Does Moore's Law Apply to 3D Printing?

[3dkarma]

@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.

[WildZBill]

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.

[TeddyYan]

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.

[Compro01]

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

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".

[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

[RepRapOwner]

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

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.

[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.

[intohim]

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

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.

[MrSmiley666]

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

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.

[Feign]

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.