Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Worthless: 3D printing is nothing but a nerd fad that won't leave hobbyist workshops.

6 (3%)

Unimportant: 3D printing will become common but won't be useful for much other than tiny full plastic objects.

8 (4%)

Minor Importance: 3D printing will function as a light industry that will coexist with existing manufacturing methodologies.

43 (21.4%)

Moderate Importance: 3D printing will challenge and slowly replace a large number of existing manufacturing businesses.

104 (51.7%)

Major Importance: 3D printing will completely flip the table on conventional manufacturing and quickly destroy existing business for anything you can make with them.

20 (10%)

Critical: 3D printing will disrupt conventional ideals of work and money so much that they collapse and are replaced in a paradigm shift.

20 (10%)

Total Members Voted: 199

[Rose]

Actually, the current best plastic to use for 3d printers, quality-wise and ease-of-printing-wise, is Poly Lactic Acid, which is not only recyclable, but is also biodegradable. It's pretty much made from sugar (smells really nice when printing)

[forsaken1111]

Actually, the current best plastic to use for 3d printers, quality-wise and ease-of-printing-wise, is Poly Lactic Acid, which is not only recyclable, but is also biodegradable. It's pretty much made from sugar (smells really nice when printing)

How does it hold up to a dishwasher?

[Rose]

Actually, the current best plastic to use for 3d printers, quality-wise and ease-of-printing-wise, is Poly Lactic Acid, which is not only recyclable, but is also biodegradable. It's pretty much made from sugar (smells really nice when printing)

How does it hold up to a dishwasher?

Badly. it softens at 60c

[forsaken1111]

Actually, the current best plastic to use for 3d printers, quality-wise and ease-of-printing-wise, is Poly Lactic Acid, which is not only recyclable, but is also biodegradable. It's pretty much made from sugar (smells really nice when printing)

How does it hold up to a dishwasher?

Badly. it softens at 60c

Hm. So a hot water soak would clean it AND get it ready to be fed back into the machine as feedstock?

[Rose]

Not currently. Printers right now need the plastic to be fed a filament that's at a very exact width, or the print turns to shit. Printers that can be fed just anything are a long way off.

[i2amroy]

The big advantage I think that 3D printing will have over normal manufacturing is the fact that you can send someone to a hostile area (like space!) with a 3D printer and a massive amount of plastic and then have them just build everything that they need, as opposed to trying to cram a bunch of weirdly shaped parts into a storage unit and hope that nothing goes wrong because they only have one copy of each part. Also if you included a machine that could take the old pieces and recycle them back into a format that the printer will accept, then you basically have everything you need to set up a base in a hostile environment without needing to try and predict everything that could happen there for the next 6 months or so.

[Telgin]

I imagine that would be one good application for this sort of technology, at least once it gets a bit more mature.  The limits on complexity, uniformity of the parts by material, and time required to print things are all problems we'll have to overcome before it would easily be applied to that, but I guess that's the entire discussion topic here.

I doubt that 3D printing will replace manufacturing on any scale, at least within my lifespan, but it will definitely have its niches like that.

Darn it, I wish I'd shelled out the cash for one of the cheaper 3D printers now.  I want to do some printing, even if I know the limits of the technology wouldn't let me print out the stuff I really want to be able to print.  That, and you get what you pay for...

[10ebbor10]

The big advantage I think that 3D printing will have over normal manufacturing is the fact that you can send someone to a hostile area (like space!) with a 3D printer and a massive amount of plastic and then have them just build everything that they need, as opposed to trying to cram a bunch of weirdly shaped parts into a storage unit and hope that nothing goes wrong because they only have one copy of each part. Also if you included a machine that could take the old pieces and recycle them back into a format that the printer will accept, then you basically have everything you need to set up a base in a hostile environment without needing to try and predict everything that could happen there for the next 6 months or so.

Then again, the higher the complexity, the larger the chance of possible errors. Also, in space, space is not much of a problem Weight/mass is. It's rather doubtfull that a 3D printer, spare parts for said printer, resources for said printer, a powersource for said printer and a way of installing printed things will come out lighter than just preinstall a secundary whatever might possibly fail.

For larger projects(Like spacestations, or extraterrestial colonies) it'll be usefull, but I don't expect any of those any time soon.

[Rose]

Darn it, I wish I'd shelled out the cash for one of the cheaper 3D printers now.  I want to do some printing, even if I know the limits of the technology wouldn't let me print out the stuff I really want to be able to print.  That, and you get what you pay for...

Not fully true. The quality you get from these printers doesn't vary /that/ much between the cheap ones and the expensive, but the user-friendliness does, as does the speed.

[RedKing]

I put Major Importance, because I think it's going to be one of those "critical mass" type things, much as the personal computer was. Initially they were bash-kits for homebrew enthusiasts. Not terribly useful, but fun to tinker on. Gradually, as the market for them steadily grew to include small businesses and affluent early-adopters, you have companies like Apple, Sinclair and Commodore arise to fill that niche, and you had IBM (an established computer giant) creating them as well.

From that, it follow that some of the high-end printer manufacturers might throw their hat into the ring over the next few years and debut 3D printers.

Expect a confusing morass of conflicting/competing standards, entire cottage industries of secondary suppliers (polylactic acid cartridge refillers, anyone?) and a tangle of compatibility headaches.

And then at some point, it's going to become A Big Deal(TM), and like most tech products you'll wind up with a few big boys, an few open source alternatives, and a growing userbase.



It's the ripple effects that I'm most interested in. When you can print something by downloading a design you like (for a microtransactional fee, like an app) and then choose your color based on the dyes you have available and spit out your own made-to-order what-have-yous.....what happens to the retailing industry? Does everyone just sit around all day toying with CAD programs and designing shit? I'm thinking a bit here of Second Life and how the number one activity for most people there is designing things to sell to other users, for virtual money to use to buy things others people have designed.

And in an economy like that, what happens to the people who simply can't hack it as "the creative class"? Are they stuck being the poor schlep who fills plastic cartridges all day?

[lordcooper]

And in an economy like that, what happens to the people who simply can't hack it as "the creative class"? Are they stuck being the poor schlep who fills plastic cartridges all day?

Arguably a step up from working a retail job.

[RedKing]

But admittedly, a job that could probably be done by a robot.

I suppose there's still fast food. Until they learn a way to 3D print protein/carbohydrate slurry. Then it'll be like a Jack In The Box: just one lonely teenager with a microwave and premade food 3D printer and a tank of "food gel".

Wow, the future is simultaneously awesome and depressing.

[10ebbor10]

But admittedly, a job that could probably be done by a robot.

I suppose there's still fast food. Until they learn a way to 3D print protein/carbohydrate slurry. Then it'll be like a Jack In The Box: just one lonely teenager with a microwave and premade food 3D printer and a tank of "food gel".

Wow, the future is simultaneously awesome and depressing.

We got that one already. I believe the best prototype they got was capable of making a small cookie in 15 minutes, after which all tubes needed to be cleaned.

A fun thing is that it allows you to make food that is technically impossible, at least for now. (Like, steak with ice in it. or something Bad at examples.)

Anyway, with 3d printing and continuing robotization, I foresee a shift in priorities away from industry, and into servicing. Energy and resources are going to become much more important than available labour, for example. Transport might also change.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We're already shifted away from industry and towards servicing.

[10ebbor10]

We're already shifted away from industry and towards servicing.

I meant a continued shift, in that industry might become mostly irrelevant.