3D Printing Future Timeline

[Larry]

Yes but there is a huge profit margin on filament. The plastic pellets to make a 750kg spool costs about $4 but the spools sell for $20 to $40.

[Bradley]

I am a late adopter of technology. I have no plans to purchase a 3D printer within the next 5 years. Nevertheless, additive manufacturing will be wildly disruptive despite my absence in the market. Additive manufacturing may have been around since the 1990's, but it is just now being introduced to the general public. What is interesting about this time in history is that everyone knows what Google, YouTube and Facebook are as well as how to use them to learn new things quickly. Another interesting thing about this time in history is that we are on the cusp of virtual/augmented reality and accurate real time speech-to-speech translation (Google Glass, Oculus Rift, etc.). Therefore, we will witness an unprecedented international collaborative effort focused on improving 3D printing (additive manufacturing).

3D printing is currently a hot subject at the academic level. However, the interest isn't limited to something as obvious as the materials sciences. On the country, every academic subject is interested -- no scratch that -- every academic subject is fascinated with 3D printing. And all that academic work is broadcast to nitwits like myself via easily consumable information sources such as YouTube, which causes my mind to dance through tangerine trees under marmalade skies. The internet is incubating a massive international "hive-mind" who(?) is highly motivated to innovate around the central idea of additive manufacturing.

For those who think 3D printing is slow I would point out that additive manufacturing permits complexity at negligible additional cost. People will wrap their heads around that concept and start to innovate unexpected product markets (i.e. precisely built ceramic engines with hydrophobic surfaces that overcome sudden temperature changes). One day ceramic engines are a pipe dream, the next they are available for free download and 10,000 Chinese have printed them and tested them before the end of the day. In addition, additive manufacturing is currently capable of batch processing micro machines via optical fabrication. Also, the concept of swarm robots is interesting to consider when thinking of 3D printing scalability.

Western innovations will be hampered by patent restrictions in the short term, however, developing nations probably won't worry too much about spending resources to enforce 1st world patents. In the short term, western universities and corporations will invent amazing 3D printing technologies. But soon those technologies will be 'borrowed' and billions of Chinese and Indians will leap right past western countries and open source almost everything. Then they will innovate on top of 1st world patents so quickly due to their massive collaborative ability that western multinationals won't be able to keep up. Eventually, westerners will wonder why we are protecting patent ideologies (it's an ideology, right?) when mass collaboration proves to be a much more efficient vehicle of market innovation.

In the short term, 3-5 years, I think the mainstream press will be very disappointed with personal 3D printing. We may see a boom and bust in the personal 3D printer market. But during that time the hobbyist/maker community will slowly develop a critical mass of useful open source products (as well as a critical mass of intellectual property right infringements).

In the mid term, 5-10 years, we will see corporations lobbying to fight for strict IP protections. Meanwhile, individuals will be breaking patents on a regular basis.

In the longer term, 10-20 years, intellectual property will be largely irrelevant for anything that can be made at home. Companies with natural barriers to entry (Boeing) will retain their IP, but only because their products are too big to replicate and too necessary to bypass with alternate designs. Automobile manufacturers, however, will be on the ropes because autonomous vehicle systems will have made it possible to build cars lighter and cheaper without all the expensive safety equipment and heavy steel frames.

In 20-40 years, who knows. There will be too many confluences of technological advancements to know which direction 3D printing will go. We might have virtual reality that is so realistic that physical objects provide a limited source of wealth. There might even be movements to have robots tear down buildings and return the land to nature while people live in hybrid reality, protected from the elements by small living spaces and fed by metabolized solar energy.

Even though I believe in the disruptive abilities of 3D printing, I wonder how converging technologies will change our ways of thinking about physical objects.