the future of printers

[deadrats]

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/HP-Printer-3D-Stratasys-AutoCAD,news-5609.html

i don't know how many "trekkies" there are on this forum, but if you guys remember they had a device on the ships called a "replicator" that could, as the name implies, replicate pretty much anything. just looking at this printer i can see a day when we come fairly close to having just such a device in every home.

of course this opens up a slew of interesting questions, such as how sophisticated will the printers get and will they be able to create working replicas, what will it do to the economy and manufacturing and will the acquisition of goods morph from a company having to manufacture, distribute and sell manufactured goods to people buying a sort of electronic blueprint from a company and then having their printer at home make it for them and will such a change in the market place lead to the ultimate piracy with people illegally trading such electronic blueprints and lastly, will it lead to open source goods, which would naturally result in the declining need of money, which will logically lead to the decline of capitalism and the existence of social classes and bring most people into a sort of economic equilibrium that certain socio-economic philosophical systems embrace and promote.

of course this won't come to pass in my lifetime, but i can certainly see a future coming to pass within the next couple of hundred years where the notion of having to go to work, get paid, save up money, go to a store and buy something you want seems like a quaint way of doing things.

[edDV]

I'd suggest this has already happened through standardization.

ISO 9000 started as a way to generate a uniform end product regardless of manufacturing plant. It led to global manufacturing replication worldwide.

But I do see the futurist extension.

[edDV]

...
will it lead to open source goods, which would naturally result in the declining need of money, which will logically lead to the decline of capitalism and the existence of social classes and bring most people into a sort of economic equilibrium that certain socio-economic philosophical systems embrace and promote....

That is the benefit of not having to do the hard work (aka labor) or buy the raw materials or innovate/finance/manage the process. When Walmart, et al force price reduction and your government prints money for welfare and taxes production, it works until it doesn't.

[stiltman]

This has been around for years for mechanical engineers.
Maybe not in this form factor, but being able to export out of ProE to something that builds it in plastic. Liquid plastic is hardened by UV light very rapidly. It can even do multiple colors