Motorola Mobility, a Google company, is building a 3D printed modular phone, and has partnered with 3D Systems for commercial fulfillment. More »
The Captured Dimensions pop-up studio was located in the Smithsonian Castle and featured approximately 80 digital cameras all connected to 3D software. More »
Microsoft expanded their support for 3D printing by launching a Windows 8 app called 3D Builder. It includes a library of objects you can edit and 3D print. More »
3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) announced the availability of the Sense 3D scanner, the first 3D scanner designed for the consumer and optimized for 3D printing. More »
With rumors circling that 3D Systems will be purchased by IBM, the stock soars. We look at why IBM might be interested in the 3D printing giant. More »
Yearly Archives: 2012
Forbes: 3D Printing Will Cause Real Wages to Rise in Global Economy
Will 3D printing be a disruptive change? Sure, but Forbes believes that we may be surprised by the result.
Contributor Tim Worstall poses an interesting counterpoint to some common conclusions about the impact of 3D printing on the global labor market.
First, Mr. Worstall suggests that there will be an experience curve for 3D printing – it will get cheaper over time to produce similar goods.
Which is, as we know, pretty much the way that manufacturing works. Things get designed, dreamt up, and they start out expensive. As we get better at doing whatever it is then prices start to drop: the clearest examples are in the computing and telecoms industries in recent years. Those examples are almost too tedious to recount in fact, they’ve been used so often.
3D printing will go through much the same process and it’s easy enough to see a time in which one has such a printer just as much as one has a paper printer. Need something, call up the part design over the web, pay a buck or two perhaps (and no doubt there will be open sourcers as well) and print out whatever it is that you wanted.
Now the key question is whether this will lead to an elimination in manual labor. As an example, we recently called the impact of 3D printing on the Indian labor market ”mind-boggling” because labor can be reduced dramatically or replaced by additive manufacturing.
But let us go to the extreme and assume that they are cheaper: so much so that manufacturing really does disappear. What does that do to wages? Yup, a fall in the costs of things is equal to, is by definition the equivalent of, a rise in real wages. So if 3D printers do take off it can only be because, by definition, they make us all richer.
Interesting view point, and one that seems to support the belief that 3D printing will be a $5 billion industry by 2020.
Via Forbes.
Factory photo by Just Add Light used under Creative Commons license.
Top 3D Printing Headlines from Last Week: Legs, Bikinis, Disney World
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from May 7 to May 13.
Monday, May 7
- 3D Printed Legs: Giving Amputees the Power of Personal Expression
- Impact of 3D Printing on Indian Labor Market “Mind-Boggling” [Opinion]
Tuesday, May 8
- Stratasys Announces Mojo: Lowest-Price Professional-Grade 3D Printer
- 3D Systems Acquires FreshFiber for 3D Printed Electronics Accessories
Wednesday, May 9
Thursday, May 10
- MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis is 3D Printing’s First Celebrity
- 3D Printed Curves: How the N12 Bikini Fits Your Body Perfectly
Friday, May 11
Happy Mother’s Day: 3D Printed Gifts for Mom
Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms out there! Here are our top picks for 3D printed gifts for Mom.
Our first pick (above) is a customized Appear lamp, featured by i.materialise ($107).
A nice gold-plated Mom pendant featured by Shapeways ($32.99).
#1 Mom pencil holder, featured by Thingiverse (free download).
Elephant Mother and Child, featured by Thingiverse (free download).
Mother statuette, featured by Shapeways ($3.47 and up).
And finally, a cute 3D printing video from MakerBot dedicated to Mom.
Disney World Offers Guests Personalized 3D Printed Star Wars Memories
Disney World is using 3D printing technology to launch a new catchy souvenir for Star Wars Weekends this year.
One of the most memorable scenes from Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back is the moment when Captain Han Solo is frozen in carbonite. Starting May 18, guests at Disney’s Hollywood Studios can relive that memory and bring home a personalized carbonite figurine – with the guest’s likeness on it.
First, state-of-the-art cameras capture a guest’s face from multiple angles. Then, the image is sent to a 3D printer which produces a eight-inch figurine reminiscent of that famous scene in Star Wars.
This should prove to be a pretty popular attraction!
Read more at the Disney Parks blog.
Hat tip to 3dprinter.net for finding the story.
Fab Lab of the Week: Castilleja Girls School in Palo Alto, CA
This week’s featured Fab Lab is the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California. Castilleja is an independent school for girls grades 6-12 in Palo Alto. The Silicon Valley Mercury News published a feature on the school and its Bourn Lab.
The Bourn Lab is part of the FabLab@School program, which was created by Paulo Blikstein, an assistant professor at Stanford who has a similar lab on campus and who started one in Moscow. Blikstein was a master’s student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology around the time a fab lab was created there, he said.
The Bourn Lab has a couple of 3-D printers, a 3-D scanner, a laser-cut printer and other equipment that have enabled one seventh-grade history class, for example, to re-create models of Leonardo da Vinci’s machines. A revolving bridge, an aerial screw, a catapult and other laser-cut wood models of the great inventor’s machines now sit in Castilleja’s library for all to admire.
The equipment for the lab cost about $60,000 and was funded by the school, the Edward E. Ford Foundation and the Doug Bourn memorial fund. Bourn, an engineer at Tesla Motors (TSLA), died in a plane crash in East Palo Alto in 2010 along with two other Tesla employees. Bourn was Castilleja’s robotics mentor.
As part of its partnership with Blikstein, Castilleja also is helping with the cost of another school fab lab, at East Palo Alto Academy, which will open later this year. Blikstein said he’s currently talking with teachers at both schools — he has worked with teachers at East Palo Alto Academy for a while, and some of the school’s students have been using his Stanford fab lab regularly — and envisions having students from the school in East Palo Alto do joint projects with Castilleja students.
Below is a video of students from the class of 2011 working in the Fab Lab.
