How 3D Printing Will Change The World

The onset of 3D printing is changing the world before our very eyes and we have barely even touched on its full potential…

Anyone who thinks additive manufacturing – as it was originally known – is still stuck in the realm of creating cheap plastic prototypes for big manufacturers, may be shocked by the disruption it will potentially cause as the technology develops.
When 3D printing started out in the 1980s (leaping straight out of Sci-Fi fantasy into our reality), it was called Rapid Prototyping Technology. Back then, huge and expensive devices took days to produce a rather grim facsimile of an actual working part.
Times have changed…
Today, Boeing has produced more than 300 aircraft parts with a 3D printer, the Foodini is ready to print food from base ingredients, a 5-storey building in China has been built with a printer and the BioBots printer is producing replica body parts and living tissue on the first step towards printing donor organs and even limbs. The medical applications are simply life-changing, with replacement organs potentially being built to spec in hours, rather than the current agonising wait for a match that may never come. Hopefully, amputees can one day even look forward to a new arm or leg.
Technically the world of 3D printing can end world hunger, too. The costs are prohibitive at the moment, but as the technology evolves, food production could become a very real possibility in the next decade.
Much like their 2D counterparts, desktop 3D printers are now available for less than the price of a budget laptop, making the product a real marketable commodity. Soon, many households could have a 3D Printer that can comfortably produce basic household items. Households with larger budgets may even own machines that can print complicated items that have moving gears and hinges.

What does this mean? Possibly the end of mass manufacturing and the retail network as we know it. It means everything could change.
The economy of scale – which effectively reduces the cost of each unit via mass production – will become obsolete, as transport costs will inevitably become the biggest part of the equation. At the point it becomes cheaper to simply print a plate, fork, or even gold jewellery at home, the game changes. This could all happen sooner than we may think…
Until home printers catch up, retailers can rely on on-demand 3D printing for their more expensive items, and gradually, keeping stock will become a thing of the past. That said, it’s possible that home printers will reach the point where the retailer becomes an irrelevance for all but the most complicated items, such as PCs and televisions, and so stock may not be required after all – a retail calamity.
There will inevitably be casualties of the 3D printing revolution. The transport and logistics industries will suffer heavy losses, and manufacturing will undergo a seismic shift. Nobody truly knows the impact this will have, but with massive job losses in the pipeline and the population living longer, 3D printing could have a profound negative, as well as positive, impact on society.
There are already countless sites devoted to 3D printing plans, and home manufacturing from downloaded plans is inevitably the way things are heading. For the most part, this has been welcomed, but there have been scandals, such as the 3D printed gun which was downloaded more than 100,000 times before it was pulled by the US authorities.
There will be further ethical and moral dilemmas ahead in the world of 3D printing as the technology is simply so powerful that it can change the world, one printed Micron at a time.