LET'S SPEAK 3D PRINTING!
What you can do?
CHANCE
Massive corporations such as Microsoft use additive manufacturing to prototype designs for their latest video-game controllers. Small businesses can try out new products that wouldn't have been possible in traditional manufacturing chains, skipping the multiple rounds of designers, sculptors, casting fabricators, and a host of other specialists and technologies well beyond the budget for small startups trying to break into a new market. 3D printing truly is democratizing the production process by providing a mechanism by which any person can create a design on free software and then render that idea.
Democratizing Manufacturing
SAVINGS
SME can skip traditional manufacturing chains - designers, sculptors, casting fabricators, and a host of other specialists and technologies well beyond their budget for breaking into new markets.
Advantages with 3D Printing Manufacturing Versus Traditional Machining Manufacturing
Belgian company takes 3D printing to chocolate
Derived Designs
Small-volume production runs allow jewelers to make custom pieces designed to fit an individual client.
The flexibility of 3D printers means that you can create an original design on the computer or by mixing elements of other designs to create a new design for fabrication.
DESIGN
Curated Artifacts
Some entrepreneurs use 3D printers to create solid versions of digital models to sell or to exhibit in galleries as show-pieces.
For example, the Smithsonian Institute's digital curation team is scanning items from its vast collection, creating 3D models of objects that can be reproduced for display elsewhere without risk to the originals.
As long as the licensing for a 3D model allows commercial reuse, objects created directly on a 3D printer can be sold to schools, museums, or private collectors.
COPY/PASTE
National Geographic: Inside Smithsonian's 3D Digitization Lab
Many jobs are being created to capture 3D models for artifact curation, creating cityscapes for urban planners, and capturing living organisms for the medical industry.
Unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being flown over entire cities to create printable 3D models of buildings through photogrammetry, CT scans are being used to create 3D models of ancient skeletal remains, and ultrasound imaging of fetal development allows a mother to see what her unborn child looks like well before the baby's delivery.
Intellectual property rights and control over trademarked or copyrighted designs are new issues raised. Personal 3D printers make it easy to violate restrictions on digitaal rights management (DRM).
Expanded Opportunities
NEW OPTIONS
