Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 07 45

3D printing and the Internet are enabling manufacturing

to become more customizable and local. It thereby has the

potential to disrupt conventional and large-scale models of

manufacturing.

by Amit MirchandaniCredits: 3D Ocean

The Changing Face of Manufacturing

Communities

Herein lies the dilemma of getting products to customers today: it takes a lot of energy to make, it uses materials that take a lot of energy to collect, the factory struggles to achieve the scale with so much customization. It takes even more energy to transport and in the end it all ends up costing too much – both in terms of money and the environmental toll it takes.

Enter a Paradigm Shift Teenage Engineering is a Swedish company that designs and sells a range of synthesizers. It is a small company offering innovative and offbeat products and has a loyal fan base of musicians and sound artists around the world. Recently, it launched a range of accessories for their popular OP-1 synthesizer. These allow one to create a variety of additional

At the time of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturers began to make mass-produced products for consumers to use. Using vast amounts of energy and enormous machines housed in large factories, they were able to stamp, shape, mould, contort, and wrangle various materials into particular shapes. These parts came together to serve a function. It was a far cry to imagine even one of these machines living in our homes and inconceivable to have the multiple machines one would require to make the various parts of an average product.Skip forward to today, when brands and manufacturers are two separate entities. Consumers are all over the world and they want things fast, they want things cheap, they want things in custom sizes and finishes to suit their requirements and personal styles.

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and unexpected sounds and functions by twisting, turning, cranking, linking and combining the knobs that exist on the synthesizer coupled with a software upgrade that activates those functions. The cost of the knob attachments, cranks, and rubber bands range from $8 to $16, however fans were disappointed with the cost to ship one of these products, which ran upwards of $25 to locations outside of their base in Sweden.The company responded by uploading 3D data files of the products on their website. If you own a 3D printer you can print the products for yourself. If you do not you can print them at Shapeways.com (a 3D printing company based in the US) at a fraction of the cost and get it shipped locally to US fans also for a fraction of the cost!I see a shift in the brand-manufacturer-consumer relationship paradigm here. Moreover, Teenage Engineering has pioneered a new form of product manufacture and delivery. One in which the manufacturing happens locally at a much smaller and customizable scale, the value of the products are not determined by the cost of the finished-shipped-retailed goods, but the intellectual property that they provide for your use. What you will be paying for is a license to use their IP. This entire customization and delivery method will facilitate itself over the Internet. You

could even imagine a try-before-you-buy mechanism in which you print out something to see whether it fits, works, enhances or satisfies your requirements and style.

Enter Home 3D PrintingCubify is a website offering 3D printable files to download for free or to buy, 3D printing capabilities through the cloud, 3D creation apps and a 3D home printer called the cube. You can even become a Cubify artist and upload 3D files for products you want to sell on their site for royalties.Cubify describes their 3D printer’s capabilities as, “(it) prints in 3D... which means that instead of putting ink onto a flat surface like regular printing, it builds up

material in three dimensions to create a real object. It melts plastic filament, then draws with it in a very fine layer. It then builds another fine layer of plastic on top of this one, and then another, and another, building your idea in slices from the bottom-up until you have a plastic object ready to hold. Think of it like dispensing frozen yogurt from a machine: you can build up your cone to be pretty big! 3D printing on a Cube is like that, only lets you make way cooler shapes with more detail, and isn’t edible.”There are no limitations with what you can build, except for that it must fit into the print area. You can print in 10 different colours in a special type of ABS plastic that is safe and recyclable.

Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 07 47

Also, with their 3D creation app, you can generate 3D files that you can print at home or by using their cloud powered industrial 3D printers.These capabilities will change the nature of products, what functions they are capable of and how we will create, use and dispose products. I see the ability to recycle materials and change the functions as your needs change. I also see a replacement of the conventional product supply chain with big savings for the environment in transport.

Enter the Future of 3D printingNASA has floated a concept whereby a 3D printer could be sent into space. It would have the capability to salvage asteroids

or space junk or use material sent from Earth. These materials would then be put through the 3D printing process to build a spacecraft, space station, space telescope or satellite outwards from the 3D printer! This would save tremendous resources and open up the design capabilities of objects in space without the constraints of having to squeeze them into a rocket or build them to withstand earth’s gravity.This idea is still several years away, but the project has received funding to see whether the concept makes business sense.What this means to people living back on earth is the ability to launch all projects - big or small - such as a toaster or a complete house - from a 3D printer with salvaged

or virgin materials. The printer will not only build part of itself, but the equipment required to get any job done, to actual parts that will make the completed product you are trying to build. Starting at the printer and building outwards from it. There will only be some assembling required!

ReferencesBrandon, “3D Printing, The Future of Customer

Service?” Astro Studios, 08 Nov 2012.

“Cube 3D Printer.” Cubify.

Hsu, Jeremy. “NASA Turns to 3D Printing for Self-

Building Spacecraft.” Tech News Daily. Tech Media

Network, 13 Sep 2012.

Photo Credits

Top Left: Teenage EngineeringLeft: Cubify

Bottom: Unlimited Tethers