3D printing: 'Third industrial revolution' or a load of old cobblers?

Culturally it's great

The 3D printing world feels the way computing did in the 1980s, with bedroom hobbyists alongside huge multinational companies.It's great fun to be around and well worth poping into iMakr near to The reg office to have a tinker.

I used to be a naysayer.

Then a friend printed a Dalek.

Now I can see their value.

Right now I can see only specialist application

Medical prosthetics, specialised jewellery, some types of models ... can't see it ever being fast or scalable enough to replace most current industrial processes.

Mind you I confidently predicted, pre Direct 3D, that Windows would never be fast enough for gaming and we'd always have to boot to DOS. So WTF do I know.

I've wanted to buy one for years, but to get top quality I'll still have to fork out tens of thousands of pounds and have a large storage space. When the quality improves on the cheaper, smaller models then I'll get one, but until then it's all a bit "meh."

3D Printing plagued by hype

There are articles on t'internet that are hailing 3D printing would allow people to print new parts for their cars, new covers for their phones, even new parts for their bodies. And we can all remember the 3D gun being printed.

The thing is, and the gun proves it, the plastic isn't strong enough to have any real use. And many applications whereby you could print parts for require parts to be made of several types of materials, not just one. So the idea of printing off a car is always going to be that: an idea. A dream.

However, in the UK on Channel 4 not so long ago there was a documentary by Embarassing Bodies about a gentleman who lost half his face from cancer. To give you an idea, he lost his left eye, his left cheekbone, the roof of his mouth, the top left part of his jaw and his teeth. Because of his treatment and everything he had been through (he had also contracted MRSA), he was forced to essentially stick a plaster over that part of his face.

He had seen some specialists and one of them was a dentist, who took a 3D model of this man's head and created a 3D print out of it, which was then used to design a prosthetic eye, check bone, and new teeth. It was very successful, and aside from the human story of this, the way 3D printing was used to give this man a new face essentially was just incredible. And I feel that 3D printing has more of a use to the medical profession than anything else.

The post-stuff age

Ask any kid what they want for christmas and the answer is more likely to be a download, or a game, or something off itunes, People today are eschewing physical things in favour of the intangible: information and entertainment. So the draw of a 3D printer in the home is not so much in what it makes, but in the process of making. Just as we are well past the time of peak-paper in the home.

The same applies at work. Less and less printing is taking place and most information only appears on the screens of devices - sometimes desk-bound and sometimes portable. So far as workplace 3D printing, the needs will be for much more specialised, high-quality and better designed products. So commercial 3D printing will only be found on the industrial estate, in the workshop of the specialist prototyper or short-run fabricator. Never in the corner of the office next to the coffee machine.

So where does that leave domestic 3D printers? In the same place as those other tools for making things: in the workshop. Just like hobbyist woodworkers, who will spend many more hours producing something hand-made than it would take them to earn the money to buy off the shelf - so there will always be a place for people for whom the making is more important, or fun, than the having. However, just like the market for lathes, compound-mitre saws and drill presses is quite active (among the cognoscenti) so will be the market for 3D printers. However they will never be a 1-per-home item.

Other uses

There's no reason why 3D printing can't make conventional manufacturing easier, you could 3D print a part then use that to cast a mould which could be used for normal injection moulding thus greatly reducing the cost of setting up as making a mould is normally very expensive.

In a foundry 3d printing with wax could be really handy for casting metal objects where 3D printing directly with metal would not be practical.

3D printers will appear all over the place, but there are only a certain number of things that any one person is going to want to 3D print (well except for say Games Workshop type figures).

This time last year I took a star ruby which we bought in India into our jewellery software development dept. Pointed in a book of rings a design, and they measured the stone and 3D printed the ring in resin, check the fit with the stone, created a couple of other resin rings, until it was right and the final resin ring was used as the mould for the gold. In the orthotics software dept they were testing out the 3D printing crowns using some new ceramic sintering material. Two custom made apps but as an individual you aren't going to be 3D printing many rings, or teeth and the printers are different in each case.

Meanwhile in the workshop they were 3D printing titanium sheaths for carbon fibre turbin blades.

Yes there are a lot of applications but I suspect that there is less applications for a home 3D plastic printer than there is for a router.

Frink

"I predict that within 100 years, 3D printers will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them."

There are already at least two 3D printers that I know of that can create PCBs, but they do it a different way. They can do everything any other extrusion 3D printer can do, but the mechanism can be fitted with a Dremel-type cutter, which is used to etch a standard PCB blank - and can also mill wood, plastic, aluminium etc. like a conventional CNC, and can be used to engrave.

My money is on this type of device - I'll dub it the "Personal Fabricator" - being the winner for home use; a combination of additive and subtractive manufacturing. Very excited about this!

Its all about the drugs

Most people are thinking about 3D printing in terms of physical manufacture, but one of the real early contenders for large scale development is in creating tailored drugs. There's already a lot of work going on in the development of processes to create personalised prescriptions that are rendered in a 3DP. It makes a lot of sense when you think of people on long-term medication who may have to take half a dozen different prescriptions a day; with an ageing population that's a big market. The biggest hurdle for this right now is regulation, but as ever, I'm sure there are naughty chemists on the other side of the pharmaceutical industry who are thinking about the possibilities for the next generation of recreational drugs.

They have some serious uses

I've literally just stopped speaking to someone enthusing about her 3-D printed dental crown. No making impressions, no temporary crown while the permanent one is made off-site, excellent fit.

She'd spoken to the dentist, and they'd had the device for some 7 months, and would buy another if this one broke down.

Impact

Certainly will have a significant impact - the question is will it just be significant butjust another channel to market or will it be dominant - hard to know

For replacing broken parts, unless you have it on file already you'll need some serious CAD skills to make another or a 3D scanner and software that can scan it and put it back together virtually for you. It's going to take a lot longer before they're as common as inkjets.

They are a good idea and they have their applications, however they will not replace the supply chain for parts.

I have looked at buying one, I could use it to print better plastic mats for the diggers in our fleet, or use it to print the plastic hand helds (£60 + VAT for a 5cm by 8cm bit of plastic) or the joystick controllers etc.

However, and this is the big hurdle - what about EU Certificate of Conformity's? If I design and print something I am accepting liability that it is safe and will do the job. Now you may say its a bit of plastic for a hand rest, however in this increasingly legal world am I going to take the risk of incurring liability to save myself £60?

Of course not.

Leaving aside hobbyists...

...the real value of 3D is fast prototyping and very short production runs, same as laser cutting.

For example. everything comes on an injection moulded plastic case. To manufacture such a case costs peanuts, once and only once, you have spent literally tens of thousands of dollars and or man hours making the tool. And them modifying it because marketing didn't 'like the feel of it'.

3D printing ( at least prototypes) allows you to arrive at the final shape cheaply and quickly, and even make enough units to fund the cost of getting an injection mould made.

As the materials that may be deposited increases in scope, so too will the applications. Its also less polluting to use additive technology rather than subtractive. A 3D printer is after all only a CNC 4 axis mill in reverse...that doesn't leave swarf and cutting fluid everywhere.Finally, it seems with certain limitations, to be able to create structures inside structures. The possibility of really good ball and socket joints exists, in a way you cant do subtracively, easily.

A solutin without a problem? No. But it takes time, when you have been used to designing things one way, to develop a new mind set such that the new way isn't just a replacement for the old, but a complete rethink in the way things are done altogether.

If you look at - say - the evolution of the domestic radio set, you see cases made first of wood, with steel chassis bolted inside, fretwork grilles and so on. Then bakelite replaced the wood. And then the printed circuit board replaced the chassis, and then ultimately we have the injection moulded case and PCB that together are exact fits to each other. Parts count drops dramatically as one moulding replaces lots of assembled 'bits'..Imagine 3D printing say, most of the wiring for set, the mechanical controls and the case as one unit, so you have plastic in plastic bearings for rotary or slide controls with knobs pre-moulded onto the shafts, and even the potentiometers pre moulded with a conductive plastic set of paths, already connected to wiring to take the signals to where they need to go. And stuck in the middle a PCB with a dozen connectors to the case wiring system. At last the wire-less wireless!

In economic terms you are replacing the cost of individual tooling for hundreds of different sets with a huge capital layout on a machine that can produce any design you want. 3D print the owners face, name and address in it. Hard to steal and re-sell an item, so personalised.

Its just another dimension to manufacturing, and as we in the 60's adapted to thinking more in terms of 'how can we get that onto the PCB, or mould it into the case' to save production costs, so too will tomorrows designers not be restrained by 'great idea, but there's no way to make it'.

The question was "3D PRINTING: 'THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION' OR A LOAD OF OLD COBBLERS?"

The answer is: Both.

Kudus!

Kudos for making the video have the feel (and audio) from an 80's BBC documentary about computing, what with the synth music!

I miss those old BBC classics!

just a step (or is that stp)

I see the printers as a step in the process.

The deposition of material could be just the first phase before substitution and finish.

I print the basic skeleton model in recyclable material, then drop it into a nano solution and over a few hours/days the model is replaced with materials with elastic properties or changing material types through the form.

End result is based on the 3d shape but has been entirely replaced.

A bit like the guy growing furniture from mushrooms the building materials could be organic based or partly crystalline.

I have one job for a bespoke 3d form, simple one but it needs to be able to withstand weather and UV. I can make it from off the shelf kit but I don't see it lasting, I either need to be able to fit the printer with many more materials (like the prototype Sugru or Chocolate 3d printers) or go to the high street materials exchange shop for an ABS-Aluminium, copper, silicon, or PLA-AG jewellery service etc.

It is very much like the Lasers, I have them as parts of other uses.

3D printing: 'Third industrial revolution' or a load of old cobblers?

Answer (b).

Generic standard components is best.

When I were a lad I could get out a set of spanners and fix my bike. A bit later jap bikes came over and apart from falling off cos the brake was on the wrong side I suddenly needed two sets of spanners and nuts and bolts got buggered cost they didn't fit so not only did diy become a nightmare a great moneysaver got priced out of existence.

Then some idiot invented unglueable plastic which is impervious to any form of repairs and everything was made of that so I might want a 3d printer so I can repair a thousand items that require one bizarrely shaped plastic element.

It could be fun though - can you imagine being able to repair all those items or maybe ever print your own refillable printer cartridges but I imagine the main use will be in school arts classes making 3d selfies or bloody customises cute kittens.

Motorbike fairing

The only plastic thing I've ever broken worth much.

Backlit Wings

One-off? You should print up a dozen or so of those and use them for wall sconces.

A proper PCB printer would be awesome, but that one's not it

Obviously I've only seen pictures of what the mentioned PCB printer can do, but based on that color me gravely unimpressed. Those tracks look crude and flimsy even compared to what an half-decent hobby CNC can do via isolation milling out of a piece of actual copper-clad PCB blank. I'd choose that over sprayed-on silver any day, and I'm not even talking about cases where said track is supposed to carry more than, say, 100 milliamps, or securely hold in place several of the umpteen oh-so-popular-these-days SMD connectors...

Not just plastic though is it?

There are DMLS printers, like the one that recently printed a fully functioning metal, doesn't-break-on-first-shot, hand gun. Very expensive bits of kit at the moment, but there have been a few hobbyists who have built one.

I'm not sure that you'll see 3D printers in every home, but I can see them being in a lot of garages. I know quite a few people who have expensive lathes in their sheds/garages for hobby's. A 3D printer, plastic or metal, costing a few thousand isn't beyond the realms of possibility for a fair few people that I can think of.

I think the chances of 3d printing replacing industrial process for mass produced items are nil.

However there are lots of ways in which I think 3d printing could be useful now and increasingly important in a world where its availability is known at the point something is designed.

1) Small-scale design shops or individuals creating prototypes. This has been mentioned at least once above, so no need to go into detail.

2) Creating parts for items which are no longer mass-producted. I know that when my (mid-90s) car goes for repair one of the hardest and most expensive jobs the garage have is in sourcing parts that are no longer made. If CAD documents were routinely created at the point of design for new models then this would be a considerably easier problem for cars of the current era in 15 years time. I'm sure there are dozens of other situations in which spares are held expensively ad infinitum where a detailled design and 3d printer availability could replace them.

Read again in four years

As soon as I can 3d print in an alloy as hard as steel with a machine that cost's less than £3000 for about a tenner a time I will own one.

<whine> Oh, they're SOOO expensive! </whine>

Remember when the first plasma and led TVs came out, and how expensive they were?

Remember that within 5 years a $2000 42" flatscreen TV came down to just $500? And two years later it came down to like $300 - and with multiple HDMI inputs?

Remember how expensive color laser printers used to be? I bought one 3 years ago for WAY less than $100. In fact, the toner cartridges for the thing costs more than the printer did.

Be patient, sheeple - the price will come down in a few years and everyone will be able to own their own desktop model. Until then, PLEASE quit your incessant, luddite whining.

Patience, Luke

Yes, it will indeed create a revolution in product creation. And by default, in physical distribution and relative power. Just takes a few iterations, like anything else. Patience.