“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot,” is the command synonymous for every fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation with one of that show’s most magical technologies: the replicator. Using 25th-century mastery over matter and energy, the Enterprise’s replicators can create virtually any desired object for which it’s programmed, from a replacement engine part to Captain Picard’s beverage of choice.
No need to wait centuries, however. The beginnings of that technology may be making its way into your home within the next five years and sparking an industrial revolution in the process.
New 3D printing and other so-called additive manufacturing technologies are based on methods that industries developed over the past quarter century to rapidly create prototypes of mechanical parts for testing. But as these methods become increasingly sophisticated, demand is rising to use them to manufacture finished products, not only in factories but also at a boutique, one-off level for individuals. Modeling software companies such as Autodesk, 3D-printer makers such as Stratasys and MakerBot Industries, and the enthusiastic make-it-yourselfers who congregate as sites such as Fab@Home have all jumped in to propel that movement. Already, 3D printing has been used to make tools and artworks, custom-fitted prosthetics for amputees, components for aviation and medical instruments, solid medical models of bones and organs based on MRI scans, paper-based photovoltaic cells, and the body panels for a lightweight hybrid automobile.
Watch a compilation of Captain Picard requesting his favorite beverage:
Much more is coming. The consulting firm Wohler Associates, which tracks additive manufacturing businesses, forecast in May that the industry should grow to $3.1 billion 2016 and $5.2 billion by 2020. Rich Karlgaard, the publisher of Forbes magazine, recently suggested 3D printing could be the “transformative technology of the 2015-2025 period.”
Today’s equivalents of Star Trek’s replicators go by many names: 3D printers, digital fabricators (or fabbers), RepRaps (for replicating rapid prototypers) and more. Working from computer models of a desired object’s design, they lay down patterns of plastic, metal powder or other fabrication materials to duplicate cross-sections through the object. Lasers or ultraviolet light may then help to set or solidify the material. The 3D printer systematically arranges these layers atop one another to create the complete object. The process is the opposite of sculpture: rather than carving away unwanted material with a mold or stencil, it adds material where there was none.
Additive manufacturing is appealing to factory operators they can modify a product’s design easily, without retooling, and small production runs need not be more costly. The manufacturing process also wastes less material. Since products can be made near where they will be used, 3D printing could help to eliminate some transportation costs for goods.
MakerBot's Thing-O-Matic retails for $2,500.
Prices for 3D printers are tumbling. Even simple systems often cost tens of thousands of dollars a decade ago. Now, 3D printers for hobbyists can be had for a fraction of that: MakerBot Industries offers a fully assembled Thing-O-Matic printer for just $2,500, and kits for building RepRap printers have sold for $500. The devices could be on track for mass-production as home appliances within just a few years.
So, will we all soon be living like Arabian Nights sultans with a 3D printing genie ready to grant our every wish? Could economies as we know them even survive in such a world, where the theoretically infinite supply of any good should drive its value toward zero?
The precise limitations of replicator technology will determine where scarcity and foundations for value will remain. 3D printers need processed materials as inputs. Those materials and all the labor required to mine, grow, synthesize or process them into existence will still be needed, along with the transportation costs to bring them to the printers. The energy to run a replicator might be another limiting factor, as would be time (would you spend three days replicating a toaster if you could have one delivered to your home in an hour)? Replicators will also need inputs to tell them how to make specific objects, so the programming and design efforts will still have value.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: most households will not purchase and run a 3D printer to produce their own products,” Terry Wohlers, the president of Wohler Associates, recently wrote. Average consumers might have small inexpensive printers for making children’s toys, but he thinks most people will lack the skills, interest or financial commitment needed to routinely make their own products. For them, contracting occasionally with a fabrication service to make things for them may make much more sense.
Perhaps the most important limitation on the replicator economy may competition from good old mass production. Custom-tailored suits may be objectively better than off-the-rack outfits, but people find that the latter are usually the more sensible, affordable purchase. Mass production—especially by factories adopting nimble 3D-printing technologies—can still provide marvelous economies of scale. So even when it is theoretically possible for anyone to fabricate anything, people might still choose to restrict their replicating to certain goods—and to continue making their tea with a store-bought teabag.
John Rennie served as editor in chief of Scientific American between 1994 and 2009. Based in New York, he continues to work as a science writer and editor, and as an adjunct instructor in New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. John blogs at The Gleaming Retort can be found on Twitter as @tvjrennie.