Two or three years ago I was asked to give a presentation on ‘the future of technology’ to a local community group. In the presentation I included a prediction that the day would come where people would have a 3D printer on their desk and would routinely “print” things ranging from household items to sculptures, toys and game characters. I also predicted that a business would evolve providing templates and designs etc for those printers.

I was careful at the time not to try and predict exactly when this would happen (predicting the future is much easier that way) but I did make the comment that just as laser printers had evolved from hugely expensive devices which only companies and bureaus could afford that the same would happen to 3D printers. And I was right. This excerpt is from a recent post on the always-interesting Ponoko blog:

“When the The Apple LaserWriter first hit the mass market in 1985, the desktop publishing revolution was born. With a starting price of $6995 the unit weighed a hefty 77 lb (35kg) and was 11.5 x 18.5 x 16.2 inches the first desktop printer was not the lightweight, disposable peripheral printers have become today, in every classroom, business and home. 23 years later and Desktop Factory, (previously mentioned on Ponoko Blog) are about to launch us into the 3rd dimension of desktop printing with their 125ci 3D Printer for under U$5000. The unit weighing around 90 lb (40kg) and 25 x 20 x 20 is only marginally bigger than the first Apple LaserWriter, and allowing for inflation, considerably cheaper”

This technology has been around for a long time but it only now starting to make its way towards the desktop and the way in which the machines work means that it’s just as easy to create a moving object as it is a static one. These videos show this in action: video 1 , video 2

No discussion on 3D printing or replication can go by without mentioning the open source RepRap project. One of the leaders of the project is New Zealand’s Vik Olliver and when I talked to him about it a while back he mentioned that one of the mind-bending (for me) goals of the project was for the RepRap to be able to make copies of itself. Imagine a device which can make copies of itself, that’s about as futuristic as it gets, right ? Well it turns out they achieved that goal on May 29th of this year.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that this technology will change the world. As a simple example, imagine the personal, business and environmental implications of being able to “print” a child’s toy instead of driving the the local toy store to purchase something made of plastic, packaged in plastic and shipped from somewhere in China. There’s a great quote from Google’s Chris DiBona on the RepRap site:

“Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop”

Personally I think one of the biggest benefits will be never having to read the phrase “some assembly required” again :-)

Update 03Nov08: a recent blog post with some great examples of 10 Things 3D Printers Can Do Now!