3D: The Third Industrial Revolution

[Crafty_Dog]

The third industrial revolution
The digitisation of manufacturing will transform the way goods are made—and change the politics of jobs too
Apr 21st 2012 | from the print edition

..
 
THE first industrial revolution began in Britain in the late 18th century, with the mechanisation of the textile industry. Tasks previously done laboriously by hand in hundreds of weavers’ cottages were brought together in a single cotton mill, and the factory was born. The second industrial revolution came in the early 20th century, when Henry Ford mastered the moving assembly line and ushered in the age of mass production. The first two industrial revolutions made people richer and more urban. Now a third revolution is under way. Manufacturing is going digital. As this week’s special report argues, this could change not just business, but much else besides.

A number of remarkable technologies are converging: clever software, novel materials, more dexterous robots, new processes (notably three-dimensional printing) and a whole range of web-based services. The factory of the past was based on cranking out zillions of identical products: Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they liked, as long as it was black. But the cost of producing much smaller batches of a wider variety, with each product tailored precisely to each customer’s whims, is falling. The factory of the future will focus on mass customisation—and may look more like those weavers’ cottages than Ford’s assembly line.

The old way of making things involved taking lots of parts and screwing or welding them together. Now a product can be designed on a computer and “printed” on a 3D printer, which creates a solid object by building up successive layers of material. The digital design can be tweaked with a few mouseclicks. The 3D printer can run unattended, and can make many things which are too complex for a traditional factory to handle. In time, these amazing machines may be able to make almost anything, anywhere—from your garage to an African village.

The applications of 3D printing are especially mind-boggling. Already, hearing aids and high-tech parts of military jets are being printed in customised shapes. The geography of supply chains will change. An engineer working in the middle of a desert who finds he lacks a certain tool no longer has to have it delivered from the nearest city. He can simply download the design and print it. The days when projects ground to a halt for want of a piece of kit, or when customers complained that they could no longer find spare parts for things they had bought, will one day seem quaint.

Other changes are nearly as momentous. New materials are lighter, stronger and more durable than the old ones. Carbon fibre is replacing steel and aluminium in products ranging from aeroplanes to mountain bikes. New techniques let engineers shape objects at a tiny scale. Nanotechnology is giving products enhanced features, such as bandages that help heal cuts, engines that run more efficiently and crockery that cleans more easily. Genetically engineered viruses are being developed to make items such as batteries. And with the internet allowing ever more designers to collaborate on new products, the barriers to entry are falling. Ford needed heaps of capital to build his colossal River Rouge factory; his modern equivalent can start with little besides a laptop and a hunger to invent.

Like all revolutions, this one will be disruptive. Digital technology has already rocked the media and retailing industries, just as cotton mills crushed hand looms and the Model T put farriers out of work. Many people will look at the factories of the future and shudder. They will not be full of grimy machines manned by men in oily overalls. Many will be squeaky clean—and almost deserted. Some carmakers already produce twice as many vehicles per employee as they did only a decade or so ago. Most jobs will not be on the factory floor but in the offices nearby, which will be full of designers, engineers, IT specialists, logistics experts, marketing staff and other professionals. The manufacturing jobs of the future will require more skills. Many dull, repetitive tasks will become obsolete: you no longer need riveters when a product has no rivets.

The revolution will affect not only how things are made, but where. Factories used to move to low-wage countries to curb labour costs. But labour costs are growing less and less important: a $499 first-generation iPad included only about $33 of manufacturing labour, of which the final assembly in China accounted for just $8. Offshore production is increasingly moving back to rich countries not because Chinese wages are rising, but because companies now want to be closer to their customers so that they can respond more quickly to changes in demand. And some products are so sophisticated that it helps to have the people who design them and the people who make them in the same place. The Boston Consulting Group reckons that in areas such as transport, computers, fabricated metals and machinery, 10-30% of the goods that America now imports from China could be made at home by 2020, boosting American output by $20 billion-55 billion a year.

The shock of the new

Consumers will have little difficulty adapting to the new age of better products, swiftly delivered. Governments, however, may find it harder. Their instinct is to protect industries and companies that already exist, not the upstarts that would destroy them. They shower old factories with subsidies and bully bosses who want to move production abroad. They spend billions backing the new technologies which they, in their wisdom, think will prevail. And they cling to a romantic belief that manufacturing is superior to services, let alone finance.

None of this makes sense. The lines between manufacturing and services are blurring. Rolls-Royce no longer sells jet engines; it sells the hours that each engine is actually thrusting an aeroplane through the sky. Governments have always been lousy at picking winners, and they are likely to become more so, as legions of entrepreneurs and tinkerers swap designs online, turn them into products at home and market them globally from a garage. As the revolution rages, governments should stick to the basics: better schools for a skilled workforce, clear rules and a level playing field for enterprises of all kinds. Leave the rest to the revolutionaries.

[Crafty_Dog]

From some friends.  Amazing stuff here folks.

http://www.gizmag.com/carbomorph-3d-printer/25129/

MOJO.  3 D printing package for $185/month.  
http://www.mojo3dprinting.com/?gclid=CIrC5pLeirQCFQyk4AodbVYAfQ
 
OMG!!!   Gizmag has dozens of articles on 3D printing.  Totally amazing:

http://www.gizmag.com/tag/3d-printing/     and one on printable batteries.   thx

Printable batteries to make light work of embedded electronics


http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-bio-bots-20121208,0,186179.story

[Crafty_Dog]

And another one:

Massive 3-D Printed Adjustable Wrench Is Way Too Big to Fix Anything http://t.co/2bh6mSu5

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/3-d-printed-gun-fires-6-shots-then-falls-apart-1C7404226

[Crafty_Dog]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/download-this-gun-3d-printed-semi-automatic-fires-over-600-rounds/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/03/first-completely-3d-printed-gun-shown/?hpt=hp_c3

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/05/09/dod-forces-3d-gun-printer-defense-distributed-to-pull-weapon-specs-off-website/
The world's first 3D-printed handgun, The Liberator, has had its liberty taken away by the government.

Plans for the working handgun were posted online by Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed, potentially allowing anyone with access to a 3D printer to make a firearm from plastic. The plans, which had been in the works for months, caused alarm among gun control advocates but were seen by some Second Amendment advocates as a breakthrough. More than 100,000 copies of the plans were downloaded before the federal government took the files.

“[Defense Distributed's] files are being removed from public access at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense Trade Controls," read a banner atop the website. "Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”

Wilson told FoxNews.com that he decided to comply with the request to remove the gun specs from his website while he weighs his legal options.

"They asked that I take it down while they determine if they have the authority to control the info," he said. "It's clearly a direct response to everything we did this week. 3D printing is clearly not the best way to make an effective weapon."

    "Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”

- Defense Distributed website

Wilson says he has complied with most laws on the books and feels that the request from the agency, a branch of the Department of State, may be politically motivated.

"If this is an attempt to control the info from getting out there, it's clearly a weak one," he said, adding that the CAD design for the weapon has already spread across the Internet at downloading sites like the Pirate Bay.

All 16 parts of the controversial gun, called the Liberator, are made from a tough, heat-resistant plastic used in products such as musical instruments, kitchen appliances and vehicle bumper bars. Fifteen of the components are made with a 3D printer while one is a non-functional metal part which can be picked up by metal detectors, making it legal under U.S. law. The firing pin is also not made of plastic, though it is easily crafted from a metal nail.

The weapon is designed to fire standard handgun rounds and even features an interchangeable barrel so that it can handle different caliber rounds.

Defense Distributed is a not-for-profit group founded by Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas. He said the Liberator project was intended to highlight how technology can render laws and governments all but irrelevant.

"I recognize that this tool might be used to harm people," Wilson told Forbes. "That’s what it is -- it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason to not put it out there. I think that liberty in the end is a better interest."

His publishing of the printable blueprints online instantly sparked outrage in the U.S.

Using the file, anyone with access to a 3D printer could theoretically print the gun with no serial number, background check or other regulatory hurdles.

U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., has already called for national legislation to ban 3D-printed guns.

"Security checkpoints, background checks and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser," Israel said.

"When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago, I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction," he added. "Now that this technology is proven, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms."

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story listed the Department of Defense as the source of the take-down request. It came instead from the Department of Defense Trade Controls, an arm of the Department of State. The corrected story is above.

Sky News contributed reporting to this story.

[G M]

I bet there are only 10,000 foreign websites hosting the plastic gun program now....
   

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/05/09/dod-forces-3d-gun-printer-defense-distributed-to-pull-weapon-specs-off-website/
The world's first 3D-printed handgun, The Liberator, has had its liberty taken away by the government.

Plans for the working handgun were posted online by Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed, potentially allowing anyone with access to a 3D printer to make a firearm from plastic. The plans, which had been in the works for months, caused alarm among gun control advocates but were seen by some Second Amendment advocates as a breakthrough. More than 100,000 copies of the plans were downloaded before the federal government took the files.

“[Defense Distributed's] files are being removed from public access at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense Trade Controls," read a banner atop the website. "Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”

Wilson told FoxNews.com that he decided to comply with the request to remove the gun specs from his website while he weighs his legal options.

"They asked that I take it down while they determine if they have the authority to control the info," he said. "It's clearly a direct response to everything we did this week. 3D printing is clearly not the best way to make an effective weapon."

    "Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”

- Defense Distributed website

Wilson says he has complied with most laws on the books and feels that the request from the agency, a branch of the Department of State, may be politically motivated.

"If this is an attempt to control the info from getting out there, it's clearly a weak one," he said, adding that the CAD design for the weapon has already spread across the Internet at downloading sites like the Pirate Bay.

All 16 parts of the controversial gun, called the Liberator, are made from a tough, heat-resistant plastic used in products such as musical instruments, kitchen appliances and vehicle bumper bars. Fifteen of the components are made with a 3D printer while one is a non-functional metal part which can be picked up by metal detectors, making it legal under U.S. law. The firing pin is also not made of plastic, though it is easily crafted from a metal nail.

The weapon is designed to fire standard handgun rounds and even features an interchangeable barrel so that it can handle different caliber rounds.

Defense Distributed is a not-for-profit group founded by Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas. He said the Liberator project was intended to highlight how technology can render laws and governments all but irrelevant.

"I recognize that this tool might be used to harm people," Wilson told Forbes. "That’s what it is -- it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason to not put it out there. I think that liberty in the end is a better interest."

His publishing of the printable blueprints online instantly sparked outrage in the U.S.

Using the file, anyone with access to a 3D printer could theoretically print the gun with no serial number, background check or other regulatory hurdles.

U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., has already called for national legislation to ban 3D-printed guns.

"Security checkpoints, background checks and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser," Israel said.

"When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago, I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction," he added. "Now that this technology is proven, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms."

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story listed the Department of Defense as the source of the take-down request. It came instead from the Department of Defense Trade Controls, an arm of the Department of State. The corrected story is above.

Sky News contributed reporting to this story.

[Crafty_Dog]

One of them is cited here:

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/05/10/