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Friday, 14 August 2009

JOURNAL: 3D Printing Update

More on the local fabrication revolution (an important driver of functional resilient communities) from Shapeways (an online 3D printer that allows people to share designs):

Interesting interview with Bram Cohen (Bittorrent creator) on 3D printing and the outsourcing model (scroll to bottom). Key quote: "Moving towards a person or company owning a printer and taking orders from other people to do on it has been a huge improvement in how 3d printing is done, so no, I don't see anyone owning their own 3d printer any time soon. If anything we'll see an extension to the outsource model, where companies own geographically distributed printers and are able to print something physically close to you to have it ship faster." 

More: Jamais Cascio chimes in on the "desktop manufacturing revolution."

Note:  most of the approaches and challenges faced by Shapeways are similar to the conventional 2D print industry (a massive industry).  So, as I anticipated, it's likely that the globally decentralized (just in time and place -- JITP) manufacturing system my team built a couple of years ago for the 2D print industry would work here too.

Posted at 02:26 PM in Journal |

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