[3dpguy]

Within this century, an average middle-class person may be able to afford a machine that could print things at home that they would want to wear or use. Today that person could make a crappy shoe in low-cost FDM machine and put shoelaces in it, but a pair of uncomfortable sandals is not the same as a nice pair of running shoes. To print consumer goods like that, you would need not only the automation and technology that could fit in a small spot in the home, but you would need raw materials that the machine could use, and probably there would need to be advances in chemistry, etc. Baking is different, though. Affordable 3D printing in a home kitchen should be much sooner, as that tech is already here.

So, if the immediate future is not having printers in the home to make any product, where would those be?

UPS moved boldly recently and got into 3D printing: https://www.theupsstore.com/print/3d-printing

I like what they are trying to do, but it doesn't work like that. The typical customer doesn't have the experience or resources available to design a part to be printed correctly, and then after that for the part to be finished as it should be to meet the specifications they've defined.

The immediate future is really all about the manufacturing companies that know 3D/additive and have the money and experience to blend those technologies with other manufacturing technologies in different niches. One company won't be able to produce cakes, shoes, and rocket parts anytime soon. But one company could produce satellite parts along with the parts for the printers and other factory equipment to make the cakes and shoes; another might just print the cake, another might print the shoe, but not all the parts of the shoe. That all happens today. Later, maybe a manufacturing company could print a whole satellite, a whole shoe, and print a cake and ship it without any human intervention.

[rebootthesystem]

A number of years ago I read a very interesting book titled "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition". Despite the title this is a forward looking book exploring ideas surrounding applications of nanotechnology. The author talks about refrigerators that can print perfectly marbleized artificial beef and, at the other extreme, downloading your brain into a robot for telepresence and space travel.

3D printing, taken to the extreme of piling molecules on top of each other, could fundamentally change the way we make things.

In today's reality I am looking for opportunities to push the envelope. This could mean everything and anything from better hardware to better services. A few interesting ideas have come forward. Trying to filter through them now.