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Bleeding Edge

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Sep 29th 2003 7:20pm





Print Your Gadgets

from the just-wait-until-the-lawyers-get-ahold-of-this-one dept

3D printers are nothing new, but this latest CNN article talks about how 3D printers with the ability to print electric circuits are now coming one step closer to reality. Combine this with an announcement earlier this year about making these sorts of printers cheaper to manufacture (perhaps they've built a printer that can print one itself) and you've really got something: peer-to-peer distributed manufacturing. Forget large factories, just send the spec over and print away. Of course, if you think the recording industry is going nuts now over file sharing software, imagine what happens when the 3D printing spec for the latest hot gadgets finds its way onto a file sharing network. Either that, or imagine the big name device manufacturers having to compete against "open source" gadgets designed by a group of volunteers.

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  1.  
    identicon
    dorpus, Sep 29th, 2003 @ 8:19pm

    Bringing manufacturing back to advanced nations?

    After all, outsourcing manufacturing to low-wage countries does pose significant costs of transportation, setting up the technology elsewhere, the time delay of shipping the product across oceans, miscommunications, and so forth. If the product can be instantaneously printed here, why not just make it here? Instant product improvements and all that.




     

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  2.  
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    Jeff, Sep 30th, 2003 @ 7:09am

    Right on

    That's what I'm talking about. You're the second person I've ever read who has written about the designs for product production being shared on P2P networks. That's exactly my view. I can't wait. Great Post.

     

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