3D printing technology is mature, and on the verge of a radical change in the rules for what, how and where everything is made by the industry literally come home.
How does 3D printing
Let's say you're an engineer. You have created a design of a bridge with your CAD software, and you wonder how it will be up in life. There was a time where you have to cut and glue and paint your own prototypes, but with a 3D printer, you simply click a button and wait.
An inkjet image, not only moves horizontally but also vertically. The 3D printer builds layer after layer of, for example, plaster dust and combines it with a laser or tiny drops of glue. As the object takes shape, and after a few hours you have even a prototype.
3D printing occur in all parts of production
Engineers and architects are 3D printing prototyping for ten years already, but now starting to work with metal, and the final print. Medical companies are medical implants printing with features very similar to the bone, EADS plane printing operations in Europe, with titanium powder fused together by lasers, and dental crowns printing tailored to the patient. 3D printers create lampshades, race car parts, personalized football, customized batteries and cell phones. Peter Schmidt at MIT has even printed a grandfather clock that works.
Shapeways you can upload your own designs for their websites, where they print your product and send it to you.
How does 3D printing will transform society in the next 15 years
Wood Army consultants predict that delivery times for most 3D printers will fall to 80% over the next five years alone. Prices are falling dramatically each year, and a typical 3D printer now costs less than a laser printer did in 1985.
We will see a wave of new products, such as cost and risk of producing a working prototype is negligible. In other words, in the not-so-distant future we will all be able to quickly and cost of prototyping our ideas, without having to sell thousands of units of the original investment back.
With fixed costs are insignificant, we perform a new era where scale does not matter, because a mass produced product, not what is popular. Adaptation will play an important role in future production, why would you wear the same gloves as thousands of others if you could make your own glove design and print at home?
Anything can happen and we learn how 3D printing with a variety of materials. You will be able to buy a bike online to adapt, to retrieve and produce 3D on your local printer.
Factories conventional machines will increasingly be replaced by large 3D printers that everything they prayed around the clock, unattended bind significantly less money in commodities (up to 90% less) and can produce tooling costs. Already, R & D teams from around the world flirts with the idea of additive manufacturing complete cars from scratch in large 3D printers. In theory there is no limit to the size of a 3D printer, apart from size of printer.
3D printers have a large volume of applications we can not begin to imagine today. Eventually, prices have fallen enough to each city and town to the public 3D designers, and some years later, each house. Buy, download and print what you need. This will drastically reduce the price of a ton of products that do many of which do not exist.
Without a doubt, a memorable decentralization of the manufacturing sector, followed by increasing production from the factory and move into the house.
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