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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]

Dunno if this has been posted or not here, but either way:

http://hackaday.com/2013/05/06/the-first-3d-printed-gun-has-been-fired-and-i-dont-care/

[Scoops Novel]

Dunno if this has been posted or not here, but either way:

http://hackaday.com/2013/05/06/the-first-3d-printed-gun-has-been-fired-and-i-dont-care/

The title in only relevant in-so-far as the inevitable misunderstandings and whinings about it's immediate relevance. Otherwise, it could easily become a problem, which he notes, and to be honest he might as well have focused on that.

[Antioch]

The fact is that a lot of the things shown by 3d printing could already be done by conventional computer aided manufacturing(CAM) machines. It is basically the same procedure for the operator, you load a digital model, set some parameters and the CAM machine mills the object out of the base material with little skill required and hobby kits for those machines also exist. In most cases for a significantly lower cost and with much better material qualities than available with 3d printing. It has even been possible to create gun parts that way for years. The strength of 3d printing lies in the increase in freedom of the possible shapes possible (for example interior cavities) and the possibility to create moving parts without assembly. So while it is definitely a useful development, it is in no way the miracle most people make it out to be.

[forsaken1111]

I think the real point here is that if you wanted a weapon, be it a gun or knife or otherwise, no legislation or restriction is going to stop you. Sure this makes it 'easier' and there is a lot of fearmongering about 'oh noez now you can download gunz!!' but really you could make a gun with a few inexpensive parts from a hardware store that would fire at least once, and you can find plans for THAT on the internet already. Stuff like that has been around for years. I did a quick search and found two sets of plans for single shot 'guns' which use no expensive parts at all. There are even several videos about how to do it, so you can follow along.

TL;DR - Nothing has changed. You're no less safe than you were yesterday.

[misko27]

I think the real point here is that if you wanted a weapon, be it a gun or knife or otherwise, no legislation or restriction is going to stop you. Sure this makes it 'easier' and there is a lot of fearmongering about 'oh noez now you can download gunz!!' but really you could make a gun with a few inexpensive parts from a hardware store that would fire at least once, and you can find plans for THAT on the internet already. Stuff like that has been around for years. I did a quick search and found two sets of plans for single shot 'guns' which use no expensive parts at all. There are even several videos about how to do it, so you can follow along.

TL;DR - Nothing has changed. You're no less safe than you were yesterday.

Hey guess what? Let us say, hypothetically, I wanted to commit suicide(not so hypothetical). If I want to try, for a fact, I have exactly 1 chance. If I fail, my life gets even worse as I am confined to a facility and lose the ability to kill myself, as well as any amount of other damages. I want to make god-damned sure. Anyone else, guess what? There are hundreds of gun murders a day. Or other violent crime. A single bullet? Can do all of jack shit if you miss. And god forbid someone has a real gun, and your self-made thing doesn't work. People who do bad things with guns, are not all lunatics. They think. They don't want to get caught. No one wants to be holding a god-damned defective gun at a crime scene, whether the murder of some else or yourself.


If I, growing up, lived in a household where I could have accessed this technology, I personally would not be typing right now. And no one could have stopped me.


TL;DR not everyone puts their gun-related crimes to chance. Which is to say, NO ONE. Even Jared Loughner made sure to have back-ups. No one on the face of the earth has a use for a single-use gun, which is exactly why they are legal. This, gives, reliability.  To a person that may or may not commit a crime, that can make all the difference.

[LordBucket]

I think this is the kind of thing that sooner or later people will simply have to accept. With knowledge and power comes the ability to do. As technological capability increases, the capacity to do increases. There isn't really any way around that other than keeping people ignorant.

Right now your neighbor has the power to destroy your house by driving their car through the front door. Hundreds of people every day have the power to kill you in any number of ways: driving over you in a parking lot. Slashing your throat with a butter knife. Walking up behind you and ripping out your throat. Anyone with a credit card and a few thousand dollars can mail order uranium and tannerite and build a radioactive dirty bomb. Drano can kill you. Bleach and ammonia from your local grocery store can be mixed to produce chlorine gas.

I don't see a lot of reason to worry about yet another way for people to kill each other falling into the hands of the common man.

god forbid someone has a real gun

No one on the face of the earth has a use for a single-use gun, which is exactly why they are legal.

I'm not sure what part of the world you live in, but here in the US, "real guns" are legal, and dozens of millions of people have them. In fact, apparently there are almost as many guns as people in the US.

Why are we worrying about 3d printing?

[Scoops Novel]

Traceability. It boils down to ways of killing people without repercussions, usually.

[misko27]

I think this is the kind of thing that sooner or later people will simply have to accept. With knowledge and power comes the ability to do. As technological capability increases, the capacity to do increases. There isn't really any way around that other than keeping people ignorant.

Right now your neighbor has the power to destroy your house by driving their car through the front door. Hundreds of people every day have the power to kill you in any number of ways: driving over you in a parking lot. Slashing your throat with a butter knife. Walking up behind you and ripping out your throat. Anyone with a credit card and a few thousand dollars can mail order uranium and tannerite and build a radioactive dirty bomb. Drano can kill you. Bleach and ammonia from your local grocery store can be mixed to produce chlorine gas.

I don't see a lot of reason to worry about yet another way for people to kill each other falling into the hands of the common man.

god forbid someone has a real gun

No one on the face of the earth has a use for a single-use gun, which is exactly why they are legal.

I'm not sure what part of the world you live in, but here in the US, "real guns" are legal, and dozens of millions of people have them. In fact, apparently there are almost as many guns as people in the US.

Why are we worrying about 3d printing?

That is exactly the point. Everyone has real guns. A fake gun is useless. Now, the thing is people spend money on those guns. They are tracked, at least in theory. There is a paper trail.


3d guns would be plastic, untraceable, un-registerable, and would pass through metal detectors. This is why.

EDIT: And I would either live in America, or Serbia, both places fond of guns (although Serbs may just be fond of shooting...).

[Scelly9]

But the bullets don't pass through metal detectors, so what's the point?

[Lagslayer]

There are ways of detecting solid objects that are not made of metal.

As far as registration goes, that's a bit more difficult if they become easily manufactured by anyone. But that's a can of worms that probably belongs in another thread.

[Scelly9]

As far as registration goes, that's a bit more difficult if they become easily manufactured by anyone. But that's a can of worms that probably belongs in another thread.

But you can do it on a CNC, a lot better. Nothing has changed.

[kingfisher1112]

As far as registration goes, that's a bit more difficult if they become easily manufactured by anyone. But that's a can of worms that probably belongs in another thread.

But you can do it on a CNC, a lot better. Nothing has changed.

Or make a fully Auto Sten in your garage for 200$ using plans on the Internet.

[Kogan Loloklam]

3D printing... To explain what it means is impossible. I can't even fully get my head around it.

3D printing is the future revolution, and I mean that figuratively as well as Literally. Nations will topple because of this technology. Not today, tomorrow, or the mear future, but within our lifetime. Today 3D printing is like the old computers. Apple IICs, maybe 486s. Antiques that have little in common with what is to be.

To understand what I am saying, realize that I am currently composing this on a device smaller than my hand over 1500 miles from home, in the middle of nowhere, and this isn't even a great feat anymore!

3D printing...
To print an object you need the printer of the right detail to work in the tolerances you need, appropiate materials in the right format, power for the printer, and instructions for the printer.

Now a 3d printer is an object that can be printed. A solar cell is also a printable object. If you can design a 3d printer that can reliably reproduce itself with the same tolerances, you can create a self-replicating manufactory that is only limited by materials. That means little for us at first. It will slowly toss manufacturing on its head, shifting us to more materials processing and less fabrication. It won't shut the smart ones down as materials won't be exact replacements and people will want choices. Many things that are currently artificially restricted like guns and smartphones will be accessible to anyone. In the US you would see very few effects of that, as well as most of the developed world at first. Heck, it might not even catch on that great here, but...

There are places in this world rich in resources but poor in finances. This is where 3d printing changes the world. The technology trickles out of the first world, and these poor nations suddenly can jump up to our quality of life technologywise overnight. Nobody can hold entire groups back, and no place is too remote to have modern technology.

You might sputter about any number of technologies that cannot be 3d printed, but it is all an engineering problem then. one that once that can do flag turns from f to t on whatever item you name, becomes impossible to flip back.

So, two things happen. One, labor prices change globally. Two, material costs rise dramatically. Where it has to be imported, it becomes exponentially, as resource producers consume more of their own product.

What does that mean? I don't really know. Its much more effect than unregulated firearms though.

If you want to be well off in the future though, find a flexible resource extraction company that works locally and invest big in them.

[Cheringe]

Here's your printer that prints printers: http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

[SalmonGod]

Can't believe I've missed this thread until now.  I'm sure I'm not saying anything new, but this is the way I see it.

The real revolution of 3d printing will be a complete obliteration of the traditional producer-consumer economic relationship. 

The technology is in its infancy.  It's not consumer friendly, and is still mostly designed exclusively for plastic.  All that will change before long.

And once it has, large industries will be made obsolete.  There will only be a few things that people will not be able to easily produce for themselves, given the blueprints:  things that require highly specialized/rare materials and organics.  Complexity will prevent many things from being printed for a long time, but that is a barrier that will continually recede until it eventually disappears.  For anything else, it will be cheaper and more convenient for anyone to buy materials and blueprints, and I'm sure you already realize many will see purchasing blueprints as optional.

Our daily lives are completely built around these traditional producer-consumer relationships.  We go to work for businesses that specialize in making certain things.  We get paid when people buy those things so that we can go out and buy other things.  This is going to go through some pretty drastic changes, and a lot of powerful people are not going to like it and are going to do everything they can to fuck it up.  I have no idea how it's going to play out.

And I'm not suggesting any kind of utopia.  Do not direct that word at me.  I'm also not suggesting that at some point it will be like bam revolution!  It will be much like the internet.  The internet has and continues to revolutionize our lives in many ways, which are often not obvious to us until we take a look at life 10 years previously.  It's also been under increasingly severe attack by entrenched interests that began almost as soon as participation became widespread.