The general consensus is that 3D printing is going to have a profound effect. The concept of mass producing goods half way around the world and then shipping them is inherently inefficient. UPS clearly agrees, as it is investing heavily in 3D printing centers throughout the US that can produce goods on demand for local delivery.
So even the big players are panicking, but what will actually happen? There are theories that much of the labor market could actually be wiped out and logistics will become a casualty of the digital era. This doesn’t take into account our natural capacity to adapt, though, and the fact that we have been here before.
China will have a huge unemployment problem...............
Somebody has to make and ship the raw materials..............
Cycle times are going to have to get waaaay shorter, and material costs are going to have to be waaaaay reduced. Other than that, tooling costs are great.
For those that don't know about China's "cultural revolution"...
Mao urged the peasants to build backyard blastfurnaces to make iron and steel for tools. The peasants were supposed to melt down scrap metal to make useful items such as tools and utensils. In practice the program worked backwards with peasants melting down useful items to produce unusable masses of metal. This happened because the State exhorted the peasants to increase production from the backyard blast furnaces and when they ran out of scrap they started melting down anything they could find, including tools and utensils. Some of this destruction of useful objects to increase the production from the backyard blastfurnaces might be attributed to enthusiasm but probably more of it was due to there being quotas of production from the furnaces that had to be met. Communist leaders at the local level faced with possible personal punishment for not meeting the quota or destruction of useful items of metal and of wood for fuel usually would choose to try to meet the quota. But the mixture of metals and the impurities in the fuel produced metal that could not be formed into anything useful. The metal was too brittle.The more insidious consequence of the backyard blastfurnaces and other nonagricultural projects of the Great Leap Forward was that they took labor away from food production and led to a shortfall in food. China was, as always in recent history, on the edge of subsistence and any decrease in food production means privation if not starvation.
It’ll be great on the supply chain, it’ll be really bad for anybody that makes money on the supply chain.
We’ve never been here before. We’ve gone through major technological changes, but the previous tech changes creates new jobs, new things for people to do. 3D printers have the potential to render the entire retail sector obsolete while not actually giving us something new to do.
One problem; they have jumped over the ‘copy’ function. I have not yet found an outfit near me that will take my specially shaped lump of inert metal and . . . . MAKE ANOTHER ONE. That’s all I want - another one! But they want computer files: stl, obj, zip, step, stp, iges, igs, 3ds, wrl. I just want another one of these.
When we think of a star wars replicator and compare that to 3D printing, the fuss is justified. It is however unrealistic.
My view is that 3D printing is good for designers and making and then refining prototypes. I have yet to see a product with lots of sales potential be made by the 3d printers and actually sell.
I would think that the UPS centers with the printers are the same as copy machines. Those designers not able to afford the machines can visit UPS and provide drawings to make a prototype
The quality and scale is just not there yet.
"The concept of mass producing goods half way around the world and then shipping them is inherently inefficient."
I currently disagree with the above statement.
While I can make a plastic comb or hair brush, or some stupid little broken part of some appliance, I still can't 3D print the thing for less than buying it online or from a store. Not even close.
What I can do is play. I can test designs on the front end to determine what will be sent into production.
Cutting the cost of design/testing will have a huge impact on the front end and will lead to truly innovative products, but it can't match the efficiency of mass production.
SpaceX uses 3D printers to make metal rocket engine parts that couldn’t be made any other way.