[chubbard]

Every point he makes is absolutely correct, and I think comparing them to computers as a rising technology is apples to oranges. For one computers made most of its improvements exponentially because the number of transistors doubled every 18 months. 3D printers don't have an equivalent part, like the transistor, that just simply scaling up makes things perform better. The things holding back are outlined in his article: limited choice of materials, lower quality of the part, slow print times, high cost for mass producing, inability to mass produce, etc. All of this will improve with time, but it won't be on the same time scale as computers.

Now there are somethings I don't think he discussed that change manufacturing because it requires imagining a different way of working. These are the more transformative changes that might have no previous equivalent to compare them to.

For example, the ability to have a de-centralized, agile work force. My wife worked for a company where the M.E. were in the states, but software teams were in Europe. They were constantly sending manufactured parts with people as they physically traveled between offices. It was far cheaper to do this than ship the boards and cases of manufactured products to the team. However, with a 3D printer they could email the CAD drawing to the other office and in a day they could print it out. This is a big change in how fast things could be turned around, and save $1000's of dollars, allowing them to iterate faster.

Another change is 3D printing molds for doing injection molding. Some rapid prototyping shops already do this today. Creating the molds is time consuming, but 3D printing gives you faster turn around. And also more complex molds. This plays to 3D printings strengths low cost for low volume one offs. The quality of the part could be a problem, but hopefully that will improve with time.

I agree with what the author said, but I see the real limit right now is our own imagination for how 3D printers enable us to do new things we can't do now. This is where I see 3D printers are like computers as making something that was impossible before possible. These are much harder to predict. In a way it wasn't just computers that transformed us as much as the internet. Maybe there a companion technology that changes much of these assumptions made.

If we find a problem that 3D printers do better than anything else some of his assumptions could really change. For example, his assessment of 3D printers in homes right now is 100% accurate, but there might be some application we didn't see today for which 3D printers push into the home without significant changes to technology.

[krschultz]

The problem with 'doing things that you can only do on a 3D printer' is that you have locked yourself into a 3D printer.

My plan as a hardware entrepreneur would be to 3D print prototypes and MVPs, maybe even the first production run. Then transition to prototype molds or CNC machining with a lot of setup/teardown. Finally you go with full blown steel molds, dedicated machines, fixtures, etc.

If you design for for only 3D printing, you can't scale past 3D printing.

[chubbard]

But that can be said for any basis of any tool or technology. Your use of CNC matching creates a dependency on that tool, and it's advantages and disadvantages. You've locked yourself into that tool if you don't want to change the way you work. A shift to any other tool will come with modifications to your work, and I don't think that is unique to 3D printers.

[graeham]

Thanks for your thoughts, you brought up a few points I hadn't thought of. I haven't worked in a international corporate environment but the collaboration ability is an interesting advantage. Printed injection molds are also interesting. I had a project that involved this but it ended up getting shelved before this step so I don't have much original or personal commentary on it.

I am hesitant on the argument of getting excited about 3D printing for as-of-yet unthought of uses. Its a fine argument for science exploring but if we are imagining the future or if I were an investor in 3D printers, a more concrete vision of how A becomes B is needed.

[starky]

Very fast turn around, low quantity molds (~25 parts) is one of the few extremely promising possibilities for rapid prototyping. For speed you just can't beat the speed that you can get with this method, you can have fully functional parts in your hand a week after sending the model. You can turn around different hardnesses and colours in 2 days. I've used it, and it is a fantastic resource for experimentation with a part.

[chubbard]

Everyone's comfort level of accepting new technology is graded on a spectrum. 3D printing is probably at the beginning of the early adopters/innovator stage. The people in this stage have to invision what jobs 3D printing can be applied to and test those ideas in the market place. I think we see that taking shape with companies going public, and other rapid prototyping companies adopting 3D printing and combing it with injection molds, etc. The economics of these ideas and the ideas themselves are being tested with the manufacturing community. These ideas have to cross the chasm between innovators and majority adopters/pragmatists before real adoption will start, and it has to do it on several verticals like: consumer, manufacturers, etc. Each crossing of the chasm will be different in each vertical. I think right now 3D printing has much more promise in crossing the chasm with manufacturing over say consumer, but that could changed depending on the innovators finding applications of it.