Twenty years ago this month, the HP Deskjet launched, signaling the demise of the dot matrix printer (and its noise). Kids these days just don’t know how easy that have it. The first Deskjet cost $995, weighed 14 pounds and could only pump out two pages per minute. How did we ever make it through?
Well, people like Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP at HP’s imaging and printing division, certainly had a hand in it. Joshi stopped by The GigaOM Show to talk about HP’s Print 2.0 initiative, the company’s role in environmental issues, and the versatile abilities of inkjet technology (3D printing, anyone?). You’ve never seen anyone get so excited about printers before, though I’m still skeptical of Joshi’s claim that pictures printed with an inkjet printer are archival-quality.
You can download the episode in QuickTime, Windows Media, and Xvid.
Zcorp is using inkjet technology to print 3D objects. We use their printers to print full color architectural scale models.
cheers
rene
more info at http://www.sotopiaconcepts.com/uk/services/3d_printing.html
3D printing will be big, indeed, as Vyomesh Joshi points out. Since besides communications, which need less and less of a physical representation because of more suitable output devices (all the screens we have around us, e-paper, speech synthesis, etc.)
It is interesting to note that there are also open source efforts to make 3D printers:
The RepRap project ( http://www.reprap.org/ )
Fab@Home ( fabathome.org/ )
CandyFab (www.candyfab.org )
These 3D printers are already a lot cheaper than the commercial printers. Granted, they do require assembly and some tinkering to get quality up, at less 1/20 of the investment costs and about a 20-fold decrease in price… that starts to become interesting. And what if you don’t want to be limited to the (mostly) plastics that commercial 3D printers allow you to use? On a RepRap/Fab@Home you could use various thermoplastics, candle wax, epoxies, chocolate and even metal…
The open development of the technology has a focus on mainstream use and affordability. The RepRap project has an interesting perk that it can 3D print many of its own parts, in essence allowing it to replicate itself. That’s where the name comes from RepRap stands for Replicating Rapid prototyper. This solves the distribution of a 3D printer that can stay current (it can download its own HARDWARE updates and print them!)
More info is also available on my blog, where I also detail the building and usage of my own RepRap machine…
Erik de Bruijn
http://blog.erikdebruijn.nl/categories/7-RepRap
My point was that, we need less physical output for information, but we still need physical things that have a material function. So the screens around us can offset the need for a lot of the 2D printing, but we will always need things. For an increasing share of products, the distribution model will change to printing-at-home or at print shops. Eventually you will have raw materials delivered to your home and you make the objects that you need on-demand.