[NetBehaviour] Drilling into 3D printing: Gimmick, revolution or spooks' nightmare?

[marc garrett]

Drilling into 3D printing: Gimmick, revolution or spooks' nightmare?

By Professor James Woudhuysen.

Special report

3D printing, otherwise known as additive manufacturing, is a subject 
that pumps out enthusiasts faster than any real-life 3D printer can 
churn out products.

Those who blithely proclaim that 3D printing brings a revolution to 
manufacturing make a mistake. 3D printing does not represent a 
pervasive, durable and penetrating transformation of the dynamics and 
status of manufacturing. Nor, as The Economist newspaper has proposed, 
is its emergence akin to the birth of the printing press (1450), the 
steam engine (1750) or the transistor (1950). There is much to celebrate 
about 3D printing, and even its too-fervent advocates at least represent 
a reasonable desire to produce new kinds of things in new kinds of ways. 
Yet what characterises 3D printing is how, as with other powerful 
technologies today, it need only barely arrive on the world economic 
stage for zealots to overrate it, and for others to turn it into an 
object of fear.

Web democracy is old hat - it's all about 'democratising innovation in 
atoms’

 From customised surgical implants to complex, lightweight components in 
the car industry, 3D seems to conquer everything before it. Indeed, not 
too long after the hipsters at Wired began to promote 3D, two editors 
from that stable quit to join Makezine.com. In another telling move, 
Chris Anderson, for years editor-in-chief of Wired, left last year to 
become CEO of 3D Robotics, a company that uses 3D printing and robots to 
build civilian unmanned aerial vehicles – aeroplane drones and 
helicopter drones, ready to fly at $765.

Read the article: 
http://m.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/19/woudhuysen_on_3d_printing/

Come discuss with us at Cybersalon on:

Tues 24th Sept 2013: 7pm

Theme- 3D Printing – How Far Will It Go?

Chair: Ivan Pope - Fabrivan, Brighton /Cybersalon

Speakers:

Simon Gill - DigitasLBi
Executive Creative Director

Alice Taylor – MakieLab
Maker of the Makies, inventing the future of toys

Ann Marie Shillito – Anarkik3D
Haptics and 3D Lab, Edinburgh

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