Print my ride! 3D Copiers are poised for consumer production

Full-sized printed motorcycle with working gears, courtesy Autodesk Design Gallery (Occupy San Francisco in background)

Jay Leno is already using a 3D printer in his garage to print hard to find parts for his stable of vintage cars, Nike, prototypes shoes by using a specialized printer to squirt out materials that have more or less compressibility, depending on how bouncy and flexible each part of the sole is meant to be- but how soon will it be before you don't need to be a multimillionaire or major corporation to be able to afford to have one in your home?

MakerBot, a small four person company in Brooklynn, is selling a 3D printer kit for around $750, and has been struggling to keep up with demand. For serious industrial-level quality, the price for a  Stratasys printer, such as Leno's, the price range is currently in the $27,000 range.
Enter Hewitt Packard, who, according to LA times reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles, is teaming with Stratasys to test  the ground to enter the high-quality consumer market with an HP branded 3D printer.  Models are currently being test marketed in Europe.   Should those tests be successful, this new technology may be available  in the US and elsewhere  in as soon as five to ten years years. It seems likely that in the future, a printer capable of multi-dimensional output may be a common household appliance.

In case you would rather not invest in your own home 3D copier, Autodesk is partnering with TechShop to create multiple Kinkos-like 3D copier locations  for consumers. TechShop currently has membership-based sites open in San Francisco and San Jose.  One can easily print anything from a working wrench to a a flute you can play.


However you end up accessing this technology, it does seem inevitable that 3D copying and scanning will soon be broadly available to consumers and allow laymen to design and print their own consumer goods at low cost. This means that the traditional manufacturing plant business model may be largely eliminated  in the next generation. 

In thinking about how culture-changing this could be, consider that with the 3D printing model there is no advantage to manufacturing anywhere other than locally, as doing otherwise only adds to shipping costs and delays. There is no need for tooling of manufacturing plants to make specific goods, as an item made singly is the same price as one made in quantity.  In one sweeping change, the long-held basis of the economies of quantity will no longer apply. With few manufactured goods to ship, the implications for ports, rail and trucking are likely to be substantial as demand for their services withers. 


Additionally, until  now, an average person couldn't reasonably design and manufacture their own goods. To turn concept to reality required sourcing, creating custom molds and possibly specialized machining . With the new democratization of design and manufacturing, literally anyone with an idea and the access to the technology can create anything.  One can only imagine what  strange and wonderful creations may arise from this freedom. Certainly, designing, or at least customizing, ordinary consumer goods such as dinnerware is likely to become the new norm.  From new directions in design for common objects like lamps,  to re-imagining medical applications such as with Scott Summit's custom sexy prosthetics,  the applications are as broad as the technology is versatile.