By Michael Newman, Lead Product Engineer, Launchpad
These days, the tech space is a flutter with the great possibilities
that 3D printing will bring to humankind. Already a revolutionary success in the
medical field,
it will likely be within the next ten years that we’ll see 3D printers as household
items, much in the same way we saw bubble jet printers take the leap into our
homes.
3D printers throw open the doors of product creation to
anyone with a creative spark. If you can think it, you can make it. Does this
mean the roles of designers and engineers and manufacturers eventually will
become obsolete?
No. Even if 3D printers become as universal as 2D home
printers, 3D printers won’t put any manufacturing outfits out of business, just
as Print Shop didn’t put Hallmark out of business. Generally it takes much more experience and
expertise to develop and design products.
3D printing is great for testing out a one-off of something.
There is no quantity discount with 3D printing. You can generally only make
a product one at a time depending on the size of the object.
Here’s a look-back at select printing technologies and
the approximate date they appeared:
·
Woodblock printing 200 (as in the year, AD)
·
Printing Press 1454
·
Offset Printing 1875
·
Screen printing 1907
·
Inkjet Printing 1956
·
Dot matrix printer 1964
·
Laser printing 1969
·
3D printing 1984
Thirty years
or so after the Dot Matrix printer was invented, it became a household item. The
first printer I remember cranking away in my house growing up was this huge beast
of a dot matrix printer. I fondly remember printing off reports for school,
then having to tear all of the sheets apart , including the holey tabs on each
side of the page, which were kind of like the antithesis to the three-hole
punch dots, but just as annoying. I experienced the highest highs and the lowest
lows with that printer. One day I could make crappy cards with Print Shop, and the
next day I’d freak-out when the thing jammed and went offline, just when a
report was due.
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| Maker-Tot- 3000: Toddler 3D printer conversion kit for your bubble jet printer. |
Forty years
after its inception, the bubble jet printer, made its way into the home, and
with it, the ability to print in color, quickly, and with no annoying side tabs
to pull off. Unfortunately, bubble jet
printers also had the problem of jamming and printing one page of
information across two pages. Also the ink... oh the ink. I remember my dad buying bulk ink and
refilling carriages with a kit supplied with special syringes. Thankfully, now printers are so cheap it’s
almost more cost-effective to buy a new printer when the previous one runs out
of ink.
Today, we’re eagerly waiting for a ubiquitous 3D printer.
I don’t have one yet sitting on my desk,
but it’s not far away. It’s been nearly 30 years since 3D printing was
introduced so it has to be close.
And as the “maker” culture evolves, and becomes more
prevalent, it will only accelerate 3D printing’s adoption and usage. The price
point will continue to fall, which will encourage further adoption, but for 3D
printers to truly permeate our culture they need to reach a level by which
people of my grandparents’ generation can use them without too much difficulty.
Removing a paper jam from a bubble jet printer is one thing, but 3D printers
involve more complexity and know how.
Unlike previous printer technologies, 3D printers are
more complex because they add an entirely new dimension to printing. They
aren’t only printing left/right forward/backwards, like on paper, but printing
upwards, as well. Generally 3D printing involves heating a material and
extruding it accurately.
Like their 2D printer ancestors encountered paper jams, you can expect 3D printers to face their own
set of snafus, like extrusion heads jamming, as well as parts breaking.
