Designing for the future of Make-On-Demand

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2 years ago I wrote about how industrial design will be affected by personal fabrication or desktop manufacturing.   The prediction was that due to the advancement of rapid prototyping technology that products will be manufactured in your own community  and perhaps in your own home with desktop manufacturing machines.   This is an exciting idea because it revolutionizes the traditional product development process,  which is full of waste, management overhead, shipping containers, distribution, and over production.  And it's beginning to happen today, although in a different format than expected.  

Web-based companies such as Ponoko, Zazzle, CafePress, Blurb, Lulu are making this a reality.   You design something, upload it, and they display it, sell it, make it on demand, and ship it to the customer.  And you get paid for each sale.  

The material limitations that we see now are really just temporary and it's only a matter of time before a company with a FDM machine and a PCB prototype machine and pick-and-place robotic system offers to make electronic products of your own design.  Plus multi material machines by Objet have just been introduced.  This is important because it makes entrepreneurial design easy.   It's a more sustainable solution.  It's customizable.   It's designer to customer direct. It brings manufacturing back to America.   It gives the designer more control.  Yet we have no precedent for this model, and it's being defined as we speak.  So what will we do with it? 



Lamp design based on soundwaves by Tyler Swain 2007.




Emit sound image lamp by Mechille Kiss, 2007.

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