. And he included caveats on the way through. I'm going to go back and read this again. Only then will I look in my piggy bank to see if I can afford that $2,000.

3D printing isn't new

The only thing new about 3D printing is the new low cost hobbyist machines.

3D printing or stereolithography as it used to be called was a well established technique being used in the automotive industry back in the early 1990s. Even companies like Rover used them in house.

Production SLA machines can produce polymer or sintered components up to about 1.5m in length.

Just show how few of these forecasters and pundits are manufacturing engineers.

Not quite

"We need also to recall, first, that America, land of the car, inventor of the assembly line and inventor of the sit-down strike"

I'm fairly certain the assembly line came from France (bicycle manufacturer). The Merkins get credit for "moving assembly line".

Shurely not...

...just a focus on what it means to individuals.

If the technology improves as it surely will, at some point it will begin to affect worldwide logistics. Many cheap items have poured into Western markets based on simple mass-production and low cost shipping. Even in higher value items the reduced costs of mass-production can be seen, for instance paying more for smaller memory chips than their higher capacity replacements as the production lines tail off.

If you take 3D-printing to one logical endpoint, the economies of scale argument will yield, at least in part, to the flexibility of local supply - in the case of the washing machine part, why mass produce a part having made an expensive injection mould template, spend money producing and storing it in the hope that the 20,000 units you have made will sell out eventually (although in a decreasing return vs. cost of storage and sunk cost). Even it if moves to the professional 'print and collect' model of local (country or region-based) commercial part printers, this changes what is currently a complex logistics component (ha!) of the manufacturing cycle to the delivery of raw materials to those localised printers.

It will probably also have other, less expected effects - for instance manufacturers who design their products to be more (or let's face it, less) able to be repaired or modded using 3D printed parts - printed iPhone ear-clips anyone?...

So IMO the more interesting space is how and when it will start to impact all those container ships circling the world full of mixed goods and spare parts (which incidentally have been credited with removing one of the key advantages behind the EU economic model at about the time that the treaty was first signed...).

A Use Case

For all the people looking for a use for this technology that proves it is a Force To Be Reckoned With, I offer the credit on the Aardman "Pirate" movie of last year, which quietly mentioned "rapid prototyping".

That's what non-hobbyists call 3D printing though sometimes the term involves CA Milling.

Did you know you can make a machine to do that from a 3D printer chassis and a Dremel rotary tool? You need to add some bits to make it clever and experience tells me the rotary tool doesn't have the bearings for ultra-fine work, but for gouging wood into submission with a router bit you are in like Flynn. There's even a company that sells the chassis you need.

This lash-up will separate the men from the boys though, since a DRT runs at such high speed there is a real danger of setting fire to the workpiece if you don't gauge the feed rate properly. But, as I always say, where's the fun in making things if there's no chance they will burst into flames in the process?

My experience has been that using a DRT to drill anything is inviting trouble since in most materials the bits will cook-off at even the slowest speeds. Found that out the expensive way. Dunno why they even sell the bits.

Thing is, I don't use my 2D printer to print books or magazines. I use it to print documents relating to my personal or professional needs, but not things which I might otherwise pay for (I suppose the exception, for some people, would be printed photos and the occasional will). I *could* print books (thanks, Project Gutenberg), but I don't. I buy books. I don't even buy eBooks and print them myself, and even if eBooks were much cheaper, I suspect I still wouldn't. I pay for someone else to print and bind them for me. Suits me fine.

I can see a market for consumer 3D printers with regard to simple products which will require no (or little) assembly once printed, but when it comes to the more complicated products I suspect Future Me will still be more than happy to pay for someone else to do it (and, preferably, deliver it to my door).