John Robb’s recent post on local manufacturing and the comments it has spawned provide some good insights into the current state of the market for what I’ve called Manufacturing 3.0. See also here on the MJ:
Archive for 3D Printing
Custom Cell Phones To Jump-start 3D Printing
Probably not all by itself, but this could be an important driver and seems worth watching.
Hoping to jump-start the long foretold 3-D printing revolution, OpenMoko, a maker of open source mobile devices, is offering its phone case CAD files to anyone who wants them.
“We want people to create their own flesh for their phone,” said Steve Mosher, VP of marketing at OpenMoko.
The OpenMoko CAD files have been made available under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.
In the past, said Mosher, creating a unique plastic part might cost a $100,000. “But today, with desktop manufacturing, you can build parts on your desktop for $3,500,” he said.
A commercial 3-D printer costs a bit more than that: The low-end Z Corp. ZPrinter 310 Plus retails for $19,900. But the open source Fab@Home Project Model 1 costs about $2,300.
The increasing ease with which 3-D parts can be fabricated is often likened to the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980s. But before 3-D printing takes off the way laser printing did, the software and hardware will have to become more affordable still and more intuitive.
Manufacturing 3.0
This is yet another reason ignorance doesn’t mesh
As we move towards the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, we’re going to hear more and more about the loss of manufacturing jobs. This is important – folk have to be able to eat. However, what the politicians aren’t talking about is the fundamental transformation going on in manufacturing and how that will impact citizens.
Why they don’t talk about it is a mixed bag – some are just ignorant or don’t care enough, others are being deceptive because they have other priorities or arrogantly believe that people are not able to deal with the subject. The next time the subject of manufacturing jobs comes up, ask people what those jobs will be like just 10 short years from now. We can’t wait until then to start dealing with the realities of Manufacturing 3.0.
China and the Coming Boom in Virtual Property
Reading reBang’s When Retail Goes Virtual post about “the impact virtual worlds will almost certainly have on real world commerce.”, I was reminded of some links I hadn’t gotten around to posting yet:
American government officials and economists from Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson to Senator Chuck Shumer to Paul Kruger have focused on balance of trade issues with China, the RMB-USD exchange rate, and China’s huge foreign reserves. But few mainstream economists or Government officials have looked at new forms of currency emerging in China that already is beginning to greatly affect China’s underlying economy – virtual currency.
Investors should not fail to look at this sector. Xinhua News has reported that the volume of virtual currency has reached several hundred million USD a year in China. My firm estimates the size to grow 30% in 2007.
reBang references an article from the Guardian which quotes Robert Lai, chief scientist of the Beijing Cyber Recreation District talking about virtual worlds capable of supporting billions of avatars(). The Chinese are VERY serious about the meshverse. The Guardian article goes on to say:
… this is a bold attempt to repeat what China has done in manufacturing (ie, conquering the world) in services. Be warned.
… At the moment, Britain and other western economies benefit from cheap Chinese manufactured goods and the low inflation they bring while also benefiting from huge wholesale, retail and distribution markups on the same goods. If they too migrate to China, what will there be left for us to do? That is a very serious question.
Others have raised this very serious question:
- Whether or not such e-commerce is even feasible may be a moot point. I feel it speaks volumes as to where the country is, culturally. Now, technology futurists are in a sense saying, “You will be able to point, click, and buy anything, just how you want it, directly from any factory in the world”—so much for “Buy American.” The Beijing Cyber Recreation District is being billed as a so-called “online counterpart” to Beijing’s China Recreation District, a physical, real-world endeavor that will boast entertainment and shopping; the center is set to open in time for the 2008 Olympics, according to the AP. And where will this new entertainment center be built? In an abandoned Chinese steel plant. Can’t you just feel the irony?
- Need a new refrigerator or a pair of pants? Go window shopping (that is, in your Explorer window) online in a virtual world and then buy it directly from the factory in rural Asia where the item is made. That’s what the Chinese government is proposing. According to an Associated Press report (“China Plans Virtual World for Commerce,” October 15, 2007), China’s central government is methodically constructing a vast virtual world, dubbed the Beijing Cyber Recreation District.
“Some supply-chain experts say the project is impossibly grandiose in its goal to provide direct links between tens of thousands of Chinese manufacturers and millions of individual customers around the world,” AP wrote. But if this turns out to be the surprise hit that no one has foreseen, PLM vendors may need to refashion their sourcing and supply-chain management features.
CADalyst: CADfidential
The west is going to have to come up with some serious innovation to cope with this but the trends I’ve covered here such as Desktop Manufacturing and DIY Gone Wild indicate that this innovation is already underway. The above-mentioned reBang post is even more expansive.
China may have low cost labor but western desktop design & manufacturing entrepreneurs can ship from down the street and do meet-ups with both creative trend setters(music, fashion, sports) and customers. This competition will play a key role in driving demand for virtual property. The coming boom in virtual property will be more far reaching than the US/USSR space race.
3D Printing Update
Given the mention of sub $10K announcements in the recent dialog about Ponoko(thanks csven), I decided to take a quick spin around the web to take the pulse of the 3D printersphere. I found out that Desktop Factory‘s $4,995 3D printer is now in external customer beta. They are estimating that the price will drop to $1,000 in 4 years. Their blog has a number of worthwhile links. The V-Flash Desktop Modeler is expected to come in before the end of the year at $9,900. I wonder if these products will cause Z-Corp to come down from the $19,000 entry level product I mentioned about a year ago. Along the way I also found this nice illustrated walk-thru of how the $40K Z-Corp Z406 works. Here are a few other interesting links I revisited or encountered:
Production Creation & Marketing Mesh
Major news today related to a discussion on last week’s iShop post where I said
… the cost of 3D printers and related technologies have been dropping. Something coming from a Fabjectory, Xardas or one of their customers could be a catalyst.
People like being able to make their own – whatever, whenever. Today I see that Dassault the “see what you mean” folk I really like, have teamed up with a global branding/marketing company Publicis to create 3DSwym based on the idea that
… successful marketing must include the co-generation of products and services with consumers themselves, for which a networked 3D digital environment is perfectly adapted.
Although I doubt that the 3DSwym browser plug-in will ever become ubiquitous, I agree with the 3PointD folks that it’s pretty significant because
… the global reach and sway of these companies could well help drive things in a more co-creative direction.
3pointD.com » Blog Archive » Publicis and Dassault Dive In for a 3dswym
The vision of customer collaboration underlying 3DSwym sets it apart from others like Viewpoint whose browser plug-in once powered Adobe’s Atmosphere virtual world platform before they killed the product. I expect that Viewpoint which has some major brands as customers, will adopt this co-creation outlook though they’d have to partner with a CAD vendor to match Dassault. While both Viewpoint and 3DSwym are proprietary products that will be difficult to get into the mainstream in this era of open source, 3DSwym will appeal to some very important niches that will expand the desktop fabrication market. It could nudge Adobe to re-enter this space and/or attract a Google or Microsoft. It will certainly help world changing ideas like RepRap take gain traction.
