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3D Printing is Not China on Your Desktop
;)
A 2008 quote attributed to Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google says: "Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop."
We strongly resonate with that image. Instead of receiving goods from China, which evidently manufactures all things these days, you can drop a 3D printer on your desk and manufacture things yourself. We Want To Do That!
But there are some issues:
- The build quality of today's 3D printers (at least the semi-affordable ones) is not quite equivalent to mainstream Chinese manufacturers
- The objects made in China have been professionally designed, tested and safety certified. Are yours? If not, where do you get the right 3D model to print?
- The build chamber of many 3D printers is smaller than the object you want to print. Therefore you must print parts and then assemble them. In some cases, this could be difficult
But let's assume these and other issues are eventually solved. You have a quality printer, a great design and you can rapidly print out your item.
It's still not China.
That's because the unit price of printing items yourself will never approach the low cost levels of Chinese manufacturers. Your printer will be idle for much of the day, while Chinese equipment efficiently spins 24 hours per day, tended by low-cost staff, producing items at extremely low cost. Home printing can never match China on cost.
And that's the tradeoff we're all faced with: Design choice but expensive, or Inexpensive with limited choice. Choose one.
Image Credit: Joi Via Wikipedia under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic
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Reader Comments (10)
the part that gets me is the idea that chinese products are safer. i'll take lead-free goop over headphones that require you to "wash hands after handling" any day.
as for the cost, i don't know how many decades it will be before we can "print" materials like shoes, (i'd love a pair of 3d "sandals," just for the novelty) but when you factor in things like paying proper salaries over child labor and slave wages, you just might break even. and sorry if i come off as "anti-china" here, it's just suspect that it's all you can buy in the u.s.
Actually, in many cases where a Reprap can produce an acceptable product substitute, if you discount the price of the 3d printer itself, the cost to an end-user is significantly lower than if they bought the object. Shipping costs, resaler profit margins, etc. all add up. Now, if you're talking about someone making thousands of something to sell, then they're going to want to put in the call to a chinese factory. But the same is definitely not true of a consumer. Unit prices are lower for a manufacturer using mass production - if they need a lot of them. The unit price for getting, say, a half dozen parts made by a chinese factory is ludicrously high, because the startup costs are constant regardless of the number being made.
Several points:
3D printers are not the only tool we have in our fabber toolkit. The fabber builds the rest of our manufacturing tools.
Traditional manufacturing is wasteful in so many ways that a person manufacturing for themselves need not be.
Packaging. Fuel costs for distribution. The hefty portion of all purchases which goes to managers and salesman. All these can be eliminated.
A faster innovation cycle comprised of personal manufacturers will optimize designs for our purposes.
Then there is the reuse of existing junk. The cost of defunct electronics and waste materials is free.
And once we get our homebrew production media online, we can further drive down costs.
Personal fabricators sitting idle is a distasteful proposition, even at our current stage. There is a great need for more reprap kits which these idle machines can be producing.
And the value of making users into amateur engineers is certainly positive.
No, we don't have China on our desktop. We have something better. China meets the needs of the old way of doing things. We will adapt existing technologies to our needs.
Furthermore let us pause and consider the ramifications of distribution of personal fabbers into China. Their users will hook into our open source designs and create smaller, cheaper products. These new Chinese designers will have a degree of social mobility supported by engineering skills. Their independence may indeed have social consequences.
"Design choice but expensive, or Inexpensive with limited choice. Choose one. "
This is a foolishly narrow minded view: Can Fabbaloo really not imagine any way in which we can achieve inexpensive production with the benefit of choice using digital fabrication? How about the same concept of time sharing as noted in China, applied to that 3D printer which may or may not be on your desk?
"The build quality of today's 3D printers (at least the semi-affordable ones) is not quite equivalent to mainstream Chinese manufacturers"
http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/fora/user/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=602.0;attach=568;image
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"The objects made in China have been professionally designed, tested and safety certified"
LOL! Really? In many case you could have fooled me.
"Therefore you must print parts and then assemble them. In some cases, this could be difficult"
For some people who haven't bothered to acquire any skills worth the name it certainly would be, I expect. Tough luck, Jack.
The biggest problem with Reprap is that it will severely disrupt extant supply chains. What will firms like Walmart do with a big chunk of their inventory can be printed at home rather than imported from China. The second biggest will be that it will collapse the GDP by a considerable amount.
Consider. I noticed some weeks ago that the cost of bread had topped $4.15/lb and I tend to go through about 3 lbs of bread/week. I bought a bread machine at $99. It will take a shade under three months to recover the cost of the machine in cheaper bread. Thereafter the cost of bread will have fallen to the cost of the inputs, viz, flour, water and electricity which is less than 10% of that $4.15/lb.
The US GDP will be dropping by about $580 hereafter because of that one choice. Suppose that half of the US population made a similar choice. The US GDP would drop by $87 billion.
That is just for a machine that can make bread. Consider all the things that a Reprap machine can completely or partially make.
We've already had the enviroNazis sniffing around looking for a rationale to demand that Reprap machines be banned. Imagine what will happen when the Walmarts of this world catch on.
Plan on trouble, BIG trouble. :-)
3d printing is NOT like China!?!? What does that even mean, China? Injection Molding in China? Sounds like comparing apples to oranges. The quality of the parts coming off 3d printers has nothing to do with cost, but the technology. There are many different types out there. However, they are all built 1 layer at a time vs. PIM has no layers, just parting lines. The costs attributed to each DO contrast by the efficiency and labor costs. When talking about home printing, let's be more specific. It sounds like this article is comparing an American end user and not a Chinese end user.
3D printing is really meant for prototyping, not manufacturing. That doesn't mean it can't be, but no matter how far we advance, creating a mold and setting up an automated system for knocking out hundreds of thousands of parts will always be more efficient that making 1 part.
Interesting article + responses! Some thoughts:
- Your printer will be idle for much of the day, while Chinese equipment efficiently spins 24 hours per day,
Easy fix: take the printer off your desktop. Fabricators can be located in city warehouses. Or Home Depots. Or Ikeas.
- tended by low-cost staff
A personal factory means no executives (other than you!). No engineers and no marketing budget. And it costs less to ship something 11 miles than 11,000.
producing items at extremely low cost.
Maintaining corporations is expensive, so removing them will reduce costs. Also, CNC processes may eventually be automated. Once there are material "vending machine," all bets may be off re: the cost of our stuff.
Fabbers can indeed compete with China. What about when any local store has a few fabbers onsite and all you have to do is order a product from your smart phone then go and pick it up at the store. Then the fabbers wont be sitting idle and people wont have to buy one. Sure they wont be able to compete with certain high end products but I can see them destroying many manufacturing industries. Who would buy a dirty product made in china when you can get a sterile one from a fab-vending machine made in your community for cheaper
What about a 3d printing co-op where a group of people share one machine. Then they can buy the plastic or metal building material in bulk and the machine wont be sitting idle as much. The zeitgeist movement has been talking about doing this with a huge group of people.
Hi,
Oh really … I liked the entire concept for sure!
Thanks,
Cygnus