Hang on, I'll just print one up for you

Simple and cheap 3D printing is here

Oh Lord, another  technological genie is out of the bottle and its the usual mixture of good bad and ignorance in Australia.  
Let me explain--we have an opportunity right now of rebuilding our manufacturing industry. Personal additive manufacturing: a process that allows many common consumer good parts to be made on demand is spreading like wildfire elsewhere in the world but here it seems to be treated as a mere curiousity.
Take this case for a moment: Breaking a handle on your prized Gogomobile? No problem, instead of trying to find the part at some exorbitant cost from an importer or a wrecker, print it up on your home 3D printer. Here is a website in Australia that will sell you one for around $2000. Connect it to the net, download a few plans and you are away.
Already the US Army has such devices, setup in fabrication plants about the size of a shipping container, in its forward deployment units. They are used to "print up" what they need when any equipment breaks down. It is faster and less dangerous than a resupply.

US Army fabrication on forward bases

I first heard that such printing were close to reality eight years ago during a trip to an American Midwest university.  Now they are here and like the arrival of the microcomputer and the internet  they are set to create chaos: a truly disruptive technology that will change how we live.
Consider for a moment the enormous investment we have in selling aftermarket parts for all kinds of mass produced goods.  It isn't just Goggomobils that need parts and a complex infrastructure and thousands of Australian jobs are tied up in supplying accessories to the vehicles on the road. 

No, no, not the Dart

It is nothing less than a revolution in manufacturing economics. Economies of scale go out the window and talk of labour units could go out the window. Firms like Apple that design in Silicon Valley and then farm out their products for manufacture in sweatshops on the other side of the world where labour is cheaper may have to radically rethink their processes because the race will tend to go to those who have a close relationship between research and manufacture.  Rapid prototyping will become hypersonic, faults could be corrected overnight with the issue of a new set of plans for a part.  

Robots can sew too

Just now most of the products being manufactured are plastic or metal but don't expect this to last long. Consider the effect of a cheap robotic clothes maker...not just a sewing machine but a cutter and assembly.  Impossible?  Don't bet your booties on it. Yes, in the words of Dr. Scott in the Rocky Horror Show "We have been working on such an idea for some time".  In fact the US military has been investing in making it happen for the last decade.  Ill fitting clothing cheaply manufactured in coarse rack size may disappear as precision engineering at the back of the retail shop works off personal body measurements, your chosen design and chosen fabric.
China has also been beavering away at adapting to this new way of doing business.  They have even opened a museum of 3D Printing to remind their citizens of how much they have already contributed to this revolution

The good News

The good news is that this could see an end to much of what we now call the global economy.  Raw materials will still have to be finished but the days when it was economic to ship those Goggomobils around the world for sale may be ending. Why buy an expensive import, when you can get something better and more suited to your exact requirements at much less cost run up in a machine shop down the road? 
Suddenly, Australian manufacturers, if they accept the challenge can be cost competitive because so much of the raw materials used in overseas plants that now create our goods come from Australia. Not only could we have our items quicker but cheaper and more customised to what we need rather than having to put up with what we put up with now from the Asian sweatshop manufacturers.

The bad news

The bad news is that this kind of instant product could have serious ramifications for how we live.  For example, in the light of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary, the US lawmakers are considering tightening up US gun laws and are homing in on the high capacity ammunition clips for assault rifles.

The freedom loving Americans paranoid that their government is trying to reduce them to slavery by taking deadly weapons out of circulation have rebelled.  The crazies are looked for ways of home manufacturing lethal weapons.  And they have scored their first big success in making those high capacity clips. Now they are moving on to producing home-made assault rifles using the cheap 3D printers.  It doesn't take much of a leap in imagination to the stockpiling of anti-tank guns, rocket launchers, armed drones, and DIY minefields. All in the name of Liberty.
But that's American.  The question is what will we be do with our three wishes from the 3D Printer Genie here in Australia. Griffith University has been working on what could be done. In fact it is already running courses in how to design for the new technology at its Queensland College of Art Campus on South Bank.  Oh brave new world.

The wrap

Too much to put into a simple blog--for instance I havent touched on the endeavours now underway to make self-replicating 3D printers. Consider watching or reading the TED address by Ned Gershenfeld of MIT in 2006 where he outlined what was coming.  Like Cassandra he warned but no one listened:

"In DC, I go to every agency that wants to talk, you know; ... they all want to talk about it, but it breaks their organizational boundaries. In fact, it's illegal for them, in many cases, to equip ordinary people to create rather than consume technology. And that problem is so severe that the ultimate invention coming from this community surprised me: it's the social engineering". 

Wouldn't want social engineering now would we?