3D Printing - A New Industry?

3D printing is attracting a lot of interest these days; and considering how quickly the capabilities of these machines is expanding, it is't suprising.

However there's also a degree of hyperbole being attached to them. Notions that we will all have 3D printers sitting in our spare room ready to whip up a copy of just about anything we need are due a certain amount of cynicism.

For a start, as I blogged about in an earlier post, theres the issue of materials complexity; It's hard to imagine that we will have a room full of exotic material sources ready to plug into a multipurpose printer, in the same manner as mum had her spools of different coloured thread ready to slip into her sewing machine. An that's one of the main issues. Those sewing machines - remember them? ask yourself where did they go? The answer is that in our disposable society, it got cheaper to buy a new one.

Similarly, I suspect it will always be cheaper to buy rather than build. It's all about mass production.

Except .....what if you can't?

Here's a perfect example of where the 3D printer will find a niche. I am a tennis player. I am also starting to collect classic tennis racquets, for the same reasons as shooters collect old guns, etc.

The moment I started doing that I became aware of a problem all racquet collectors face. Nearly all racquets have plastic inserts called "grommets" that the strings run through, so that the frame doesnt cut into the strings and vice versa.  And thats the problem, The grommets are the point of wear, and they also break, crack, split - you get the picture.

A modern racquet - no problem - you go buy a new set for a few dollars. An obsolete racquet? forget it. (and we are talking sometimes only a few years old) No manufacturer would keep making new sets of something they might only sell a few of a year, given the handful of each model that survive in collectors hands.

The result?  Many of these great old racquets, unlike the guns, can no longer be taken out and used.

Thats where the 3D printers offer salvation. In conjunction with 3D scanning, the printers offer the ability to make parts that the original manufacturers would probably be happy to support.  It is even conceivable that the internet village will see small home manufacturers whose sole income is derived from their specialist fabrication of such parts; each such specialist having their stock of specialist materials and specialist patterns, in this case a grommet pattern library.