05-04-2014, 11:40 PM
Mike Kieran Wrote:With the internet and technology accelerating exponentially, 3D printers will soon replace manufacturing (when's the last time that you saw factories on Star Trek) and many more manufacturers will succumb to closure. While people will argue that last point, just remember that the technology used for a basic calculator took up an entire city block; to the size of a room; to the size of a brick; to the size of a watch (in fact I had a Casio touch screen watch with a calculator on it 30 years ago in 1984); to a free app for smart phones. We are seeing 3D printing in it's infancy. Sci Fi movies refer to them as replicators.
Actually, an episode of the Next Generation specifically refers to a factory in Senegal that makes nanomachines! And there's the five or six shipyards, which are just factories that make starships, that have turned up along the way.
I think 3D printing isn't going to be the revolution people think it is. It will, in broader life, but not hobbies. You're still going to have a whole lot of people that lack the skillset to design the actual model in the first place. Then the machines will probably end up having some sort of license controls so you buy the license to print one boxcar. Basically, you're doing the company a favor! YOU have to provide the materials and YOU have to put wear and tear on the machinery! What will be interesting is the people that do have the skills with CAD that are hobbyists doing garage industry designs to license or contract work. People with the ability to do the design work for one-off things that have virtually no commercial appear will do some very, very interesting things. I could never, in a thousand years, build a model of the Fort Wayne Bridge in Pittsburgh out of strip styrene. I could put a CAD model together if I took a couple days off work and have the printer humming away making truss assemblies for a few weeks while I slept.