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PhysOrg runs a story on the implications of 3D printers for the food industry.
The use of 3D printers has the potential to revolutionize the way food is manufactured within the next 10 to 20 years, impacting everything from how military personnel get food on the battlefield to how long it takes to get a meal from the computer to your table..
The article attributes the following to "Hod Lipson, Ph.D., a professor of engineering at Columbia University and a co-author of the book Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing"
3D printing is a good fit for the food industry because it allows manufacturers to bring complexity and variety to consumers at a low cost. Traditional manufacturing is built on mass production of the same item, but with a 3D printer, it takes as much time and money to produce a complex, customized product that appeals to one person as it does to make a simple, routine product that would be appealing to a large group. ... Users could choose from a large online database of recipes, put a cartridge with the ingredients into their 3D printer at home, and it would create the dish just for that person. The user could customize it to include extra nutrients or replace one ingredient with another.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 14 2015, @07:36PM
it takes as much time and money to produce a complex, customized product that appeals to one person as it does to make a simple, routine product that would be appealing to a large group
Not with any printer I've used, or heard of, or seriously heard argued, other than basically IP violations (making unlicensed car crash repair parts, for example, rather than paying list price for real parts that are marked up 500x so merely printing for 10x cost is a great deal) or spaced out imagination.
Honestly I'm not even sure what the author means. That design work for more complicated custom stuff is cheaper and easier than simple mass produced stuff. Uh, OK. Or maybe that the time value of money / capital is infinitely low such that its OK to invest $2K in a printer that is infinitely slow compared to an assembly line, in fact cheaper, Uh, OK. Or maybe that people in herd mode don't make purchasing decisions off buying the exact same thing as the guy on tv (see iDevices or whatever). Uh OK. Another LOL is cheap bulk styrene beads for injection molding are somehow going to become more expensive than precision manufactured PLA. Isn't styrene about $3/kg but the PLA I use is about $30/kg? I mean, there's some basic chemistry limitations here, not just bulk vs small quantity issues.
Another oddity is space aliens descend and give us a warp drive which makes 3-d printers, and 3-d printers only, cost 100x less and 100x faster yet magically the same magic wouldn't make injection molding 100x lower capex and 100x lower delivered cost. Because admitting reality would screw up the narrative.
I see printing as a cool hobby. Much like the cheapest or fastest consumer way to communicate or build a radio isn't building their own ham radio gear, but it is a hell of a lot of fun. In the long run I figure citizen ownership of 3-d printers will approach the soldering iron / table saw range. Nothing wrong with that, either.
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Tuesday July 14 2015, @10:32PM
How about if we make a 3D printer that can make other 3D printers*, and then use space solar plants to provide obscene amounts of energy?
* something capable of such a feat would probably have to be at least the size of a bacterium
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.