Mark Pickavance looks at the world of 3D printing and wonders why we don’t all own one of these amazing machines?
A few years ago, I saw my first demonstration of a 3D printer and told everyone that I knew that this was most certainly the ‘next big thing’.
I’m still excited about the technology and the possibilities, but for numerous reasons, 3D printing just hasn’t gone mainstream in the way I thought it would.
Is the dream of a 3D printer in every home dead, or is it just waiting for something special to happen that will elevate it from geek gadget status?
An Important Question
When I sat down to think about this subject, I was struck by one critical fact that I couldn’t ignore: I don’t own a 3D printer. I also don’t own a Learjet or a Rolex watch, even a copy, so surely that isn’t anything shocking, is it? No, it’s not, but given how enthusiastic I was about the concept of 3D printers, that years later I don’t own one is somewhat telling.
Self-interrogation revealed that three things stood between me and owning one of these devices, and these are:
• Cost
• Maturity of the technology
• Justification
What’s interesting about the first part is that I actually first encountered a 3D printer some 25 years ago working in the automotive industry, using a technology called stereolithography. This expensive equipment took inordinate amounts of time to make rather brittle plastic prototype parts to use in cars.
It was also rather large and needed an expensive service contract to keep operational. Surely things are more realistic now?
Costs
3D printers are less expensive these days, but not to the point where everyone can afford one. There are self-build solutions and rather Heath-Robinson devices that are less than £1,000, like the Velleman K8200, which sells for about £600. But when you start looking into these they all print at relatively low resolution, usually between 0.2mm or even 0.25mm. That’s not a very smooth object, and spending over £1,000 only usually gets you to 0.15mm and £2,000 to 0.1mm.
In addition to the quality price curve there is also another that balances the size of the object you can print against the cost and the time taken to produce.
And, without exception, all these printers use extrusion technology, and those that make professional 3D printed parts use a granular method (sintering) or a powder bed method. Neither of these techniques is affordable for home use, yet, and the even more exotic ones like the aforementioned stereolithography or electron bean freeform fabrication aren’t likely to be in the near future.
That leaves extrusion, probably the least effective means of 3D printing, as one of the few options for home use. Yet to get good quality and speed, even this is too pricey for general home use, and I’ve not even mentioned the cost of materials and power that goes into making relatively simple items.
Maturity Of The Technology
Writing for any technology magazine, the question that I get asked the most is the classic one about buying now or waiting for something better. I’m sure I could write a paper on the psychology of delayed gratification, but many people quite reasonably choose not to buy something now to get something better at a later date.
With the speed that technology now moves at, that makes plenty of sense, though taken to its extreme you’d never buy anything technological ever again.
The tipping point is usually when the next generation will be better, but not so much that it is worth not investing now. A good example would be someone interested in an Apple iPhone, the next version of which is very likely to be only marginally better than the one they currently sell or the one they previously sold.
With very incremental changes, it’s easier to make those choices because, other than bragging rights, the differences between each release are modest.
But that’s not where 3D printers are right now. They’re on a very steep development curve where big jumps in quality, speed and cost are potentially just around the corner. In that scenario, sitting on your hands makes more sense because spending big on a printer that’s entirely obsolete only months later would be annoying.
But it isn’t that 3D printers are getting better; a whole slew of new technologies are coming along that are adding whole new methods, one of which might make the era of extruding ABS plastic seem as arcane as making parachutes with actual silk.
One of these is certainly continuous liquid interface production (CLIP), a technique that US company Carbon3D demonstrated recently. Instead of forming an object in fine layers, CLIP grows objects in a pool of resin using UV light to polymerise the liquid and oxygen to inhibit the reaction.
The advantage of this method is that it is, even at this stage of its development, between 25 and 100 times quicker than extrusion and powder methods. Objects emerge in minutes, not hours, are of high quality, and the objects don’t suffer with thermal distortions or inconsistent mechanical rigidity.
In many respects this sounds like the nirvana of 3D printing, and Carbon 3D has attracted substantial amounts of investment since these announcements in March, but a commercial product seems some way off yet.
In the meantime, there are hundreds of other people all over the globe looking at means to make other new methods or enhance existing ones. So in terms of maturity, 3D printing is still at the toddling stages, and therefore big investments in time and cash may well be premature.
And then, there is the justification for that level of investment to consider.
Justifications
Whenever 3D printers appear on the news or a documentary channel, they’re generally being used by experts in a lab working on spacecraft parts or to build an amazingly expensive F1 car. That sends the message to those who aren’t tuned to the technology world that 3D printing isn’t something that most people could use or, most pointedly, have a use for.
But that’s the wrong impression, created by documentary makers, who are trying to push the line that the technology in use is ‘cutting edge’ and wouldn’t be understood by Joe Public. What the majority of people don’t realise is that a 3D printer can make a replacement handle for a fridge just as easily as it can prototype an F1 body part, as it’s uninterested in the complexity of how the shape was originated.
If you stopped using the phrase ‘3D printer’ and told people you had a box that could take any broken plastic part and replicate it whole again, then they’d be interested.
Okay, they might be less interested when they saw the price, but generally people like the idea of fixing broken things, even if actually doing it proves to be too much of a challenge for many.
3D printers offer that possibility, though at this time, they’re not public friendly in respect of either cost or the complexity of operation. To operate one you need to be computer literate, understand 3D modelling, and also realise the technical limitations of the printer you have.
But none of those things are a problem for me, so why am I not on this bandwagon? It comes down to justification, because spending more than £1,000 on something I occasionally use to make replacement parts isn’t something I could easily defend.
If I’m honest, what I’d really like to do is use one to fabricate super-detailed replacement parts for plastic model kits, which I loved making as a child. But that doesn’t cross the justification line either, not least at this stage of my life, when I just don’t have the time for those hobbies.
For the economics of this to work, I’d need to have something to do that would either take me an inordinate amount of time to do without the 3D printer or just couldn’t be done otherwise. And sadly, that’s not a situation I’ve so far run into.
I won’t say I’ll never have an excuse to have one, and as the technology gets better and cheaper, the justification gets easier, but I’m not at that point right now.
Those are my subjective reasons for not owning one, but there are other problems that people are finding beyond these that are more to do with the general air of negativity that has surrounded 3D printing from the outset.
Legalities
Very early on, when 3D printers first became a story, lots of people got very agitated about the legalities of using them to either recreate or redesign products that companies spent millions developing. But actually it was more complex than that, because using a 3D printer, it is potentially possible to infringe copyrights, patents and even trademarks.
For example, if you designed some sculptures of Mickey Mouse, then Disney wouldn’t be too thrilled even if technically the character might soon be out of copyright, but he’s still a registered trademark and will be indefinitely.
But equally, any patent or copyright dispute will often focus on the financial losses of the rights holder, so making a one-off-copy of something, like the film industry does all the time to destroy it in a movie, isn’t likely to bring the legal system down on your head. Well, you’d like to think that, but the reality is stranger.
Disney famously demanded that paintings of its characters be removed from three Florida daycare centres for young children, citing trademark infringement. The three complied and very kindly Universal Pictures paid for the repaint, replacing Disney characters with some trademarked to its own company.
Some companies, like the one I just mentioned, protect their rights to silly extents, but others only get really interested when you start making money. And in that situation, does Disney, for example, go after the person using the 3D printer, the maker of the printer, the supplier of the material or the point of sale (eBay, for example).
At this time, the usual method is to approach the maker and selling location and ask that the product be withdrawn because it infringes copyright. Equally, those selling the items can protect themselves to some degree by promising to immediately withdraw items that might infringe if the copyright holder asks them to do so. That way, they’re not encouraging people to infringe the law, even if they’re not actively discouraging it either.
Early on in the development of these machines, there was some talk that perhaps they should all be licensed and then pass their data to some central arbiter, where it would be checked for infringement. Apart from the total impracticality of that, and how small adaptations would make it non-infringing, some in the intellectual property game still seem to think that such a magic wand might exist, in some universe.
Potential legal ramification put some people off, and others didn’t want to be labelled as potential terrorists.
Gun Control
Many non-technical people have argued strongly for control of 3D printers after the media started circulating scare stories about how they could be used to create firearms. The fine irony that most of these stories originated in a country where the number of handguns in circulation almost exceeds the population wasn’t lost on me. What they generally failed to mention was that at this point you can’t practically 3D print ammunition, that the design in question would only fire once, and that it was massively inaccurate and significantly less powerful than if the same ammo was fired from an actual gun.
From my own experience with firearms, and some never-to-be-repeated experiments I did some 40 years ago, I’ve made a more effective gun from a block of wood and a nail than the 3D-printed one that appeared on numerous news broadcasts.
It was sensationalist and entirely missed the point that gun makers themselves have been making really effective prototype weapons using sintering techniques since the 70s. Nevertheless, the idea that 3D printers would likely be owned by those wishing to create nefarious devices was pushed hard, even if it had little or no solid basis in fact.
With the right knowledge, it is possible to create poison gas from household cleaning materials, and explosives from gardening products, but I don’t see anyone serious about banning either of those common substances.
It’s true that eventually home owned 3D printers will be able to reach a level of sophistication that professional equipment reached decades ago, where making functional firearms is entirely practical, but at this time, you can buy real automatic weapon in numerous gun bazaars around the world for only a few dollars, so why would you bother? This is yet another connection that has been made between these devices and those breaking or intent on breaking the law that doesn’t help their cause.
Cheaper Alternatives
Many of us own colour printers, but often we don’t use them to print our holiday snaps, because of the cost. Instead we send or take the digital files to a photo print booth, where they’re printed for us professionally. Not only does this take less time than printing hundreds of pictures at home, it’s also much, much cheaper, probably by an order of magnitude. We still might print the occasional large photo for a frame or for a visiting aunt, but this example points out that having a facility doesn’t always dictate that you use it.
3D printing has its cheaper options too, with 3D printing bureaus cropping up that will accept your model data in a range of formats and then output the object in the material you require quickly and efficiently.
The equipment that these companies operate costs tens of thousands to buy and plenty to operate, so they can do things that home 3D printing practically can’t. They can also offer facilities, like converting the object into solid metal, that are beyond the home user. That takes 3D printing from something mostly promoted for prototyping into custom parts for limited volume productions.
For someone producing the occasional part, the economics of this are that the parts can be made more quickly, in a greater range of materials, at higher quality levels but at a higher individual cost. But when you factor in that there is no investment needed, and all the maintenance problems aren’t yours, it still looks very attractive. This is especially true if the parts are being made for a business client, as the 3D print costs can be passed on to them.
It could be argued that the ideal situation is the same one as I outlined with the printer, where you have a general purpose machine for ad hoc tests and immediate jobs, but the finished items are all sent for better quality rendering.
However, if the cost of having objects rendered as a service drops and the speeds are fast enough for a quick turnaround, then that could undermine the need for a personal solution entirely.
Final Thoughts
There are two potential arguments as to why 3D printing hasn’t taken off, and I’m not actually sure which one I’m really convinced by.
One is that it will never actually become a widespread thing, because not everyone is both technically minded and creative. Alternatively, it will expand rapidly once the devices are cheaper, the methods slicker and the output more useful.
Supporting the view that it won’t become an appliance in every home is that there are some really useful pieces of equipment that most homes don’t have for a variety of reasons. A typical example of this would be the lathe, a technology that the ancient Egyptians understood could be very useful more than 4,000 years ago. But it became a precision tool during the industrial revolution, and these days anyone wanting to work wood or metal in cylindrical shapes will use one. However, of all my friends, I only know one that owns and has the skills to use a lathe, and for most people it isn’t ever a device that they’d ever invest in personally owning.
While the 3D printer has a wider application, it does require some skills to operate, much like a lathe, though I’ll admit that a 3D printer is probably less dangerous should something go wrong.
That’s one end of the spectrum, where 3D printers will only end up in very few people’s hands, which will not make them cheap or especially accessible.
However, the very good counter argument to that view is presented by the printer, because before desktop publishing, if you wanted high-quality printed material, you’d need a professional printer. No individual would understand the technicalities of typesetting or own the very expensive equipment needed to output even single-colour printed copy.
And then Pagemaker came along on the Mac, and laser printers and inkjet printers, and suddenly everyone is a full-blown print house. In just ten years, print went from being the exclusive preserve of those in the business to something almost anyone could achieve in their own homes, and almost every person that owns a PC has a printer, almost without exception. We now take for granted that if we need low-volume printed material, it’s a job many of us can do, and printers are only required for either high volume, very high quality or specialist jobs like A0 posters.
The lathe is one extreme, and the printer is the other, and there is no rule that dictates that the 3D printer needs to be at either point; it could be something between them.
Given that it seems to be having something of a difficult gestation, it probably isn’t going to have the global spread of the ink/toner printer, but equally I don’t see it as being as exclusive or as specialist as the lathe. With the right software and printing method it could be much more useful and require less kill to operate, splitting these technology examples.
It may also be that, very much like the tablet computer, it will be something that doesn’t fly at the first attempt but needs more than one go to get fully airborne.
Even without the explosion of use that I was genuinely expecting, I still think 3D printers will have their age. It just might not be as soon as I thought.