Since I missed a gazillion opportunities to become filthy-rich during the birth years of the public internet, I probably should rectify that by getting in early on the era of personal fabrication. Who is going to corner the market by creating the 3-D Printing App Store and when can I begin investing?
The big money will be made by corporations that control patents not just for 3-D printers themselves, but also for various kinds of objects people might want to “print.” Want to make a rubber ducky for your kid? Disney owns that design and demands that you pay before you recreate it. Want to print a replacement tail light for your Camry? Toyota owns that.
Fortunes will also be made by those who control 3-D printing marketplaces akin to Apple’s App Store, where the design files for various printable objects will wind up being traded, with sellers paying huge fees for the privilege of just being allowed to participate. And if people want to sell stuff they make with their 3-D printers, then they’ll most likely have to peddle their wares in markets controlled by the likes of Amazon, eBay and Etsy, which will rake in most of the profits.
I don’t know that my brother has seen the future with perfect clarity, but he’s right that there are many fortunes to be made. It’s something to keep your eye on, so you aren’t the guy or gal who didn’t bother to invest in Microsoft or Amazon or Apple or eBay…again.
As always, the big money will be made on printer cartridges.
Want to make a rubber ducky for your kid? Disney owns that design and demands that you pay before you recreate it.
That seems a little harsh. Not that I’m going to go out of my way to defend Disney’s intellectual property rights, but they’re basically selling you a virtual rubber ducky that you can then print as many times as you want. And the price would have to be pretty low to make it worth your while, so it’s not that different from selling real rubber duckies. The fortunes are going to be made in the volume of transactions.
Although I do wonder how easy it will be to enforce these patents when 3-D scanners are also readily available. I guess the safe and sure strategy would be to buy shares in 3D Systems, because people are going to need the printers regardless.
When I was a boy, there was an episode of “My Three Sons” in which Uncle Charlie quiped that by the time (the youngest boy) Chip is shaving, they’ll be using radar. That’s how I feel about 3-D printing. Perhaps it will happen one day; I don’t really care.
Technology doesn’t necessarily make life better. We know that. I shave with an old razor from the 1950s and the double edged blades they’ve been making for over 100 years. Cartridge razors are overpriced and give a horrible shave. Personally, I have little desire to manufacture objects in my home. If I need a length of copper pipe, I’ll drive to the hardware store (thanks just the same).
I’d go with the people who have the millisecond-faster connections to the Patent Office.
Open source software constitutes a huge part of the software market, and I would expect open source options to be available as 3-D printing takes off. The threat of vendor lock-in can’t be dismissed, but it need not be resigned to.
Companies like Microsoft, Apple and Oracle have built their empires on technologies that erect barriers to interoperability. But there are more and more alternatives to these gatekeepers — they’re just not as well known because unlike proprietary vendors, open source efforts don’t have millions of dollars to spend on marketing.
As an after-thought: The case of Disney patenting a rubber duck may be more difficult than the case of Toyota patenting a headlight assembly: Few care who made their car parts, as long as they do the work they’re supposed to do, but your children may insist on the Disney-branded duck design for reasons similar to why most of the books you read and the music you listen to is likely distributed by a few major publishers and labels. As harmful and wide-ranging as the effects of intellectual property laws are, they’re not to blame for the centralization of mass culture.
If you’re carrying around ready-made fetishes, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got your own factory: You will buy what they’re selling.
Open source software already is available for 3-D printing applications. Several of the commercial equipment manufacturers are using open-source software as part of their offerings. Even for large commercial and industrial applications.
The folks who make the various materials that will replace petroleum-based plastics as the goo for the printers.
Fabricators who use printers for precision work, like on-demand medical applications.
But…the money gets made by the big boys, not by individual investors. And given the nonsense monetary policy, there will be a bubble and it will burst just like with the internet.
Is it time for me to plug the financial transaction tax again. Proven to dampen bubbles and prevent serious downturns arising from stupid investments.
You are assuming that home manufacture will be cheaper than mass production. That’s a big assumption and I don’t see how it would work out, but you may be right.
Is it cheaper for me to print an e-book than to buy a mass-produced book?
various kinds of objects people might want to “print.”
Guess they’ve never heard of Napster.
The point these 3D printer fan bois all seem to miss is that there is no material that functions as the universal substance that serves the purpose of making the stuff these 3D printers make. And even if we reach a point were the technology allows such a thing, you have to produce that magical “ink”, at what cost?
As I’ve said with the guy who is getting his 15 minutes of fame printing an open source gun that blows up after a few uses: wouldn’t it be easier just to start a conventional gun factory? (But no, that guy doesn’t intend to make guns with his 3D gun printing. He intends to get famous with it. He’s in law school after all!)
You have to have raw material first, not some magical technology in which you push a button and your product appears behind a glass door. Replicators exist only in the imaginations of science fiction writers.
I swear these people have watched entirely too many re-runs of Star Trek. This is all about selling the rubes printers, not advancing the state of manufacturing technology.