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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

IKEA will have to adapt or be demolished. They could actually leverage this kind of tech.

I can picture all sorts of flat-pack furniture made by specialized machines to automatically rout and drill holes, with specialized parts made by 3D printers.

The whole back catalog would always be available. Designs are already modularized and extendable. I could also picture DIY one of a kind "custom closet" kits designed on a computer, with the parts bagged for you, and custom directions printed just for you.

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3D printing vs injection moulding are 10000:1 cost wise right now, in the future this will come down but I doubt there will ever be parity.

The reason companies like IKEA standardize connectors, handles and all kinds of other bits and pieces is to maximize the use of these hard to design parts. Mold making is an art and molds are expensive, even for relatively simple parts. But once you have a mold the parts become absolutely dirt cheap.

Specialized woodworking machines exist, such as CNC rigs to create roof trusses straight from a customized CAD package.

One other nasty little gotcha about 'printed' 3d objects is that they are really 2 1/2 D printed objects, in other words the design is deposited layer by layer, this usually means that in at least one direct (the deposition direction) the material is not very strong.

Slightly off the topic of the original article, but imagine an Ikea store with a "print behind the counter" making semi-custom furniture by CNC milling/routing the MDF/OSB components and using existing tech to make the camlocks, screws, pins, etc.

That doesn't require any new tech at all, just for the capital equipment to become cheap enough (or the utilization high enough) to justify doing the manufacture at the store instead of at a centralized plant.

It wouldn't need that much $ at all, a fair sized CNC rig that could do this would run you about $20,000 including software and tooling. I built my own once (for plasmacutting sheetmetal) for about 2/3 of that, and that's already quite a while ago, I'd expect it to be cheaper today.

This is actually a really good idea you've got there, you should do something with that!

Just select your furniture from a computer and the automated ikea design system will automagically build your furniture infront of you. You could even make slight modifications on the spot.

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