Yet another 3D printing application success.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Cock-a-doodle-Whew!

Veterinary medicine is making great strides in animal prostheses.  3D printing has many more peaceful applications than otherwise expected.

[ussoldier2002 109]

I think you can say that about anything tho really. It's a shame that evil is usually the one that wins out. 

[LexusInfernus 908]

No, the evil ones are the ones that hog all the attention. At least, on the short term they do. In the long run 3d printing will not be remembered because it allowed people to print their own guns or whatever, instead it will be remembered for how it revolutionizes production, how it was perhaps the start of an entirely new production/distribution model in a number of industries and how it was the precursor of nanofabricators. 

  Edited July 11, 2015 by LexusInfernus  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Good point. 

All that automation and miniaturization is giving rise to the next industrial revolution.  We've finally come to the realization point of the next real technological upgrade that has been needed as the labour market changes from blue to white collar.  While some blue collar jobs will persist, more knowledge workers will be seen as things expand. 

Useless university degrees should become things of the past as the education system catches up to the reality of the new production methods.  More skilled trades are needed as well as people with engineering associated strengths.  Let's not forget that the overall use of education is to train production workers.  Production produces value.  Value translates quite handily into money, which is one of the goals of most people.  Many people lose sight of that basic economic fact in all the BS coming from the sophisticated (in the Italian sense) economists.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

When more people can own the means of production (at least on small scales), the economy will be better off. I was afraid of a future where expensive to purchase labour-replacing technology would dominate.

--Ocram

 

 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I think we can see that cottage industry of the future could well include a little "cottage manufacturing".  Think of a group of entrepreneurs on not a lot of money with 3D printers making components where one of them is an assembly shop.  Products we can't even imagine might well be possible.

The principles of JIT manufacturing are well established.  You could have whole towns acting like a spread-out factory.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

3D Printed Pills to go into production.

Someone at the FDA was awake and with it.  Let's hope the same for Health Canada.

I am on several daily medications, and at least one of them comes in multiple pills taken at the same time.  The reason for one of them is that the dose I take is a combination provided only by two pills.  A 3D printed custom pill would relieve this nuisance.  In another case, I must take six tablets of a specified drug which comes in 2.5 mg quanta once a week to get a 15 mg dose.

Think about the advantages of having medications for chronic conditions custom made with this method by your local pharmacist.  Let's hope the equipment will be affordable and nicely automatic -- a peripheral to the pharmacy computer system. 

In the long run, this is going to be hard lines on the generic pharmaceutical manufacturers, but that's progress for you.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

3D Printers the very old ancestors of replicators which will undoubtedly come in a 100 or 200 years time. You know those replicators from Star Trek.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Let's hope they are not the replicators from SG1.