Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing • Hacker News Board

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#31

Post by ph0rque » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 1:52 PM UTC

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #7

I see the same breathless optimism here as in the dawn of the WWW in the laste nineties. People with little to no understanding of what 3d printing is or its limitations, making wild extrapolations that don't take much reality (especially the social, legal, and political implications) into account. The fact is, we do not have any idea where 3d printing will take us. The idea that we'll all have 3d printers in our hom…

I see the same breathless optimism here as in the dawn of the WWW in the laste [sic] nineties.

So in about a decade, most of these predictions should start coming true... except with the acceleration of technology, it might take ~5 years instead of ~10.

I'm completely fine with that.

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#32

Post by zeteo » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 1:55 PM UTC

Pure hype. It's interesting how a technology that is in fact revolutionizing manufacturing (CNC milling) gets very little attention compared to one that will, by all reasonable accounts, only ever be useful for prototyping or very limited production runs of small objects. A CNC mill in every house would be much more disruptive than a 3D printer. It would give people the ability to make actually useful objects (door knobs, hinges, car engine parts etc.) out of materials (wood, metal etc.) that are far more abundant, strong and cheap than 3D printer substrates.

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#33

Post by leoedin » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

zeteo wrote: post #32

Pure hype. It's interesting how a technology that is in fact revolutionizing manufacturing (CNC milling) gets very little attention compared to one that will, by all reasonable accounts, only ever be useful for prototyping or very limited production runs of small objects. A CNC mill in every house would be much more disruptive than a 3D printer. It would give people the ability to make actually useful objects (door k…

3D printing techniques are becoming more and more relevant to manufacturing. There's plenty of shapes that you simply cannot make with a CNC mill - RF wave guides, topology optimised brackets etc. Additionally, there's materials which are uneconomical to mill - principally titanium.

The main issues with selective laser sintered titanium as a manufacturing process are speed and surface finish. Speed is increasing, and people are making progress with surface finish. CNC milling (which is an incredibly wasteful process) is just a small development from traditional manufacturing processes. 3D printing is the disruptive technology in the room.

For very high scale components stamping and injection moulding will almost certainly remain the most cost effective manufacturing process. For lower scale stuff (especially weight concious things like aircraft parts) SLS 3D printing will almost certainly start to dominate the market in the next few decades.

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#34

Post by briguy » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 3:29 PM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #33

zeteo wrote: post #32

Pure hype. It's interesting how a technology that is in fact revolutionizing manufacturing (CNC milling) gets very little attention compared to one that will, by all reasonable accounts, only ever be useful for prototyping or very limited production runs of small objects. A CNC mill in every house would be much more disruptive than a 3D printer. It would give people the ability to make actually useful objects (door k…

3D printing techniques are becoming more and more relevant to manufacturing. There's plenty of shapes that you simply cannot make with a CNC mill - RF wave guides, topology optimised brackets etc. Additionally, there's materials which are uneconomical to mill - principally titanium. The main issues with selective laser sintered titanium as a manufacturing process are speed and surface finish. Speed is increasing, and…

I have extensive experience with both CNC milling and 3D printing. I feel that 3D printing is disrupting Product Design/Development vs. actual Manufacturing. Anyone with an idea can now make functional prototypes and proofs of concepts with the click of a button. As you wrote, in perhaps 10 years time, we will be able to get the size and surface finish from 3d printing required to make limited production parts that have certain characteristics (weight, shape, containing reentrant angles, etc) not feasible from CNC milling/turning, etc.