Bruewer
Editor’s Note: Views expressed in guest columns and letters to the editor reflect the views of the author, not the views of The State News.
During winter break I read a list of technology predictions for 2013 on The Daily Beast. Near the end of the short list was the possibility of 3-D printing in your own home, rated at a “Probability: Medium.”
It made me think how cool it would be to just manufacture any figure you design in your own home. I was in awe with the possibilities of where this technology will be headed in the next couple of years.
Last summer, I worked at my local Lowe’s Home Improvement. If you have ever wandered the aisles in a large hardware store, you would not be able to count the diverse screws, nuts, bolts, plumbing fittings and other items that fill the shelves. One of the biggest problems I would come across was when we would run out of inventory, or a customer would bring in a broken part we no longer carried. It always was a frustrating encounter for both the customer and me.
Why should hardware stores have to order such diverse selections of small instruments when your average day-to-day consumer only comes in for a replacement?
The sharp decline in price of these sophisticated machines — once as much as $25,000 and today some are listed as low as $2,000 — has made it possible for manufacturing businesses and even lay consumers to purchase them.
The possibilities of these machines are being tested around the country, from using living cells to print cartilage for human ears at Cornell University, to architectural and material ecology research at MIT.
Even our Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at MSU has a Objet Connex350 multi-material 3-D printer. These fascinating and complex machines have vast potential for a variety of diverse fields. There is even talk of building bases on the moon with a large-scale construction printer that would use a bonding compound and regolith.
For the hardware store regulars, you potentially could print your very own replacement parts and even customize the materials and design used to fit the job perfectly.
No longer would you have to worry about driving to the store to see if they even have in stock what you need. Three dimensional printing supports a creative and unparalleled DIY culture of the likes we have never seen before.
This technology is creating what MIT’s Neri Oxman considers the “3-D Revolution” that “is democratizing and revolutionizing the way we do fabrication.” The only problem inhibiting the mass production and distribution of these machines is that their physical and legal limits still are being explored.
There have been quite a few eyebrows raised at whole guns printed and assembled with relatively few kinks. Already have there been copyright infringements and cease and desist orders filed about likenesses being printed without permission. If you have the raw materials and the design, you can do amazing things in a relatively short period of time. The possibilities need to be addressed and fully understood.
As these machines currently are limited to groups familiar with graphic and computer-aided design, there also is a need to have a medium to translate this information to the everyday consumer.
Before a 3-D printer hits the shelves, there will need to be programs developed to limit the scope of what the consumer can do under the restrictions of copyright, yet at the same time allowing the consumer to use the technology with ease and simplicity.
This need for a program that could be installed quickly and easily comply with copyright laws, and allow the consumer to print and customize will be the first step before these machines can be produced and distributed in an open market.
As these printers are explored and tested by those who know how to work with them, we, the lay consumers, will have to wait before we can start using them in the garage or home office.
Who knows what we will see made with these machines within the coming years.
From the medical field to the moon, we potentially will see manufacturing technique and design explode and diversify with the customizable possibilities of 3-D printing in ways we never thought possible.
All we can hope for is our views and understanding of fabrication technique and possibility continue to expand and allow for a new generation of designers and manufacturers to step forward. Slowly these machines will grow closer to the consumer market.
Until then, you will still have to make that trip to the store to purchase your hardware.
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Nick Bruewer is a guest columnist at The State News and a media and information sophomore. Reach him at bruewern@msu.edu.
