3D DESIGN IS still very niche. Most computer users never do any 3D design. I can think of many reasons for that, but foremost there is no particular use case for them today. 3D printing is an example that will bring that use case. Especially when 3D home printers become more common place. But there are still ways to go. 3D design software is still hard to use or too simple to make meaningful objects. The issue is that for the average computer user using 3D design software feels awkward. This is not surprising because all software uses a 2D metaphor to create objects in 3D. You need skill and a trained mind set to translate a 2D representation on the screen to a 3D world in your mind. It takes practice and patience before you can master that. I see this as a huge friction to get consumers to design in 3D – and eventually print their own designed 3D objects.

The current generation of screens is moving towards displaying in 3D. But there is a significant problem with these solutions. They project a 3D image from a single view point. Changing the viewing angle does not change the image. This is acceptable for games or passive consumption of content. But it only marginally helps in the creation of 3D content.

source: AIST (http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/latest_research/2006/20060210/20060210.html)

A solution is volumetric displays. That will be the big game changer I think. Volumetric displays project an object or environment in 3 dimensions. It gives the viewer complete freedom in viewing the object from every angle. The user can view and inspect an object like the would any other real object – without touching it.

Unfortunately the technology is not mature yet and only exists in research. There are typically two approaches used: swept-volume display or static volume display. The swept-volume display works by projecting a single slice of the 3D image onto a moving screen. When the screen moves another slice of the 3D image is shown. If this is done fast enough, the persistence of images in the human vision will automatically blend all images together, and 3D object will emerge.

The static volume display has no moving parts. The 3D object is projected inside a solid volume. The volume could be a gas or liquid. A laser excites the molecules briefly to make them emit light.

Volumetric displays are one part of the equation. The other part is capturing 3D input to allow manipulation of 3D objects. The current computer mouse is designed to capture 2D input for a 2D environment. The mouse is not suitable to navigate a 3D environment. There are new 3D input devices on the market like the one from Sixense.

I have high hopes for volumetric displays. I have been following the research for years. Progress in this area is very slow. But I am sure when they get it right, it will be a game changer for 3D design.

IN MY SERIES ON the impact of 3D printing, I wrote about my views of the impact on supply chain and product design. In today’s post, I write about manufacturing locations. This topic has already been partly covered in the post about supply chain, but I think there is more to say about it.

Manufacturing takes places all over the world. But the bulk of our manufacturing takes place in Asia. I expect that 3D printing has the opportunity to change that. 3D printing offers benefits over mass production like:

• one-off and small series production
• multiple products coming out of the same production line
• semiautomated production lines
• smaller factory footprint because of all the above.

Looking at these benefits, I see new directions for manufacturing, which have an impact on the location where production will take place. The directions I see are:

• manufacturing closer to major markets – in essence bring manufacturing back to the West localized production near large population concentrations
• insourcing of production by nonmanufacturing companies
• around the corner production (Kinko concept)
• home manufacturing (home printers)

Manufacturing closer to major markets
We produce in Asia because it is cheaper to manufacture overseas and ship it back to us than to produce it locally. Now this concept works great for mass-produced goods, but with 3D printing it may change. With lowering prices of 3D printing equipment and materials, it can tip the balance and make localized production possible.

Localized production near large population concentrations
Given the above, it makes more sense to move production closer to large cities or near central distribution hubs similar to warehouses of big etailers like Amazon. I can even imagine that some production will take place inside those existing warehouses.

Insourcing of production by nonmanufacturing companies
Beyond making production local, certain companies or organization can start producing themselves. The benefits to be able to produce on demand on-site can in certain cases very compelling. For example, a hospital which needs specialized tools for operations or tailor-made items for patients. Or car shops who need to special parts to repair a car. In these cases, it saves time, costs and inventory to have produce them inhouse.

Around-the-corner production (Kinko concept)
When 3D printers become more capable and their use more ubiquitous, the next step is to go hyper local. Local shops in convenient locations (a la Kinkos) open and offer local pickup and on-demand 3D printing options to businesses and consumer alike.

Home manufacturing (home printers)
And there is the option of home printers where consumers can print their own products at home.

There are considerations to take into account on how the future will unfolds itself. One consideration is the acceptance of customers of build-to-order products versus off-the-shelve products. Build-to-order offers freedom, but at the same time does not deliver instant gratification. Off-the-shelve delivers that instant gratification, but the customer is limited in choices. The other consideration is that the applicability of 3D printing is different in each product category. The applicability could be limited to shells or components for some, while others are completely manufactured using 3D printing.

There are many opportunities for 3D printing to have a major impact on the manufacturing locations of products. If you look at 2D printing business environment, I can imagine something similar for 3D printing. In 2D printing, you have many options to print. Each of these options is specialized in certain markets or services. But foremost they are complimentary to each other. I expect nothing less for 3D printing.

FRED WILSON – VC Union Square Ventures – often recites his rule of thumb of social internet services. It is the 100-10-1 rule. He sees with social internet services that on average 100% of users consume, 10% of users interact and 1% of users actually create.

So how does this apply to Personal Fabrication? As a social service, there are many options for Personal Fabrication. I am thinking of:

• sharing of designs between designers
• making designs available for fabrication to others
• cooperative design of products between designers and users
• product configurators made by designers for users
• online creation tools for users which interact with all the above

All these options can make personal fabrication a social activity. When you apply the 100-10-1 rule of thumb, the opportunities for scaling such a service become immediately clear. As far as I know there are no exact figures available on how many 3D modelers / product designers there are in the world. But let’s assume there are 5 million of them. That would turn social fabrication into a 500M users opportunity. That is Facebook and Google territory. Just imagine 50M users interacting on personal fabrication and the effects it can have on product design and how we design products. This is a very significant opportunity. Of course, the big caveat is that not all 3D modelers / product designers are interested in social fabrication. Maybe only 10% or less. That still leaves a 50M opportunity.

I do wonder what will happen to this ratio. I think it will change over time. I have no data available how this ratio looks like per demographic, but I can imagine that young people are much more engaged to create and interact than older generations. Now when they get older, start their careers and families, I can imagine that some of them drop off. But in general I expect that the creators and interactors groups will become a larger portion of the total users.

THREE WEEKS AGO, I wrote about how 3D printing as a manufacturing technology can impact supply chain. This week I am writing about the impact on product design and then – especially – on the design process as part of the overall manufacturing process. I expect here the biggest impact will manifest itself. 3D printing has also impact on the design of products itself. But that is a topic for another time.

source: East Capital

So let’s talk about product design process. For mass-produced goods, the design step is extremely critical. It involves many disciplines from designing the product to sourcing components and finding production partners. The product is thoroughly tested, because it is expensive to make mistakes due to the large production batches. The result is that the product design process is long.

A high level mass-production manufacturing process can be broken into the following steps:

1. design product
2. prototype product
3. test product
4. manufacture product
5. distribute product
6. sell product

What kind of impact can 3D printing have on this process? The strength of 3D printing is the ability for small series or one-off production runs. The effect is that it shortens the lead time of a product and reduces the manufacturing risk due to smaller batches and just-in-time production. These effects have an impact on the design process. It can be leaner and can iterate faster through improved product versions than is usual today. New improved product designs can be taken into production immediately, and the changes are instantly available to customers.

To sum it up the impact of 3D printing on product design process is:

• Ultra short lead times
• One-off or small series production
• Instant design changes are incorporated into the manufacturing process
• Limited exposure when product fails

These benefits will have an effect on the design process. They will enable new, innovative product design processes. I like to group them as follows:

• Lean Product Design
• Continuous or Iterative Design
• Collaborative Design
• Distributed Design

Lean Product Design
This is basically an adaptation of the design process for mass-produced products but than employing the benefits of 3D printing. The major difference is the ability to improve the product during its normal life-cycle.

• design product
• manufacture product
• distribute product
• sell product
• improve product

Continuous or Iterative Design
A step up from Lean Product Design is Continuous Design. Here, a product design is continuously updated or adapted to match changes in trends, environment or new use cases for the product. A good example is a phone case which is adapted for new models coming out on the market. These adaptations are outside the normal product life cycle.

• design product
• manufacture product
• distribute product
• sell product
• market changes / feedback

Collaborative Design
Due to the short lead times and small production runs, designers and customers can start collaborating on product design. Although this is a high touch and expensive design process, for certain product categories it can make sense. A good example is personalized jewelry. Sometimes, this is called Co-Creation.
There are several options how the collaborative design process can be executed:

• Designer designs, customer gives feedback / input
• Designer designs, customer modifies / improves themselves
• Customer designs, designer improves / finishes

Distributed Design
The digitization and homogenization of the production process allows for sharing of product designs or parts of a design. In turn, these shared designs can be used as a basis for a new product design. I call this distributed design.

• Select Designs
• Design Product
• Share Design

Conclusions
The impact of 3D printing on product design processes is potentially significant. It allows for quick iterations of designs and enables sharing or reuse of product designs. Designers can cooperate more closely with customers on the product design and can quickly react on changes in the market or environment. While 3D printing matures, I expect that design processes will adapt and change in significant ways. I am curious to see how it will actually affect the products itself. Will these change significantly? What is the impact on trends? Is the perception of consumers on how things are made and work going to change?

Last week Geomagic COO, Tom Kurke, wrote 2 blog posts called The call for a harmonized “Community” License for 3D Content. In these posts, he makes the case that there is no way to license 3D content properly. And he is right.

The problem is that current IP laws only offer limited protection for 3D content. Obviously these laws were written when 3D content was not available yet. To license content you first need to own it. Copyright only extends towards the physical unaltered file of the 3D content itself or 3D render of the 3D content. This means that when a designer redesigns a faithful copy of the 3D design, the options to claim copyright are extremely limited for the original designer. Current copyright laws offer no protection on aesthetics or function. Especially in relationship to 3D printing, those are especially important aspects of 3D design to protect.

Other IP laws like design patents and trademark – namely trade dress – are beyond the financial options for most hobbyist and semi-professionals.

So, if you cannot claim ownership of a design, you cannot license it to others. All community sharing licenses – like GPL or CC – are geared towards licensing copyrighted content for others to use. They deal with photos, software and text. These are common media broadly protected by copyright.

The first task is a mechanism to establish ownership of a 3D design and give the owners broad protection on the applicability of their ownership. But I cannot oversee what the implications that change will be. I see a major risk that they can become very restrictive since every major corporation in the world will claim ownership of their 3D designs.

So yes I am not surprised there is no harmonized community license. What would be the point?

WHEN 3D PRINTING becomes mainstream, it will have a major impact on many aspects of manufacturing and design processes. In the next weeks, I am writing a series of posts on how I think the 3D printing revolution will unfold and what impact it can have. In this first post, I am writing about the impact on supply chain.

(source: Mike Baird)

A supply chain is a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to the end customer. In sophisticated supply chain systems, used products may re-enter the supply chain at any point where residual value is recyclable. Supply chains link value chains. (source: Wikipedia)

A typical supply chain for a product goes from product design to delivery to the customer. In the following graph is a simplified example of typical supply chain for a product. As many products, it is manufactured in Asia, and sold in one of the Western countries.

Now let us assume that 3D printing and personal fabrication become mainstream – either using a personal 3D printer or a local service. How does the same supply chain look like then?

As you can see, the supply chain is greatly simplified. The simplification is possible, because of a unique characteristic of 3D printing, which is the ability to manufacture different designs without building a complete production line for each and every product. It opens up the doors for localized production facilities close to consumer concentrations.

Another benefit is that there is no need for the production of large batches to offset the investments necessary for setting up the supply chain, tooling, production lines and transporting the product to the customer location. This reduces risks in the supply chain for product failures. With 3D printing, the production can take place in small batches or as one-offs, which makes it possible to adapt a product design almost immediately.

To summarize, the simplification of supply chain using 3D printing can lead to:

• Shorter lead times
• Reduced supply chain risk
• Reduction of transportation costs

Today 3D printed parts are still expensive compared to their mass-produced counterparts. But I am confident that gap will close in the coming years. The growth of the industry will lead to lower prices for machine and materials. Another caveat is that not every product can be 3D printed yet – either as a whole in one go or even in parts. That is a bigger gap to close. Though options exist to mix-and-match products sourcing both from 3D printed parts and off-the-shelf mass-produced parts. I expect that the transition will be more gradual than revolutionary.

I see significant benefits for 3D printing and personal fabrication for supply chain. It is not surprising that high-end manufacturers like Boeing, EADS and General Electric are already actively using or researching the options for 3D printing for the manufacturing of their products. As 3D printing further matures, the technology becomes within reach of a larger group of manufacturers. At some point, the manufacturers like we know today will vanish. Just like they did when all manufacturing moved to Asia.

AN INTERESTING ASPECT of design in relation to personal fabrication and customized design is fit for purpose. How do you determine a product is good enough for its intended purpose? And who is responsible that a product you buy is fit for the purpose you intended?

With fit to purpose, I mean that a design properly supports the intended function it was designed for. For example, a necklace should not break while wearing it, or a coffee cup should not break in the dishwasher. Manufacturing companies spent a lot of time and effort to test their products before they are manufactured and shipped to their customers. For them, it is risk mitigation to avoid returns and warranty issues down the line. No mass-producing manufacturer wants to risk losing large volume batches of products.

With personal fabrication and online creation, the relationship between designer, manufacturer and the customer is changing. Customers can make or manipulate their own designs and choose the materials they want to use for the fabrication of their product. But they are no experts. How do you make sure that their designs are fit for purpose? And how about designs made and sold by hobbyists or semi-professionals? Who is responsible when there is a problem?

When personal fabrication becomes more common place than product liability issues like fit for purpose can become a problem, as well. Liabilities are often shared in the supply chain, but that only makes sense when the liabilities are known. With personalized fabrication and customized design, the liabilities are unknown. How are we going to handle that?

A lot of product categories have mandatory regulations applied to them for instance children’s toys. But when you think about personal fabrication or customization, it is impossible to comply with those regulations when you do not control the design. Do these regulations need to be adapted?

I think there are lots of questions still to be answered in the areas of product liability, product regulations and fit for purpose in general. It is one of those essential preconditions to be tackled for personal fabrication and customized production to grow. There has not been a lot of traction around these topics yet, and I hope – no, expect – that will change soon. It is the reason for me to bring it up (again).

LAST FRIDAY Michael Weinberg from Public Knowledge swinged by our office. It is always great to catch up with him. He spoke about their new initiative called Internet Blueprint to make new better and improved legislation to replace the texts of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

A massive protest against SOPA was launched on the Internet during the congressional hearings on the topic. The protest was successful, and the passing of SOPA was postponed. But it also received criticism from politicians. Just saying NO is not helping. They wondered how the text should be changed to make it acceptable for the Internet community. I think it is a valid criticism.

The Internet was – and still mostly is – an unregulated free haven since its inception. In the last decades, the internet has grown significantly in importance. For most people, the internet is as indispensable as phone lines or high ways.

But with that comes greater responsibility and economic impact. For that reason, there is a demand onto the government to regulate to ensure everybody on the internet is abiding the law.

SOPA & PIPA are two examples where that happened. The Internet at large protested – rightly so – against these two acts. These laws were clearly drawn up from a one-sided point of view. Mostly, to protect dying industries whom business models are heavily disrupted by the Internet and digitization of content.

But the response from Washington was also annoyance by the fact that Internet community only said NO and did not come with counter proposals and improvements. I understand why that happened because there is no mechanism to facilitate collaboration on law making on the Internet. Without it, I am not surprised it did not happen.

Public Knowledge has setup Internet Blueprint where the Internet community can participate in making an improved proposal to congress for the regulation of the Internet on the issues addressed in PIPA & SOPA. This is a great initiative. It fosters participation from the internet community on law making. I have a feeling that this is the way of the future.

Internet has changed the speed and availability of information dramatically. It means that the Internet community in some cases is better informed than people in congress. Instead of using that power to bitch and whine, it can also be leveraged to inspire involvement in law making. It can bring better balanced proposals, more involvement in government and law making, better approval ratings of a new law and it can speed up the process of the law making process. These are great wins for everybody.

The question is how congress and government officials feel about this. Up until now they had – after being chosen – “free” reign to create a world to their own liking. Of course, there are many people involved already, but still that is a small group compared to the population as a whole.

I have never been a fan by referendums, and this could be perceived as such. But it actually is not. Referendums require participation by everybody, and by clever (media) manipulation of public opinion by politicians, it always felt dishonest to me. Organizing referendums are major undertakings and collaboration on the internet is not. Collaboration is also self-selecting in nature which makes the process much more natural and authentic.

I hope the initiative by Public Knowledge is a success. I also hope it inspires others to setup similar initiatives, as well. But most of all I hope that somebody is inspired to build a platform to facilitate law making. Not only to improve new proposals, but also to improve existing laws and to make new laws. I see politicians, professionals and others working together and bring better laws much faster than we can do today. It will improve communication by bringing debates into the public domain and participation will improve public opinion of the government.

BRAZIL has the honor of having the first 3D printing franchise chain in the world. At least as far as I know. The company Imprimate in Sao Paulo focuses on solely on ZCorp technology. Their customers are professionals and small companies in architecture, engineering and design.

The concept of franchising has been very successful in other markets, and I think it can work in this market, as well. A lot of service bureaus in the market today are small, and a chain can add a lot of value for them. Marketing, sales and purchasing can be centralized. As a chain, the market reach can be improved, and brand recognition will help to increase sales. Best practices can lead to improved quality, lead time and reliability. The chain can help in maintenance and inventory management. Lots of processes in handling and storing of the digital files can be handled through a shared website which keeps investments low for individual 3D printing service bureau owners.

At the same time, they keep the power of being local and accessible to their customers.

Last year, I wrote about the 3D printing service bureau market, and pondered about the idea that service bureaus may not need to own a 3D printer at all. I still think that is an option. A lot of 3D printing service bureaus are actually providing more services than 3D printing alone like building complete prototypes, post-finishing options, etc. In case of Imprimate, they focus on ZCorp technology and those parts are often used for design validation purposes, and are not meant to be a part of a bigger product or as a master for a mold.

In 2012 Imprimate wants to add 25 printers to their network of franchises and increase their sales with 30%. They focus on franchisers in cities with more than 200.000 people, and they promise the franchisor a net income of 3-5 thousand dollars per month. Maybe a new Kinko’s is born?

ONE OF THE FASCINATING THINGS to watch on my blog are the search keywords used by visitors from search engines. I find it fascinating, because it gives a sign of the times on what people are thinking about with regard to 3D printing. I did a fast analysis today of the last 3 months of search traffic and normalized the search keywords. These are the top 5 search topics for my blog.

1. 3D printing as a hobby
2. Who invented 3D printing
3. 3D printing and intellectual property
4. Impact of 3D printing on the world
5. Limitations of 3D printing.

I call this the sign of the times of 3D printing today. Many people search for information about hobby 3D printers and what they can do with such a printer. It is interesting that people search for the inventor, as well. I guess that many students are writing papers about 3D printing and where better to start than the invention of 3D printing itself.

Interesting enough is that intellectual property with regard to 3D printing scores so high. Maybe it is because I wrote a few posts around that topic. Although many more articles on high traffic sites have appeared in the last couple of weeks thanks to the Pirate Bay blog post.

But people are also starting to think about what 3D printing means and can provide. They ask questions like what is the impact of 3D printing on existing industries or society as a whole. At the same time, they wonder what the limitations are.

Of course, this analysis is completely unscientific and totally biased since it is based on my own blog and I only write about specific topics. Though it is still interesting to see, what the state of mind is on the internet with regard to 3D printing. Clearly there is a lot of interest in 3D printing as a hobby. But at the same time people are still learning about 3D printing, what it means and the ramifications of 3D printing as a technology.