I caught the last 2 minutes of Radio4′s Click On programme yesterday (series 7, ep2) and they were talking about the advent of affordable 3D Printers. I only caught a tiny bit of the discussion but it was enough to get my mind going.
3D printing is an area I’ve not bothered thinking about much, seeing it as a Design & Technology issue which is a specialised area I’m not familiar with.
The theme of the radio segment was how costs of this kind of solid object reproduction are tumbling to the point where soon they will be a consumer item.
And then what?
Manufacturing becomes a more accessible industry, they were suggesting, not something limited to organisations with large amounts of capital.
Where does that leave intellectual property around physical objects? They gave the example of a child wanting the latest lego model. Can’t afford it? Go online and see if anyone has pirated the schematics then “print off” your own one.
It was this bit about IPR that really got me. We’re talking more and more about an open culture when it comes to information; well, now objects and data are overlapping in the public domain in a way they haven’t before.
I really love the idea that there could be an open-source version of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. Plastics seem to be the easiest things to replicate at the moment but this article about the RepRap project suggests that electronic components are a possibility (see the RepRap homepage here). If the cleaner itself isn’t a possibility, then what about a hacking community devoted to designing specialised attachments for those hard-to-reach areas that you can print out at home? All Creative Commons licensed, of course.
Imagine printing off an open source laptop, then running Linux on it.
There would be some very interesting economic implications. Manufacturing would face similar issues in the future that are challenging the publishing industry now. As a trivial example, how would Lego differentiate itself from homemade, pirated equivalents? How would they protect their intellectual property? Go down the same, disastrous route as the music industry or something more enlightened?
Are there environmental considerations? Is it more ecological to produce lots of objects on a small scale as and when they are needed (a pull model, rather than push) as a opposed to large-scale manufacturing plants? Will we see warnings on schematics like we see on the bottom of emails nicely asking us not to print out this object unless you have to?
What really tickled me, though, was what the Daily Mail would make of the RepRap project. Imagine: a machine that can replicate itself! Robot monsters that will destroy us all! Run for the hills!
Image: Better Than Bacon – By NC ND – http://www.flickr.com/photos/slurm/1119404732/
2 Comments until now
I actually looked into making a reprap a long time ago (last year?) – but the quality of the items it produces were not really up to what I wanted
I think in the future they could be amazing – but right now, the DPI just isn’t high enough.
I love the way you have gone into the possible problems of these 3d printers. lol. Kids making their own pirate Lego sets. I love it! haha.
Congratulations, Aaron. You are my 150th commenter!!
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It’s weird thinking object resolution in terms of dpi. It’s a bit 2D.
Interesting to think we are on the cusp of another tech wave where definition is going grow and cost is going to plummet. Or will it just pootle along in the background?
I can’t claim credit for the Lego idea. One of the presenters was talking about how much his son wanted a Star Wars Lego General Grevous and he was speculating about what it would be like to be able to pirate one.
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