Does Moore's Law Apply to 3D Printing?

This is something have been discussing with some of my students.

3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental, believes that Moore's law applies to 3D Printing. For those of you that don't know what Moore's law is, it is an observation made by the founder of Intel, Gordon Moore. He observed that every 2 years, the number of transistors on a circuit doubles. This law has held up perfectly over the years.

As for 3D Printing, Reichental believes that these printers' performance will double up and costs will double down (presumably every 2 years).

Do you guys think this is true?

If this is the case, than we shoud expect some great things within the next 10 years. 2 to the 5th power (10 years) is 32. That means that printers will be 32 times more powerful, and 32 times more cost efficient in 10 years from now.

Then again this guy is the CEO of one of the largest 3D Printing manufacturers in the world. Of course he wants people to believe this. Do you?

Laws of physics trump Moore's law. Plastic can only melt so fast, heat can only travel so fast, materials can only handle so much, there is a minimum length, and diameter melt chamber, there is an upper limit to print speed.

Better performance dosent always mean "faster". There's other way to make things faster, like multiple layer at the same time.

I trust this is true ! We will see more and more price drop and more resolution, speed and reability over time!

Vanguard's point is correct as far as it goes. I think Reichental is correct in saying that the machinery will become more cost efficient in the future as the industrial use of 3D printing moves away from a reliance on prototyping and towards printing one-off items to suit individuals. My interest is in printing prosthetics for amputees, and other bio-structures.

I see domestic 3D printers as items of transient interest to the majority of the population, but there will always be that hard core of enthusiastic tinkerers.

Old Man Emu

I fully expect what Reichental says to come true. However, I don't think Moore's law applies here. It's like comparing apples and oranges.

3D Printing will become a lot more efficient, faster, better quality, etc, but to put numbers on the rate at which it will happen, and the rate at which prices will fall seems silly to me.

I wouldn't discount Avi Reichental's prediction so fast. Yes physics gets in the way now, as plastic needs time to melt, extrude and harden in filament printers. That's if you look at current technology which maxes out at 4 extruder heads now. What if HP figures out a way to atomize the plastic and spray it through a 14,000 nozzle extruders like in their wide format printers? Or what if a nozzle array was wide enough that it didn't have to move on one axis like the HP inkjet with no moving print head? SLA took a huge jump with the Form 1 and speeds could certainly increase with laser arrays to melt the substrate. Double the speed at half the price in 2 years... totally possible.

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Originally Posted by Artiemosk

What if HP figures out a way to atomize the plastic and spray it through a 14,000 nozzle extruders like in their wide format printers?

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Stratasys already does this sort of thing with their Objet printers and they hold a patent on it which is good for another 5 years.

Yeah, for overall performance it could be true that it may double every two years, especially as the amount of people starting to seriously work with 3d printing seems to be exponentially increasing. But performance here does not equal speed, I see it more as a combination of all factors, so then overall performance would remain a subjective quality. For some it's more in aesthetic representation of the design intent, for other it's more to do with mechanical properties, for others speed and profitability is most important. I don't see the speed doubling every two years since that will depend a lot on the motors and materials used, and those don't evolve as fast as electrical components.

I think it's more reasonable to compare the progression of 3D printers with the old 2D printers. Back in the day of dot-matrix printers, consumer level machines were slow, noisy and of low quality. Industrial machines were fast, really really noisy and of low quality. We've seen massive increases in quality, massive reductions in price but not a comparative improvement in speed. I'd venture a guess that 3D printers will go the same route - price will go down by a long way, quality will go way up but speed won't improve at the same rate.

Remember, 3D printing is already 30 years old. It has only had this spurt of innovation because a patent ran out and people started racing to make a cheaper printer.
I work with a $10k printer, bottom of the line for Stratasys, and a $400 printer from Printrbot. Their output is different, but not 25 times better.
This is very hot technology. Moving faster than anything before. People compare it to home computers and 2d printers, but there is something new happening here. It is the acceleration caused by the internet, specifically open-source hardware and software, crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding.
I think that Moore's Law is an understatement in this case. I would say that I have already seen a doubling cycle that is close to 6 months.

@WildZBill - can you quantify what you're seeing doubling every six months (e.g. speed / quality) and give us some examples? At the DIY level, we're still dealing with pretty much the same technology - albeit with an explosion of interest and designs - that we were three years ago when I bought my first printer. Print head technology hasn't moved on a great deal and the fundamentals of the designs are still largely the same. I have zero experience at the high end level and would be very interested to hear what's happening.

I get info about what's going on through a couple of 3D printer online zines:
http://3dprintingindustry.com/
http://www.3dprinterworld.com/
Plus I scan Hackaday: http://hackaday.com/
Gizmag: http://www.gizmag.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/
and a few other sources, every morning.
What I see is that this technology is being used to advance whole industries; manufacturing in plastic, metal, biological, food (sugar, chocolate, pizza...), construction.
It has a hardware aspect, mechanical engineers are designing and printing new printer parts almost as if it is a race.
It has a long software tail; CAD, Slicer, controller, and also display, service, and collaboration websites.
The electronics are fairly simple, which inspires people to tinker with them and add more sensors, motors, displays, inputs, etc.
So you get the Moore's Law affect from 3 or 4 directions. They multiply.
But the real key is the open source nature of it all. There are thousands of people working on this, most of them doing it for free, some for contest prizes, and some are earning a lot of money because the government is throwing money at 'innovation'.
For Moore's Law in the semiconductor world, all that was needed was a few hundred engineers, keeping secrets from each other, earning a paycheck. No love, no fame, no glory.

Isn't Moore's law mostly about processor speed? Printer speed isn't related to processor speed. It is related simply to how fast the stepper motors can run with correct sized gears, to lay down filament. We will need new technological breakthroughs in order to actually increase speed very much.

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Originally Posted by TeddyYan

Isn't Moore's law mostly about processor speed?

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Originally, it was about integrated circuit component density and the minimum cost thereof. Due to numerous snowclones, it's basically become a byword for "some quality of X will follow an exponential function with respect to time".

i think there a lot more factors in the quality/price/performance of 3D printing compared to stuffing as many transistors on a chip as possible so its hard to say

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Originally Posted by barto

i think there a lot more factors in the quality/price/performance of 3D printing compared to stuffing as many transistors on a chip as possible so its hard to say

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I agree with you barto. I also don't believe that Moore's law should be applied to 3D printing. It is a different type of technology, and I don't see speed increasing like it has with other industries that Moore's law has been applied to. I guess only time will tell. I'm willing to bet that if you look at the history of 3D printing speeds though, you will see that Moore's law has not been upheld thus far. This means we shouldn't expect it to be in the future.

technology typically follows an S graph. which is basically 3 different segments

1. First innovation. which is slow growth till major design challenge is overcome.

2. explosive growth. (Moore's law essentially)

3. stagnation. physical limits slows growth.

And where do you think 3D printing is at now? First Innovation?

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Originally Posted by MrSmiley666

technology typically follows an S graph. which is basically 3 different segments

1. First innovation. which is slow growth till major design challenge is overcome.

2. explosive growth. (Moore's law essentially)

3. stagnation. physical limits slows growth.

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Originally Posted by intohim

And where do you think 3D printing is at now? First Innovation?

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its hard to say exactly from our current perspective.

but i think we are hitting the end of the first stage. with the major design challenge being various materials and multiple extruders.

I agree with Smiley, we're at the end of First Innovation. Consider, while there's a new breakthrough in regards to 3D printing almost daily, the vast majority of them are announcements of plans to start funding for a business to get an idea to market, rather than actual announcements of products being released into the market.

Perhaps the biggest thing about 3D printing as a technology is the amount of media coverage of early development. Other big technological fields have been in the hands of big secretive orginazations whose only milestones to the public were final products arriving in stores. The common belief in business has been for a long time that the public will turn sour at seeing the messy process of product development, and won't be as wowed by the finished product if they've had years to know it was on the way. With the majority of these small 3D printing start-ups, we see the general mess that is development and we relate to it in a more human way. When the product comes to market, it already has followers who feel like they already know much better how it works because they saw it grow from an idea up.

Another major design challenge that Smiley didn't mention is in the materials themselves. There's a race on to invent a significantly electrically conductive thermoplastic suitable for FFF.

Hi Vanguard i totally agree with your answer.
I work in the 1st 3D store in France called Cubeek 3D, so i'm use to print everyday and i'm aware of the new technologies, new machines and process.
Indeed i'll take the example of the Leapfrog Creatr "High Speed" model of the netherland company: this machine announces 5 times speed improvment compared to the Leapfrog Creatr (that has the same speed as the Rep 2), I'm not really optimistic with that.
Yes 3d printing still meets the physical bareer (i mean the FDM) that unallows 3D printing to be really fast, but in another hand i trust big companies as 3D systems or Makerbot will invent new processes that will change the speed of printing models.

True,
but 3D printing will still exists in the futur even with the appearance of new revolutionnary technology as well as the ink printing.
Obama said 3D printing is the 3rd industrial revolution, and i believe it's not the same as coal: the concept is revolutionnary for the industry (create locally and delete the delays with low cost of production) but it's more a technological revolution.

3D printing is not a scientific revolution. The science has been available for decades. 3D printing is a manufacturing revolution. Instead of subtractive manufacturing we now have additive manufacturing where you can do things that previously could not be manufactured in one process step.
One way to create a marketing campaign is to compare speed between 3D printers and injection molding.
However there are many variables to actually profit from additive manufacturing.
Build volume is a key variable for some market segments.
Quality in the finally product now depends on slower speeds, layer height and other variables when using FFF or FDM.
The big corporations are going to be using lasers and technology that "Makers" can not afford and don't have room for at home.
Additive manufacturing will use different technologies in the appropriate market segment to increase the speed, improve quality and drive down the costs.

The market for 3D printers will have many different market segments depending on the results required.

Additive manufacturing is growing exponentially in different market segments at the same time. Many small businesses now have a 3D printer. Much of this is invisible to us except for a few news stories pre-selected for entertainment value.

i think that is true, and i hope that is true!

The really interesting thing about the current state of 3d printing, particular the lower end of the market is that it's comparable to the automobile industry in the 1920's and 30's.
Most towns had one or two car makers and anyone could laumnch their own brand with minimal setup.

And that's exactly how the current home 3d printer situation is.

Until the big boys: HP, epson, canon, brother etc launch their own 3d printers - we can expect to see exponential progress in all aspects, the more competition the greater the incentive to innovate.

Cost wise - that's really interesting. Most of the recent small company launches have been in the plus £1000 price range. To my mind if you want to sell a truly universal consumer machine it has to be sub £500.

So there's a lot of manufacturers who are aiming at the small business arena. There are also concentrating on safety (that one puzzles me :-) and quality of print. Not speed but quality.
And again that's puzzling for me.

If you're buying a machine for a school. The ability to produce a 0.05mm layer print in 20 hours HAS to be secondary to the ability to knock out a decent model at speed 0.3 or 0.4 within the course of a single lesson.

I went round the tct show asking how fast and low resolution printers could print and just got puzzled expressions.
The thing is that if - like me - you're mostly using a 3d printer to make practical and useful things. Then the ability to print invisible layers is entirely secondary to the ability to knock out a useful item as quick as I can.
And i can see a lot of industries with the same approach.

There's no doubt that moores law does apply - but you need to change the criteria.
The number of 3d printing companies is definitely expanding on an exponential basis - until the big boys launch and drive them out of the market.

At the moment we're basking in the golden age of 3d print inventors, pioneers and engineers. Every home inventor and engineer can design and sell his own 3d printer, and lot of them are doing so, with varying degrees of success. History tells you that this period can't last for long.

Let's enjoy it while it's here - I give it two years at best before one of the major 2d printer manufacturers aims something at the home market - and then things will change again.

It should be noted, that the golden days of the automotive industry weren't quashed by previously existing large companies coming in from the outside the way you fear, but competition was culled down by giants that arose from the field of startups. Much of the competition in the early automotive days were locamotive makers that tried to make the transition from railway to road, but they were too slow to adapt and were pushed back out. It's probably safe to assume that 3D Systems and Stratasys are going to remain the biggest names in the market for a long time. Companies like HP and Brother aren't going to be able to make the transition the way you think they will, but might instead buy up smaller 3D printing companies to use their brand and expertise in the market.

Yes you are right 3D Printing is day to day is grew with new technology it's make s faster and better quality hope it's rate and price will minor.

3D Printing market is in the progressive phase of its life cycle. It was valued at $2,811.8 million in 2014, and is anticipated to reach $8,683.7 million by 2020. 3D Printing market is growing at a CAGR of 21% during 2015 -2020.

Moore's Law is not as certain as Murphy's Law, Price point's can stay the same while the technology or features improve.

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Originally Posted by Compro01

Stratasys already does this sort of thing with their Objet printers and they hold a patent on it which is good for another 5 years.

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Soon it will be economically smart for Stratasys to start targeting the consumer market.