I saw this on #Slashdot. I wanted to get other’s perspective. The big question for me is can #3dprinting take down a company like #Nike?
Not any time soon. The technology of 3D printing can’t print shoes at all (yet), and the economics are such that your personalized shoe costs fifty or a hundred times more than the mass produced one to make.
What happens to bakeries when everyone bakes his own bread?
@Jasper_Janssen and @John_Doe1 , I agree in the near term. I was also thinking about 20 years in the future. Would this be the case? Not sure, but it’s a fun mental exercise to walkthrough. Thanks for the responses.
@Carsten_Meyer that’s a good point. No more bakeries. We may never there either. Thanks for taking the time to response.
@Carsten_Meyer this was actually a real concern when The Poors got to be rich enough to have houses with ovens as a matter of course (1950s ish).
(And of course breadmakers retrod that same argument).
Ignore the may sayers. Communities become increasingly self sufficient, diyers multiply, trade in goods between individuals mushrooms. Tax bases fall, government must structure or fail.
3d printers, home made lathes and milling machines. Conductive ink and paints…I think the tech will produce something akin to the local blacksmith where lots of thing can be made/repaired/reconstituted by 2 or 3 people in a neighbourhood.
No.
3D printing is not and will never be the one final production method. It has it’s uses as a tool, making shoes is not one of these uses.
Why did CNC machining not kill Nike? Because a milled shoe is crap and nobody wants to own a mill (except me). 3D printing is not going to upset the textiles world just yet.
There are industries that will be disrupted, keep an eye on pre-fab housing…
@Bracken_Dawson really pre fab housing… You can build a pre fab wooden house fully fitted in a day.
A printed house takes 3 or 4 days prep levelling the ground…and even if its printed in a day it will take 4 or 5 days fitting out.
Concrete isn’t the best way to build houses cheap and quick.
@Nigel_Dickinson but you can’t have one in any shape you like. Imagine being able to sit with a designer, lay out your house, then one day a giant machine rocks up and prints it, lifting in pre-fabbed window bits etc.
@Bracken_Dawson you can do it with wood now and quicker.
You can build a brick house in a week if you plan the trades right…all custom.
Pre fab concrete panel houses were built from the 50s on…its nothing new. Totally Modula any shape… Its just not practical.
The concrete printed house still hasn’t been printed after 10 years of research. And it still needs fitting out as it just prints.
The nearest we have is polystyrene formers that get filled with concrete and take at least 3 days for the concrete to cure. Then they have to render the formers.
@Jasper_Janssen you can indeed print your own shoes (today!) with some of the tpe filaments. I’ve been wanting to try it so bad…
@ThantiK you can print footwear. “Shoes” is stretching it IMHO.
http://3dprint.com/1540/recreus-introduces-sneakerbot-ii-flexible-3d-printed-shoes-using-filaflex-filament/ – I’d call that a shoe.
@John_Doe1 let’s hope we don’t forget about the Second Amendment. I think people will still want guns when something better comes. We still have knife collectors out there.
@Elizabeth_Hubbard I really like that idea. I sleep on a memory foam mattress. It would be great to walk on the material as well.
I don’t think that 3D printing will be able to compete with manufactured good on “fit and finish” for a while. But compared to Nike shoes it has two advantages: cost and personalization. And if all you care about is cost, you can get cheap off-brand shoes for under $20, and 3D printed does aren’t going to cost less than that by the time you’re done. So really, aside from it being a cool demo, personalization is the reason to 3D print shoes. That is, they can fit your feet perfectly, or they can be a cool, unique design that only you have. Imagine when things get a bit easier and the materials a little better, when it might become “cooler” to print your own shoes so you’re not wearing boring, mass produced shoes. It could happen.