I know it is probably unwise to criticize a band of people  trying to 3D print their own firearms. But, I feel I must state this, if only for the record, if only to let me sleep better at night someday in the future.

The people at Defense Distributed are sociopaths who by refusing to consider any possible consequences of their actions are exhibiting an almost childlike asinine level of  irresponsibility. The media, by giving young Cody a platform to express their views and obtain funding, are culpable in letting a lone gunman not only hijack their editorial pages, blogs and TV for his own ends but also in letting him build his gun. Without media attention the “3D printed gun” would not have been possible. Through their irresponsible reporting they have made from a non-event a deadly device that will at one point kill someone. The most likely victim, one of the people making this thing.

It is through media attention that we see Cody’s pathology emerge. If you see the YouTube videos the student becomes a leather jacketed sunglasses wearing “eating Diane Finestine’s lunch”, “Joe Biden this is no country for old men”, “How’s that national conversation going” corny one liner bad boy who AR-15 in hand interjects himself into the US national gun debate. Look at the changes coming over him in the videos, ever more bombastic, self-absorbed and macho. Driven with a desire to be famous he has grabbed his 15 minutes of fame with a secure pistol grip and Rambo stare.  Motivated by a wish to delta his Twitter followers and be someone he is driven to complete his mission. Not a student of law but rather an actor on the world stage, a mayor influencer in a grand national debate a Navy Seal  in the culture wars. The New York Times, CNN, NBC, BBC News, etc. He is somebody. Somebody who has a natural gift for PR. A deadly troll wants to be famous and has found his shtick in making guns. A quote from Cody and co. describing their inspiration, “We could be like arms manufacturers”, “That’d be cool.” “What about 3D printing?” A quote from me, “this will end well.”

Dear reporters, you have created this monster, this self promotional manipulator who bereft of any engineering or 3D printing sense will probably end up hurting himself. Everything they’ve done so far could have been done better by a few experienced engineers & 3D printing people over a weekend. The real tragedy here is that the most likely short term outcome of this entire thing is that Cody will on live TV lose several fingers and may suffer from severe burns once his poorly designed excuse for a firearm explodes in his hands.  Not only is the idea ill conceived but the materials are poorly chosen with heat deflection temperatures and strengths far below those required for a firearm. Some basic research would have uncovered much better suited 3D printing materials. Orientation and layer direction also does not seem to have been taken into account. The design is also in my opinion not adequate not taking into consideration the forces at play. What we can learn about the design choices they make seem bereft of a basic understanding of the plastics involved, mechanical engineering and 3D printing. The Liberator is a dangerous thing, not because it will somehow change America but because it will at one point rupture while being fired and possible really harm the operator of the weapon. The other victim will be irony. No doubt that this is going to be the worst thing thats happened to the word since Alanis Morisette.

Despite the existence of this thing, I still maintain that on current generation home machines it will not be possible to make a working reliable firearm. A gun that is better than a few things one could collect from Home Depot.  There are far better production technologies available for producing arms in the home.

But, if this idea is promoted enough it will at one point lead to a 3D printed weapon being produced. This will be untraceable and you will by no means whatever be able to detect it or stop it from being produced. It may not work well but could be used to threaten, rape, kill and hijack. Because the most dangerous thing about this is that it radically lowers the barrier for a criminal to obtain something they can use to credibly threaten someone else and coerce them into doing their bidding. By mentioning this gun the media and letting them do their story we are making this outcome more likely. We should stop talking about this and ignore this entirely because that will make it less likely that such a thing will be produced and less likely that people will get hurt. Not mentioning this will at  least slow its development.  You can not unmake an idea. Eventually with 3D printing everything that can be made will be made. We need to realize this and as a society be responsible. And promoting a dangerous idea just because it is hip and interesting is not being responsible.

This is akin to in 1995 giving a gigantic amount of media attention to someone who wants to publish the Anarchist’s Cookbook online. Imagine all the fear then? And now terrorists can use the internet to exchange lots of information but I am betting that this level of exchange and the ensuing dangers are  far lower than what we would have feared back then. But, the simple mentioning over and over again of this possibility would be enough to make it self-fulfilling just like the internet itself was a self- fulfilling prophecy. Will the internet make it possible to exchange all information? Yes. Is this inherently dangerous? No, unless people who want to do dangerous things seek and find this information.

We are basically good people and so far the 30,000 people who have 3D printers at home haven’t been making guns, because they don’t want to kill people but make nice lovely things. This idea has been around for decades but no one (outside R&D for the military) has picked this up, why? Because these people were intelligent enough to realize that the outcomes of this would be negative. Being grown ups, they were able to think about the consequences of their actions.

This entire “3D printed gun’ story  is akin to there being no occurrences of anyone stabbing anyone in the eye with a fork. Someone coming up with the idea to stab people in the eye with the fork because they believed that in general you are free to do what you want. That someone then detailing how to stab people in the eye with forks. That person then repeatedly explaining the concept to the mass media over and over again. And…all of a sudden people start getting stabbed in the eye with forks. Will this mean that forks are dangerous? No, it means that if you give someone a stage from which to shout their dangerous idea, you make it more likely that this idea will come about. This is not true of all ideas, some can be stopped because they are aired. But, others like the “stabbing people in the eye with forks” or “you can now 3D print a gun” idea can not be stopped because once the genie is out of the bottle there only remains the inspiration for the individual to carry out the act in isolation. This is similar to the “lone school shooter” idea whereby mentioning this in the media causes more school shooters to emerge.

It is much easier to make a weapon with CNC, and plans for CNC weapons have been online for a while now.

If you were really interested in making guns at home aren’t there many tools that would be much better suited for the purpose than a 3D printer? Reamers? Drills? CNC?

Could you make a gun out of clay by using that as a mold? Yes. Should we regulate pottery wheels?

This thing has the functionality of a zip gun (maybe) and would not be up to the standards of a weapon made with pipe and other materials from your local hardware store. So what is the story exactly?

This just the perfect storm of “new technology 3D printing”+fear+guns=story.

How will this help American gun owners? They can buy guns? So why would they want to make them?

Isn’t there a risk that criminals and the insane, who can not buy weapons will use them?

Isn’t the best possible use case for this weapon the hijacking of an aircraft?

In the interests of liberty should you do product development for Al Qaeda? A group much more likely to benefit from this technology than NRA loving Americans?

How many aircraft can  Al Qaeda hijack using this weapon for it to still be a victory for liberty?

If Americans die due to terrorists using this weapon will it still be a victory for liberty? What number of deaths will be OK?

Does the risk that a person unable to obtain a firearm because they are insane or a criminal using this to kill someone outweigh the perceived benefit to American gun owners?

Does lack of criticism from the NRA imply that the NRA thinks it is a good idea that the criminally insane and convicted or active criminals will have an ability to produce their own  firearms?

“The goal was, the political goal was, universal access to the firearm.” So this is a political goal that may kill someone? Is it worth it, did you get to the part in your course about proportionality yet?

Would this project be worth it if someone died?  Would the people at defense distributed be able to live with that? From interviews it seems they have not considered this or do not mind.

Does something like the precautionary principle or any kind of reasonable weighing of the outcomes apply here?

“If the police can have it, if the military can have it, then you can have it.” Isn’t the modern state based on a monopoly of violence by the authorities?Is a asymmetry in weaponry needed to keep a stable society? So I should also be allowed poisonous gas? Nothing is to be forbidden or restricted? How about basic laws that we’d like to make so that we all get along?

He seems to imply that he’s read the Leviathan, has he?

“The political “discussion” about mental health, the background check, and gun control is invidious and follows a disciplinary desire. Remember that power produces truth. Individual subjects are made administrative objects through a documentary process: The mental health evaluation, the questionnaire, the application. The tendency is toward an ultimate result where no one really meets an artificial behavioral “norm,” and all are unfit to own a weapon. Case in point.
This is not a discovered truth about reality. Power produces.”

Read that few times and tell me what you think. Does this imply that because at one point maybe the criteria for insanity will become broader it is a good idea to give weapons to insane people now? Because maybe at some different future “the government may  take our guns away”, we should make them available to bank robbers and psychopaths now? In other words, we may at some point reach a slippery slope so we must now do something that endangers people?

“Don’t we all have the capacity for evil within us, is an essential question and I think yes of course, …. this ability to do harm that lies in all of us. But regardless of if there will be more murders in the end or more gun crime in the end we still think there is a liberty interest in allowing you to have access to those things.”

Is anyone actually listening to what this guy is saying? How can someone say this and still be considered to be of sound mind? He is accepting of the fact that a certain number of people may die but thinks that regardless of the number of these deaths “the liberty interest” outweighs the number of deaths be they 1, 10 or 100,000? He accepts that what he is doing will kill people but wants to press on regardless? Regardless. His idea of what liberty is and his actions in bringing this about outweighs any possible consequence? If I think that something promotes liberty I can do it regardless? More importantly I should let nothing stop me? Someone should tell these guys that we live in a world with consequences. There is no save game, no do over.  What if we disagree on what liberty is? What kind of 3rd grader man is the measure thinking is this? So by the amazing logic driving these people someone who wanted to detonate a nuclear weapon would be justified in doing this as long as they thought there was a “liberty interest” involved?  And even if 300,000 people died it would totally be OK because the abstract idea of liberty is much more important than any number of human lives. What are the criteria for liberty interests and who sets them?  Its like someone gave a third grader access to a thesaurus, Hobbes and 3D printing and they understood none of those things but were able to parrot a few things just enough to get invited to all the TV channels.

“Oh Definitely, this is the problem of liberty generally, people are gonna be free to be stupid, they’re gonna be free to mess up, they won’t build it right, and they might hurt themselves.” Finally I think he’s said something I can agree with.

BotObjects launched their full color desktop 3D printer with a podcast and a webpage. You should check out the page and read their claims because below I will discuss why I doubt their claim that this is currently a fully functional device that they have and will be launched in a matter of weeks. I really want this thing to be true and real. It would be wonderful. And I will be the first to admit I was wrong and apologize profusely if this incredible idea is real. If this were a concept I would go easy on it but they say they have this device and it will be on the market in weeks. I am highly skeptical. Technically I don’t think its possible, they also don’t seem to have the required knowledge of people who would have done this. If they would have they would explain themselves differently and would ascribe a different relative importance to their innovations.

But, the most important thing to me is: Why the hell is this thing orange? Why did they go through the trouble or making a semi transparent orange cover? Why choose orange? Did they like the color? Did they think people wanted to see their prints but not see them really well in a transparent cover? The Form1 uses an orange cover but that is because it uses SLA and needs the orange to block out light to  prevent it being harmful to peoples eyes and most to stop the light in the room from hardening the resin before the laser does. Why in a non-light based 3D printer would you pick orange as a color? This thing use FDM so the orange is not needed. Knowing, as I’m sure that the people capable of making a full color desktop 3D printer would know, that all the  light based systems will tend to use orange to do this, why pick orange. Why not pick another color to differentiate yourself? Any color but orange? Why pick orange, this is totally amazing to me.

I’ll go through their site, header by header.

“Just like normal ink printers, the ProDesk3D uses its proprietary 5-colour PLA cartridge system, capable of mixing primary printing colors to generate the colors of choice for the object you wish to print. This is delivered seamlessly with our software included with the ProDesk3D.”

Why “delivered seamlessly with our software included with the ProDesk3D” is that really important considering the invention itself?

Why mention this and not talk about other color related things?

DPI, colors, color capability?

The form factor of the thing leaves too little space for 5 regular print heads plus everything else.

The mechanics of the thing would be too complex.

And why not mention the complex mechanics?

Why not mention all the breakthroughs needed for this in switching/gates/extrusion technology?

If the complex mechanics would be there they would also not fit in the machine. Or did they perhaps have a huge stride in some kind of electronics field?

If they did this why not mention it.

Mixing like this would not be feasible without some huge tech gains.

Purge times would be too high. Or if purging would be done, would require more equipment.

Why not talk about these challenges?

Why not mention what colors are in the cartridges?

Color mixing is hard.

And all the mixing is done in the cartridge? Or cartridges individually?

If the cartridge is the magic is the magic then done in each cartridge individually? The podcast seems to imply that this is the case. This is confusing to me. Or is it a cartridge system? If there is a mixing system why not give that a name and mention that? Our ColorMixerPro is amazing…”

If you could mix any color, how would this create true full color? How would that work exactly?

If I’d have to mix for skin color, print, mix for eye color, print, mix for pupil color, print, mix for eye color, print, mix for skin color print all in one layer wouldn’t it take too long? How would it purge/cut off the stream?

And if it would do these things they would need much more space.

“Improved accuracy with printed Support Material 
To support your printed 3D objects, the ProDesk3D delivers a PVA-based Support Material via our proprietary Dual-Extruder head. Now the most complex 3D designs can be printed with ease. Our Support Material does not require a messy finishing set or any chemicals to complete your design.”

“Improved accuracy with printed Support Material” is bull. They go on to say that it does improve the number of things you can print but support material is support for geometry not something that increases accuracy. How would it increase accuracy actually?

Why not mention how support is removed? Ultra sonic wash tank?

It is not messy, maybe, but how does it work then?

Why not make a bigger deal about support in the first place?

“Fast automatic set-up – with self-calibrating build platform
Just like normal ink printers, there shouldn’t be any complex or tricky set up, the ProDesk3D arrives out-of-box complete. Plug it into the mains, quick auto software download, insert your cartridges in seconds, and load up your 3D design and print it! Our industry leading proprietary Self Calibration Software talks to the ProDesk3D, understanding the composition of your uploaded 3D design, and while it auto-sets the printer, it also self calibrates the printer bed. No more tricky software set up!”

Whats the big deal with a self calibrating build platform? Why is that a huge selling point?

Does the extruder self calibrate?

Why does only the build platform self calibrate?

Why not both the platform and extruder?

How does it do this?

Why is this more important than highest speed and accuracy (see below)?

And the self calibrating build platform is more important than outperfoming the entire industry in every metric (see below)?

“Delivering industry leading accuracy, speed and durability
The ProDesk3D will be capable of printing down to 25 microns, beating industry leading speeds using durable PLA and PVA support material. The ProDesk3D sets a new standard for PLA-based 3D models, leading the industry on finish quality and durability. The ProDesk3D is capable of printing ABS material.”

How do they get better durability exactly? How would a printer give a part better durability?

So not only can they do full color but they are also faster and more accurate?

What does printing down to 25 micron mean? Does it refer to layer thickness? Detail?

Win on one maybe, win on many fronts and it seems too amazing.

Why are these things lumped in one sentence and not explained? Each part of the first sentence below the header is amazing.

And how do they achieve a better surface finish?

Is this a another process?

“Cutting edge tri-fan system
In order to ensure consistency of airflow within the enclosed casing, the ProDesk3D delivers a unique proprietary based tri-fan system to balance airflow across the cubic space of the build platform, enabling time and time again consistent 3D builds, and eliminates inaccurate modeling.”

But their 3 fans get their own header?

In the previous header they mention in one sentence, oh yeah we outperform the entire desktop 3D printing industry in every important metric. But, we thought that this was less important than our self calibrating build platform. We will lump the amazingness all in one sentence and then for another header talk about these amazing fans we have.

Also the usage of “cubic space” just bothers me.

What does eliminates accurate modeling mean? in the previous sentence the fans provide “consistent 3D builds” ok, so far so awesome and this in line to what they help do. But what is eliminates inaccurate modeling mean? Do the fans make sure I don’t make any mistakes in Solidworks?

“A beautiful anodized aluminum safe casing – highly functional
The ProDesk3D arrives in a high quality, beautiful and safe anodized aluminum casing. The goal had been set to think about the maturity of 3D printing, what would it look like in 5 years time, and how would the right case endure these times. Setting new standards with aluminum design, the ProDesk3D separates itself from the kit-like contemporaries.”

High quality, beautiful and safe are important but…uum…maybe the case does something else for your printer?

Is it rigid for example?

Why not mention the other benefits the case brings?

Marketing & Claims

I could understand not disclosing tech before launch. But, then why not talk about the other non patentable technolgy?

Why not mention all of the breakthroughs you had to make. “We had to make major advances in….”

Why not file first, then disclose?

Why not file, disclose and then launch with a working machine?

If the machine works right now and is ready, why not wait and show upon launch? Why the lag between now and the garden party?

Why not launch at the garden party? What is the  purpose of putting this live now a month in advance?

If as they say they have it right now why not go to BBC, CNN and show the thing working.

Why not launch at the 3D printing event that they say they attended?

Why soft launch something that answers every question and problem in 3D printing? What is the point of this from a marketing perspective, when with a few images and a video shared privately you could launch this with a newspaper, blogger or TV channel of your choice.

Soft launching this would be comparable to soft launching a chocolate bar that tastes great and makes you thinner.

Why no images of printed objects now?

From the Podcast

From the Engineer & Designer podcast: “we got cracking on this over two years ago” when they were involved with 5 other companies as CEO and CTO.

The “cartridge system is eco friendly and reusable, that was a big challenge for us, huge challenge” compared to the other stuff, not so much.

“We’ve got a self calibrating build platform, it took for ever”, uum why? How? Compared to the other things that they must have done to get the color to work the platform doesn’t seem like a hard challenge.

Also compared to the higher, accuracy, higher speed and other innovations it doesn’t seem like a huge challenge.

The build platform and cartridge are the only “big” and “huge” challenges mentioned. None of the other stuff, support, writing the mixing software etc.

Why not talk about the speed and accuracy?

“the tri fan system, was critical to making this work” How come? It would only improve builds, its not critical for the whole machine.

How are the fans critical to making this whole machine work?

300mm x 275mm x 275mm build platform is mentioned. But, this is not mentioned as amazing even though is 3 times Makerbots and second only to Rostock Max and German RepRap.

“sliders and autochecks (of machine software) go immeasurably further than whats available on the market today.” Sliders? How so? After a story about the sliders being used to adjust parameters, a question is asked What parameters do you have to adjust? “Its more around coloration. And what you can do with coloration.” uum?

 In summation

But, most of all, I go on Twitter and  in the comments box of Solidsmack and express my doubts about this machine. The logical response for them is that the sweet sweet smell of victory is near. Because if they have this machine and  it works as they say and it is going to be shipped in a matter of weeks as they say this is a beautiful moment. There is one 3D printing guy expressing his doubts. He doubts that this machine we made exists. He is a 3D printing consultant and he doesn’t even believe that this machine we spent two years on exists! Could you believe this? How awesome this would be? How great this would feel?

Other people also doubt it and start posting their doubts to twitter and in comments to articles. Oh no, we’re about to launch everyones dream 3D printer and this may cloud our launch. This is a risk. And we’ve been working on this thing for two years and have made multiple breakthroughs in multiple technical fields and will this will blow everyones mind.

What would you do? What is the only thing to do, to tweet, “@pilz glad that the botobjects is so amazing you cant hardly believe it, come to our garden party June. Heres an invite” But instead silence. The sweet vindication is so near. Would you wait? Would you not respond?

Or maybe you just would have taken one photo of one part and then presto this would all be gone and you’d have had 1.2 million visits and 200,000 newsletter sign ups by nightfall and been on the BBC in the morning. Then in 24 hours with some canny PR support you could have been on many major tv stations and papers the world over.  After all you have the device? It will be shipped in a few weeks?

And if you are not ready why say you are? Why launch this now? To promote the garden party? I mean if you invited a few journalists and told/proved to them them before that you have a full color desktop 3D printer that is also the fastest and most accurate system in the world well…I think they’d come. Given the high media interest in 3D printing you could make a huge event out of this. It just doesn’t make sense.  In short, I don’t believe the BotObjects is real. I understand I’m putting my neck out there but I just think that someone needs to stand up and say this before people get taken for a ride.

For some research on the topic of color mixing you can check out Myles Corbett’s report about RepRap color mixing (Thank you Richard). One thing mentioned in there is that for CMYK color to work on a FDM machine you’d need a fifth color, white to get lighter shades and no color. This would mean that including the support material the BotObjects machine would need 6 cartridges total not five, as mentioned. Or perhaps you would need the 5 cartridges as mentioned and an additional filament spool of support. But, this is not mentioned by BotObjects, they only mention a 5 cartridge system.

Tipped off by the 3D Printing subreddit, I just read a paper on PLOS ONE about an open source 3D printable optical equipment library. This is, in one word, fantastic.

The paper initiated a, “library of open-source 3D-printable optical components to provide an extremely flexible, customizable, low-cost, start of a public-domain library for developing both research and teaching optics hardware. The results show that using this open-source optics method can reduce costs of many optical components by 97% or more.”

By using 3D printed components this library should greatly expand the number of people that are able to experiment and play with optics.  The cost of an optical rail went down from $320 per meter to 12 per meter. A lens holder went down from between $20 and $180 to 24 cents. A base went down from $150-730 to $3. These are amazing cost reductions and illustrate 3D printing’s role in making technology more accessible.

“For example to outfit an undergraduate teaching laboratory with 30 optics setups including 1 m optical tracks, optical lens, adjustable lens holder, ray optical kit, and viewing screen, the total cost would be less than $500 using the open-source optics approach as compared to $15,000 for commercial versions, providing over $14,500 in savings.” This could have as a benefit that optics can now be done in the home and also in High Schools.

A lens holder. 

The OpenSCAD designs as well as the Arduino control software were  posted to Thingiverse. You can see and download them here from Joshua Pearce’s Thingiverse. Pearce was one of the authors of the paper and also authored a paper on the Recyclebot so is quickly becoming one of my favorite people in 3D printing.

Open source optical rail using OpenBeam.

The team used OpenSCAD to make the designs and printed them out on a RepRap. They also used other open technologies such as OpenBeam (an open source extrusion beam project), OpenBeam is making huge strides lately and is increasingly also used in 3D printers for the chassis. They also made a Filter Wheel changer which usually costs around $1500 for $50 using an Arduino and 3D printing.

Open source 3D printed, arduino controlled filter wheel changer. 

The authors point out that the accuracy of the RepRaps needs to be improved to get better results. The dimensional accuracy of ABS/FDM is good though and it is relatively tough so I hope that this will be a great solution for schools, colleges and enthusiasts to get into the DIY optics game.

When I read this I felt head slappingly dumb for a moment since this system works similarly to Materialise’s Rapid Fit system that produces jigs for the testing of mass produced parts. These are made by SLS and are extremely accurate and also use 3D printed parts in combination with beams. I’m an idiot for not connecting these two things earlier and realizing that this should be possible. The extreme accuracy of RapidFit though does point to further possibilities in refining and improving the optics library using high end machines.

P.s., A great thing about the paper was the acknowledgements where, “The authors would like to acknowledge helpful designs and discussions with M. Kreiger, G. Anzalone, T. Tam and thingiverse user ordaos.”

In a story scripted for Good Morning America 83 year old Hugh Lyman invented the Lyman Extruder II, a simple desktop open source machine that converts ABS plastic pellets into filament. Mr. Lyman also won a $40,000 prize with his invention and in case you were wondering supplements his making activities with fishing and golf.

I thought this was a wonderful story and it is a significant invention. I was also moved by Mr. Lyman’s YouTube comment, “This is an open source project free to the world.” Not only by the quote but because it was  a YouTube comment by an 83 year old inventor who had just really pushed 3D printing forward. Modernity still surprises. As does YouTube with no crappy comments and no people falling to the floor and flopping around like fish for once.

Effects of Lyman 

Filament currently retails for $40-$50 online in several 3D printing material stores and 3D printer retailers. By letting people buy pellets the cost per kilo might be reduced as much as ten fold. You can buy pellets from $5 to $10 a kilo and much cheaper even if you buy direct from large distributors or plastics majors.

Cheaper 3D printing 

This extruder will therefore have a significant effect on pricing. If you wanted to print a mug it would have previously cost you $5 and now perhaps $0.5. This is a huge difference for 3D printer operators, you can make many more things at lower cost. Many more designs will become feasible at this price point. You also now don’t really have to think about using up material but can rather impulse 3D print many more things. Many more desktop 3D printed products now make sense. And for many things the price differential between the 3D printed thing and the mass produced item at the store has eroded or even disappeared altogether. This will make desktop 3D printing a cheaper hobby, more useful for some business applications and significantly reduce the TCO of the machines in any application.  ABS based FDM printers in one fell swoop just became 10 times cheaper to use. This will push the demand curve for the technology significantly outward.

Example of installed base improvement  

Better still this points to proof that indeed this market can be improved quickly by inventions that improve conditions for the installed base of 3D printers. If the software gets better, everyone with a 3D printer benefits. If lasers get better any SLS printer gets better. If resins get better Objet benefits etc. If materials get stronger they can be immediately deployed on compatible machines.  This is different from traditional manufacturing whereby each new technological innovation can not be immediately applied to existing factories. Because 3D printing is a 3 factor input process furthermore any of these 3 factors (machine, file, material) can be readily identified and improved upon, this is much more difficult in a fragmented complex mass manufacturing supply chain. It is in this manner that developments in 3D printing will out pace technological developments in mass manufacturing. 3D printing innovation can simply enter into use much more quickly.

Example of business problems and realities being solved by a Maker for Makers

The reason these materials were so expensive in the first place is that the market was too fragmented with too many different 3D printing solutions consuming different materials. There were lots of small vendors that placed small orders and fragmented these even further by wanting lots of different colors. This meant that these vendors could not achieve the low cost and scale that was needed for cheap filament. They bought from small time distributors or intermediaries and traders and were nuisance customers which also drove up the cost. I know this because I’ve been working on this problem for some months and came close to cracking it but, well, moving right along. Also with prices & margins artificially high everyone was not exactly keen to cut prices so prices stayed high. And what ended happening in the end? This whole inefficient chain of vendors was circumvented by a tool made by a maker making 3D printing more efficient. This is not only significant for now but points to this happening more in the future. You might be able to rip off a guy who wants to print out a term paper or airline ticket but you can’t indefinitely rip off a guy that wants to print everything.

One to many

Another great effect is that now its much simpler to give away things. Like this key chain? Keep it. This gets 3D printed things into many more people’s hands. By giving away more things and letting people keep lots of things and making it cheaper to sell 3D printed things we can turn these products into ambassadors for the technology. We can give away things that illustrate the capability & cost of these machines. Most importantly the people that have these things can now tell their story to their friends and family spreading the technology further around the world.

More failure=yippee!

With lower costs we will all be able to fail harder, better, faster and stronger. We’ll be able to make many more versions of things and test out many more things. We will be able to more easily test out each other’s designs and print out things with more whimsy or more adventure. This should in time lead to better product development in 3D printed things. We should see better things emerging more quickly than they have. More beautiful and functional things should also get made, all with more rapidity. This will also lead to increased demand for 3D printing.

But..this gets better yet, FilaMaker, Recylcebot and FilaBot

But, this story gets better still. There are a bunch of other similar project out there such as Joshua Pearce’s Recyclebot (more info here at RepRap).  FilaBot is a KickStarter funded project to make a personal filament maker. FilaMaker is a project by Marcus Thymark to combine a grinder with a filament maker (good name, Marcus Thymark, sounds like he should be invading Carthage or something). You can see a video below of Marcus’ grinder.

Recycle your 3D prints.

So what would a reliable grinder+filament maker mean? It would mean that you could recycle your 3D prints. Don’t like your mug or fractal whatnot, just recycle it. Bored with your keychain, turn it into a new one. This would also in and of itself significantly reduce the cost of 3D printing because not only is the kilo price much lower but you would iterate while reusing material and only keep what is perfect or memorable. Keep a picture frame, fridge magnet or gift and all other things would be in flux. This would greatly reduce the environmental impact of the entire 3D printing ecosystem and also lead to increased adoption. Also, we can now totally hit on Greenpeace chicks.

3D print for free! 

But..does it get better still? Oh yes it does, because a reliable grinder & filament maker could recycle household waste and turn that into 3D printing filament. So take your old Coke bottle tops and turn them into a nice Coca Cola red 3D printed bracelet. This would be a huge reduction in the environmental impact of 3D printing in the home and indeed make closed loop recycling in the home possible. It would also make 3D printing free. We could print whatever we like. And it would cost us nothing. This should help drive desktop 3D printer adoption as well.

Wow, so nothing bad’s going to happen?

Mmmm…well first off we have to be sure that these machines will even work repeatably at scale. Can they produce the correct diameter’s consistently?  Will there be bubbling and breakage. And since these things are rather slow, can you leave it on overnight without it burning your house down? We have to realize also that sooner or later someone is going to get very ill from putting the wrong kind of plastic in the machine or from fumes. If you melt PVC you might expose yourself to dioxin. Styrofoam has fun carcinogens too. Other plastics can also release dioxins when melted or burnt. Many melted plastics release fumes that to a more or lesser degree are harmful to us. So incorrect or possibly also correct usage of these devices could lead to people developing cancer. This doesn’t have to stop this thing in its tracks but should give us a moment to take pause. But, then again cigarettes give us cancer and people use those things all the time and they don’t even let you 3D print. But, because of this it is unlikely that these devices will go beyond the kit form. Perceived liability will also deter investors.

Speaking of investors, what about other negative things?

Well, if we do go on there is one more rather negative thing. In order to explain that I have to take you to a land far far away, a magical enchanted land of sunshine, dreams, hopes and possibility. This land is inhabited by a mystical and very powerful tribe of creatures with otherworldly names such as  Thiel, Khosla, Efrusy & Doerr.  The name of this magical land is Sand Hill Road. This tribe of creatures is called the VC’s. The VC’s are fearless, brainy, influential and very good at one thing: risk. Just how good are these creatures at judging risk? They’re amazing, thats why they all live smack dab in the middle of an earth quake zone in a city guaranteed to at one point fall into the sea. Yes, kids, these guys know risk like no one else.  These gallant and courageous creatures fear only three things: capital gains, hardware and the Emperor of Trolls, Myhrvold. When Myhrvold stomps around the wastelands of Texas the VC’s scurry and hide in their restaurants but other than that these proud creatures are free to roam the far corners of the earth. When Lord Myhrvold returns to his castle to cook up his potions they come out, blinking their eyes adjusting to the bright sunny glow of  their land paved in sun, bar charts and gold. These creatures are super smart, like owls every one. They feed only off of dreams and Excel. They are the guardians of invention deciding which idea becomes a thing. And they make amazing things such as social media video app platforms and also sometimes media video social app media platforms or sometimes even app social media video platforms and many amazing things like that.  Recently I even heard that they made a social app video media platform. Theres talk, but only talk, of them even perhaps getting together to, wait for it, make a social video media app platform. Truly world changing stuff! And to think they had humble beginnings in boring things such as semiconductors, these creatures have come a long way indeed. The tribe is really more of a heard but a herd that pretends its not a herd if that makes sense kids. Just imagine a group of mythical zebras pretending that they all don’t have stripes. And also pretending never to talk to one another.  Just like a magic lamp you go to them and rub them the right way and they grant you a wish. This wish is called a term sheet. But, unlike a genie you must never ever let them grant you your first wish.  What you really want is a second term sheet.  Also, unlike a genie you can not wish whatever you want but rather only wish something really really big.  VC’s never grant small wishes. Besides the rubbing you need a few things as well, some shiny PowerPoint as an offering, some yummy Excel to sustain them and some  items called barriers to entry, business model, defensibility and a dream. These all combine to form a magical potion and if the potion is just right  magical potion, the VC’s will grant you your wish.

So a few days ago our young hero Brock, good at Lacrosse, arrogance and pivot tables, jumps out of bed to work on his magic slides. And the numbers are good, yummy tasty VC numbers. Because Brock is going to take the VC’s fear of hardware away with these yummy tasty consumables numbers. Its not a machine, its HP. Its not an industry, its Gillette. You see, what we’re selling them a 3D  printing solution and the 3D printing material is a part of that, this is a platform. And with those yummy margins on the material the whole potion just makes sense. He just knows the VC’s will grant him his wish and he’ll be in his own jet faster than you kids can say abracadabra. But, then Brock reads about an 83  year old man who has just won a prize for something called a Filament Extruder. Brock breaks down crying sure that the mystical people up on that hill of greenbacks will never make his dreams come true. 30 years in the trenches at McExcel are to be his lot.

So kids, the moral of the story? Brock is fucked. The VC money to this market just went poof, like Amp’d mobile poof, gone. This is the downside, we bootstrap and kickstart from here on out.

With a world demanding resources in ever growing quantities things are set to become more expensive. The easy oil and easy copper has already been found. More complicated and harder to reach deposits are what will need to be mined in order to create the consumer electronics and packaging of the future. With the aspirations of the developing world awakening desires for air conditioning, fridges, TV’s and Ipad’s become more prevalent amoungst the world’s populations. Wealth and income increases in South East Asia, China, Latin America and Africa are putting consumer electronics and the trappings of modern life well within the reach of millions of new consumers. Meanwhile the growth in consumption and waste continues unabated in the developed world. We consume more and consume more complex things and throw away things more quickly. Our waste rises and more things are disposed of in landfill with each passing year. We throw away tonnes of plastics, cardboard, wood, wire, computers  and phones each year. Some things are recycled but in the vast majority of cases things just disappear underneath the earth. Festering mounds of plastics, liquids and decomposing things swirling and  breaking down beneath the landscape hidden from view, cancerous sores inside our earth.

But, if we look at the twins of more consumption and a higher cost for many materials could it be conceivable that in the future we will mine our landfills? Currently in many developing nations legions scour landfill in search of usable and salable metals and plastics. Many make their living sorting through garbage. But much is still buried and one would expect many valuable metals and plastics to be discarded in those countries that are not Sweden nor are they Congo. With other words those nations that have not adopted the highly efficient recycling practices of the Swedes nor do they have the vast poverty of the Congolese that enables the sorting and reuse of much garbage. These middle countries especially would throw much of value away.

So with rising resource costs and less material available will it at some time in the future be viable to mine landfill? Will companies and people dig up these festering mounds in order to extract the coltan, copper, aluminum and ABS from within? Will expeditions uncover and sort through millions of kilos of garbage in order to find the newly valuable inside? Will diggers and cranes be sent in to uncover what they previously burried? Will there be a trash gold rush? It seems logical to me that eventually this will happen. What do you think?

Images Creative Commons Attribution, Steve Snodgrass & Dave Goodman.

Imagine a world where millions of people have 3D printers. The home printers are reliable and easy to use and have roughly 400% the capability of the printers now.  These printers can print complex geometries and use support material. Materials have come down significantly in cost and have improved. Surface quality, texture and color have improved significantly also. Easy CAD software is free, services have improved while lowering prices, fablabs have spread like gyms and 3D printing is a career for some, hobby for many and an occasional activity for many more.

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So not a “flying cars in five years”, OMG we can print everything on the desktop, everyone will have 3D printers or some other bullshit scenario but in my mind a rather realistic proposition for 2020 or earlier. We’ll call this State 2, as opposed to State 1 which we are in now and State 3 which will be a world where “everyone  can make anything anywhere.”

What would such a State 2 world be like? How would a limited implementation of consumer 3D printing affect the world? With just a few million adherents 3D printing would still be a niche activity. It would be something that most connected people, those in the rich North who are connected to the internet news stream will know about. It would be something that people use regularly at university and in design and engineering schools. In business, it would be something similar to how CAD is now. A skill some master, that  is in and of itself a vibrant industry and has useful applications in some business areas. As a consumer activity it would be somewhere in between Origami and scrapbooking. There would still be barriers to entry and even though the groundwork for wide adoption would be there it would just be a hobby that most people have not gotten around to trying.

Broader adoption would require more design tools, applications that people would understand or trendy 3D printed products that let people touch 3D printing. Home 3D printer companies will have grown significantly and become much more professional and much more like regular businesses. The first wave of start ups has died and we wait for a Cambrian explosion of apps, printers and materials. The skills of individual users will have been expanded greatly. Some initial adherents will have left the market already. Many people will have been disappointed with their initial 3D printer purchase and will have become disillusioned with the technology. The media will cease to find 3D printing in and of itself interesting and write about it only sporadically. VC interest will be there as will regular investors. Buoyed by a Shapeways IPO as well as hopefully IPO’s by more traditional companies such as EOS and Materialise the industry will find much new capital.

On the business front many thousands of patients would be helped with 3D printed implants and the industry will have made serious inroads into aerospace and some manufacturing. For the first time major consumer electronics players would join the market and large corporates will launch 3D printing initiatives to kickstart innovation and re-engineer their supply chains. The technology would be used for most product development and many companies will iteratively develop products following Apple’s lead.

The industry will be a self-sustaining ecosystem with companies springing up to support product, printer and software development. Regular businesses will find success with 3D printed products and improvements in their supply chains. Designers will make their own products and without having to buy inventory up front be able to be much more successful. Technology and files will spread around the world and be improved upon by many people working together. Dad will be able to surprise Mom with a necklace that is actually meaningful to them both.

And thats it. No magic. No miracles. Just a continuation of current developments in 3D printing. And wouldn’t that in and of itself be amazing? Wouldn’t that already be interesting enough? Lets guard ourselves against disillusioning the press and general public and focus on explaining what the technology can deliver today and how amazing this is.

Wildebeest on the Serengeti by Ganesh Raghunathan, Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike.

In a world where anyone can make anything many things will be copied & reverse engineered. Many things will be remixed. Many things will be adapted upon, changed radically or altered ever so slightly. It will be easy to download objects and tweak them. People will work on things together and designs will be passed around the world. In such a world we must be mindful of attribution. Attribution will be key to encouraging invention & innovation by letting people reap the rewards of their creations. If things are not correctly attributed we reward only those that copy and not those that put in the hard work. We risk ending up in a world without fundamentally new ideas and without true innovation.

I will write more about this in a later post but I think its about time for us all to accept that we will soon no longer be living in a world with any defensible intellectual property. I think that this is inevitable and it is from this operating assumption that I write this post. The one thing we should hang on to is attribution. When a movie is downloaded you at least know its from New Line Cinema or the Michael Haneke directed it. You at least know the movie by its original title and can enjoy and recommend that film to friends. You could later on buy the movie or friends of yours could or you could become a fan of Mr. Haneke. In this manner Mr. Haneke profits from any and all interactions people have with his film and indirectly could monetize even free downloads.

With things it is different. If you design a lovely chair, I could download the file adapt it and change the name of the chair. I could take your form, innovation or design and remove all trace of you. It would be difficult for anyone to then find out who you were and that you designed this chair. The object is different from the movie, it is not a shared experience per se but a thing. Because of this you could not profit from the success of this thing in any way. It would be easier to copy, steal and adapt than innovate and do research.

True artists and inventors would not be rewarded and unable to make any money off of their innovations. The outmoded Intellectual Property system is a plaything for big companies and is not capable of dealing with the speed of a 3D printed world. Since it is concerned with individual objects and comparing their relative uniqueness, age or primacy it will be too slow to make any real impact on what is actually happening with 3D printed things. If a court could make a ruling in Belgium on a case of infringement within two weeks it would be irrelevant in a global context despite copyright and other treaties. Also, by then this thing will have mutated perhaps a 100 times in as many jurisdictions. When does one copy become a new thing? Since the system is set up to rule in cases of individual items it is always going to be behind the times. If Mary copies a chair and then Tom adapts it and Leandro adapts it once again and then Min downloads the original and changes that while Moses combines both chairs then who infringes when? If Mary is found to have infringed on the original, then what about the others? The court would have to determine infringement in each and every case individually.

Previously copyright worked because book printing companies and TV stations were centralized businesses that were easy to find. In a world of decentralized production there will be no one to go after. There will always be someone somewhere who doesn’t have a mortgage, doesn’t have kids in college but does have a 3D printer.

Knowing what the source is of your objects is therefore very important. There will be no enforceable penalties from a centralized trademark bureau that can ensure that a trademark or name is your own. With trends and global information flows accelerating “flash in the pan” hits will become the norm as well as tiny successes. By the time the trademark infringement email arrives most of the monetization of that trademark that is momentarily in the spotlight might have already occurred. By the time the letter falls on the doormat, it could already be over.

What we need for objects is a combination between Flickr and Twitter. We need a timeline that establishes when a thing was made. We need a public database where one can upload a thing to the world, establish what it is, who made it and what rights are assigned to it. Shapeways and Thingiverse both could have this role but as they are being run by commercial parties for financial gain it is doubtful that they could be the best custodians for this kind of information in the long run. With commercial interests at stake, they might cave to people abusing the IP system too quickly. eg what if someone uploaded a Ford part to Thingiverse today? Would Makerbot keep the part live? or take it down? I would assume that Makerbot’s deal to sell several thousand 3D printers to Ford’s engineers might influence their decision. This points to a need for a Wikipedia-like organization to safeguard the public timeline of all the worlds designs. This would answer the oft heard online chorus yammering for sauce. The all defining sauce, or source. Where does this thing come from, what is it, who made it and when was it made? It is only through publicly safeguarding source that we can entertain the possibility that in the future there might be some way to make a living as an artist, designer or inventor.

Above is an image for the Mal1956, a copy of the Eames Ottoman. For an excellent article explaining the merits of this case here is a piece by preeminent IP lawyer Ernst Louwers.

What will it mean to live in a world where anyone, anywhere can make anything? A world where 3D printers are ubiquitous?

We will no longer be able to wear anyone else’s shoes.

Given enough eyeballs, all things are shallow.

Anything that “touches” a person in some way will be 3D printed.

If it is important to you emotionally,  it will be 3D printed.

if it is important to you because you are passionate about it,  it will be 3D printed.

if it needs to be right because it is your life on the line  it will be 3D printed.

if a significant improvement in comfort means the world to you, it will be 3D printed.

We will 3D print all the meaningful things. The value will migrate towards 3D printed goods & services that cater to a 3D printed world.

The mass produced things with millions of copies will still be made. LVMH will still exist. Sometimes we want to outsource the complicated or unimportant decisions in design. But mass production will be rolled back, pressed into the corner of Happy Meal toys and cheap TVs.

What you design, what you find beautiful, what you discover, what you make, what you remix will determine value for a large amount of people. Creativity, discovery, being first & curation will become crucial.

Smaller markets and smaller target audiences will ever dwindle. Peaks will be higher and valleys deeper. Product development will accelerate. There will be platforms for everything and everyone will be a brand.

Anything that can be made will be made by anyone anywhere.

Anyone could 3D print a spoon, a land mine or a rose.

Nothing can be univented, no thing or no idea.

Any individual will have access to all the world’s technology. All the artists and all the terrorists.

Armies will iteratively  improve and get better still.

The leviathan will be bridled, not having a hold over his populace.

We will eliminate much of the waste caused by mass production.

We will eliminate much of the carbon and pollution caused by supply chains and inventories.

There will be no way what so ever to defend any Intellectual Property.

In the long run 3D printing will be completely free.

In the long run the technology will suck the value out of all manufacturing, design, invention & distribution.

We will be able to print spare parts for people. Tissue, bones, organs.

We will be able to nanoprint at the atomic level and all produce labs on a chip.

We will be able to 3D print nanomachines/microsystems on the desktop.

Gradient materials will outperform mass produced materials.

In the long run it will not make sense to research or invent because you will not be able to benefit from invention.

Not being inspired will be the only reason not to make a thing.

Single inventors or designers will working alone compete with and bring down large corporations.

We will be able to think of any object and that object could then be 3D printed.

Any innovation will instantly be copied, any design instantly recognized. The Long Tail will be longer & the World Flatter than anyone could conceive. There will be no barriers to entry. None.

Welcome to a 3D printed world.

This post builds on a Quora answer I gave.

I think that there are a number of similarities between paper printing and 3D printing but would council against directly comparing the paper printing industry, market, cost reductions and growth with that of 3D printing.

There are a number of fundamental differences at the moment and here I pick out 8 ways in which the current state of the 3D printing industry is different from the state of the DTP/PC/printer industry before its mainstreaming:

1. Ecosystem: With paper printing entire industries & ecosystems coalesce around technologies such as inkjet, laser printing & toner. This is not the case with 3D printing where there are many different technologies that have very little to do with each other and there is no ecosystem around them with many being developed by one company.

2. Shaving Cut: With paper printing the ink is very expensive but paper is cheap. This means that even though the printing ink is a ridiculously expensive compound and gives companies inordinate margins, the cost per print for the consumer is still low. This is because paper is cheap. This means that HP can have sweet margins in paper printing while still making the technology usable. Meanwhile in 3D printing everyone copied the HP/Gillette business model but they made a mistake. The 3D printing material is both the paper and the ink. So yes, the margins are ridiculous but they are limiting their market size and revenues significantly because the technology is too expensive. By limiting the applications 3D printing has and by unnecessarily inflating costs so that less things can and will be printed they are keeping people from using and adopting the technology. All the 3D printing companies are guilty of this and it is really inhibiting the growth of the market.

3. PostScript: With paper printing there was PostScript. Before PostScript paper printing was a mess and it is with the adoption of PostsScript that the entire DTP, print at home, print at the office thing actually worked. 3D printing has no PostScript. This means that you don’t know what you’re going to get, you don’t know if it will work, theres no universal path from app to machine and theres a lot of ambiguity.

4. Ease. It is easier to use Microsoft Word successfully and consistently than it is to use a 3D modeling application.

5. Bleed. Word and other business productivity applications had crossover effects with home use leading work use to bleed into the home igniting the DTP and PC revolutions. The work user base for 3D modeling and CAD is much smaller than PC.

6. Need. As part of their lives people have to make documents and often print them. The PC and DTP revolutions made ingrained user behavior and needs easier to accomplish. 3D printing does not do this but is a new thing for users to do. It might make their lives easier somewhere in the future but there is little immediate benefit.

7. No Spellcheck. In addition to PostScript there is no spell check for 3D printing. With making a Word (or WordPerfect 5.1! ) file you could see what you were doing, edit it yourself and spell check. There is no spell check to check if your thing will work in 3D printing. You also won’t even know if it will print in the first place. There is file repair software but there is no integration between these high end packages and the 3D design application.

8. Many people can write. Many people can write and could use PC’s and printers from the get go. But, not many people can 3D model, design or have a sense of design. For the PC and DTP we had to learn GUI’s and what software is but for 3D printing we will have to learn to 3D model (or other input) and learn how to speak design.

Image, Creative Commons Attribution Jake Sutton.

If we imagine a world where many people have a 3D printer, free & easy 3D modeling tools, inexpensive 3D scanning and where materials are cheap and 3D printers are good, reliable and more capable than they are now. You could make everything you could desire exactly as you desire it. The world is your oyster or indeed one big oyster buffet for all. Imagine us all sharing designs and improving them, working together on making better things. You could go to sleep and wake up only to find out that 1000 people in Tokyo printed your sunglasses or ChenPanda4EVA in Chengdu improved upon your design in ways you could not have imagined. You could sell files to everyone in the world or share them for free. Things would get better at an accelerating rate of improvement and more designers would lead to more improvements. As I’ve stated before, given enough eyeballs all things are shallow. Or all products. Or all inventions. Imagine the benefits for humanity if the combined creativity , skills and knowledge of millions of people could be set loose on building better water pumps, orthopedic implants, shoes, beds, engines, houses for all? Imagine a cambrian explosion in better things. Not every thing will be good but everything that survives will be fit. Imagine the value that we will collectively unlock for all. Technology spreading round the world as more people every day would be able to make what they need. It will be wonderful. It will be like communism without the camps or capitalism without beggars. A period of great change and improvement for the human race never before seen. It will be so so wonderful. It will feel exhilarating. And then we will hit a wall.

Just as suddenly as it has begun to accelerate all true innovation will stop. Sure, we’ll make things and some new things will get designed. But, true over the horizon new things and truly fundamentally new discoveries will not happen. We will just mess about with existing things and remix them again and again. Because of this we won’t notice that we’ve killed off all invention and innovation until it is too late. We will be Jordan thinking we have years left in those legs because of how high they jumped before. But, fundamentally new discoveries will dry up. With so many inventors and so many new things being created and improved initially competition will breed even more and even better things. But, as more get involved and the technology advances all the revenue will be sucked out of the business. The, There’s No Money in 3D printing, post explains how that will happen. The average professional will be crushed and some gods might remain but even they will feel the pressure. There will be diminishing returns in recognition and being lauded for doing inventions. It will be difficult to distinguish that which is merely a remix to a fundamentally new thing (curious? Try this at home for art, it is very hard.) If you spend two years working on something and I spend ten minutes we might be given the same amount of attention. Or we might just be swallowed up in the maelstrom of 3D printed goods and newly released or changed designs. Those that network or curate well will grow popular while true innovators will be ignored. It will be much easier to steal an invention or design than to make one. It will be much easier to steal an idea and obfuscate its origins than to make something oneself. It will be much easier to slightly alter something and market it well than to do something truly original. At the same time people will be less impressed with whatever it is that you have done because of all that was before. It also will become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between a new thing, a remixed thing or a copy of a thing. In a copypaste culture the true artist will get snowed under. This is similar to the Hong Kong Jade Market problem. With no business model and no recognition for innovation, it will eventually dry up. Some government funded initiatives and idealists will persist as will hobbyists. But, the true explosion of creativity and innovation will be over. In the end there won’t be any people left to work one year on a completely new thing. No one will have the attention span or the will to see it through. We will be left with many beautiful things that we can change but no new beautiful things will be made. We will be left with many of the world’s problems solved but will not be able to come up with any new solutions. All in all the oyster buffet for everyone will probably have been worth it.

Wait, there’s more!

Who will 3D Systems buy next?

Thinking outside the box, unlimited build volumes.

Creative Commons, Attribution Paul Lowry.