#48 of #100Scenarios — Additive Manufacturing
I remember the hype of additive manufacturing sometime back. Turns out that people don’t really want plastic knick-knacks except for the edge cases, and that the plastic filament for consumers weren’t really up to scratch. Plus if people just wanted a cup, they would buy a cup, not download a design, buy a 3d printer, and print the cup. It might even have leaked. But perhaps these are still early days of additive manufacturing. Perhaps the really useful aspects of the technology will come later, as we obtain better plastics and better fabricators. Perhaps I’m being unfair; usefulness is in the eye of the beholder, and already, people have done useful, life-changing things, such as building cheap prosthetics for kids. Perhaps there is more to additive manufacturing than meets the eye.
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To be sure, there is still loads of untapped potential — and it will depend on the possibility of fabrication and new materials. Perhaps not today, but soon —materials that are cheap, flexible, and amenable to some fabrication process.
