Category Archives: News
America Will Lead the Future of Manufacturing, China Will Follow
In a fantastic opinion piece by technology entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa, the case is made that America will be the center of manufacturing, not China. This won’t happen through increasing Chinese labor costs or monetary policy, but through American innovation in technology. Specific innovations cited include robotics, AI, 3D printing, and nanotechnology.
Below are Wadhwa’s thoughts on 3D printing:
A type of manufacturing called “additive manufacturing” is now making it possible to cost-effectively “print” products. In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material until you’re left with the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. In other words, the more complex the product you want to create, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.
In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on three-dimensional models — adding materials rather than subtracting them. The ”3D printers” that produce these parts use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials — much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. This allows the creation of objects without any sort of tools or fixtures. The process doesn’t produce any waste material, and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, thanks to laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn’t cost much more than one with text (other than the cost of toner), with 3D printers we can print a sophisticated 3D structure for what it would cost to print something simple.
Three-D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1,000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that, in the next decade, manufacturing will again become a local industry and it will be possible to 3D print electronics and use giant 3D printing scaffolds to print entire buildings. Why would we ship raw materials all the way to China and then ship completed products back to the United States when they can be manufactured more cheaply locally, on demand?
Read the full article at foreignpolicy.com.
American flag photo by Loving Earth used under Creative Commons license.
Vivek Wadhwa photo by BAIA used under Creative Commons license.
Results of First Survey On 3D Printing: Adoption, Education, Services
[Updated for corrections]
The results of the first survey on 3D printing are captured below, courtesy of Statistical Studies of Peer Production. We wanted to highlight the most interesting statistics.
First engagement with 3D printing: The survey asked respondents when they first used 3D printing. The largest concentration was for the year 2011. 2010 and 2012 were close runners up. This suggests that we are at an inflection point for adoption of 3D printing.
Education level: 33.7% of 3D printing users have a 4-year college degree and another 23.5% have an advanced degree. This suggests that the earliest adopters are mainly well-educated people.
Most commonly used 3D printers: The most commonly used 3D printer was RepRap, with MakerBot as the close second.
Usage of 3D printing services: The most-used 3D printing service was Shapeways. Others, like i.materialise and Ponoko, were not commonly used. The largest response to this question was “none”, which suggests that these 3D printing services have a long road ahead in terms of driving awareness.
Read the full report at PeerProduction.net.
Here is a video by Stephen Murphey visualizing the results.
3D Printing Coming to a Public Library Near You: Nevada First
As 3D printing becomes more popular among consumers, we expect 3D printers to become more ubiquitous and available to the public. That transition is finally starting to occur, with the University of Nevada engineering library now the first in the nation to offer 3D printing resources to the public.
“We’ve brought the technology out of the lab and into access for all students,” Tod Colegrove, director of the DeLaMare library, said. “It’s a first for universities around the country where the machines are typically part of a specialized program or research lab.”
Using specialized software, the machine builds a three-dimensional plastic model from computerized drawings.
“3D printers are typically purchased by a faculty member with grant funds in support of a particular research project, and installed in isolated departmental locations,” Colegrove said. “Printers remain largely inaccessible to students and faculty outside of a select few. We’ve changed that.”
“In the arts, sciences and engineering, breakthroughs in learning or research often require going beyond pencil and paper,” he said. “With technology and a supportive environment, it becomes possible to breathe life into ideas – in the library. We have a waiting list for projects, which can take anywhere from 40 minutes to 40 hours, depending on the complexity.
Via KTVN.
3D printing photo by DSTL UNR used under Creative Commons license.
Shapeways Opens NYC 3D Printing and Distribution Center
3D printing marketplace Shapeways has opened a NYC-based 3D printing and distribution center. This comes just a few weeks after raising $6.2M in Series B funding.
The NY-based startup began printing from a single 3D Systems ProJet 3500 Plus printer last week at its Long Island City factory/distribution center. Because the machines are customized for specific materials, the ProJet will only be churning out UV curable acrylic plastics until other printers are installed.
This past March, the Long Island City location began distributing its 3D printed wares, which paved the way for the company to begin ramping up its US production efforts. While this isn’t the “factory of the future” that was announced last November, Shapeways says the real deal will be up and running by the end of summer or early fall. There are also plans to implement a “lab” for creators and students alike to experiment with different materials and production methods to further improve and iterate upon current methods.
To date, Shapeways has over 150,000 active community members/designers with over 6,000 of them having their own online shops delivering their custom wares.
Via TechCrunch.
Harry Houdini First, Now 3D Printing Challenges Handcuff Security
Magician and escape artist Harry Houdini was knows as “The Handcuff King” in the early 1900s for his amazing ability to free himself from handcuffs. Now there is a new handcuff king in town, one who uses 3D printing to fabricate custom keys. As Forbes reports:
The security of high-end handcuffs depends on a detainee not having access to certain small, precisely-shaped objects. In the age of easy 3D printing and other DIY innovations, that assumption may no longer apply.
In a workshop Friday at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York, a German hacker and security consultant who goes by the name “Ray” demonstrated a looming problem for handcuff makers hoping to restrict the distribution of the keys that open their cuffs: With plastic copies he cheaply produced with a laser-cutter and a 3D printer, he was able to open handcuffs built by the German firm Bonowi and the English manufacturer Chubb, both of which attempt to control the distribution of their keys to keep them exclusively in the hands of authorized buyers such as law enforcement.
This 3D printing achievement shows that even high-end handcuffs are no longer always secure. Keys can be reproduced and 3D printed into plexiglass or other materials that are not captured by metal detectors. It’s perhaps time to upgrade the technology used by law enforcement.
The photo below shows the 3D printed handcuff key.
Read the full story on Forbes.
Handcuff photo by Marcin Wichary used under Creative Commons license. 3D printed handcuff key by CabFabLab used under Creative Commons license.
