3D printing and some thoughts

Rob Keeble

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I put this post in off topic given this is going to be some rambling as to my thoughts as i begin to experience and think about the 3d printing revolution first hand.

Feel free to join the debate.

So in volume terms, my product development life has always been in niche market products.
Niche has traditionally meant higher gross margin. But also comes with higher price tag to create and produce. Its not a linear function, in the case of these costs but in the mass market volume of sales helps dilute and recover development cost significantly.

So what's the relevance, well i think back and many times in the design of a solution, where a part was to be plastic, there was a significant constraint we imposed upon ourselves with regards to the parts manufacturability.

Example
The tooling complexity and cost that could be carried by a product say like a disposable razor tool is dramatically different to a widget for say a Railway ticket office dedicated ticket issuing machine.
So where if one was lucky the demand is in the 10's of thousands, in the other case the demand potential is in the millions.

The result often was a less than ideal design solution.

Then i consider just how the price of machinery and tooling has dropped in my life thus far and i honestly think that there may be merits in companies in niche markets, not bothering with tooling and injection molding but simply having a large number of 3D printers in production.

Solutions can then be evolved and more complex and given tooling costs versus product life cycle, one tool would pay for an awful large quantity of pretty decent 3D printers.

My thoughts go to the number of designers that unknowingly have been given birth to by merely having acquired a 3D printer and now learnt to design widgets in a 3D cad package and create something.

Not long ago this was and still is somewhat in the realm of tertiary education. Now its beginning at home at young age without the constraints of formal education.

So how does a design, part or idea, go from one off to mainstream ?

In the past the old adage "money makes money" is pretty true.

Just think of the "as seen on tv products" that have a great deal of initial capital put into them to kinda force them into the market.

But today, one can "test market" your idea whether niche or mainstream potential through exercises like say kickstarter albeit that the demographics that visit and support a site like that do not necessary reflect the market for the creation.

Crowd sourcing money is way easier than its been to raise venture capital.

So the barriers to being able to create and bring to market have dramatically come down making investing in new product design through traditional routes all the more risky.

What does strike me is nothing will supplant the ultimate skill of creativity.

Without the idea, there is nothing.

So is the niche a thing of the past for some products. When people can pretty readily create their own custom solution, will there be a need for a manufactured one? How will that manufactured one be produced? Marketed?
Is that not already happening with the likes of an etsy site or ebay or buy local campaign.
Simply consider a site like Ponoko. Or even Thiniverse where you can secure a price for someone to print something you see there on your behalf.

What then will end up being tooled.
Only mass market parts for products?

For sure there are some engineering plastics which 3D printing has a ways to go to emulate and produce. But lets keep in mind the industry is growing in leaps and bounds and barriers are coming down.

Is it out of the question to "crowd source " production of a larger quantity of parts say 1000 at a time through thingiverse?

Real interesting events at play here. More later , got a meeting to attend.
 
I for one am excited about the idea of those that wouldn't traditionally be able to design and build something, being able to put an idea into production. Many great ideas come from someone that has no clue how things work physically or mechanically, that drives collaboration with those that can.

I don't think, a niche market will go away, there are too many folks that just want something and are willing to pay for it. Those of us that can, do. Those that can't, want or will pay for it.

To address the thought about crowd sourcing production of parts.

Given everything is equal, yes it is possible. Well, that comes down to what the expectation of quality is. If everyone had an Ultimaker printer, was supplied raw material from the same manufacturer, had controlled environments of 75* F (as an example), and all held their tongues just right, quality would be very high.

Realistically, that isn't the case. Some folks have printers of high quality, but many are not; Filaments sit on the shelf in uncontrolled environments and age or come from a variety of sources with varying qualities; and some folks have enclosures to prevent warpage of prints and some folks are printing in the open air in winter weather.

Now I realize in the manufacturing world, if quality is bad from one manufacturer, you simply send it back or find another vendor. You could implement a review system of those that participate and only use the best with good reviews going forward. :dunno:
 
Rob if your good at what you do you will always be in demand. The old ways of craftsmanship survive through a hand-me-down mentality and the sought after trade is handed down through generations of learned appreciation for quality. Other then that 95% of the market who see quality is IKEA brainwashed generation. I kind of follow the trends by what I see coming into the shop. The amount of educating the novice furniture buyer.
 
3d printing is coming, IMHO. Today, I would say we are still at the early stages, as we once were with computers (the Sinclair, 8088 thread).
I believe we have another thread here, about Thingverse (open source/crowdsourcing), as we WILL have issues with things like trademarks/patents, etc. (buy one part, scan/copy it and print as many as you need), but those issues will come up more as materials, and durability improve. (the plastics used in printing, or future materials, like rubber of some type, or when metal printing, becomes affordable to home users). I can see mechanical things (from cars to those old washers/dryers), being more repairable, and eventually (decades later), complete circuits to repair things (requires printing of different materials together, as well as finding open source code to do the software aspect)), but I think that is probably closer to 75 years away.

I have already mentioned, old mechanical things I could print parts for, that I could no longer get. But I could also print older patterned tools, from long loved, out of business companies (Bonney pattern wrenches, for example), that I expect you would see out there, competing with current market stuff, as that market will exist, but be smaller then it is now.
 
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