The User is The Factory
I love the coverage Fabbaloo did of the new MakerBot pulleys for bucks program.
If you’ve got a 3D printer, you can print 608 pulleys for the MakerBot, and MakerBot Industries will buy them from you for a buck each, with a minimum batch size of 30 for obvious reasons of scale. In time, MakerBot wants to move more of their manufacturing off their factory floor and into the cloud. Future versions of the MakerBot will have first their pulleys, and eventually a hefty fraction of their parts made by other users.
Dr. Bowyer’s original dream of putting a factory in every home might come true this way: in the long term, MakerBot Industries can leverage its own product’s ability to make mechanical parts to multiply their production capacity without making capital investment. They’ll have created a system which meets large demand without building up excessive inventory.
This is the beginning of a new system of manufacturing, possibly every bit as important as the Industrial Revolution. As time goes on, it won’t just be MakerBots that are made by distributed manufacturing, it’ll be many things. That basket of goods I talked about being associated with consumer products just might start to include parts for the actual consumer products in a few years, if the technology continues to improve.
Speaking of the Industrial Revolution, it was centralized production that created economic cycles in the first place, with their large, high-momentum and open-loop production systems. By comparison, distributed manufacture does not build up inventory nor does it require a company to make large capital investments. I’m not saying a world with distributed manufacture will have no recessions, but they might get a bit softer in such an environment.
Subscribe by RSS
Dominic Muren Said,
August 13, 2009 @ 5:29 pm
Zack(or Bre, I can never tell who’s writing these things)- You also have to wonder what such a world might do innovation-wise. Because of Thingiverse, not only do all users have access to a micro-factory, but all users have access to all other users as a giant, distributed R&D division. New inventions can spread as fast as users can print them out, and most importantly, individual users have little incentive to hold back designs, since the likelihood is that they will be improved by the group at no cost. It’s the inverse of our modern economy, where makers don’t want to use their fabrications, they just want to profit from them. Makerbot owners make stuff to use it themselves, so optimal function is more important than monopolistic control. I think you’re onto something with the altered economics of this system — we’ve got to get some professional feedback on this. Are there any economist makers in the audience?
Conrad Said,
August 15, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
As soon as i get mine workin ill sell ya some pullys!
Adrian Said,
August 19, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
Dominic – your comment exactly summarizes how I wanted RepRap (and its offshoots like MakerBot) to go when I first thought of it.