Science questions not worth a thread I: I'm a moron!

[peter grimes]

Yet. People said the internet would never take off. Are you perhaps being too dismissive?

Did people seriously say that? I'm skeptical.

I'm not dismissing 3D printing, but I can tell you from first-hand experience that it's not going to wholly supplant current manufacturing techniques. 3D printing currently has very limited applications due to the restrictions of material feedstock. I'm sure chemists and materials science will advance, but some that doesn't mean a complete revolution in manufacturing.

Also, 3D printing is slow. Lathes and milling machines are orders of magnitude faster. That gap is likely to change, but again 3D printing is well-suited to distributed small-batch items.

 

[salty mud]

Virtually every invention had people saying "it won't work." Notable examples include the telephone, the car and even the television.

While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.

-Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube,1926.

So 3D printing may be limited NOW, but don't be so quick to say it can never improve drastically and revolutionise what we have now. 3D printing is slow now, who knows what it could be in ten years. I for one am very excited to see this technology grow.

 

[peter grimes]

So you really think it's going to have a catastrophic effect on manufacturing??

 

[salty mud]

If the technology can be improved, I think it will have major consequences, yes. I see no reason why this technology cannot be improved further as of yet, and if you can use machines to do a job that a human does but faster, cheaper and better, it's a no-brainer.

 

[Cutlass]

3D printing won't replace much of any other manufacturing. It's great for making 1 off items. And prototypes. But it's not a replacement for mass production.

 

[madviking]

...yet

 

[timtofly]

The mass production of 3D printers may do it?

 

[salty mud]

Once we've got 3D printers making 3D printers humans will become obsolete.

 

[Mise]

If making a 1 off item costs 90% less than mass producing an item, why would anyone bother mass producing an item? You have to think big picture. Why is mass production actually valuable? Why do we do it? Because there are economies of scale: you can produce things cheaper if you produce them en mass. But if 3D printing eventually makes things really really cheap to make individually, then you don't need mass production. It's like saying that lightbulbs will never replace oil lamps because lightbulbs don't use oil. The point of oil lamps is to light a room, not to use oil; similarly, the point of mass production is to produce things cheaply, not to produce things en mass. The "mass" part of it is merely the means via which it achieves its goal of producing things cheaply. If 3D printing can make stuff cheaper then there's no point in mass production. You just keep a 3D printer in your house or in an Argos in town and make stuff ad hoc. This is always the way with disruptive technologies: it's because they specifically don't try to replicate the proximate function of existing technologies that they end up usurping those technologies by replicating their ultimate function instead.

 

[salty mud]

So industries could go from factories full of workers and machines to each business having their own 3D printer and just making what they need, when they need it? Revolutionary. The future is here.

 

[Arakhor]

I look forward to GURPS' nanofacs and Star Trek's replicators!

 

[Kyriakos]

Think of it in another way:

If enough people have their own 3d printer, then 'game companies' or other plastic/material object companies, will sell you the 3d model of the object, along with the notation to the printer.
They won't have to produce the object themselves, as long as your printer has enough data to do the exact same

So future lego sets will be some dvd, basically. I suppose they may create special cardridges for 3d printers, to avoid most of the web piracy, but some will be there anyway if the people know how to model in a 3d program and some basic programming for the printer.

 

[Samson]

Think of it in another way:

If enough people have their own 3d printer, then 'game companies' or other plastic/material object companies, will sell you the 3d model of the object, along with the notation to the printer.
They won't have to produce the object themselves, as long as your printer has enough data to do the exact same

So future lego sets will be some dvd, basically. I suppose they may create special cardridges for 3d printers, to avoid most of the web piracy, but some will be there anyway if the people know how to model in a 3d program and some basic programming for the printer.

It is going to be a challenge for IP law to keep up with this world. Currently lego is protected by patent (I think), so no-one can make anything that behaves like lego does. If lego was sold as an instruction set, it would have to be protected by copyright, and I could reverse engineer the instruction set from the end product, and sell my instruction set (or give it away for free). Patent law does not cover things I make for myself and do not sell so the end product cannot be so protected.

Please note I am not an IP lawyer, I could easily be wrong about this interpretation but I am pretty sure there is a problem here.

 

[peter grimes]

The current 3D printing community is rapidly open-source. Nintendo would have a devilishly hard time keeping the file for being uploaded and seeded all over the place.

Take a look at thingverse.

 

[CKS]

Currently lego is protected by patent (I think), so no-one can make anything that behaves like lego does.

_Lots_ of other companies make lego-like bricks. Some of them aren't as nice, but most of them work just fine. They all can be used together.

 

[Samson]

_Lots_ of other companies make lego-like bricks. Some of them aren't as nice, but most of them work just fine. They all can be used together.

Really? I know there are other lego like things, but I thought they could not fit with lego because of IP. I stand corrected, but I think my general point stands.

 

[Kyriakos]

Really? I know there are other lego like things, but I thought they could not fit with lego because of IP. I stand corrected, but I think my general point stands.

Even in the 80s there were other toys in the same style (not sure if they even predated lego sets), for example i recall having toy-castles which i was building using very small brick pieces, and they were not lego.
The main trait of the lego sets were rather the yellow figures Maybe also some degree of 'freedom' to construct different sets with them than the one you had instructions in the box to build up.

 

[timtofly]

Lego sets started shipping in 1965. I also had a set of building bricks in 1971, but they did not "lock" together. They came with plans and it was a house with windows and a functioning door. You could also build an attached garage with a working garage door with panels that moved up into the top of the garage. All the "bricks" were red and the door parts were white. They held together fairly well, but you could not pick it up as a unit, because they held together more loosely than Lego does.

Would not a bigger issue arise if the 3D printer also did scans, and could make perfect replicas and even store them, instead of having to get them from the original source?

 

[peter grimes]

That already exists. Laser scanning bed. Your local makerspace likely has one. At least they do around here.

 

[timtofly]

That already exists. Laser scanning bed. Your local makerspace likely has one. At least they do around here.

Would they scan things that may be construed as infringement rights?