As you all are aware, the Democrats took a huge drubbing in the midterm elections a couple of nights ago, losing control of the House of Representatives by a sizable margin while barely holding on to the Senate. There are numerous reasons why the GOP was so successful in the elections, but one of them is certainly the massive amounts of money contributed to groups like Karl Rove's American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who in turn used those contributions to run countless negative ads against Democratic candidates. As was noted by Think Progress, much of those contributions were not subject to disclosure, but among those which were disclosed, the contributions came from some of the biggest businesses in the USA as well as a number of overseas companies who have benefited mightily from the outsourcing of American jobs.
Now we all know that our biggest American corporations have been outsourcing American manufacturing jobs to countries like China and India for at least the last ten years, and the GOP leaders in Congress have been all but happy to facilitate the shipping of our jobs to those countries. And with the GOP taking back the House in the midterm elections, it appears that they will attempt to resume fast-tracking the outsourcing of American jobs overseas. In the short term, this is making me livid, but in the long term it may not matter, and in fact during the next five to ten years it may well come back to bite corporate America in the ass.
I want to state this diary is not really political in nature; in fact, this is about science and technology. In particular it's about the future of manufacturing. The way most people traditionally view manufacturing is seeing huge buildings housing assembly lines full of people stamping out molds, tiles, tools, circuit boards, etc. and assembling them into the everyday products we use, from cars, refrigerators, computers, and iPods. But just as computers and the internet revolutionized and transformed industries like banking, publishing, and entertainment, it appears they are on the verge of transforming manufacturing as well.
What is the source of this potential transformation? It has several names, including desktop manufacturing or rapid prototyping, or even democratized fabrication, but they all are based on a device called the 3D printer. #D printers are much like inkjet or laser printers except that they use an inputted solid material like a plastic polymer or powdered metal to print successive layers of that material on top of each other to build a prototype object. 3D printers create objects after having a CAD file load into a computer, which then analyzes the data and splits it into several parts, which is then fed into the 3d printer and set up to print. Basically any object which can be analyzed in 3D on a computer can have a prototype created on a 3D printer.
Now 3D printers have been around since the 1980's, but they have been extraordinarily expensive (in the high 5 to 6 figures) and have been only available for use by large corporations. But thanks to advances in technology, one can get basic 3d printers for $5,000 and more deluxe models for between $10,000 and $20,000. And with open-source hobbyists sharing information, it may be very soon that we see a 3D printer available for the masses for the price of an OLED TV. Groups like RepRap and MakerBot are already gunning for making 3D printers available for home use.
Now what does this mean for the future? No less than Fast Company magazine claims that it will become a massive revolution in the way people do business. It will allow home hobbyists and tinkerers to create their own factories out of their garages and basements, and it has the potential to manufacturing truly local again. But does it mean that Walmart is dead, or that major corporations outsourcing manufacturing will suddenly go by the wayside? Probably not in the near future, but it may change supply chain logistics for the better. Instead of having to order tons of parts in advance and wait for them to be shipped from China or Mexico and deal with potential shortages or inventory glut, companies may be able to manufacture their own parts at exactly the amount they need and at a much faster pace than previously seen.
Now there are likely to be issues, including intellectual property theft and counterfeiting. There's also the possibility that 3D printing advances may get into the hands of consumers so quickly that it may cannibalize big business the same way that Napster and file sharing decimated the music industry. Now there's still time for big business to coordinate this technology with hobbyists and early adopters so that all may benefit greatly and make tons of money, but if bis business thumbs its nose at American workers the same way the music industry did to its fans/consumers, they may find themselves in a titanic losing battle to stay alive.