Reflections on the Power of Making Real Things

I submitted a post to another class (Green IT) and decided to use this part of the Fabricated book. I thought it was worthwhile to include here since the assignment for the Fabricated book only allowed for 250 words.

I have been reading a book titled “Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing”. The book provides a top level overview of the history, technology, and potential directions for 3d printing. For starters, 3d printing is a blanket term for several different processes that exist to produce 3 dimensional physical objects from computer design files. The two most common processes are additive manufacturing and laser sintering. In additive manufacturing, an extruder heats up and excretes melted plastic. The extruder itself is mounted on a device that moves in 2 dimensions (x and y axis. The platform where the material is being secreted moves downward. Essentially the material is layered until the item is complete. In laser sintering, a high-power laser beam is directed toward the surface of a bed a of powder. The powder melts and the process continues for the next layer. The traditional (non additive manufacturing process) is injection molding. In injection molding, one first has to create a metal mold of the object you would like to produce. Creating the mold itself requires a high degree of expertise and it is a multi step process. Once the mold is complete, it is assembled into an injection molding machine. In this process, polycarbonate pellets are melted into the mold. The melted plastic takes the shape of the mold and it is completed in seconds. The benefit of this process is that the mold can create thousands upon thousands of replicas within a very short amount of time. This has been the long standing method for large scale manufacturing.

The book makes speculation that the traditional injection molding process will made be obsolete by localized 3d printers. The question now becomes, due to the reduction of scale and the dirty tradition of factories, is 3d printing a green alternative?

The book’s first response is no and makes three arguments against 3d printing as a green technology to replace injection molding. First, per unit of mass of manufactured product, a 3D printer consumes more than 10 times as much electricity as an injection molding machine. Second, an injection molding machine creates very little waste product as the input materials directly take the form of the final product. Last, 3d printing these goods instead of large scale manufacturing means that instead of several big shipments of the final products in the distribution process is more energy efficient than a distribution network built on large numbers of small shipments to different locations. As the book puts it, “if 3d printed manufacturing were merely scaled up to global proportions, there would be nothing green about it”.

The next chapter makes a complete 180 degree turn in speculation and with good reason. The book then goes on to make a case for 3d printing as a viable green alternative to traditional manufacturing methods. The trick is not to simply make 3d printing adapt to the current paradigm of large scale manufacturing. Instead, the book proposes that manufacturers leverage the capabilities of 3d printing to create a new manufacturing paradigm. Technologists like to call this “technological disruption”. The first argument is that 3d printing allows for the fabrication of products who shape is ultimately optimized for its application or environment. Second, storing  digital design and print files is more ecofriendly and less costly than storing and maintaining environmentally costly warehouses full of inventory, staff, packing materials and molds. Next, 3d printing technology does not require large scale manufacturing facilities. Therefore, localized manufacturing is feasible. Products can be made on a per need basis with quick easy local access to the customer (think Kinko’s/Staples but for specialized custom products). Lastly, there is still an unexplored potential to work with recycled or “earth friendly” materials.