Tough Minded Investment Manager Analysis

The Future of Manufacturing
Another big change is coming to manufacturing.  Not as big as the industrial revolution, but big.  Possibly, bigger than the internet.  The change goes by several names including personal fabrication, three-dimensional printing and probably a bunch of other terms I’m not hip enough to know.  The basic idea is simple enough; you design it, using off-the-shelf CAD (computer-aided design) programs and the fabricator cuts it out of a single block of wood or metal or plastic.  New technology prints what you want-- in three dimensions.  You can see examples of what the printer can print here.  You can get quotes for the printer and see examples of the prototypes the printer can build here.

If I owned a manufacturing company, I would worry about this. Right now, three-dimensional printers are useful for building prototypes, but not much else.  Expense is not the problem, of course.  If these things can be put to useful work, the prices should drop exponentially.  Currently, the printers “print” in many colors, but only one substance at a time.  Eventually printers will be built which can print in more than one substance at a time.  When that becomes possible, the world will really change.