How Open Source Hardware Is Driving the 3D-Printing Industry 199
TheNextCorner sends this quote from ReadWriteWeb:
"Open source software has been a key player in all kinds of disruptive technologies — from the Web to big data. Now the nascent and growing open source hardware movement is helping to power its own disruptive revolution. ... As 3D printing, powered by Arduino and other open source technologies, becomes more prevalent, economies of scale become much less of a problem. A 3D printer can print a few devices — or thousands — without significant retooling, pushing upfront costs to near-zero. This is what The Economist calls the 'Third Industrial Revolution,' where devices and things can be made in smaller, cleaner factories with far less overhead and — significantly — less labor."
Material costs - material generally (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently, the cost of materials for most 3D printers is quite high. That makes 3D printing uneconomical for most purposes.
The other problem is that most useful things are made of more than one material. Consider even something as simple as a toaster. It requires a good conductor, a resisting conductor, an insulator and structural material. So, even something as low tech as a toaster is well beyond the ability of 3D printers to make at all and especially to do so economically.
Re:A post scarcity society (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no physical reason why this should not be the case.
Now if only it'd be that simple.
At the moment, replacing dangerous and tedious jobs no one really wants by much more effective machines is everything the government and our whole economic system is trying to stop. How did this happen? How are we any better than those in the middle ages when we fight progress in the name of old beliefs of capitalism?
Re:A post scarcity society (Score:5, Insightful)
If you could come up with a proposal for feeding and housing all those people who lose their income then you'd be on to a winner. Opposing progress is perfectly understandable when progress will make you jobless and therefore unable to feed, clothe and house yourself. And don't say 'retrain'. That costs money and time, and in the meantime the rent or mortgage isn't being paid.
Re:A post scarcity society (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A post scarcity society (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose this is what one would expect from anyone with "open source space travel" in their sig. We are nowhere near approaching a "post scarcity society", go to Africa or India and tell the significant proportion of the earth's populaton that live in poverty that we are approaching a "post scarcity society"!
On the 3D printing front, gimme one that prints steel, aluminium alloys, etc. with the structural integrity of their conventially produced equivalents (i.e. not sintered) and I'll start to take this discussion seriously.