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  bob

  11 years ago

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  the only silly thing about this thinking is that why would people 3d print something only to make a mold when they can just make a mold of the actual part?

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  Ray Jepson

  11 years ago

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  HAHAHHAHA!!! **falling off my chair**
  
  For the last ten years, I've had to explain to my employers that wanted to knock-off products that there was no savings in 3D scanning a spun sheet metal lamp shade and 3D printing it. It will take me 2 minutes to CAD it, an hour to make a buck in MDF and 5 minutes to spin it and then we can make a few hundred a day. By 3D printing, I can get you maybe 4 very fragile, rough surfaced versions of the same thing and it will take 18 hours. Of course, you can't use it for production because they will cost $100 each and can't withstand the temperature of the light bulbs, but...
  
  3D scanning and printing are at least 10 years from being relevant to consumers. I would say 20, but Ray Kurzweil always argues that technology increases exponentially.
  
  And where does this $100 billion number come from? This is clearly an inflated BS number pulled from someone's nether-regions. Maybe it comes from someone scanning an Oxo spatula and putting Mickey Mouse on it. The lawyers count the spatula as being worth $200k (it doesn't matter if it's $10 in the store, the lawyers will count the cost of development completely in their analysis) and then the theory that it would be another $200k to license a Disney character.
  
  Actually, that still doesn't make sense. It would take 500,000 x $400,000 spatulas to equal $100,000,000,000. WTF? And they think this will be in the next 2 years!?!?!?!
  
  I'm going to stop thinking about this, I'm laughing too hard.

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  Sved

  11 years ago

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  Don't trust analysts, they are already 3 years late.
  
  If some users want to 3D print your products, you should embrace it, sell or give away your CAD files and provide customer support, not lawsuits.

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  D

  11 years ago

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  This being Core77, I kind of expect some designer's commentary on the report, not just a reposting of some breathless analysts' attention seeking. Especially considering that most of those analysts have never used a 3D printer professionally.
  
  From a technical perspective, I don't see the concern. The only thing you can convincingly knock off with a 3D printer is another 3D printed object. Anything else can be reverse engineered, and produced using the same means as the original. After all, there's a reason the original was produced using X process, and not 3D printing.
  
  Anything worth knocking off en masse, is worth tooling up for.

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  Anonymous

  11 years ago

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  Printcrime
  
  Copy this story.
  
  Cory Doctorow
  
  The coppers smashed my father's printer when I was eight. I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da's look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it.
  
  The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. One of Da's customers had shopped him. The ipolice paid in high-grade pharmaceuticals -- performance enhancers, memory supplements, metabolic boosters. The kind of things that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of things you could print at home, if you didn't mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way.
  
  They destroyed grandma's trunk, the one she'd brought from the old country. They smashed our little refrigerator and the purifier unit over the window. My tweetybird escaped death by hiding in a corner of his cage as a big, booted foot crushed most of it into a sad tangle of printer-wire.
  
  Da. What they did to him. When he was done, he looked like he'd been brawling with an entire rugby side. They brought him out the door and let the newsies get a good look at him as they tossed him in the car. All the while a spokesman told the world that my Da's organized-crime bootlegging operation had been responsible for at least 20 million in contraband, and that my Da, the desperate villain, had resisted arrest.
  
  I saw it all from my phone, in the remains of the sitting room, watching it on the screen and wondering how, just how anyone could look at our little flat and our terrible, manky estate and mistake it for the home of an organized crime kingpin. They took the printer away, of course, and displayed it like a trophy for the newsies. Its little shrine in the kitchenette seemed horribly empty. When I roused myself and picked up the flat and rescued my poor peeping tweetybird, I put a blender there. It was made out of printed parts, so it would only last a month before I'd need to print new bearings and other moving parts. Back then, I could take apart and reassemble anything that could be printed.
  
  By the time I turned 18, they were ready to let Da out of prison. I'd visited him three times -- on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and when Ma died. It had been two years since I'd last seen him and he was in bad shape. A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. I was embarrassed when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to keep my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside and up the stairs.
  
  "Lanie," he said, as he sat me down. "You're a smart girl, I know that. You wouldn't know where your old Da could get a printer and some goop?"
  
  I squeezed my hands into fists so tight my fingernails cut into my palms. I closed my eyes. "You've been in prison for ten years, Da. Ten. Years. You're going to risk another ten years to print out more blenders and pharma, more laptops and designer hats?"
  
  He grinned. "I'm not stupid, Lanie. I've learned my lesson. There's no hat or laptop that's worth going to jail for. I'm not going to print none of that rubbish, never again." He had a cup of tea, and he drank it now like it was whisky, a sip and then a long, satisfied exhalation. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
  
  "Come here, Lanie, let me whisper in your ear. Let me tell you the thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup. Come here and listen to your stupid Da."
  
  I felt a guilty pang about ticking him off. He was off his rocker, that much was clear. God knew what he went through in prison. "What, Da?" I said, leaning in close.
  
  "Lanie, I'm going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for everyone. That's worth going to jail for. That's worth anything."

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  Thijmen

  11 years ago

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  This sounds exactly like the big music companies who claim to lose billions over downloaded music, where the contrary usually is measured.

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  Sten

  11 years ago

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  What is this - "Home taping will kill music" BS again?!?

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  Tom Mc

  11 years ago

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  3D printed guns are not bad news for those of us who like and respect firearms. The other ones who seek to use them for harm will seek out any weapon available to cause harm and will either A) not likely understand the complexity of building a firearm or B) will find it easier and more effective to use something already available (and more durable). These individuals will already break laws to cause trouble, what makes you think having another means to maybe make something that could be dangerous will lead to a spike in violence? Tools don't cause crime.

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  Philippe J-G

  11 years ago

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  How is this relevant now, 3D prototyping and 3D scanning have been alive for sometimes and if the Chinese or other would be thief wanted to copy products, my guess they have already doing it.
  
  And its only relevant for manufacturers, cause I'll never see someone with an home 3D printer and scanner, copying objects and producing them on a larger scale. It's not worth it even for a thief. The end products in ABS or stl is just a proto and if you went ahead and make molds then good luck to you!

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