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I agree that as of today 3D printers can't replace almost any commercial manufacturing technique. I think the article was meant for excitement about what may be coming soon. Most of the comments here sound a lot like what photographers said about digital cameras in the early 90's - low quality, poor resolution, expensive. Do you see 3d printing being able to improve in the near future to the point of being useful to you in final production? Or do you think that even with major improvements they just won't be able to keep up with more conventional means?

For what I do today, nothing on the horizon as of today could replace the bulk of our work. I work on industrial stuff where almost everything is metal. We do almost exclusively low volume work so the rapid prototyping is key to our design process, but very little of what we do can be done in plastics of any kind. And I think that extends to a lot of industries.

Certainly if you are designing a new phone and you want to 'feel' a bunch of cases, 3D printing is a dream come true.

But think of all the things it doesn't touch at all. -All chemical processes, from oil refineries to pharmaceuticals -Web processes like making paper and fabric (and even solar panels these days) -Everything related to ICs and circuit boards -Anything made of metal which extends from giant cranes and ships all the way down to bent sheet metal computer cases -Anything that is high volume -Biomedical devices and medical supplies

I think it gets a lot of press because the largest impact will be on the most visible type of product - the mass produced consumer plastic product. Today these all have to be identical copies because the fixed costs are so high (molds) and the per unit costs are so low (plastic). In the future maybe we will see more variety there, but I think fundamentally people don't like choice in products in practice as much as they do in principle (thats just my opinion, but look at what has happened with the consolidation of Linux distros over time). But I think the majority of manufacturing is not doing that stuff.

Great points. The company I work with operates production thermoforming machines to produce plastic containers. Each machine produces over 12,000 units every single hour, 24 hours a day -- that's over 2 million every week, with only one or two labor hours per machine-hour. And our machines are not even that big or modern; if we were to replace them with new machines, we could easily scale to three times that much per machine-hour. Technologies such as this help us design a prototype to validate a product for a customer before building molds, but it would never be an actual production process. Not until it can produce three products per second while matching the low weights per part.

Our tool room already is much smaller than it was twenty years ago, while producing more molds, thanks to the wonders of CNC machines.

> I just don't think any of the authors have really worked with a 3D printer hands on.

There's another problem - the authors of such articles don't understand "real manufacturing". Even when they do work with a 3D printer, they don't understand the gap between what it does and what's "real manufacturing" requires.

Completely agree. I was involved with a startup in the 3D printing space, and the gap between what 3D printing is capable of and what people think it will be able to do is just enormous.

I think the more interesting stuff is voxel printing and some of the advanced machining technology that's being developed.

I agree that the future is bright for the technology. I absolutely love the idea of powdered metal 3D printed molds for injection molding. If you can drop down the cost of making a mold by an order of magnitude inject molding of smaller lot sizes becomes economical. I think that really shakes up the consumer product industry because suddenly you can make a new product for 1/10th of the cost as before.

What is voxel printing?

http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/Rapid_Assembler

Think Minecraft on a nano scale.

I must respectfully disagree.

I take your central argument to be: "3D printers won't ultimately change our manufacturing process."

I take your main points to be: 1. The materials are weak and thus unsuitable for most products and 2. The efficiencies of scale of traditional manufacturing trump 3D printers in runs above 1k units.

Today your first point is true, however I use 3D printed parts as structural components in my robots and they are sound. I suspect in general material strength will increase until it meets the demands of how people want to use it. I hope you wouldn't make the argument that it can't increase in strength. There will always be material properties that can't be replicated in a fabber, but I do not know how many products in my life need these advanced properties.

Your second point ignores the decentralized nature of 3D printing. In total, yes, it will always be less efficient. But imagine a world where an Apple product launch means access to a new fabber file. Everyone in the world with a fabber could download and print the new product ... at the same time. No centralized manufacturing and distribution network could match that.

Some additional hurdles you don't mention: Material cost. $6 a cubic inch (my costs today) are really quite high. Material diversity. I need multiple materials for many objects I'd like to print. Speed. It takes hours to print something of moderate size. If I can pop over to a store and get the same item manufactured in the traditional way, I probably will.

Finally, if by any chance, someone reading this comment hasn't read "The Diamond Age" by Stephenson, please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

The Diamond Age is about molecular nanotechnology and, while that will change the world, this ain't that.

"Everyone in the world with a fabber could download and print the new product ... at the same time. No centralized manufacturing and distribution network could match that."

So what happens when everyone is torrenting the fabber file on the launch date? Now you're pirating physical things over the net, not just data.

"imagine a world where an Apple product launch means access to a new fabber file. Everyone in the world with a fabber could download and print the new product ... at the same time. "

I can't imagine an Apple product that can be printed. Maybe you could print a plastic copy of the enclosure for the product, but what you'd have in your hand is a essentially a plastic design prototype. Which 3D printers are great for. But how would you print the PCB, copper traces, pcb components, battery, lcd display...etc.

These 3D printers are only really a manufacturing revolution to people pumping out plastic (or weak powdered metal) products in low volumes (<1,000 units) and sizes between a few mm and meter or two cube. That actually doesn't cover a whole lot of products - the unit numbers are the thing that rules out most things you would think of.

I think this is exactly the use case I am most excited for. Everyone can print their own objects (shared and personalized). Maybe even in their own house like desktop printing or, for more expensive equipment, just downtown like a Kinko's. Everyone can download, modify, and make unique objects with very little turnaround time and no minimum quantity.

Why not use 3-d printers to make blanks for castings and molds, and maybe streamline building jigs? I don't know anything about the field, really, so there may be a simple and obvious answer, but I would be curious about it.

I think the editor is sympathetic to your position. The subtitle "Print me a stratovarius!" is pretty tongue-in-cheek towards high quality 3D printer manufacturing.