An Author's look into the future: Economic models are changing. We must deal with it.

I agree with you that the midsize print shops turning out parts for local businesses and manufacturers will have a hard time finding a place but I think in the (not so) long run, when the Moore's Law of printing kicks in, even the "Amazon of 3D printing" - whoever that turns out to be - will have a hard time competing with local printers. With cheap, reliable and accurate 3D printouts available in your shop and eventually everyone's home, who will be willing to pay the middleman's markup or wait 2 days for delivery? Yeah, the quality is not quite there yet, but it's coming. Have you seen the realtime measurement feedback loops they're coming out with on hobbyist machines? Two years ago you had to pay the big bucks for that. Two more years and it will be pretty much standard on every printer.

Either way, it doesn't really matter to me. I have options I never dreamed about 10 years ago and I see only endless opportunities ahead for individual designers and builders and, sooner than later, everyone. We are entering another techno-revolution and we, as a society, are going to lose jobs because of it but there will probably also be a lot of jobs created by it that we can't even imagine from our viewpoint in time. But one thing is for sure, it is going to be very good for us as empowered individuals. It's going to be mighty hard for some govt goober to tell me what I can or cannot have when I just printed it out for myself.

“... Much of what you need is just waiting for you to place your order.”

No it isn’t.

Garth Tater has not the first idea of what he is talking about.

No one in gun manufacturing, nor in gun repair, speaks about “10x stronger than steel.” Lots of materials are “stronger” but cannot be fashioned into a gun that will fire more than one shot or have much chance of not injuring the shooter. I realize I’m on very thin ice here, but I suspect the market is not very big for guns that aren’t durable, safe, and reliable - no matter how cheap they are.

Nothing but steel - properly alloyed, carburized, and/or tempered - has to date demonstrated the requisite properties of toughness, hardness, and resistance to high-temperature erosion required in a firearm.

And the requisite levels of these properties cannot be bestowed on an accreted mass while it’s being built up. The part must be shaped first, then heat-treated and/or surface hardened.

And no firearm can be assembled from parts by the uninformed and unskilled: safety, reliability, and durability cannot be attained unless everything is properly fitted, which cannot be done in advance by any automated process. The difference in dimensions, between “won’t work” and “explodes on firing” is too small. No cutesy software-controlled workaround will do the job.

Springs cannot be built up by any 3D-print method. And no firearm can be made without them. The design details are irrelevant.

“... When computers were first invented, everyone was talking about computers translating languages. Turns out it was a tougher nut to crack ...”

The reasons for lack of success in translating are not lack of computing power, nor lack of software innovation. No language translates precisely one-to-one, into another. Go ask the most junior employee of an international technical publishing firm.

Just because advances in digital computing have occasionally advanced farther, at quicker rates, than this or that wild forecast, there is no reason to assume all aspects of life will advance indefinitely, everywhere, at ever-steepening rates, without limit. Believing such is immature: unworthy of people who presume to style themselves “conservative.”

Making complete firearms by 3D printing will continue to present extraordinary challenges, in part because gun owners are iron-spined traditionalists of the most die-hard sort. No civilian buyer will be inclined to purchase an arm that doesn’t fire traditional cartridges, no matter how inexpensive such a gun might be. Bear in mind that the first metallic cartridge introduced is still in routine production: 22 rimfire short. It first appeared in 1857.

I disagree. I believe it will continue until the Lord returns. And I believe the rate of discovery is increasing exponentially. It is not immature thinking. It is mature thinking. History demonstrates it.

To put it bluntly, regarding any and all possible discoveries, it is not “if”. It is “when”. But the Lord will cut it off.

Everything changes. And the rate of change is rapidly increasing. I remember in high school (I graduated in 1972), we would be arguing about some possible government control change and people would say, “People will never accept that!” I always responded, “I think what you mean is that THIS GENERATION will never accept that.”

And look where we are now. ;)

Closed-loop control would help the quality issue somewhat. Alot of the problem I see with the hobbyist/consumer units is related to using cheap frames and motion components. Unfortunately, that’s also what puts them in the hobbyist price bracket. In general, I don’t think the extrusion process will ever turn out finished quality mechanincal parts without considerable post-machining.

If I had access to a SLS or good quality SLA machine, I could make good parts without having to put so much time into them, and save weight on almost any part. Problem is good SLA printers are in the same price range as decent CNC mills and they have the advantage of producing full-strength metal parts. In the case of good sintering machines, those currently cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Anybody who’s handy enough to get real use out of a 3D printer and has time/space for the project, can make a DIY CNC vertical mill or lathe that will produce high-quality parts for about what they’d pay for a good prosumer-level extruder.

Definitely think 3D printing is going to disrupt certain niches of the manufacturing/prototyping/machining industries. Could put some concrete form-setters out of work, too. Just don’t see a typical consumer getting enough actual utility out of one to justify the price tag unless the price for plastic manufactured goods suddenly shoots up 10-fold.

Garth Tater has not the first idea of what he is talking about.

Sure I do. Unlike some people, I'm not stuck in the last century.

Rebuttal:

No one in gun manufacturing, nor in gun repair, speaks about “10x stronger than steel.”

Perhaps you missed the title of the original article shurmann. An Author's look into the future but that's okay. Plenty of room in the past to stay in.

Lots of materials are “stronger” but cannot be fashioned into a gun that will fire more than one shot or have much chance of not injuring the shooter.

One shot? How about 600?

Cody Wilson, like many Texan gunsmiths, is fast-talkin’ and fast-shootin’—but unlike his predecessors in the Lone Star State, he’s got 3D printing technology to help him with his craft - 3D-printed semi-automatic fires over 600 rounds

And how about these guys? They are hosting an open source project that develops guns manufactured with modern techniques. Probably not something you would be interested in shurmann:

Defense Distributed's Wiki Weapon Project an online, open source, 3D printed weapon project. Join and contribute your time and skills.

Shurmann, when you said:

Nothing but steel - properly alloyed, carburized, and/or tempered - has to date demonstrated the requisite properties of toughness, hardness, and resistance to high-temperature erosion required in a firearm.

were you being serious, or am I missing a joke here?

I guess titanium doesn't count:

The TIKI-T Titanium Handgun

or maybe

Smith & Wesson 342PD Titanium Centennial .38 Special +P

As Smith and Wesson says: Smith & Wesson has pioneered the use of titanium alloys in its revolvers, resulting in weapons that are much easier to carry concealed, without sacrificing strength. Titanium, when compared to steel, is lighter, tougher, and absolutely rust-proof.
but since no one is talking about anything but steel I guess someone better drop them a note and get them up to date on the subject.

And I guess you didn't follow the link I provided to the MIT lab that is 3D printing with graphene.

MIT creates 3D printed graphene that’s lighter than air, 10X stronger than steel

For those of you that are interested in playing today, my original post that schurmann is responding to included a link to a company selling all sorts of 3D printing media. Take a look at their catalog and give some of the newer materials a try.

Or maybe give these guys a try? They will be happy to deliver 3D printed titanium parts right to your door printed directly from your supplied CAD files.

i.materialise - 3D Printing Materials » Titanium

Did you catch that shurmann? Printed with TITANIUM. Not quite as strong and lightweight as graphene but it is at least a metal, so maybe you could ease your way into the future with that and work your way on to other materials later after you've gotten past your "nothing but steel" phase.

And did you note that it is available TODAY shurmann? We're not even talking "the future" which is what the original article was about. TODAY shurmann. Not last century.

As to your statement that: "Springs cannot be built up by any 3D-print method."

take a look at this link:

3D Printed Spring Exceeds Traditional Manufacturing

Did you see where the article mentions, "The spring created by TNO and LayerWise demonstrates the advantage AM has over subtractive methods in variable-density construction of parts.
Variable density springs. Cool stuff, huh? Not something you would be interested in though I guess.

I hate to say it shurmann, but you seem to be seriously stuck in the past.

Might be that's a good place for you.

I think it’s a fun technology, and can see the attraction from the point of view of a hobbyist or someone who wants to live a more DIY lifestyle than most. For me, it’s nice to be able to prototype quickly. Getting usable machine parts requires more time and effort than standard machining, though.

My daughter contributes time and skill to an international charity project that designs and prints 3D prostheses for use in third world hell holes. The parts need nothing more than a sandpaper touch up before being assembled with simple hand tools. That is part of the design. An additional feature, and one that is more to your point that "Anybody who’s handy enough to get real use out of a 3D printer and has time/space for the project, can make a DIY CNC vertical mill or lathe that will produce high-quality parts for about what they’d pay for a good prosumer-level extruder."
is that the skills needed to run a 3D printer are significantly less than the skills required to run a manual CNC mill and for a few thousand dollars a site can be set up in a third world slum that provides real benefits to the local population without having to have skilled machinists onsite. One doctor, one low-skilled technician and voila, artificial hands, feet, arms and legs, custom fitted to the patients' needs, are going out the door. Cool stuff and being done today.

"Machines can’t be as smart as people, but they can be much smarter at one thing. And when all of the “one thing’s” people can do are each handed over to the computer/machine that can do it better, there will be no need for humans to actually HAVE TO do anything. But this sort of world is not compatible with human nature. People will still fight over who has and who doesn’t have."

Yes the computer tech we have right now will most likely never replace human thought but can be tasked to be better than humans at a chosen group of tasks.

However if quantum computing becomes a working tech (and there are claims of research labs building working quantum computer parts right now) then it is Kate-bar-the-door. Because the limitations our current computers have will be blown away it will be a bigger change than both the Industrial and Digital revolutions combined.

From what I've read one paper claims one fully realized quantum computer will have more computing power than all of the computers created to date. If just a fraction of that claim pans out ten years after that date we will not recognize our world.

"the skills required to run a manual CNC mill"

I wasn't talking about "manual" CNC (computer numeric control) mills. You can build one (with software control similar to 3D printing, minus automatic bit changes) for a couple/few thousand if you know what you're doing. Yes you would need some expertise/skill to source parts for and build the CNC mill.

For prostheses, 3D printing is the way to go for weight savings and relative ease of producing complex infill patterns especially for one-off parts. There are a few niches where 3D really shines, and medical prosthetics are one of them.

I doubt it's anywhere near as "low skill" an endeavor as you believe. Possibly somebody wrote and supplied a software package and equipment which makes them able to take a 3D scan of the patient's body and produce a model to print? Or qualified biomedical engineers and doctors spent numerous hours developing 3D-printable universal prostheses in conjunction with the company that produces the printers? That takes considerable technical know-how to pull off, and possibly a good bit of money that isn't included in your costing. This kind of support would probably not be available free of cost to a typical consumer or business in the 3D printer market.

For 95% of typical machine parts, the printers commonly sold as consumer/prosumer models for under $10,000 are less useful than CNC mills because it is impossible or nearly so (at least from what I've read/experienced with current models) to correctly place and dimension clearance/dowel holes and tap bores with the kind of precision that demands. And as you said yourself, 3D printed parts require touch-up after printing. In the case of machine parts where you must have things like perfectly flat or round surfaces and precise alignment for parts to mate correctly in complex mechanisms, they require considerable touch up. They often require the kind of "touch up" you need a vertical mill or lathe for. They require enough touch up that parts are at least as time-consuming and expensive to produce as they would be with subtractive methods. They take an added layer of skill/expense, because you still need to to do some basic machining on top of having a printer and being able to get relatively good results out of it. Add to this that you will not get the full mechanical strength out of the material. It currently takes considerable skill, effort, and expensive software to design around this in applications where a part might be stressed near failure. In some cases (like gunsmithing) you'd have to have a screw loose, or be in a pretty desperate situation to even bother trying.

That's where the affordable 3D tech (extrusion and low-end SLA) is currently at. I'm not saying they're completely useless, but they're limited unless you have alot of time on your hands and access to other tools/equipment. The other tech (high-end SLA and SLS) has not budged in price much the last 3-5 years. It's currently way out of the "consumer" price range. It may come down to earth at some point, or it may not. We'll see. Some of the patents on those technologies expired a few years ago, but they're not easy to reproduce from a technical standpoint. Alot of the individual components which make them capable of doing things like fusing powdered metal to within +/- a couple microns are expensive in their own right even without the development costs and markup.

"Or maybe give these guys a try? They will be happy to deliver 3D printed titanium parts right to your door printed directly from your supplied CAD files."

Go ahead and request a quote, Garth. Somewhere around $1000 per cubic inch plus material would be my ballpark guess, and the tolerances are not great. If you're making just 1 part, and don't need alot of precision, it might be worth it. If you're making 100 of them, you can make most of what's shown on their page of equal or better quality for a fraction of the price using casting (really old tech).

The article you linked isn't a full 3D printed gun. Only the lower receiver is 3D printed. Even those are easier to make (and far safer) using "last century" tech. You can (kind of) 3D print full "real" metal guns (not recommended). It's neither economical nor safe, and you're going to need more "last century" tech to finish them after you've rough-printed the parts. To outfit your home shop to do that would cost you a bare minimum of $150k, and could easily run upwards of $500k. Last time I checked, you could still buy a whole pile of genuine-article AR-15's for that kind of cash.

Possibly somebody wrote and supplied a software package and equipment which makes them able to take a 3D scan of the patient's body and produce a model to print? Or qualified biomedical engineers and doctors spent numerous hours developing 3D-printable universal prostheses in conjunction with the company that produces the printers? That takes considerable technical know-how to pull off, and possibly a good bit of money that isn't included in your costing.

My daughter is a bio-mechanical engineer and works with prostheses in her paid job. Nights and weekends she works with this charity organization. Spanish doctors head the outfit. There's an Indian software engineer working in the Netherlands that has written most of the code. Basically, a doctor working in a 3rd world hell hole takes a few measurements of the amputee's arm or leg and emails them to the s/w engineer who runs it thru his custom coded preprocessor and the G-code for a properly sized prosthesis is generated and emailed back to Calcutta or wherever. If there is a problem with the printout my daughter runs it on her machine at home and fixes up any glitches. So, yes, lots of time and effort and skill went into developing the system but the end result is a desktop 3D printer on a desk somewhere in the third world printing out prostheses in a low tech environment for just a few dollars a pop.

This kind of support would probably not be available free of cost to a typical consumer or business in the 3D printer market.

Not yet, but I remember the days when an Epson dot matrix printer cost north of a thousand dollars and required a service/maintenance agreement. Now an ink cartridge costs more than the printer. What used to be called a photo-realistic printer is now a non-repairable commodity item. 3D printers will be heading down that same path. Looking at the cost curve and the feature growth of 3D printers over the last several years I see Moore's Law in full effect.

Add to this that you will not get the full mechanical strength out of the material.

I think you are only looking at the downside of a 3D printed part here. If the entire assembly is designed to use 3D printed parts from the get go a designer has a world of options only limited by his skill and imagination. Did you see my response to the gunsmith who thought springs could not be 3D printed? Take a look at that article. Those springs don't look anything like a typical coiled spring and they probably couldn't have been made without a 3D printer but they have features that are hard to duplicate with a traditionally manufactured spring. 3D Printed Spring Exceeds Traditional Manufacturing

I was talking to a Honda engineer a couple of days ago that was very excited about some of the part designs that he was getting approved that were simply not possible to be made on mills. Double and triple undercuts. Parts that are enclosed inside of a shell. Parts too delicate to support themselves until their structure is completed being printed with a supporting media that is evaporated away when the printout is done. He said, that for all of their technical expertise Honda, until recently, had been very reluctant to approve a design that could only be made on a 3D printer. But not any more. He was like a kid in a candy store talking about what he was going to be able to do now. I really don't think they would have to pay him to show up to work if they'd heard the excitement in his voice.

I'm not saying they're completely useless, but they're limited unless you have alot of time on your hands and access to other tools/equipment.

Have you ever been inside a MakerSpace facility? For about $200/month you have access to ALL of their equipment. Laser sintering, top of the line printers, the works. Sometimes I wish I was a kid again so I could go play.

The article you linked isn't a full 3D printed gun. Only the lower receiver is 3D printed. Even those are easier to make (and far safer) using "last century" tech.

Well, that is the "gun" according to the BATF :)

That article was 3 years old. Here's a newer one you might find interesting.

How 3-D Printed Guns Evolved Into Serious Weapons in Just One Year

Go ahead and request a quote, Garth. Somewhere around $1000 per cubic inch plus material would be my ballpark guess, and the tolerances are not great. If you're making just 1 part, and don't need alot of precision, it might be worth it.

We're quibbling here and I don't like to do that, but... the original article that started this discussion was about "the future." I merely pointed out a few of the things that are ALREADY available. And if you don't like the price quoted by the company I mentioned head on down to your local MakerSpace and rent their laser sintering machine for what? Less than $100 per hour? There is more cool manufacturing tech out there right now than any one mind can get itself wrapped around. I can hardly wait to see what comes along in "the future."

"the end result is a desktop 3D printer on a desk somewhere in the third world printing out prostheses in a low tech environment for just a few dollars a pop."

That is cool. No doubt about it. Still a pretty narrow niche as far as the broader consumer/manufacturing market is concerned.

3D printers will be heading down that same path.

Agree to disagree, at least any time in the next decade. I just don't see anyone ever getting that kind of quality out of extruders. That tech has limits. It will get better, but nowhere near the quality you can turn out with traditional machining for the vast majority of applications. Precision sintering machines are much better, but require numerous parts that cost over $1,000/ea. They cost that much because they have to be made the old fashioned way. They're precision machined and ground with very pricey equipment using good (expensive) materials. SLA is showing a little more promise on the affordability front, because it's not quite as tech-intensive and doesn't require high-powered lasers or an oxygen-depleted build chamber, but once again they're bumping up against hard limits cost-wise. Precise motion components cost real money, and there's no way to get around it right now. Rule #1 of business: you can't sell things for less than it costs to make them.

I think you are only looking at the downside of a 3D printed part here.

Not at all. I think it's fascinating. I have the education and technical chops (and access to software) to make use of at least some of its benefits. Unfortunately to get the full benefit, I'd need to get my hands on equipment that I might never have access to. I'm also going to lose access to the $50k worth of software I'm using in about 6 months. Only companies like Honda and Boeing can afford current state-of-the art 3D. That situation is almost guaranteed not to change any time in the next decade. Like I said in my initial post in this thread, I wish I were wrong. I just don't see the industry headed that way at the moment.

It's split into two tiers. On one hand, you have true industrial grade equipment/software that is not coming down in cost but gradually getting better quality. It's not accessible to the general public (or even most businesses) in any real sense. The current tech won't be for some time. On the other hand, you have consumer-level stuff that's coming down in price pretty rapidly but might not ever quite get there quality-wise due to limits in working with extruded thermoplastics.

Have you ever been inside a MakerSpace facility?

Have the keys to one. I fixed one of their printers, and in return the wonderful lady who runs the place threw me a set of keys. I am using a current-generation $1,200 printer (one of the highest rated products in its price range) on a project. It's the cheapest way I have of making the parts. That's only because I don't have to charge myself for my own labor.

Hope I'm not boring you with too many details here. If I included my time in the project costs, those parts would not be cheap at all compared to standard machining. If I'd used aluminum, I'd have to pay for machine time on things like a hydroforming table, and CNC mill, but they would be nearly no-touch. All I'd have to do manually is tap a few threads and I'd be done. Using extrusion, I only have to pay material cost. The downside is that I have to do many hours of actual manual machining to finish the parts. The only real benefit I get is a relatively small weight reduction compared to aluminum. It's a weight-sensitive application, so that is nice.

The reality is for $2000-$3000 I could probably build myself an entry-level CNC mill that would turn out better parts than any extruder ever will, and give me the option to use solid aluminum or steel. Maybe an extruder would be a nice addition to the shop if I already had a CNC mill and enough extra money laying around for it and a home copy of Solidworks or something like it. But back to reality. I have to finalize the drawings for a boatload of parts tonight, so I'm checking out for now.

FRegards

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