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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

[Andrew425]

I don't understand the thought of 3d printing removing normal manufacturing.  If you have to pay for the printer and pay for the components to reach you you're not going to be able to reach the economies of scale that a large manufacturing company can manage. Thus as long as the items are sold for just a slim margin more then it costs you to print it I don't see why more then a significant minority of people will take the time to make it themselves.


As for space flight, why haven't NASA built an agridome in space yet? They have all the power and fertilizer they need. A bunch of vegetables could be grown fairly well.

[forsaken1111]

It will be a long while before 3d printing replaces the manufacture of complex goods. It will be nice for simple mechanical items, replacement parts, etc but nobody will be printing an ipad at any point in the near future.

[SalmonGod]

I don't understand the thought of 3d printing removing normal manufacturing.  If you have to pay for the printer and pay for the components to reach you you're not going to be able to reach the economies of scale that a large manufacturing company can manage. Thus as long as the items are sold for just a slim margin more then it costs you to print it I don't see why more then a significant minority of people will take the time to make it themselves.

The whole point is that mass production will no longer be necessary, and that the technology will eventually reach a point where printing something for oneself will take less time than going to the store to get it yourself.  Just like online distribution has severely damaged physical media markets, because downloading is just so damn convenient.

Yeah, it's going to be a while, but it will happen.  3d printing in 20 years compared to today will be much like the internet today is compared to the internet in the early 90s.

TO be honest, who has the internet effecting? I mean, it has changed tremendously, but it hasn't, moved the world, so to speak.

Yeah, not like it hasn't become a strong force in politics and culture, had a role in revolutions, threatened multiple major industries with extinction, and become something that a majority of the world interacts with daily for countless different purposes, and its role in our lives totally isn't still expanding at a rapid pace.

[Pnx]

First of all we'd need to get past all those little roadblocks that prevent from really being on par with star trek's replicators. We may very well get there some day, but all things considered, I think 20 years is far too short a time frame for that.

Secondly, even if you do get to that point, given how often people actually buy consumer items, I'm not sure that they're going to own their own printer for the purposes of making them. It seems like it's going to be more cost effective for them, to go to a Staples or something and have someone make it for them at a small mark up.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Back in the day, the most radically optimistic predictions for computers said that in a century or so, every university might have a decent one. Some things just blindside us against all accepted reason, and I agree with SalmonGod that 3D printing today and computers in the past appear to be in an intriguingly similar situation.

[Pnx]

Yeah, but for all the technologies we've underestimated, there's been another we've overestimated. Plastic, hot air balloons, and jet engines come to mind in this regard.

[SethCreiyd]

We're good at computers, though.  Fifty years ago we had barely come up with integrated circuits.  The microcomputers of the sixties looked like this and were as tall as a room, with performance that makes the NES look like a quad core in comparison. 

Printing is advancing rapidly as well.  We started out printing plastic toy models, and today we can print out an airway tube and save a baby's life.  We are starting to print cybernetic organs. Who knows what we will be printing in fifty years?

[Pnx]

Oh yeah, the organ thing is definitely a big deal, but only because we had no viable way of making new internal organs before this. That doesn't really apply to consumer items.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Nor does a comsumer need a supercomputer or an experimental AI, but we have those things alongside personal computers. Average people probably won't own medical printers, but that doesn't mean they won't own printers.

[Pnx]

Ok, let's go over this again. Let's say we manage to make a 3D printer that can make pretty much any common item you might need, a laptop, a phone, a desk, a chair, a bunsen burner, whatever. Pretty much anything you need. Thing is I only really see myself using something like this on a very irregular basis. Not every day, probably not even every week.

If that's the case, why would I go to the effort of buying a printer, occasionally maintaining it, stocking myself up with the various printing supplies when I can just go to a nearby outlet and have them make whatever it is I need?

3D printing may well change the consumer market, I'm sure it will eventually, but saying it will completely obliterate it, seems a bit ridiculous to me.

[SalmonGod]

Ok, let's go over this again. Let's say we manage to make a 3D printer that can make pretty much any common item you might need, a laptop, a phone, a desk, a chair, a bunsen burner, whatever. Pretty much anything you need. Thing is I only really see myself using something like this on a very irregular basis. Not every day, probably not even every week.

Most of the things we use computers or the internet for today are not the purposes originally in mind when those things were invented.  I think 3d printers will be a similar thing.  As the technology gets more efficient and flexible, we'll find ourselves using it to solve problems we didn't know we had.

[DWC]

Ok, let's go over this again. Let's say we manage to make a 3D printer that can make pretty much any common item you might need, a laptop, a phone, a desk, a chair, a bunsen burner, whatever. Pretty much anything you need. Thing is I only really see myself using something like this on a very irregular basis. Not every day, probably not even every week.

Most of the things we use computers or the internet for today are not the purposes originally in mind when those things were invented.  I think 3d printers will be a similar thing.  As the technology gets more efficient and flexible, we'll find ourselves using it to solve problems we didn't know we had.

Probably this. I doubt it's going to be revolutionary in that it makes something else obsolete, but rather people will have it as something extra they didn't know they wanted. Like smartphones. Nobody ever needed those awful distractions but they are virtually ubiquitous while virtually nobody wanted a PDA when they were around.

Really, 3d printing has too many limitations to really replace anything. They can only make simple objects and only out of a few kinds of materials. It's not a star trek replicator that is going to spit out a phaser gun if you need it to.

[Scelly9]

Really, 3d printing has too many limitations to really replace anything.

Only at the current time. The tech isn't going to stop developing here.

[DWC]

Really, 3d printing has too many limitations to really replace anything.

Only at the current time. The tech isn't going to stop developing here.

Well that remains to be seen, they said the same thing about virtual reality and flying cars.

[Flying Dice]

Really, 3d printing has too many limitations to really replace anything.

Only at the current time. The tech isn't going to stop developing here.

Well that remains to be seen, they said the same thing about virtual reality and flying cars.

They also said the same thing about personal computers.