Personal Fabrication and the Future of Industrial Design: Part 1
Here's a preview of a paper that I'm working on right now...
(note: I have since finished two versions of this paper and it was published in the ICSID/IDSA International Education Conference Proceedings 2007 and the book Shaping the Future? The 9th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education. You can read the finished paper PDF here.)
A revolution in manufacturing may be coming sooner than we expect, and it could change industrial design dramatically. Eventually, it is predicted one will be able to fabricate a product in the home, just as one can print out a color document today. It’s called personal fabrication1 or desktop manufacturing. How will this affect the profession of industrial design? Does it empower industrial designers or does it make every person a designer? With the creative insights of design students, this paper explores the possibilities and implications of this coming paradigm shift.
What is personal fabrication?
Rapid prototyping technology has been in use since the early 1990’s. These machines have been used to create unique prototype parts one at a time. Through additive or subtractive processes they can make highly precise parts of polymers and metals. Once a digital three-dimensional file is created by the designer or engineer, it can be sent to one of these machines to be produced in a matter of hours.
However, rapid prototyping has primarily been used for just that; making prototypes. It’s intended to be a means to an end, with the end being high volume, mass production. Designers and engineers are beginning to realize that this versatile process may have potential as a final manufacturing process in itself. Rapid prototyping methods offer advantages that mass production simply can’t match, such as the absence of production tooling costs, mass customization, and the ability to create highly complex geometries
As one looks to the future, rapid prototyping technologies are developing at a high rate, and engineers are developing machines that not only create polymer and metal parts layer by layer, but also print electronic circuitry, and micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Researchers at MIT are also studying how to build structures using proteins as building blocks. The result will be machines that create products, not just solid objects, but working products with displays and logic and interfaces.
Could this really happen?
One can see the signs of this happening already. As the technology improves, the costs of these machines are quickly declining. For example, the 3D Systems V-Flash desktop modeler is priced at $9900. Laser-cutter desktop machines are being used by high-end hobbyists. A group called Fab@Home is promoting the open-source working plans for building your own 3D printer (or fabber).
These technologies have been combined together in a fabrication laboratory or “Fab Lab.” This lab is contained within a small room with equipment that costs under $20,000 and can make a wide variety of products (Gershenfeld, 2005). As technology becomes less expensive and more compact, it’s not hard to imagine a future where there is a desktop manufacturing machine in each of our homes. And if we can manufacture products, one at a time in our own homes, then how will that change the role of the industrial designer?
Part 2....
A revolution in manufacturing may be coming sooner than we expect, and it could change industrial design dramatically. Eventually, it is predicted one will be able to fabricate a product in the home, just as one can print out a color document today. It’s called personal fabrication1 or desktop manufacturing. How will this affect the profession of industrial design? Does it empower industrial designers or does it make every person a designer? With the creative insights of design students, this paper explores the possibilities and implications of this coming paradigm shift.
What is personal fabrication?
Rapid prototyping technology has been in use since the early 1990’s. These machines have been used to create unique prototype parts one at a time. Through additive or subtractive processes they can make highly precise parts of polymers and metals. Once a digital three-dimensional file is created by the designer or engineer, it can be sent to one of these machines to be produced in a matter of hours.
However, rapid prototyping has primarily been used for just that; making prototypes. It’s intended to be a means to an end, with the end being high volume, mass production. Designers and engineers are beginning to realize that this versatile process may have potential as a final manufacturing process in itself. Rapid prototyping methods offer advantages that mass production simply can’t match, such as the absence of production tooling costs, mass customization, and the ability to create highly complex geometries
As one looks to the future, rapid prototyping technologies are developing at a high rate, and engineers are developing machines that not only create polymer and metal parts layer by layer, but also print electronic circuitry, and micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Researchers at MIT are also studying how to build structures using proteins as building blocks. The result will be machines that create products, not just solid objects, but working products with displays and logic and interfaces.
Could this really happen?
One can see the signs of this happening already. As the technology improves, the costs of these machines are quickly declining. For example, the 3D Systems V-Flash desktop modeler is priced at $9900. Laser-cutter desktop machines are being used by high-end hobbyists. A group called Fab@Home is promoting the open-source working plans for building your own 3D printer (or fabber).
These technologies have been combined together in a fabrication laboratory or “Fab Lab.” This lab is contained within a small room with equipment that costs under $20,000 and can make a wide variety of products (Gershenfeld, 2005). As technology becomes less expensive and more compact, it’s not hard to imagine a future where there is a desktop manufacturing machine in each of our homes. And if we can manufacture products, one at a time in our own homes, then how will that change the role of the industrial designer?
Part 2....
Comments
all the best,
michael
Quartzite fabrication tooling