[2ndDivisionVet]

Two page article.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“Ford Motor Company, which recently celebrated the production of their 500,000th 3D-printed industrial part.”

I remain skeptical because of surface finish, speed, strength, and materials property limitations. But that item above caught my eye. Anybody know what part Ford is making and why they selected 3D printing?

I consulted to a printed electronics startup company about ten years ago and that has proven to be a real tough nut to crack.

[Tallguy]

Horsehocky. 3D Printing will be another manufacturing tool. You wont be able to produce 1-off custom cars with it affordably as this article seems to suggest because you (or most people) lack the engineering know-how to design & certify the type.

Plus material science has a long way to catchup to leverage this technology.

[null and void]

3-D Printer Ping!

[MNDude]

During a tour of a GM plant, the tour guide was bragging about how fast they could crank out automobiles and said “in fact, we once even produced one car in only one hour!”
A man in the group spoke up and said “Sir, I believe I am the owner of that car.”

[Flag_This]

"At the same cost and quality, companies will always choose the flexibility of 3D printing over mass production. At the same cost and quality, 3D printing irreversibly overtakes conventional manufacturing as the preferred method of production."

It seems to me they've ignored time in their cost equation. An injection mold can kick out dozens of widgets in a hour; how much time would it take for a 3D printer to print one widget? If your company needs several hundred widgets quickly, wouldn't this enter into your calculations?

[wastoute]

I was relaxing last night watching a car show of construction of the Koeningsberg One:1. They were making RIMS from carbon fiber. The whole car was carbon fiber but the engine and suspension. Some smart feller is gonna 3D print that car! Bring the price down from $3 million to about thirty grand, I bet.

[ClearCase_guy]

3-D printing is an important step toward nanotechnology. The idea that from a basic mass of material I can produce whatever I need, is a new way of thinking about scarcity. With nanotechnology it gets even more encompassing.

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson said (in "The Diamond Age") that there exist only the business of things and the business of entertainment, and the business of things is not very interesting when nanotechnology can produce anything.

And that sort of observation gets us back to Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" where information/entertainment simply becomes a control mechanism in a post-scarcity society which should have more freedom but which may end up with less freedom.

[martin_fierro]

[ExCTCitizen]

3D printers will create new companies. As a model railroader, I'm thinking of creating products for model railroaders - buildings (the futuristic TWA building at Kennedy would be one, I'd create), bridges (Merrit Parkway bridges are fancy), freight cars that are unusual and locomotives.

I think you might see medical 3D printing, too...

[SamAdams76]

In 1973, Kodak invented the digital camera. They shelved it because they didn't want the new technology to interfere with their highly lucrative film and camera business. Of course, the first digital camera was very primitive, only .001 megapixels and it took nearly 30 seconds to process even that grainy image.

We all know how that turned out. Other companies exploited the technology and Moore's law eventually allowed them to market cheap digital cameras with high amount of megapixels. The technology became so cheap and miniaturized that they started building cameras into cell phones and tablets.

The same is occurring with 3D printing.

Many people are scoffing at it because it looks so primitive. But it is progressing rapidly and about to hit that curve where it becomes really disruptive.

For example, let's say you own a chain of auto parts stores. If so, I would be very worried. Because the time is soon coming where car repair shops can just print their own parts on demand.

For example, if you need parts like those pictured below, you simply have GM, Ford, Nissan (or whoever) email you the file, for a fee of course, and you print it out on your 3D printer. This cuts your auto parts store right out of the loop.

And this is just the beginning of the disruption about to occur.

Additive manufacturing is here to stay and it will be exploding exponentially.