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Just Slightly Ahead of Our Time
Posted by
michael
on Mon Feb 12, 2001 05:56 AM
from the program-the-replicators dept.
from the program-the-replicators dept.
jameshowison writes: "We're doing a presentation at the O'Reilly P2P conference next week on what happens when you merge the technologies of P2P with those of 3D printers or 'Fabbers'. If you thought the record companies were pissed off, wait till manufacturers realise that P2P will affect them too!" Yum, tasty wheat.
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Just Slightly Ahead of Our Time
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Fabbers (Score:3)
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Re:Been there, done that (Score:3)
You're right of course. The precise material properties are tremendously important. Even if chemical composition is the same, yield strength of plate metal depends upon roll schedule, anneal time etc. However, these problems are not as insurmountable as all that. With RP manafacturing technology, you can actually control the precise macro-structure of the material,eg create structures with custom sized bubbles in a regular pattern, and with some processes you can vary the microstructure too by adjusting time between ejection of bubble to control anneal time precisely or you could control alloy composition for every different cubic gram of material. This stuff will be controllable at a level that traditional processes can only dream about.
As the technology gets better RP manafucturing processes will be able to build structures far lighter and stronger, with desired resonance frequencies and all sorts of other cool exotic shit. It's not there yet, but give it 10 years, maybe 20... the technology will improve.
Been there, done that (Score:4)
It was dead fun working at 3dsystems though. I wrote a translator so I could grab cool looking VRML models off the net and print them out as solid objects. As far as I know, I was the first person to do this. Fun to come to work in the morning and have a vat full of models of the Enterprise waiting for you.
Manafacturers don't have to hang up their boots just yet though. The current machines generally print in a single material, plastic, wax, or some such. It will be a while before you go to the mechanic and he prints out a new transmission instead of ordering one from Ford. However already, you can create a cast and injection mold a small run of parts, accuracy is around 1/1000 of an inch on the better machines. Currently takes around 10 hours of so for a 10 inch cubed model.
However, the technology will improve. An auto-parts company *will* download the part instead of ordering it. Eventually manafacturing will be an information business too. This won't do humanity a blind bit of good until we move over to a post capitalist society though. Capitalism is a good mechansim for efficient distribution of scarce resources but when wealth is in the form of information, capitalism only works by enforcing false scarcity on the information.
"Desktop Manufacturing" (Score:4)
I'd come to pretty much the same conclusions over the last few months. I've been talking to engineer friends about the machines that sinter metal powders with lasers, the UV-sensitive polymers, and the starch bubble-jet printer, and the possible combination of them with the various plastic electronics components still being developed.
I applied Moores Law (probably not directly relevant, but a good bechmark nonetheless) to the current state-of-the-art, which is a washing machine sized device that can sinter plastic powder. A place here in town will take your CAD files and return a plastic part for about US$180 a pop.
I calculated we'll have microwave-sized 'fabbers' as a common household appliance in a little less than 15 years.
That means us early apopters will have expensive 'hobby' kits in just less than ten.
The main action will remain in commercial prototyping up until then. It will probably be a common commercial practise in about five years.
Right now the only users are the commercial and educational 'early-adopters' with specific needs that are filled by the fairly primitive tech we have now. Automated milling machines are currently a far superior tech if you want to do metal, for example.
Of course, the very existence of these machines is likely to push the curve forward by an unpredictable amount.
Just consider: fifteen years from now, well look back on all those jokes about ordering things over the internet, ("how do you fit it down the wires! Ha, ha!") and not get it.
The main obstacles are as follows:
* Sintering (melting powders together) has precision limits caused by heat transfer in the material.
* Light-sensitive polymers are still rather nasty chemicals. They're also quite brittle.
* Plastic electronics need to become available in dye/powder form. This will take a while. (And they will never beat silicon for high-performance tasks)
* You need infrastructure to ship the raw materials. They don't just magically materialize in the print-head, you know.
* Recycling all these things is going to become an issue.
But, yes. 'Fabbers' are another great step down the path. Open Hardware, here we come. (And the advantage is, it's easier to design a plastic toy than your average piece of software)
If you want a good historical analogy, you can't go past printing. From Gutenberg, to desktop publishing, to the web.
Can't wait.
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:3)
Many products are actually made from a trivial variety of materials. Most toys are made of plastic, and many toys don't really have many moving parts. For example, action figures. In fact, I think action figures would be especially vulnerable because a great deal of their cost is from movie industry royalty markup.
The technology will improve and get cheaper. I think at various steps along the curve, there will be new sets of things it makes economic sense to manufacture at home.
At some point, the technology will be good enough and cheap enough that you can fabricate fabricators. Prehaps, at first, this will result in a sort of analog degredation effect like you see with tapes, but eventually, it'll make more sense to get a fabricator from your neighbor than from the factory.
I would actually guess that the real overhead in many types of manufacturing comes from marketing and distribution (just like with music). Both of those costs would become unrecoverable with fabricator technology.
In short, I think you're being shortsighted. :-)
Wow someone sees the light! (Score:3)
Chaos Erupts (Score:3)
I can see the headlines now:
Neal Stephenson Sues Fabber Industry For Prior Art
Then the flash cartons:
Neal Stephenson says Fabbers Bad!
Then the lawsuit:
Neal Stephenson sues Fabster for anonymous digital distribution of "A Young Lady's Primer"
-BlueLines
Re:Tea...Earl Grey..Hot. (Score:3)
Yes, though, holgraphic image displays do have interesting similarities, but so do 3d video cards.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:4)
However, the technology will improve. An auto-parts company *will* download the part instead of ordering it. Eventually manafacturing will be an information business too.
Cool that you wrote the stuff. That's gotta be some pretty cool code. However, manufacturing will probably not make that kind of switch *ANY* time soon.
Manufactured parts come in a variety of materials formed in a variety of ways. Not all parts can be built in any one specific way - not because of the cost - but because of the material structure, the stresses which the material will experience, and so on. Casting is cool for engine blocks, but I would hate to see it used for body panels.
Different parts not only have different thicknesses of materials, but different structural makeups. Pressing a metal weakens and strengthens it vastly different from stamping, forging, or casting. Sheet alumininum will respond quite differently to outside forces than say, a part spun from aluminum bar stock.
I guess, that plastic parts have a better chance of being usefully replicated, but traditionally the processes used (injection blow molding, rotational molding, extrusions, and so on) are usually used to produce the original product because it is simple, easy and quick. Ten hours to build a shampoo bottle, or a half a dozen legos is unacceptable when the manufacturing process for producing them turns out hundreds or thousands in that amount of time.
While I agree, there will be an increased role of these prototype modelers in the coming decade, the replicators from star trek are - well - not. This story is FUD.
Edible? (Score:3)
Doughnuts for all!
Or, better yet, little edible figurines of Metallica!
"Forbidden doughnut..." --Homer Simpson
I think you are thinking too small (Score:4)
What we are really talking about here is changing every kind of property into intellectual property. Once this can be done at the molecular or atomic level, then you can make gold, heroin, a ferrari, or any other desirable item out of your garbage, mud, sewage, etc. It would render things like recycling completely obsolete. It would also render the ownership, buying and selling of material goods completely obsolete. Every electron, proton, and neutron would be worth the same amount because all would have the same utility.
I think you are also missing the biological implications. Today, when we want to fix a problem with your body, we have to first understand the problem, then coax your body into healing it with its immune system or with chemical help. But if we could just move your molecules around, we could just take a "snapshot" of you when you were a healthy 18 year old, and then, years later, rearrange your decrepit 85 year old body, except the brain, to the original configuration. This would be much more dramatic than cloning. You could duplicate or modify yourself with great flexibility, and would not have to wait for the product to "grow up" - while we don't understand certain mysteries of life, I bet a bunch of electrons, protons, and neutrons configured just like me would be, well, just like me. PEOPLE might ultimately be transformed into intellectual property.
There's also the military angle. Those who read Ender's Game may remember the "Molecular Detachment Device", which could undo molecular bonds. Just like you could turn a pile of garbage into a person or a tank, you could turn a tank or a person (or a country) into a pile of garbage. Perhaps the analogy is really Calvin & Hobbes's transmogrifyer. Of course, "they" could just turn their pile of garbage right back into a tank, and this time also turn YOU into extra missiles for them to use, so this would quickly spin completely out of control.
Of course, the ability to do this at the atomic level is very far from the fabbers we are talking about. I doubt it will come any time soon.
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:3)
Consider a common car engine with the higher and higher temperatures and pressures neede for fuel efficiency. There are many curved parts made to high tolerances. Never mind little details like gasoline and oil, and heat removal issues.
The short answer is that there are places where it can be used, but it is not ready for prime time at all under these conditions.
In this case, if the manufacturers could have saved money or improved performance via a plastic engine, they would have. Instead, the future is more in the direction of ceramics in this high performance field.
Heck, - would you want a plastic or a metal heat sink for your overclocked CPU?
Re:Very much ahead of our time. (Score:3)
I knew you were a liar right after that... no
;)
Very much ahead of our time. (Score:5)
Fabricators are slow. Very slow.
There's a limited range of materials you can use in them - the idea of a Rolex fab mentioned in the article is a fairy tale. The fabricator can't just magically produce gold and diamonds and incorporate them into a shiny new replica Rolex Oyster. Fabricators just aren't designed for making luxury goods like this, or for making anything which requires a non-trivial variety of materials.
Basic economics tells you that fabricators aren't a threat to the manufacturing industry. Real manufacturers benefit hugely from economies of scale, allowing them to buy raw materials in bulk and use faster and more efficient machinery. By trying to make things yourself, you lose these economies of scale. It wouldn't be worth your while trying to cheat Bic out of a few pence by trying to make your own ballpoint pens. The industrial revolution happened for a good reason!
Items produced by a fabricator don't have the durability of properly manufactured items.
There are countless other reasons why fabricator technology isn't a threat to manufacturing industry. This presentation is just jumping on the peer to peer bandwagon, but it really isn't realistic. Only when we have Star Trek-esque replicator technology will this sort of thing approach viability, but I am sure that replicators will also prove to be financially unviable.
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no more drug control (Score:3)
If we as a society ever hope to deal with the drug problem, it's clear prohobition will have to go. We might as well start preparing people now for the responsibility of dealing with drugs rather than waiting for the mass flooding of the market that will occur with "the diamond age."
Not very convincing reasons (Score:5)
Computers used to be slow too.
"There's a limited range of materials you can use in them..."
Most consumer goods are made of a limited range of materials as well. Nearly all children's toys, for example, are plastic and/or wood. Besides, why couldn't I fab myself a VCR minus those parts that need to be "handmade" and then install those myself later?
"Fabricators just aren't designed for..."
Here's your basic flaw. No, fabbers aren't designed for that NOW. But what about 20/50/100/150 years from now?
"By trying to make things yourself, you lose these economies of scale. It wouldn't be worth your while trying to cheat Bic out of a few pence by trying to make your own ballpoint pens."
This reads like FUD from the manufacturing industry, circa 2101. Sure, I might lose economies of scale (although dirt, air, water, wood and sunshine are all pretty cheap--not to mention the fact that I might buy my materials from a co-op or something)--but what do I GAIN? I can make a device that works EXACTLY how I design it. I can download Joe's design for a water heater, tweak some parameters and have my own custom machine that exactly meets my needs. The point of fabbers isn't saving money on pens. It's control over the devices in your life. It's also about opening the field of design (if not manufacturing) to everyone, just like the Internet opened up the fields of music, writing and programming.
"Items produced by a fabricator don't have the durability of properly manufactured items."
This almost solely a function of the materials used--which could easily change in the future.
Honestly, your whole post reads like some intelligent-but-fuddy-duddy from the early 70's explaining why this new-fangled "desktop publishing" won't work. "Sure, a computer and a printer are useful for creating a manuscript--but who wants to read dot-matrix?"
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