This is a common fallacy amongst fans of 3d Printing. I'm a gonna go ahead and call it what it is - Cheez Whiz Engineering. You list three things. Let's talk about what goes into them. 1) A violin. It's a resonating box with resonators on top. Resonation is a function of density and tensile strength, those densities and tensile strengths being 3-cimensional matrices in tension, 3-dimensional matrices in compression. In order to "make" a violin I need one non-uniform, non-linear material graph for the body. I need another non-uniform, non-linear material graph for the neck. I need another non-linear, non-uniform material graph for the bridge and yet another for the strings. I can build the tuning pegs out of Cheez Whiz, but the sound of a violin is entirely dependent on the resonant properties of those four deep non-linearities. 2) A bicycle. Let's just go to the frame. Suppose I make it out of chrome-moly. This is an anoxic carbon steel blend forged in one atmosphere, tempered in another, joined in another. My fabrication processes are well-understood but they do not lend themselves to thermoplastics. There are parts of a bicycle that lend themselves to Cheez Whiz, but they're the internal guts of the shifters and the Cheez Whiz they lend themselves to is sintered metal powder. Not exactly something user-manipulable on 120W. 3) A car. Let's simplify and go with something stupid simple like "a brake disc." Not the fluid, not the pads, not the bearings, not the studs; those are all deep chemistry and metallurgy. A brake disc is forged in the fires of Hell to do one thing and do it well. It's a multi-tempered multi-pass multi-machined component reliant on many different source materials combined in concert in extreme processing in order to produce one dumb, homogenous part that could be drawn as an STL file by any mook. Make it out of Cheez Whiz, though, and… Here's the problem with 3d printing. It presumes that all things are made of thermoplastic. Granted - there are things that can be made from thermoplastic. Dice. Watchbands. iPod docks (minus the circuitry). Flowerpots. Amusing 3d Solids. They're lowest-common-denominator strength, though, and usually highest-common-denominator cost. There are very 3d printed things in the world that can't be made radically cheaper via lost wax or injection molding. So if there's nothing in your life that needs any material strength, you can totally 3d print your entire life. But if you actually need functional goods, you shall remain dependent on the manufacturing apparatus arrayed around you. Yeah, you can 3d-print a bottle opener. it'll cost you 3-4$ in materials. Or, you can go to the store and buy a better bottle opener for 79 cents. They're much easier to stamp out of steel, and they work way better. That's a bottle opener. You don't want to imagine a Cheez Whiz bicycle. Yeah, you can print a violin. and if you like listening to Cheez Whiz, that's a bright, bright future.There is no reason to suspect that you won't have torrents for things like violins, bikes, or even cars.
I think this is perhaps your crucial point where we can find agreement: I agree that for many things you will not necessarily be able to print them out directly from your home. But the manufacturing apparatus around you will be able to. Hospitals will have sophisticated 3D printers designed specifically for printing out organs. Automobile manufacturers will have essentially replaced their assembly lines with 3D printers, etc. All of this will dramatically reduce the cost of material goods.But if you actually need functional goods, you shall remain dependent on the manufacturing apparatus arrayed around you.
Not really, no. Your counter-argument is "contractor-grade Cheez Whiz." 3d printing is integrated, incremental materials deposition. That's the definition. Your "cell" is your printing resolution. Which works fine for amorphous materials, but runs into real problems as soon as you're dealing with anything beholden to materials science. Take a fishing rod. We'll skip the rings and cork and shit, we'll just talk about a long piece of fiberglass. It gets its strength from a bundle of glass fibers that run longitudinally and a matrix of polymer that binds them together. It's a "wood" analog - the fiberglass is a crude imitation of bamboo, essentially. The glass fibers are microscopic in one dimension and macroscopic in another, running to "microns" and "multiple feet" respectively. The effective manufacturing methods for fishing rods involve aligning bundles of glass fiber on a jig, depositing matrix (spray or injection, not sure), using vacuum to remove air pockets, and then allowing the matrix to cure before polishing the assembly. You now have a stick of plastic and glass that performs better than a piece of bamboo, but not quite as well as hand-formed cane. Let's take this process and turn it into 3D printing. Now our glass particles are microscopic in all dimensions. We have no stress matrix. Effectively, we've got a pile of sandpaper without the paper - glass particles in glue. We can heat-cure the assembly… but now instead of having a sturdy and resilient pole, you've got a glass rod. Or, more specifically, a glass-and-glue rod. That's 3D printing - integrate down to zero, find the ideal particle for your nozzle size, and repeat it volumetrically. It's like making an English longbow by taking the yew tree, feeding it to the wood chipper, rendering it to sawdust and then forming the paste into an arc. You can't make a decent bow out of MDF, let alone plywood. Yeah, you can add all sorts of mathematical filigree but in the end, your maximum imodulus is your particle size. If all you've got are 1x4 legos, you're going to have a rough time building a broomstick. A "How it's Made" marathon might do you some good - we have hundreds of different manufacturing processes because we're efficient, not the other way 'round. As to the 3D printed organs: The technology they're leveraging is based upon a handful of patents developed by the University of Washington in the mid '90s. I did a lot of post-grad work with them. Basically, Mat Sci figured out a way to create fibers so small that the body didn't reject them but so inert that they didn't cause mesothelioma like asbestos. They kind of work as a matrix for stem cell growth - we'd spray 'em down electrophoretically and then put some cultured tissue on 'em and they sort of grow in the shape of your matrix. At the time we were looking at wound care because skin tissue was more easily cultured and easier to acquire than, say, lung tissue but the principle is the same - make a "something" and coax cells into growing on it. Yeah, you can "3D print" that matrix, after a fashion. We called it "spraying" back in '99. Of course, that's back when our 3D printer was called the STL lab and nobody cared… nowadays, you say you're "3D printing" and suddenly The Economist wants to come shoot videos. Make no mistake - the tech hasn't changed. It was a questionable tech spinoff 15 years ago. The Vacanti Mouse was 17 years ago… how much has it changed the world?