In August this year, an American start-up called Modern Meadow announced it was working on printing edible meat. Paypal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has reportedly put $350,000 towards the project.
“If you look at the resource intensity of everything that goes into a hamburger, it is an environmental trainwreck,” Thiel said when he made the investment.
Modern Meadow claims that by layering mixtures of cells in specific structures, it could replicate the texture and chemical properties of meat. The project is some way off completion – its current aim is just to create a piece of edible meat 2 centimetres long.
If we do start printing products at home, there’s room for people to make money selling the designs.
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of American online retailer Amazon.com, says that the future of online shopping will be shaped by 3D printers.
By making it cheaper to create one-off plastic objects, and by allowing greater flexibility in production, 3D printing is already being used by artists to make new creations.
Karen Marsh, the enterprise manager at the Australian Institute for Art and Technology, has for the past year been showing off the foundations new 3D printer anywhere there’s likely to be a crowd.
“Pretty much everyone, once they see it in action, starts to think of ways they can apply it to their own needs. Artists and designers, jewellers, as well as tinkerers and fixers, who see it as a useful way to print out spare parts.”
The downfall of industrial capitalism?
Like many new technologies, 3D printing has the potential to radically undermine many a business model.
Over the past decade, the internet has made intellectual property increasingly difficult to defend. This has cost the entertainment industry billions of dollars: movies, music and increasingly books can be viewed for free online even before they are officially released.
Manufacturing has faced no such concerns (different ones). But imagine what could happen once there’s a 3D printer in every home. Anyone could download scanned copies of a consumer item, print it, and assemble it themselves.
Initially, this is likely to benefit retailers, who will have the ability to print small runs of items as consumers come in to make a purchase. But over time, 3D printing could be used by anyone.
Already, Games Workshop, a British company worth 62 million pounds that makes and sells expensive figurines used in table-top games, has issued cease-and-desist notices to Thiniverse, a website that published 3D models of the designs.
When Dr Adrian Bowyer, an engineer and academic, created the first 3D printer that could ‘print itself’, he didn’t bother patenting it.
“You’ve got a machine that copies itself and you try and prevent people from exploiting it, you’re basically saying you want to spend your whole life in court. I’ve got better things to do so I made it free,” he told the ABC’s Catalyst program last year.
It’s not just corporations who have a lot to lose from 3D printing.
In July, an American gunsmith uploaded a working 3D printable model of a .22 calibre pistol. If you have the right printer, you can make it at home.
Worryingly, printed guns work just fine. The user has reportedly fired more than 200 rounds with the gun without any sign of wear and tear.
Can 3D printing be controlled? “With great difficulty,” Dawson says. “This is part of a broader trend where essentially, greater destructive power is put in the hands of fewer people. That’s been going on for some time, and is likely to continue.”
The limitations
The experts think widespread use of 3D is more than five years away.
Right now, there are plenty of limitations to 3D printing.
“The major issue is in terms of the materials used,” Dawson says. “3D printing essentially works by adding layers of materials. So, in fact you can create, readily, almost any shape you can imagine, including ones that are extremely difficult to manufacture.
“If you don’t have to worry about materials, it’s phenomenal what they can do today. They’re already used for decorative things, to create amazing shapes in plastics and resins.
“It’s when we start to get to other materials that it starts to become harder.”
Another set of constraints revolves around size. Home printers are unlikely to ever be big enough to print, for example, furniture, which even today would require a printer too large to be practical for most retailers.
One issue that may stop 3D printers proliferating in homes is the level of maintenance required. Current models clog easily, which leads Marsh to think 3D printing will most likely to remain in the hands of retailers for the foreseeable future. “One day there might be 3D printing bureaus on street corners, where if you break something, you download the design and send it to the printers,” Marsh says.
Myriam Robin is a reporter for SmartCompany and its sister site LeadingCompany. She has degrees in economics, international studies and journalism. She likes writing about businesses taking risks and doing new things.
