How will 3D Printing Impact Modern World?

Have you heard about 3D printing technology recently? Chances are, that you have. In the last few years this very interesting achievement of science had spread to general public, if only in a form of very expensive printers, too unaffordable for general customer. These machines take up quite a lot of space and their use is limited for their potential – yet still very comprehensive; and in this article, I will discuss briefly what it is, history of 3D printing, its present state and most importantly – it's amazingly promising future.

How do they work and how can you work with them

3D printing is creating a three-dimensional object by laying extremely thin layers after layers of various materials, for example nylon, paper, etc, creating virtually any shape you want. The shape you want can be downloaded in form of .stl off of internet, or, if you're experienced graphic designer and can manage the absolutely awfully complicated programs, you can make an object entirely of your design.

That, as you can imagine, can have entire myriad of uses – from creating household objects, plastic figurines, plastic spoon, forks, or knives, to creating vehicle parts, ballistic weapons, buidlings, and food. Yes, food. Probably very untasteful at first, but, well, give it another twenty years, and cooks will be obsolete.

Evolution of 3D printing

When I first heard of it, it sounded very sci-fi to me, to be honest. It's like creating something out of thin air, something that would overpass all sorts of manufacturing processes in time. It was quite right.

What surprised me was the fact, that the first working 3D printer to ever see the light of the sun (or well, a scientific workshop), was created in 1984, even before digital press! I doubt its usability, of course, but as the first marker on a path to this amazing technology, it sufficed.

The technology didn't see any major breakthroughs in its functionality in the continuing years – the effort was made to make the manufacturing process of a 3D printer cheaper and more efficient for the general customer, while still seeing some use in governmental institutions.

In the past 5 years, the prices dropped drastically – back then it cost about 20,000 USD – on the beginning of 2014, the cheapest machine available is priced on cca. 500 dollars. Of course, it is only an entry-level model, capable of making only plastic models, on a small scale. But it is nonetheless remarkable, with 3D printing business reaching about 2.2 billions of USD annualy.

Future of this technology may sound even crazier than it is today.

Theoretically, if the process would be perfected, we could print anything at all, and thus the manufacturing industry will be unneeded – thousands, millions of factory workers would be without the job. That may cause further social problems.

Everything would be easier to have – so making it viable for today's money based society, consumer product companies would need some very serious encryption and patent-enforcing methods, because nearly everything could be duplicated with proper 3D modelling – imagine that you could print a working iPhone at home. Almost like pirating a movie, but instead, you would pirate, well, real things.

It is not true, that this technology would solve the world's hunger and poverty – you have to have materials. If it would be possible to just create matter out of nowhere, our world would be looking a lot differently.

The prices will drop and the price/quality ratio will rise, like in computing technologies, and all materials will be able to be manufacturable, with printers capable to make complicated creations out of numerous materials. The government will begin to také the matter more seriously, enforcing law on printing weapons, explosives, and other dangerous things. The conflict between manufacturing companies and 3D printers (people, who print with 3D printer) will escalate, much like conflict between internet pirates and digital content creators.

That would be it, guys, let me know in the comments, what do you think, share it on whatever site you want to share it and think about the future.

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