Piracy vs. Theft

[Pappy13]

I think that this is a reality that is coming sooner than later, where we may be able to download a significant amount of actual products, rather than having to go to a store and buy them.  This will be extremely convenient for things that break.  Imagine if you lose a specific screw and can just do to the manufacturer's website and download the replacement...

Sorry, I was commenting on this part of your original post. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear, I thought it was.

I have no comment on the whole piracy vs. theft angle.

[Brian Fein]

Without reading all the responses here, I just want to add that I have experience with these 3D printers.  We have one at work, I use it almost daily.

The material which is uses in this machine is not durable, breaks easily.  Its good for rapid prototyping and quick-turn one-off parts, but the material is EXPENSIVE and not as good as original materials.

So, while you could make a 3D print of a cup with a logo etched in the side, it wouldn't be perfectly clear, probably not safe to drink from, and would cost about 10x the cost of just buying the cup.  Because all the "empty space" inside the cup gets filled with material and removed later.

I don't think 3D printing is as viable as you may think as a means of re-creating things like Ikea furniture.

[Dave Gray]

Jesus Christ.

We're talking about 30 years in the future.  Not today.

[Brian Fein]

OK, so now that I've read the replies...

30 years in the future, 3D printing will still be more expensive than mass production.  This is constant.  Why not go buy an injection molding machine and buy resin and mold them in your garage?  Its the same thing.

I think your lack of knowledge about 3D printing is what is crippling your judgment here.  If we're talking theoretical and not as a cost saving measure, then, fine, so be it.  But 3D printing is not likely to ever develop into a mainstream in-home technology.  No one has a CNC milling machine in their garage, and the 3D printer is similar.  Its just not practical.

Practicality, aside - if you have a 3D printer in your home, I still wouldn't want to use it to make things.  Again, the material is unpaintable, only comes in one color, and NOT clear.  In your example of the alarm clock face, sure that's a great way to fix that problem, but the 3D printed face would likely be more fragile than the original, and thus likely also break (not to mention you wouldn't be able to see the time).

[Pappy13]

30 years in the future, 3D printing will still be more expensive than mass production.  This is constant.  Why not go buy an injection molding machine and buy resin and mold them in your garage?  Its the same thing.

This is basically what I was trying to say. People don't do this. They don't want to do this no matter how easy it is. People like to go to the store, browse the shelves, pick out something they like, fork over the cash and take it home. We are basically very lazy consumers. We want it all wrapped up with a nice bow on top. We don't mind if we have to pay a few bucks more, it's worth it because it's really our time that we are talking about. If it doesn't take much time to have someone else do all the work for us, we'll take that route. I really don't see that changing in 30 years.

The one thing I do see changing is going online and ordering what you want. What you order is not premanufactured. It's not sitting in a warehouse or at Walmart waiting for you to buy it. It doesn't exist. When you put in your order online, the 3D printer goes to work creating your product for you and ships it straight to your house or perhaps it's waiting at Walmart for you to stop by and pick it up on your way home from work. That I can see.

[Dave Gray]

I think you guys are way off.  Technology gets cheap. 

30 years in the future, 3D printing will still be more expensive than mass production.  This is constant.  Why not go buy an injection molding machine and buy resin and mold them in your garage?  Its the same thing.

Because I'm guessing those devices are very expensive and the materials are as well.  Plus, they are limited to a small number of things.

If I had a machine that was cheap and could, say, carve blocks of wood from downloadable plans, I'd probably make my own wooden bowls, that go buy expensive ones at Crate and Barrel. 

I think that if tech can get cheap enough (and it always does) and more importantly easy enough, it will make buying certain objects in stores obsolete.

[Brian Fein]

While I understand your principle, I think 3D printing is not the right tree to be barking up.

There already exist machines that can carve blocks of wood into wooden bowls.  A used one will run you about $1500, and the technology has been around for 15-20 years.  However, unless you have a tree farm, the block of wood will still cost you more money than buying the wooden bowl.  Maybe pick it up at Wal Mart instead of Crate and Barrel to save some cash.  90% of that wooden block will end up on the floor of your garage, not to mention now you have to have a huge garage to hold that machine.

Maybe it would also help you to know that the 3D printer is the size of half a car.  Its not a desktop machine like a 2D printer.  Perhaps in the future there will be a desktop version.

I agree with you in principle, that making stuff yourself would be better than buying it.  But, at the same time, you can not neglect the cost of raw materials.  Your hypothesis speaks as though that cost is negligible, like its something you have an abundance of lying around your house.  Unless you can figure out how to make water a solid at room temperature (hey, since we're speculating on technology...) then I don't see how you can just outright ignore that cost.

[Pappy13]

I think you guys are way off.  Technology gets cheap.  Because I'm guessing those devices are very expensive and the materials are as well.  Plus, they are limited to a small number of things.

The materials are not that expensive, the machine itself is. What makes the machine worth it is mass producing the product and marking up the price of each enough to make a decent profit over the cost of the machine. Buying a machine and purchasing the raw materials to produce only a small number, is NOT cost effective and it will NEVER be because the cost of the machine is gonna far outweigh the cost of a single product or 2. Even if the price of the 3D printer comes down to say something like 5 grand you'd have to save enough money on product to make it worth it. Remember that if YOU can buy the printer for 5 grand, what is going to stop Walmart from buying hundreds of the printers and selling the products at or near the cost you're able to make them at? You simply won't be able to make it worth it.

As far as being limited, it's only limited by the molds you buy which aren't cheap either. Yes, the 3D printer has that going for it over the injection machine, but I'm not so sure about the materials involved. I got a feeling a larger proportion of the cost would be tied up in the materials in the 3D printer. Also I'm not convinced that this technology will ever become as inexpensive as you think it will. There might be a low cost 3D printer that's affordable for home, but's it's not going to be as good or as flexible as a really expensive one that someone will use to mass produce the product.

That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

[Dave Gray]

I will always side with things being inexpensive and small enough for home use, given enough time.

I see this kind of thing as more of an inevitability.  I've heard some small uses for these printers now, where you create a character in a video game, and then the game sends your printer the 3D model to print as a figurine.  Kinda cool, but not really all that useful.

Be careful not to underestimate technology's ability to wipe out your current kind of thinking.  There are things that have changed in just the last 10 years that have totally flipped the way I look at things.  I can't imagine going into a store and buying a road-map, for example.

[Spider-Dan]

Because you don't have an answer. The scenario you are proposing is JUST like photo's are today, but you don't want to admit it.

Why do people buy digital songs from iTunes when they can download them from the internet for free?

You're right; the situation is more like photos than you think.  People go to Walmart to print out photos because it's cheap and easy to get consistently high-quality prints, and you don't have to invest in the hardware or go out to buy replacement ink cartridges when you just want to print one photo.

Similarly, iTunes was able to succeed as a business model because it was easy, relatively cheap, and you didn't have to worry about horrible quality rips or incomplete/mislabeled songs or downloading viruses.  The name of the game is convenience.

So then, what does this have to do with future cheap 3D printers?  Will the products that you buy in the store have nice boxes and instruction manuals and product warranties?  Yes, in the same sense that DVDs today come with nice boxes and commentary tracks and deleted scenes.  And yet, people still download ripped copies without any of those things, and the media cartels howl bloody murder over it.

If you are going to respond with some argument about the cost of the printer, or the cost of the materials, or the quality of the reproduction, YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT.  It's like people in 1970 arguing that copying a reel-to-reel film requires expensive equipment and the quality ALWAYS degrades when you make a copy from a copy, plus how could anyone possibly afford all that film?  If someone had hypothesized then that people in 40 years could store 20 copies of theater-quality films with flawless video and sound on a device the size of a piece of toast, and that said device would cost about 1 day's wages at minimum wage, it would sound as ridiculous as you think home 3D printing sounds now.

20 years ago, the cost to buy and record 100 feature-film-capacity optical discs would have been astronomical.  Today it is peanuts.  You have absolutely no idea what the base material for 3D printers will cost in the future, nor how durable it will be.  Making your counterargument on those grounds is a waste of time.

Rather than arguing about the hypothetical cost of this future technology, you should answer Dave's question: what will/should the moral, ethical, and legal impact of using these future printers be?

[Dave Gray]

From the "experts" I've listened to on the subject, the hypothesis is that the IKEAs of the world that now sell you wood, screws and plans, would instead sell you the RIGHTS (for a much reduced price, because you're using your own materials, and they don't have to move the items or store them) for the items.  You could download them yourself.

But I see a bigger issue:  What about "freeware".  What about a nice guy out there that creates a chair in his spare time and uploads the results for free.  Then, the need to buy a chair goes down.  It's enough to put entire industries out of business.

I think that this all comes down to food.  Everyone needs basic needs: food, clean water, waste management and access to medicine.  Other than that, I can envision a future where other "products" don't need to be retailed.

[Brian Fein]

I assume your question is rhetorical because there is no fundamental difference between making a 3D "photocopy" of a bookshelf, and making a digital copy of a DVD.  No difference whatsoever.

And in response to Dave's point - While you have some instances where people might prefer to print their own furniture, I still think there will be a market for retail products.  Albeit likely scaled down, in this far-fetched and seemingly unreasonable alternate universe where we can all manufacture goods out of a printer the size of a bread box that uses no raw materials.  Just like the example above - DVD's and Music are available to frely download online.  Yet, DVD sales and CD sales (although admittedly declined) still exist.  Explain...

[Spider-Dan]

Albeit likely scaled down, in this far-fetched and seemingly unreasonable alternate universe where we can all manufacture goods out of a printer the size of a bread box that uses no raw materials.

Who said that they will use no raw materials?

Digital copies still use raw materials: storage space (if you collect HD movies, you should be well aware that storage space quickly becomes a significant cost).  Similarly, copying CDs and DVDs uses raw materials (i.e. blank discs).  It's just that the raw materials are much cheaper than the retail product.

The premise presumes that going out and buying a box of ultraplasticine for your 3D printer is cheaper than buying the finished products.

Just like the example above - DVD's and Music are available to frely download online.  Yet, DVD sales and CD sales (although admittedly declined) still exist.  Explain...

Explain?  I think that was the point I was making.

Pappy13 was talking about the prevalence of Walmart photo-printing as "proof" that there's no market for home 3D printing.  My counterpoint was that there will always be a market for cheaper, less "fully featured" products, and that the enthusiastic pursuit of copyright infringement by the media cartels shows that they, too, are concerned with this market.

[fyo]

 

Without reading all the responses here, I just want to add that I have experience with these 3D printers.  We have one at work, I use it almost daily.

That's not the type that will be (is) inexpensive. There are quite a few different DIY 3D printers out there and they're quite capable of printing a cup without requiring removal of material. They work a bit like 3D inkjet printers (which does limit the geometries that can be created) except that they print in plastic,
typically PE (which is safe and what your plastic kitchenware is made of) or PLA (which is also safe and not derived from oil like other plastics). People are even printing with polycarbonate! All the materials are relatively cheap and will only continue to become cheaper.

Durability is still an issue, particularly for thin structures. Work is being done to improve that, although it is a problem to achieve at a low cost (using an oven and a cleaner, enclosed environment).

printing a cup and filling it with beer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAO0XUze2_c

polycarbonate printing:
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20120101-experiment-polycarbonate-with-diy-3d-printer.html

[Brian Fein]

^^ yup almost the exact same machine we have, except our doesn't have an X-Y table for the part to move on.  The print head moves in 2 directions, and the platform goes up and down for Z.