3D Printing–Potential Disadvantages

Dear Class,

Three-dimensional printing progressed from academic curiosity to powerful production tool through the 1980s and 1990s. The apparatus works by injecting media onto a bed, sometimes submerged in liquid, in thin layers, usually around 100 micrometers. After repeating this process many thousands of times, a physical model of a digital object is produced in three dimensions.

As with most technologies, three-dimensional printing has the potential to be socially disruptive. For instance, how will we, as a society, decide to protect the intellectual property rights of companies whose products are likely to be copied using three-dimensional printing? (See this article on how three-dimensional printing is likely to disrupt tabletop gaming company, Games Workshop.) How will we choose to regulate the production of certain objects, like assault rifles? (For more information about weapons manufacture using three-dimensional printing, see this interview with Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson.)

As technology is adopted, there is the tendency for our lives to be lived farther and farther from the physical. Three-dimensional printing is an odd reversal of this trend, a movement of the digital world into the physical. And yet, the physical experience of three-dimensional printing is not the same as other acts of creation. The designer of objects for three-dimensional printing never knows the human pleasure of craftsmanship, the tactile experience of exploring material as it progresses from imagination to form.

The craftsman knows the sensory delights of working in the physical world: the sound and smell of wood as the plane removes shavings, the touch of the plane, the sight of wood taking its final form.
(Image Source.)

With best wishes for your happiness,

Hayden