History of Computers - 3D Printing
Introduction
"Perhaps the most exciting aspect of additive manufacturing is that it lowers the cost of entry into the business of making things. Instead of finding the money to set up a factory or asking a mass-producer at home (or in another country) to make something for you, 3D printers will offer a cheaper, less risky route to the market. An entrepreneur could run off one or two samples with a 3D printer to see if his idea works. He could make a few more to see if they sell, and take in design changes that buyers ask for. If things go really well, he could scale up—with conventional mass production or an enormous 3D print run.
This suggests that success in manufacturing will depend less on scale and more on the quality of ideas. Brilliance alone, though, will not be enough. Good ideas can be copied even more rapidly with 3D printing, so battles over intellectual property may become more intense. It will be easier for imitators as well as innovators to get goods to markets quickly. Competitive advantages may thus be shorter-lived than ever before. As with past industrial revolutions, the greatest beneficiaries may not be companies but their customers. But whoever gains most, revolution may not be too strong a word." -FILTON, from The Economist Also, in the future, we will have to deal with new copyright laws and safety concerns as people begin to create under-the-radar guns and copyrighted products. [1]
Makerbot's 3-D Printer
Overview
As of 2010, the American Society for Testing and Materials has announced seven different types of 3-d printers:
(1986) Vat Photopolymerisation-through stereolithography, a vat of photopolymer resin is exposed to an ultraviolet laser that traces patterns on it and makes it bind to the resin below
Material Jetting-See Below
(1993) Binder Jetting-One uses powder and mixes it with a liquid that "glues the powder" into solid shapes
(late 80s)Material Extrusion-Using fused deposition modelling, the material is melted and then placed in a specific pattern in layers
(mid-1980s) Powder Bed Fusion-Commonly using selective laser sintering, a high powered laser fuses bits of powder together
Sheet Lamination-Metal sheets are ultrasonically welded togetehr and then molded by CNC
Directed Energy Deposition-A nimble robotic arm releases bits of powder that a high energy laser fuses together to make a solid shape[2]
As opposed to the standard printer, which uses toner ink to print 2-dimensional images from a file, 3D printing breaks this 2D boundary through a process called layering. 3D printing is currently a developing technology, still mostly in the hands of academic researchers or hobbyist groups, similar to the DIY (Do-it-yourself) computer kits of the 1970's. Most 3D printers function in a similar fashion, by taking a 3D model file produced by 3D imaging software and feeding that to the printer, which then reads the model as a number of micro-thin slices, or layers, which are printed on top of one another until the object is fully formed. As a developing technology, no set standard has emerged as the most efficient method of printing, so 3D printers use a variety or techniques or methods to build the object.
One popular method is inkjet printing, where the printer puts down a layer of material at a time and printing an inkjet binder between layers. This has gained popularity because it allows for a full spectrum of color printing as opposed to other types, which are limited to the base color of the material.Visual diagrams of inkjet printing. With projects such as the Peachy Printer[3], 3-d printers are rapidly jumping into the consumer market at ever decreasing prices.
The filament, which is the "toner" of a 3D pinter, is made of various types of plastics: ABS, PLA, HIPS, and PVA. The type of filament depends on the characteristics of the printer: temperature and extrusion speed. Also the filament can vary in flexibility, conductivity, strength, transparency. Spools of filament average around $50 each. [4] (Gregory Dayao)
Significance
For the first time, 3D printers have given geeks the holy grail of technology: a machine which while at the moment merely fuses the concepts of software and hardware, may soon make the difference disappear. 3D printing has the potential for an upcoming revolution in not just the computing world, but in every sector. 3D printing has the potential to, and in all likelihood will, void all current copyright law, make monopoly impossible, and empower the consumer to levels undreamed of, with the sole limit being toner prices.
References
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/137955-how-drm-will-infest-the-3d-printing-revolution https://textually.org/3DPrinting/2013/09/032328.htm
