Disruptive technologies often start small. For example, what began as an online blogging diary ten years ago gave birth to the simple, yet powerful blogging platforms available today at companies such as WIX, Go Daddy and Word Press. These have fundamentally changed mass media enabling aspiring writers, designers and photographers to become publishers. Digital fabrication technologies like 3D printing, which enable people to ‘print’ objects from digital files, are set to drive an equally powerful revolution in physical manufacturing from designer eyewear to jet engines.
Since its launch in 2009, MakerBot has positioned itself in the 3D printing community as a leader in DIY production. Co-founded by former public school art teacher Bre Pettis, MakerBot facilitates the dreams of tinkerers and the curious minded with nothing more than corn-based plastic and an idea. 3D printing, finding its way into the hands of small, ‘kitchen-table’ producers and end consumers in the form of accessibly priced machines, makes everyone a designer and manufacturer. Printers let users share 3D design files and make, buy and sell their own products. The once labor intensive manufacturing process mostly done overseas has turned design and manufacturing into another cloud computing service available at the click of a mouse. MakerBot, recently acquired in a stock deal worth $400 million by Stratasys Incorporated, now has machines in both schools and international design firms across the country.
Designer eyewear, where brands make a sizable chunk of revenue through highly lucrative licensing deals, may see the first impact of 3D printing in a significant way. In the US, the total amount of eyewear sold throughout the country has increased every year since 2009 in the four main categories: prescription (Rx) eyeglasses, sunglasses, over-the-counter (OTC) readers, and contact lenses. Sunglass sales throughout the United States generated more than $4 billion dollars in retail sales. With 3D printing capabilities, designers can produce limited edition designer styles easily and affordably without extensive outlays for off shore manufacturing.
The online design store Etsy features many ‘shops’ of merchandise made by designers utilizing MakerBot technologies. There are stores where consumers can upload an image of a friend, have it turned into a 3 – D design and send it out as a gift with a click of a mouse. Students, taking advantage of printers in their schools are able to design, manufacture and sell a wide range of items ranging from jewelry, iphone cases, golf club putters and chess sets.
3D printing has the potential to reshape how America makes things on an even larger scale, creating new high tech jobs in the US and bringing old ones back from abroad. The labor input savings 3D printing can yield for employers are substantial and at the same time, the technology appears poised to create markets for new, higher-skilled jobs. GE Aviation, for example, is developing 3D printed fuel nozzles to be used in its LEAP engine for commercial planes. Like the assembly line based manufacturing revolution that employed a previous generation of American’s, the 3-D technology revolution will sustain a new generation of American workers who are able to design and create their own industries for the 21st century.
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