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from the printster-will-be-the-new-napster dept.
Remember Napster or Grokster? Both services allowed users to share computer files – usually digital music – that infringed the copyrights for those songs.
Now imagine that, instead of music, you could download a physical object. Sounds like something from a sci-fi movie – push a button and there's the item! But that scenario is already becoming a reality. With a 3D printer, someone can download a computer file, called a computer-aided design (CAD) file, that instructs the printer to make a physical, three-dimensional object.
Because CAD files are digital, they can be shared across the internet on file-sharing services, just like movies and music. Just as digital media challenged the copyright system with rampant copyright infringement, the patent system likely will encounter widespread infringement of patented inventions through 3D printing. The problem is, however, that the patent system is even more ill-equipped to deal with this situation than copyright law was, posing a challenge to a key component of our innovation system.
If 3-D printing at home happened fast enough it would cut China off at the knees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @08:10PM
Think you are missing a bit of what people are saying.
Right now, *today*, 3d printing is a rather finiky picky thing to do. You need a decent rig to pull it off. Even then you can end up wasting a day and end up with a bum project.
The guys in the early 1980s were right then too. The computers of the time where *nothing* like the machines we have today. They were finiky and picky and a PITA. I spooled up my fair share of green line. At the time memory and visual display was a major limiting factor of what they could do.
When we played our first real music on the Apple IIGS, we said, "Now you can have all the music you want right on your computer and you can give copies to all your friends..."
They were right. At best you could do a few dozen songs and of arguably cheesy quality. They probably had 50x that in the box out in their car and it sounded amazing compared to it. Even better if they were rich and sprung for CDs. The mp3 of the mid 90s was where it came into its own. Even then it took awhile for that to catch on as the storage space tech was not there until the early 2000s.
At the quality level they have now the cost will have to go down even more. They are already semi cheap. But not quite there. The software is getting way better than it was say 3 years ago. But it will have to get even better.
Also do not confuse what some people are saying. They are saying 'for a one off I can get it just as cheap or cheaper somewhere else'. Cost is the motivating factor for them. Not quality or something interesting. Cost. Someone even with 1 semester of econ will tell you most people consider the cost of the machine as part of the cost of making something (not true but it is the way people see it). If it costs me 800 bucks to buy 1 small plastic part. I will buy the part instead. If I need 200 parts with each one doing something different then I may look into it. Most people are looking for 1 small part not 200 different ones.
Here is how you will know 3d printing is 'main stream'. You will go into something like lowes or home depot and they have a printer and they print some oddball part you are looking for instead of stocking it. At that point you will be better off cutting out the middle man.
Dont get me wrong. 3d printing is at the same place as computers in the early 1980s. Right now it shows promise. That is it.