The substrates will be A) mass produced like printer cartridges are now. B) recyclable. No doubt Dow and Dupont are already looking at the problem.Taboo wrote:I disagree with everyone.
3D Printing isn't going to be nearly as revolutionary as you think Tinker. I used to think it would be. Now that I know more, I don't. Sure, it may bankrupt some toy manufactures in China, and free up some isles at Walmarts. People may fix more stuff around the house, especially after photo-to-CAD automation is developed. So what? All of the things you mention: spoilers, forks, poker chips - are not revolutionary, merely slightly more convenient, depending on the price of the printer and the metal-plastic cartridges. The plastic/metal powder you would use to print stuff has to be specially processed so will necessarily be more expensive than mass-produced plastic/metal parts, even after the cost of distribution. Will big and medium-sized manufacturers also run a few batches and particular parts via industrial-sized 3D printers? They already do. But will Joe Schmoe install a nanometer resolution 30x10 ft void-chamber printer in his garage? A few eccentrics may, but unlikely to be everybody's cuppatea, as Zack says.
The notion that the IT revolution is beholden to processor speeds shows a profound ignorance of the innovation on the software end of it.I strongly disagree with Zack that the IT revolution has run out of steam.
1) Have you noticed how for the past few years computers have gone multicore, instead of breaking through the 4Ghz barrier? It was because of fundamental problems with cooling. Well the new Sandia Cooler blasts that away, with a 3,000% improvment in cooling power. That should take us to about 9Ghz processors.
Right, when I say 3D printers will be revolutionary, I don't mean in a vacuum sans this other technology. Bringing down the costs of manufacturing at every level will change the fundamental structure of manufacturing the world over. It's a scale thing. When you fundamentally alter the scales of society everything has to shift and reform around them, that's revolutionary. So if people like me have the 3D printer equivalent of an inkjet at home, and a laserjet at work, then the company that is producing small novelty goods for the neighborhood can have a storefront where they sell toys and other household items. Hardware stores can produce certain custom jobs in house kind of like they already have key grinders to produce keys. Auto parts stores will be able to produce some parts. The town machine fabrication joint will use rapid prototyping to spec out jobs for prospective clients.2) The AI advances of the last decade have been amazing. Back when I designed my first visual detection neural net back in the early 2000s, there were probably a few thousand people in the world who knew how to do that. Now every camera has face-detecting nets embedded. Asimovian butlers are not that far off, a mere sixteen fold increase of capability, an adequate power supply, and a good company to properly integrate the disparate techs into a working ensemble are needed. Pseudo-intelligent robotic helpers will turn the labor relations intranationally and internationally between rich and poor on their head. China's low-skill model is fucked, and they know it. This is more revolutionary than anything that has ever come before. The first 2 industrial revolutions (steam and electric) hugely increased the brawn of humankind, leaving slow failing human minds to deal with the power. The third one, once it properly sets in, will exponentially increase the mental-analytic and observational capabilities of the civilization. Of course, our decision making powers (information-integration) and willpower (goal-setting and planning) will lag far behind, causing tremendous (perhaps fatal) stress on the system. But it will be exciting.
It's a tier thing and I have yet to have anyone address this fundamental point I continue to make. No one is looking at it from the SOCIAL angle. When you reduce the barrier to entry and introduce more use cases for a technology then certain benchmarks for market saturation occur that cause fundamental economic shifts in the access that people have to resources.
At the top end the level of sophistication in the things produced will be mind-boggling. Mitsubishi's robot butlers will have incredibly intricate parts.