If what Reichental and other executives within 3D Systems believes to be true, turns out to in fact be the case, within the next 10 years 3D printing will be incredibly fast. If speeds double every 2 years, that equates to speeds 32 times that of today by the year 2024. For instance if a 3D printed toy car takes 4 hours to print today, by 2024 that same car would take just seven and a half minutes to print. Now, taking this a step further, a company called Local Motors is planning to 3D print an actual car in Chicago this September. They expect the process to take around 5-6 days. If what 3D Systems predicts, becomes reality, that same car will only take about four and a moore-1half hours to print within a decade’s time. Such an accomplishment would have far reaching implications throughout the manufacturing world, and if you extrapolate numbers even further, past the 10 year horizon, things become almost scary. There have been thousands of predictions made by executives of companies within every industry, which are laughed at today for their lack of foresight. Just because a CEO of a company makes a statement, doesn’t mean it’s a fact. Nevertheless it certainly can make one’s ears perk up. Whether we will be 3D printed cars within hours, or little plastic toys within seconds, is yet to be seen, however, the way things have progressed in just the last year alone, makes me believe that such a future is very much possible. 3D printing speeds have been following a path of progression which mimics that of Moore’s law, but will it continue?
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 09:05:29 +0000
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