Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says something like
Speaker 1: a recipe bits and pieces and bits and pieces. And
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Stupor Stricklin, and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And hey, guys, I have a question for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do y'all remember the fact that we have a three
Speaker 1: D printer in the office. I do sometimes look at
Speaker 1: it and think what an expensive paperweight. I was going
Speaker 1: to make the exact same joke. Where is it now?
Speaker 1: It's around the corner somewhere, isn't it if Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: near the conference rooms. Yeah, it's over by where our
Speaker 1: our our dear friend and co worker Robert Lamb hides
Speaker 1: out from the rest of us, and he's in the office.
Speaker 1: Does he actually hide over there? Is that where he is? Huh?
Speaker 1: That's his spy cave, thybe, I shouldn't have revealed. Just
Speaker 1: move his desk over there. I mean, he's got a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. So okay, alright, So so we've got
Speaker 1: the the forbidden zone in which Robert Lamb and the
Speaker 1: three D printer have some sort of uneasy truce. Well,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to highlight the fact that when we
Speaker 1: very first got our our three D printer, um that
Speaker 1: was it was. It was through some work relationships. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we we don't want to come off as ungrateful
Speaker 1: like that was a cool thing, but at the very
Speaker 1: first we were we were trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's figure out how to use this thing, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: three D printer, Gonna do some stuff with it. And
Speaker 1: I was doing a lot of stuff with it. I
Speaker 1: installed software on my computer and I was making you know,
Speaker 1: designs and what is he you know, CAD design, the
Speaker 1: computer assisted design, and and it was fun for a
Speaker 1: while until man, it was just really really hard to
Speaker 1: get that thing to work. It was a lot of
Speaker 1: work to use the three D printer, I mean it
Speaker 1: and like most jobs, failed at some point along the line,
Speaker 1: failed really spectacularly, and like the machine or the software
Speaker 1: didn't have any way of knowing when it had failed,
Speaker 1: so it would just continue to fail more and more
Speaker 1: hilariously until you had something like John Carpenter's the Thing
Speaker 1: in place of whatever it was trying to plastic hairball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well and I mean and and the reason for this
Speaker 1: is that it was it was a relatively inexpensive unit
Speaker 1: that was meant for home hobbyists. And yeah it wasn't.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't. I mean, so you know, like like
Speaker 1: the all of the parts were not like like finely
Speaker 1: tuned for the best possible use. And their software was
Speaker 1: all software that you had to go find. It didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily come with the machine. Well, one piece of software
Speaker 1: came with it, others did not. And also just the
Speaker 1: fact that different factors can change the the the elements
Speaker 1: of the plastic that you're using. Right, So for example,
Speaker 1: if you've got a lot more humidity or the temperature
Speaker 1: is different in the place where you are producing things,
Speaker 1: it may mean that you have to make some adjustments
Speaker 1: to Like the way a three D printer typically works.
Speaker 1: The basic three D printers is it lays down a
Speaker 1: thin layer of plastic on a heated um platform, and
Speaker 1: the platform is heated in order to make sure that
Speaker 1: the plastic doesn't doesn't cool too quickly, stays tacky enough
Speaker 1: to accept another layer of plastic on top of it, right,
Speaker 1: And you do layer by layer by layer until the
Speaker 1: object you want to create has been made. And if
Speaker 1: you're talking about larger three D printers, they might even
Speaker 1: have a heated chamber in order to keep a an
Speaker 1: object from collapsing in on itself, for um, making sure
Speaker 1: it maintains its structural integrity as you go through the
Speaker 1: print job. But there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: could go wrong. I mean, if the plastic is not
Speaker 1: extruding at the proper rate, that's a problem. If the
Speaker 1: print head drags across any layer of plastic, it could
Speaker 1: completely dislodge it. Yeah, yeah, if any part yeah right right,
Speaker 1: if it if it scratches it in any way and
Speaker 1: creates an uneven surface for printing. Yeah, yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: just following directions, like, it's following a series of movements
Speaker 1: that it thinks it needs to do to complete a
Speaker 1: print job. Three D printers are not aware, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: of how a print job is going, so if something
Speaker 1: does go wrong, it just keeps on going wronger um.
Speaker 1: And then can be very funny. It could be funny,
Speaker 1: but it can also be very frustrating if you're trying
Speaker 1: to print something for a specific purpose. Yeah, so today,
Speaker 1: if you can't tell already, we're going to be doing
Speaker 1: a three D printing update. We've done episodes on three
Speaker 1: D printing before. We did one in October three D
Speaker 1: Printing in Medicine, and one in August the Art of
Speaker 1: three D Printing. I think it was all about art,
Speaker 1: wasn't Yeah, that was about replicating works of art and
Speaker 1: also creating new works of art with three D printing.
Speaker 1: We did one about three D printing in construction, I believe, yeah,
Speaker 1: in May, often called print Your Dream Home. And then
Speaker 1: our fourth ever episode that we ever did was called
Speaker 1: three D Printer Jam When tables are intellectual property? Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's from March, and those those are the episodes we've
Speaker 1: done that are entirely about three D printing. Of course,
Speaker 1: we've mentioned it like a lot of times if you
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast, um as an element of technology
Speaker 1: that researchers have been using and creating whatever it is
Speaker 1: that they're creating exactly. And so today we're really focusing
Speaker 1: primarily on consumer three D printers, stuff that would be
Speaker 1: in private hands maybe for some small businesses, but additive
Speaker 1: manufacturing is clearly very important in lots of in industries.
Speaker 1: It's used in R and D and production on a
Speaker 1: professional level more than ever before. Like it's three D
Speaker 1: printing is enormous in various industries. It's great for prototyping.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's the primary use for three D printers today.
Speaker 1: Or yes, yeah, that that is on the cusp of changing,
Speaker 1: but it is. It has for the longest time been
Speaker 1: the main use for any three D printer. The idea
Speaker 1: was that you would come up with a design for
Speaker 1: a product, maybe a change in a product line. You
Speaker 1: could then use a three D printer to build a
Speaker 1: model of it and see if it would actually work
Speaker 1: in the real world, because sometimes a design that works
Speaker 1: on paper is not practical, and you could do it quickly,
Speaker 1: so if it didn't work, you go back to the
Speaker 1: drawing board, makes some changes, print those out and try that.
Speaker 1: And it speeds up the prototyping process by several factors.
Speaker 1: And also because it's additive rather than subtractive, it's less
Speaker 1: wasteful than other method. It's a prototyping so we've talked
Speaker 1: all about that extensively. And of course, though I wonder
Speaker 1: if the wastefulness thing will will be challenged by the
Speaker 1: fact that you have to create like four failed attempts
Speaker 1: at something before it actually takes. I think it depends
Speaker 1: upon the printer. To some printers maybe uh less prone
Speaker 1: to print failures than others. Oh, I know that. I
Speaker 1: just mean, if you've got one of these that I
Speaker 1: still think it's probably faster than than like carving away
Speaker 1: at some material so that you finally get it whatever
Speaker 1: it is you were you were aiming for, depending upon
Speaker 1: the how you're carving. I mean, if you have a
Speaker 1: robot arm doing it. Maybe. Yeah. I was about to say,
Speaker 1: like I am not personally a master whittler. No, I
Speaker 1: I've been known to whittle, but I mostly little toothpicks,
Speaker 1: depending I'm aiming for, like a spoon, but it never
Speaker 1: I never get there, so toothpick it is. I figure,
Speaker 1: you know, you just say, whatever you end up with,
Speaker 1: that's what you were uting for, and then it's a
Speaker 1: success every time. Um. But we were also seeing the
Speaker 1: potential for using three D printers in areas like in
Speaker 1: space exploration. There have been a lot of recent experiments
Speaker 1: NASA has done several about how how can we do
Speaker 1: three D printing in a micro gravity environment where including
Speaker 1: three D printing of food yep, yep so, and that
Speaker 1: introduces challenges that you know you're on Earth, we just
Speaker 1: don't think about because we can rely on gravity to
Speaker 1: be a component of a three D printer and hold
Speaker 1: stuff in place. But up in space that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a luxury that you have at your disposal. UM. But
Speaker 1: on that consumer side, we really want to look at
Speaker 1: what's going on, because when we started this podcast a
Speaker 1: few years ago, uh, three D printing was one of
Speaker 1: those buzz words that was really really starting to hit
Speaker 1: UM full speed, because I can tell you the first
Speaker 1: year I went to CE which was two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: was the first time I had ever seen a three
Speaker 1: D printer in person. I saw a maker bought three
Speaker 1: D printer. UH. My UM co host of Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: at the time, Chris Pallette was with me, and he
Speaker 1: flipped out when he saw it. He knew immediately what
Speaker 1: it was he was looking at, whereas I did not.
Speaker 1: I had never encountered the three D printer before, and
Speaker 1: when I found out, I was like, Wow, that's a
Speaker 1: really cool idea. And obviously those had been used in
Speaker 1: various industrial purposes for a while, but it had really
Speaker 1: just started to dawn in the consumer realm, right It
Speaker 1: just started to show up By two thousand thirteen, when
Speaker 1: we were really getting started with this show, uh, that
Speaker 1: it had gone beyond just hobbyists, like a very small
Speaker 1: group of hobbyists who were aware of it, and it
Speaker 1: entered into the general public consciousness. And that's really when
Speaker 1: things took off, and we wanted to kind of take
Speaker 1: bearings of where we are now based upon are compared
Speaker 1: to where we were then, right, And it's it's not
Speaker 1: it's not like the graph just goes up and up
Speaker 1: and up into the right. No, I mean I remember
Speaker 1: what things were like back when we started this show
Speaker 1: in Yeah, So essentially, I guess the question I want
Speaker 1: to ask today is is three D printing another example
Speaker 1: of a bursting or recently burst tech enthusiasm bubble, kind
Speaker 1: of like you you might think of virtual reality in
Speaker 1: the nineties, not where the technology is you know, never
Speaker 1: going anywhere, but at least for a while, it has
Speaker 1: seriously squandered its public interest capital, right, because back in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, the narrative that was being shared was
Speaker 1: that three D printers were going to be ubiquitous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's going to have one and one in every home.
Speaker 1: He's going to change the world. Yeah, you could print
Speaker 1: anything you needed. If your chair broke, you could print
Speaker 1: a replacement or the part that broke. If you needed
Speaker 1: to end up printing out utensils, you could do that.
Speaker 1: Like you've got more people over than you have plates,
Speaker 1: for no problem, print a few plates. I think it
Speaker 1: was it was seen as a form of democratization and
Speaker 1: decentralization in a way, doing for physical objects what the
Speaker 1: Internet does for information. Right, And so there there's one
Speaker 1: question that we have in here. We were asking did
Speaker 1: it did it really have that fund that huge of
Speaker 1: an impact on people? And I would argue that in general, no,
Speaker 1: it has not. That's not to say that there aren't
Speaker 1: specific cases where it did have an enormous impact, there are, sure,
Speaker 1: But the kind of the kind of fear that was
Speaker 1: being expressed that was like, well, I'm I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a furniture designer, and will anyone ever buy my art again,
Speaker 1: my my my artistic beautiful items again if they can
Speaker 1: just print them at home, which everyone will be able
Speaker 1: to do really soon, right, that the fear that businesses
Speaker 1: like Ikea would disappear because anyone could just go take
Speaker 1: some photos of Ikea furniture, go home, and three D
Speaker 1: model them and then print them up in a day's
Speaker 1: time and then you've got your own, you know, shelf
Speaker 1: with a weird Scandinavian name. And and looking at our
Speaker 1: at our legacy collection of of these bizarre plastic hairballs
Speaker 1: that that's hilarious and it's like fear is just funny.
Speaker 1: And even the successful print jobs, which are mostly just
Speaker 1: chot keys, right there's we didn't really succeed in printing
Speaker 1: anything of of real substance, and at least that's on
Speaker 1: a large scale. The best thing I was able to
Speaker 1: print was a flat, uh flat thing in the shape
Speaker 1: of the state of Tennessee, which is my home state.
Speaker 1: I remember that we used to have a three D
Speaker 1: printer before the one that we've got now. It was
Speaker 1: a smaller one, and I remember one of the things
Speaker 1: that printed, and I remember being blown away by it
Speaker 1: at the time was it was like a little castle
Speaker 1: tower kind of like right yeah, and it had windows
Speaker 1: in it and if you look through the windows, you
Speaker 1: can see a spiral staircase on the inside of the
Speaker 1: chess piecease. And there was that, and that just blew
Speaker 1: my mind. It printed, it printed a spiral staircase on
Speaker 1: the inside of this thing. That's that first printer you
Speaker 1: had might have been a better one. It was. It
Speaker 1: was also it was also a much smaller one, and
Speaker 1: it was not capable of printing in two different colors
Speaker 1: of plastic simultaneously. But then you could argue neither was
Speaker 1: ours though it was designed to do so. Um, So yes,
Speaker 1: I would say that in large part it has failed
Speaker 1: to deliver. However, that being said, I do not want
Speaker 1: to be completely dismissive, because we are very much aware
Speaker 1: of cases where three D printers, even consumer level three
Speaker 1: D printers, have made a remarkable difference in people's lives.
Speaker 1: One example of that are there's there are a couple
Speaker 1: of different projects where people have open sourced the design
Speaker 1: and production of prosthetics for kids who might not otherwise
Speaker 1: be able to afford them. Yeah, and I like, like
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of high schoolers have done this, and
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Now, these prosthetics that are designed, they're not
Speaker 1: intended to be permanent replacements. They tend to be sort
Speaker 1: of a temporary thing while a child is still growing,
Speaker 1: because obviously that's going to require new prosthetics over the
Speaker 1: course of of the person's life. But they are something
Speaker 1: that allows a child to have a little more utility,
Speaker 1: uh than they would otherwise, And so there's no denying
Speaker 1: that it's had an impact. And again, that was using
Speaker 1: consumer level three D printers. But that's a special case, right.
Speaker 1: We are not in the future where everybody has their
Speaker 1: own three D printer, where everyone is printing all the
Speaker 1: physical things they need. Well, And it's not just that
Speaker 1: that hasn't happened yet, because you could still argue I
Speaker 1: guess that, well, maybe that's going to happen someday in
Speaker 1: the far future. It's just you know, no one would
Speaker 1: have expected such a thing to happen so soon. But
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the fact that that used to be
Speaker 1: a much more strongly represented narrative in tech journalism and
Speaker 1: the popular consciousness than it is today. I don't hear
Speaker 1: people talking about that anymore. And it feels like the
Speaker 1: idea that that Back to the Future Part two had
Speaker 1: that we would have a fax machine in every room,
Speaker 1: yeah right, right, yeah, And so that kind of ground
Speaker 1: level enthusiasm for three D printers does not seem to
Speaker 1: be on the rise. And I also wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about some some specific market trends, like just economic trends
Speaker 1: regarding three D printing. Yeah, because this can this can
Speaker 1: lead to evidence about whether or not that that we're
Speaker 1: actually seeing a bubble or if it's just no, we're
Speaker 1: just on the journey to that destination. We just haven't
Speaker 1: reached it yet. Yeah. I think that was really the
Speaker 1: first big boom year in the stock market for for
Speaker 1: companies that were offering commercial and consumer three D printing
Speaker 1: technologies for sale. UH. Stratusis was up a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty percent that year. That's that's pretty significant growth. Three
Speaker 1: D Systems was up two hundred and seventy stratess UH,
Speaker 1: and their stocks would continue to rise. The Stratusis maintained
Speaker 1: its growth longer. So Stratusis that you know, they said, well,
Speaker 1: we we do three D printing solutions, so they were
Speaker 1: one of the big consumer three D printing companies out there.
Speaker 1: According to Nasdaq, the Stratusis stock price peaked around a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty to a hundred and forty dollars a
Speaker 1: share around the end of and it stayed high through
Speaker 1: the middle of but it has been falling ever since then.
Speaker 1: It's now close to about twenty bucks a share. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty significant drop, although I would need to look
Speaker 1: into it further to see make sure like they didn't
Speaker 1: have any stock splits or anything, because that can affect
Speaker 1: the price as well. But oh yeah, but assuming that
Speaker 1: there weren't any splits, then yeah, that's not a great story.
Speaker 1: Uh again, Also three D Systems, I decided to look
Speaker 1: that up. The three D printer manufacturer three D Systems
Speaker 1: peaked closer to the beginning of at about a hundred
Speaker 1: bucks and has been mostly falling since then, is now
Speaker 1: out about fifteen bucks. Yeah, so if you look at
Speaker 1: market trends, it's it's looking pretty dire, right that that
Speaker 1: kind of leads to or leans us closer to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that there was a bubble issue. Um. And you
Speaker 1: can you can also on the on the technology end,
Speaker 1: on the price end of the technology, kind of look
Speaker 1: at at how how it's been developing over that period
Speaker 1: of time, like like how how how low can you go? Um,
Speaker 1: Like like how how much can you make this available
Speaker 1: to people through price cuts? And and that affects there
Speaker 1: there are multiple effects that we would discuss your right,
Speaker 1: like like you have the very low ends side. Once
Speaker 1: you get the price down to a certain amount, yes,
Speaker 1: you've made it more accessible to a larger audience. But
Speaker 1: chances are, you know, the phrase you get what you
Speaker 1: paid for it comes into play, right, So if you're
Speaker 1: paying a smaller amount for a three D printer, chances
Speaker 1: are it's not at the quality of one of the
Speaker 1: really good ones, which means the experience of the person
Speaker 1: has even though they now have access to a three
Speaker 1: D printer, is not necessarily a positive experience. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think there's like a strange little curve happening in
Speaker 1: those prices over the past few years where wherein actually
Speaker 1: the prices have started to go up again for for
Speaker 1: some of the like base unit models. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about this. So so at the back at the kind
Speaker 1: of kind of beginning of this trend, back in a
Speaker 1: the low end of consumer devices was a little bit
Speaker 1: above a thousand bucks a pop um. The low end
Speaker 1: of of commercial devices was about ten thousand dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by the end of we saw home units priced as
Speaker 1: low as two hundred. That's that's great. That's obviously not
Speaker 1: a advancement in the technology in that time, at least
Speaker 1: leading to that kind of pricing. I think what happens
Speaker 1: is this is an armchair analysis here, I would argue
Speaker 1: that what happens is in two thousand twelve UH and
Speaker 1: early two you see this incredible interest in the concept
Speaker 1: of three D printing. UH the media, and the media
Speaker 1: has involved, Investors are involved. As they start to drive
Speaker 1: up the market value of various companies, other companies say, hey,
Speaker 1: we can make some money getting into this business too.
Speaker 1: We like money. So you get a lot more companies
Speaker 1: making a lot more three D printers. Along the entire range.
Speaker 1: You've got some that are making very expensive ones and
Speaker 1: some making budget ones, trying to hit that consumer market
Speaker 1: because once interest goes up super high, you can really
Speaker 1: profit off of that. Right. People, people know what three
Speaker 1: D printing is, they've heard the term. They are eager
Speaker 1: to get involved in this. Uh. And if you're not
Speaker 1: already part of the hobbyist scene, you may not be
Speaker 1: aware of what devices really are the best ones. You
Speaker 1: may just see, oh, hey, I've heard of three D printing.
Speaker 1: This thing's on sale for two dollars. That's that's an
Speaker 1: investment I feel comfortable making. It's like your well meaning
Speaker 1: uncle getting you and in Timbo for and you just
Speaker 1: started going like, well think thanks, Polly station three man,
Speaker 1: I played so many hours of Super Macio Brothers. It
Speaker 1: was Ralph Macchio, but they never named the other one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fun times anyway, So to kind of look at some
Speaker 1: where the spread is right now, if you're looking at
Speaker 1: like what's considered the best of three D printers in
Speaker 1: various categories. One of the resources I like is a
Speaker 1: site called three D hubs dot com. I've used it
Speaker 1: before actually, because it also can put you in touch
Speaker 1: with people who run businesses where they print three D
Speaker 1: objects for you. You can send them the plans or
Speaker 1: and and in fact I used this a couple of
Speaker 1: times with some costume pieces I was able to send
Speaker 1: because because our printer, well it's awesome. I mean, I
Speaker 1: do really like our printer. It does definitely have some
Speaker 1: major problems that you've gotta babysit that thing which is
Speaker 1: problematic because it takes so long to print. Um, it
Speaker 1: was just not gonna I think. I recall at the time,
Speaker 1: the size of the build plate was an issue. Yes,
Speaker 1: I needed something that was going to be larger and
Speaker 1: I and I didn't want to have to break the
Speaker 1: build up into too many smaller parts and then glue
Speaker 1: it all together. Uh. I did have it printed in
Speaker 1: three parts because it was still pretty big. But I
Speaker 1: was able to go with use three D hubs to
Speaker 1: find someone and they were you know, they would oversee
Speaker 1: the build and make sure the quality was there, so
Speaker 1: I didn't have to worry about any of that. But
Speaker 1: three D hubs also has a section where they rate
Speaker 1: various three D printers that are on the market and
Speaker 1: they divide them up into categories that include enthusiast, plug
Speaker 1: and play, a budget and kits or d I Y projects.
Speaker 1: So the costs have certainly come down over the last
Speaker 1: few years. I mean, when you look at when they
Speaker 1: were first on the market, you're talking in excess of
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars, but again by we're getting down to
Speaker 1: a round a thousand dollars. Today, if you want a
Speaker 1: really nice three D printer, you're still paying more than
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars. It's not like it's not like computers
Speaker 1: where you could say, well, I'm gonna get a mid
Speaker 1: range computer and that's gonna be like a couple hundred
Speaker 1: bucks or five hundred dollars, maybe on on the higher
Speaker 1: end of mid range, and it's not like that. With
Speaker 1: three D printers, you're still really getting what you pay for.
Speaker 1: Uh So, most of the reliable models they listed in
Speaker 1: the enthusiast category were around undred dollars, like the Make
Speaker 1: the Maker gear M two was the top performing printer
Speaker 1: in the enthusiast category, and that was at one thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred twenty five dollars. And also the enthusiast category.
Speaker 1: Enthusiast makes it sounds like sound like, Hey, I'm into
Speaker 1: did in three D printing. It means more than that.
Speaker 1: Enthusiast means you are educated in the in the field.
Speaker 1: You are familiar with the way three D printers work,
Speaker 1: You're familiar with modeling software, you know, you know, you
Speaker 1: have the it's not a casual hobbyists. Yeah, you you
Speaker 1: have to be willing to go through that steep learning
Speaker 1: curve that a lot of these machines require, and this
Speaker 1: is one of them. They actually said, it is not
Speaker 1: easy to use. It's a great printer, but it is
Speaker 1: not intuitive. So it's one of those things that you know,
Speaker 1: you start to make trades. Some of the other printers
Speaker 1: in that same category cost more than two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: A couple were like when you went to the plug
Speaker 1: in play type, which simplifies matters, They make it a
Speaker 1: lot less complicated than some of the other models. You're
Speaker 1: still paying more than a thousand dollars. Even in the
Speaker 1: budget level. The printers that they listed as as good
Speaker 1: reliable printers were five dollars or more. So, they didn't
Speaker 1: have anything below five hundred dollars that they actually considered
Speaker 1: to be a good three D print. Now that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean there aren't sub three D printers out there, they
Speaker 1: just might not be very user friendly or very effective.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's kind of hard to say what does
Speaker 1: price mean when it comes to demand, Like, has the
Speaker 1: demand changed over time? It may very well be that
Speaker 1: three D printers has never as as a as a product,
Speaker 1: has never really branched out beyond a relatively small hobbyist
Speaker 1: community there. I'm sure it's made some advances beyond that,
Speaker 1: but I think at its core we're still looking at
Speaker 1: a niche market. I don't think we're looking at a
Speaker 1: general market for many many reasons. But you can't necessarily
Speaker 1: draw those conclusions just from the the cost or the
Speaker 1: price of these products. Well, there is partially the fact
Speaker 1: that some companies have in fact stopped selling Yeah, those
Speaker 1: poorly performing uh cheap three D printers like in In January,
Speaker 1: three D Systems announced that it was going to stop
Speaker 1: selling um it's consumer level three D printers. The model
Speaker 1: that they're ditching is this industry unfavorite called Cube, which
Speaker 1: which retailed for about a thousand bucks, was generally reported
Speaker 1: to not work well, certainly not as well as competitors.
Speaker 1: Um The company is maintaining its Cube Pro, which is
Speaker 1: a manufacturing grade unit which sells for about three thousand
Speaker 1: bucks and is better, better rated in the industry. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think that this kind of thing is
Speaker 1: is definitely indicative of the early consumer boom just being
Speaker 1: a hype bubble um and and you know, companies have
Speaker 1: had to realize that the technology isn't just the hardware.
Speaker 1: It's the hardware and the software and neither is cheap
Speaker 1: enough or easy enough to use currently to to make
Speaker 1: three D printing at home but possible for that casual hobbyist.
Speaker 1: I think for printing to really be that compelling to
Speaker 1: a consumer, it has to be as dead simple as
Speaker 1: printing on paper. And the problem is it isn't. It's
Speaker 1: for multiple reasons it isn't. And like you were saying, Lauren,
Speaker 1: it's it's the software and the hardware combined. There are
Speaker 1: complications on both ends that are barriers to entry for
Speaker 1: your average person. Uh, someone who's willing to really put
Speaker 1: in the work. Obviously they can they can do it.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like there's a bouncer outside
Speaker 1: the three D printer world that says, I'm sorry, you
Speaker 1: don't make the cut. But it means a lot more effort.
Speaker 1: It's not something like even the plug in play Uh,
Speaker 1: printers that are on three D hubs dot com aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily completely intuitive and easy to use. They're less difficult
Speaker 1: to use than some of the other models. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: to get away from the technology itself for a moment
Speaker 1: and look, uh, you know, what is a what is
Speaker 1: a market analysts view of the overall uh you know,
Speaker 1: market outlook for three D printing companies. I did find
Speaker 1: in August CNBC article discussing this, it was talking about
Speaker 1: that year's collapse in value for three D printing companies.
Speaker 1: And apparently, in as we've been talking about three D printing,
Speaker 1: it generated a lot of financial interest and a lot
Speaker 1: of investment, and in fourteen all that sort of started
Speaker 1: falling apart, not for everybody, though, as I noted earlier,
Speaker 1: Stratusis was still doing well for most. But the article
Speaker 1: quotes a senior analystic Cannalysts named Tim Shepherd, and Shepherd
Speaker 1: says quote, I think last year we saw stock prices
Speaker 1: of some of the leading three D printing companies inflated
Speaker 1: beyond the level they should have been at based on hype,
Speaker 1: and investors jumped on the bandwagon. But this is a
Speaker 1: market where there's a lot of misunderstanding. The reality is
Speaker 1: that it has huge potential to make a transformation to
Speaker 1: the way products are made and designed, but those will
Speaker 1: take a while to kick in. And I think that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense, essentially saying people people were
Speaker 1: getting excited about a thing they didn't understand, excited too early.
Speaker 1: And there is in fact recent news that that demonstrates this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean there's still investment in three D
Speaker 1: printing companies. I was just reading news from today or
Speaker 1: I think the past couple of days about a three
Speaker 1: D printing startup called Carbon that has received more than
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty million in funding with investors like BMW,
Speaker 1: nikon Ge and the Japanese company js R um So
Speaker 1: that and that I think that's more on the industrial
Speaker 1: scale and manufacturing side. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's on the
Speaker 1: production side of the manufacturing industry, and that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of three D printing now seems like it's being
Speaker 1: focused car parts, machine parts, aerospace parts, that that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and uh even on the hobby end. I
Speaker 1: think that's largely what people have been using the technology
Speaker 1: from it. I mean, maybe not car parts, but but
Speaker 1: but y'all, there's so much three three D printed jewelry
Speaker 1: on etc. Right now. One of those pieces is currently
Speaker 1: on my wife's wrist. I'm sure it's beautiful, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's nifty. She liked it. Yeah, so yeah, I was like,
Speaker 1: I I could have printed that for you would have
Speaker 1: taken could you would have taken about eight months? Could you?
Speaker 1: Uh so? Yeah? I mean, I guess the question is
Speaker 1: how if we're wanting to know how things have changed
Speaker 1: in three D printing since we were first talking about it,
Speaker 1: you know what, three three and a half years ago.
Speaker 1: I think that over the past few years, various forms
Speaker 1: of additive manufacturing have proved useful in specific scenarios where
Speaker 1: it's worth investing in expensive, high quality technology, but at
Speaker 1: the consumer and hobbyist level, I think three D printing
Speaker 1: does sort of remain about as much of a novelty
Speaker 1: as it was two or three years ago. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you all would think about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: has it reached a valley in the hype cycle and
Speaker 1: if so, when's it going to recover? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: like like like looking looking at virtual reality, it's you know,
Speaker 1: like that had a public hay Day that was that
Speaker 1: was full of buzz about the incredible future, future future,
Speaker 1: and it was mainly focusing on these really like like
Speaker 1: far reaching entertainment applications, and and that failed so spectacularly
Speaker 1: that that was followed by a couple really kind of
Speaker 1: dark decades where the technology was still in use, but
Speaker 1: very much so out of the public eye. You know,
Speaker 1: it was being used for for for psychological therapy, for
Speaker 1: for astronaut training, stuff like virtual boy, purposes, for for
Speaker 1: making yourself really nauseated. So that's not even virtual reality,
Speaker 1: is it. I mean, it's it was an attempt to
Speaker 1: try and create something approaching virtual reality. I Uh, I
Speaker 1: definitely think that the there are parallels. So with virtual reality,
Speaker 1: you know, you had all this hype and The problem
Speaker 1: was when the public became aware of the actual state
Speaker 1: of the art of the technology at the time. This
Speaker 1: ain't like I've been hearing on the news exactly compared
Speaker 1: it to the hype. The two had some gaps between them,
Speaker 1: I chasms, so much so that the term virtual reality
Speaker 1: a lot of people a lot of people decided that
Speaker 1: they weren't even going to use the term virtual reality
Speaker 1: to describe their work anymore because it was considered a Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a stigma against it, so they started calling
Speaker 1: it virtual environments or other terminology to try and avoid VR.
Speaker 1: VR was considered toxic, and if you wanted to get
Speaker 1: funding for your projects, then you had to figure out
Speaker 1: something else. And it also meant that the they had
Speaker 1: to the people who were working in that field. They
Speaker 1: were starting to repurpose other equipment to act as VR
Speaker 1: equipment because they no longer had the money to build
Speaker 1: their own, you know, their own specific devices. So you
Speaker 1: had this huge amount of hype, and then you had
Speaker 1: the public kind of catch up to where the actual
Speaker 1: technology was, and then once those could not be reconciled,
Speaker 1: you saw a collapse. I think that's there's a really
Speaker 1: good parallel to be made with consumer three D printers
Speaker 1: in that respect. Um, Now, that's not saying that everyone
Speaker 1: was guilty of sharing this vision of a three D
Speaker 1: printer in every home and we're all printing out tables
Speaker 1: and chairs and stuff like that. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of journalists who had a much more modest view about
Speaker 1: three D printing, and they were talking about how they
Speaker 1: saw three D printing being more of an important role,
Speaker 1: playing more of an important role in small businesses, in
Speaker 1: production centers, where you might have a a small business
Speaker 1: that prints on demand and build old objects on demand,
Speaker 1: which is kind of similar to what we have now,
Speaker 1: although I would argue that what we have now is
Speaker 1: much more modest than even this projection. But this projection
Speaker 1: doesn't take into account the idea of an industry being
Speaker 1: overhyped and this collapsing in on itself somewhat right, if,
Speaker 1: in fact, we had had a closer, a more conservative
Speaker 1: build up with three D printing so many puns, then
Speaker 1: perhaps we wouldn't have had we wouldn't have had the
Speaker 1: precipitous fall, and we would see more examples of this.
Speaker 1: But if you were to go to like three D
Speaker 1: hubs dot com and you wanted to have something printed,
Speaker 1: you could do that, and that's the kind of future
Speaker 1: that a lot of journalists I would follow we're talking about.
Speaker 1: They said, Yeah, I don't really think that this technology
Speaker 1: is appropriate for the average person to have hooked up
Speaker 1: to their PC because it has such a high demand
Speaker 1: on your time and attention to get to a point
Speaker 1: where you're really comfortable using it effectively, that it's outside
Speaker 1: the realm of most consumers. So, uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: those people, I think we're being responsible there they were
Speaker 1: and being more grounded and realistic. Uh, it was not
Speaker 1: enough to counteract the hype where everyone was saying, look
Speaker 1: at the potential for this stuff and just equating that
Speaker 1: to being like right around the corner and we'll all
Speaker 1: have it at our fingertips all the time. Um, there
Speaker 1: are some big problems that we need to be solved
Speaker 1: for us to fix this. Because you asked, are we
Speaker 1: in a valley? And if so, do we ever climb
Speaker 1: out of it? And if so, when I mean, I
Speaker 1: assume we will at some point. I'm just thinking, how
Speaker 1: long will it take. I don't know that consumer three
Speaker 1: D printers are ever going to be a huge product.
Speaker 1: I think I think, I think it's like not the
Speaker 1: foreseeable future, like like I could see it in I
Speaker 1: mean maybe maybe the classic forty years, maybe even longer
Speaker 1: than that. When you get to a point where it
Speaker 1: truly is intuitive, it's easy to use the it's easy
Speaker 1: to load, it's easy to uh switch out materials, especially
Speaker 1: once we get to a point where the same device
Speaker 1: can print in multiple materials. We're seeing prototypes of that
Speaker 1: now on the professional side, nothing close to the consumer side.
Speaker 1: But if we get to that then maybe, But right
Speaker 1: now I would say that I think consumer three D
Speaker 1: printers are pretty much um consigned to being in the
Speaker 1: hobbyist realm and not not going much further than that. Um.
Speaker 1: So the challenge then is how many or really the
Speaker 1: question is how many companies will either have to switch
Speaker 1: their strategies so that they're making more professional level materials
Speaker 1: and fewer consumer ones, and which ones are just going
Speaker 1: to completely go out of business because they have dedicated
Speaker 1: themselves to producing a product for which there is no
Speaker 1: sustainable market. You know, uh, well, you know, as as
Speaker 1: we've as we've been saying, it sounds like a lot
Speaker 1: of companies are in fact making that switch, and it's
Speaker 1: it's why we are continuing to read a lot of headlines,
Speaker 1: or not even headlines, but maybe stories that are incorporating
Speaker 1: three D printing technology. Yeah, there's still life in the
Speaker 1: hobbyist realm. So while I'm being kind of doom and gloom,
Speaker 1: it's not like the hobbyists are going away. It's not
Speaker 1: like they're less passionate about using three D printers. And
Speaker 1: it's not like they're not pushing the envelope with what
Speaker 1: three D printers are capable of doing. They are doing
Speaker 1: all of those things. It's just it's a smaller population
Speaker 1: than your general PC owner population. Sure. Sure, on the
Speaker 1: professional level though, the print printers that are being produced
Speaker 1: are getting more detailed. Um. I've seen a couple of
Speaker 1: stories in the past couple of months about using three
Speaker 1: D printers to to for example, to create thin plastic
Speaker 1: membranes like like for you and fuel cells or water
Speaker 1: treatment or food processing that have very very finely patterned
Speaker 1: surfaces to help with particle flow or even with ion flow.
Speaker 1: UM or another example these a foam like microstructures that
Speaker 1: are three D printed that can retain their long term
Speaker 1: stability and usability better than traditionally manufactured materials, meaning that, like,
Speaker 1: like anything foami ish, like, like insulating material, shock absorbing
Speaker 1: stuff of flotation devices could could be made to last
Speaker 1: longer without breaking or without needing to be replaced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is something that we didn't really touch on.
Speaker 1: But three D printing has really advanced our understanding of
Speaker 1: material science anyways, like and even even given us the
Speaker 1: opportunity to play with some levels of micro structures up
Speaker 1: down to a certain scale. It's hard to use the
Speaker 1: additive manufacturing, especially the traditional three D printing technologies for
Speaker 1: anything truly truly tiny. For that, you've got to go
Speaker 1: with a slightly different approach. It's still sometimes called three
Speaker 1: D printing, but doesn't involve an extruder. Yeah, right, right,
Speaker 1: But it's why I like, like tissue printing hasn't hasn't
Speaker 1: really taken off yet, or hasn't really reached a level
Speaker 1: of usability yet. Getting down to the cellular level is
Speaker 1: not a little bit of a challenge. Yeah, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of progress in developing three D printers that
Speaker 1: are capable of using different materials for one job, that
Speaker 1: was one I had mentioned. So for years, three D
Speaker 1: printing has primarily been used for prototyping, but if you
Speaker 1: are able to print in multiple materials, that increases the
Speaker 1: utility of a printer and allows it to become a
Speaker 1: real manufacturing tool, so you can actually print a full
Speaker 1: product as opposed to like printing the shell or the
Speaker 1: casing or something pizza or a pizza. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: three D printed food. It's a thing. But imagine being
Speaker 1: able to print out an entire circuit board everything, Like
Speaker 1: you're able to print the substrate and then you're able
Speaker 1: to print the actual circuitry and have it all design
Speaker 1: that way. Tell me when will we print man long pig? Well,
Speaker 1: we're going back to food. And of course there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of stories about three D printing and medical applications,
Speaker 1: not just the ones about printing organs, not just for cannibalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, not not just kidney. That's a good thing.
Speaker 1: I have two of them because I want seconds. Um.
Speaker 1: The the goal of printing oregans is obviously one of
Speaker 1: those that we are striving for in medicine. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: we're talking about like the prosthetics. Uh, we're talking about
Speaker 1: um uh, some really interesting stuff. I read about a
Speaker 1: story from the Autonomous University of Puebla, which is actually
Speaker 1: the oldest university in Mexico, and in fact it's better
Speaker 1: known as the Benamerta Universe Universe adad Autonoma the Puebla
Speaker 1: in my accent is terrible, I know, I apologize, But
Speaker 1: they've developed a three D printed bio material that mimics
Speaker 1: bone and actually facilitates bone regen narration. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: often see this coming up in regenerative medicine and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, where there they need to substrate to to
Speaker 1: to apply the scaff material to. Yeah, and the substrate
Speaker 1: very often is a three D printed one because they
Speaker 1: can custom make it to their specifications. And then also
Speaker 1: something that goes hand in hand with three D printing
Speaker 1: technology and modeling is using scanners being able to scan
Speaker 1: physical objects so that you can create the three D
Speaker 1: virtual model and then print a replica of it. We're
Speaker 1: starting to see a lot more of those kind of
Speaker 1: entering that prosumer consumer market, which that that removes a
Speaker 1: big barrier, assuming it works well and assuming it has
Speaker 1: an intuitive interface, which are two big assumptions. I know. Uh,
Speaker 1: it does remove part of the barrier, which is building
Speaker 1: out those virtual models for as as a plan to
Speaker 1: send to a three D printer that that is a
Speaker 1: skill that is uh not easy to attain. It requires
Speaker 1: a lot of practice, a lot of work. And if
Speaker 1: you have a scanner, then you can kind of do
Speaker 1: some shortcuts. Right. If you can actually scan the thing
Speaker 1: you want to print, and it's able to create a
Speaker 1: an accurate virtual replica and you are able to send
Speaker 1: that to a printer, you avoid a lot of steps
Speaker 1: that otherwise would take you a very long time to
Speaker 1: to do, especially if you had not had a lot
Speaker 1: of experience and computer aided design. So we're seeing that
Speaker 1: as well, and maybe that will increase the hobbyist population
Speaker 1: a little bit because you've removed one of the barriers there,
Speaker 1: but you still have other issues, like just the idea
Speaker 1: that you have to sometimes babysit printing jobs and make
Speaker 1: sure that everything is going all right and not turning
Speaker 1: into the plastic thread of doom the way it would here. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would hope that we would get out
Speaker 1: of that valley. I would love to see three D
Speaker 1: printing get a or like realistic uh standing, and and
Speaker 1: increase in popularity, but at a natural rate as opposed
Speaker 1: to a hyped rate where you do have this bubble burst.
Speaker 1: I think we did an episode, and I may be
Speaker 1: wrong about this. I know I've talked about it before
Speaker 1: about how uh people tend to frame technologies as having
Speaker 1: a particular um course where you've got the hype part
Speaker 1: of products uh uh existence, and then you've got the peak,
Speaker 1: and then you've got the decline, and then eventually it
Speaker 1: levels out, and sometimes they level out higher up than
Speaker 1: other technologies do. Uh. And I remember actually looking at
Speaker 1: a map of one where it was really interesting because
Speaker 1: it it put different technologies along that pathway, saying like
Speaker 1: three D printing at that time was still on the
Speaker 1: upward climb for hype, uh, and other technologies that had
Speaker 1: been out for a bit, like three D televisions were
Speaker 1: on the down words slope, right. So uh And some
Speaker 1: of sometimes you could argue the hype is something that
Speaker 1: was not necessarily fostered, right, That just kind of happens
Speaker 1: because people get excited about it and it just sort
Speaker 1: of has an organic build to its own. In other cases,
Speaker 1: it's very much a fostered approach, where it has been
Speaker 1: a manufactured attempt to to increase interest in something in
Speaker 1: order to sell more units. Uh. We've we've seen examples
Speaker 1: of both. I would argue three D television falls into
Speaker 1: that second category a little more than the first. I
Speaker 1: might be biased. I also covered three D televisions for
Speaker 1: so many years that, uh, I'm a little bitter about it. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I remember like every CS you would come back when
Speaker 1: when I was on tech stuff and we would just
Speaker 1: sit there and you would be like, yep, there were
Speaker 1: some there were some of those. Ye, mansion televisions have
Speaker 1: gotten so three dimensional they have. I mean, there's it's
Speaker 1: weird because he's still trying to do that, not as much,
Speaker 1: not as much now. That was that was a real
Speaker 1: effort for uh, not just television companies, but but content
Speaker 1: companies like Sony that does both. That it was a
Speaker 1: real attempt to push that technology as a way of
Speaker 1: of adding perceived value because there because once you hit
Speaker 1: a certain resolution, uh, it's really hard to convince people
Speaker 1: that you're getting that much more out of your device
Speaker 1: than you were before. Same thing is true with three
Speaker 1: D printers. Another great example three D printerers, you get
Speaker 1: to a certain point beyond that your your returns are
Speaker 1: so low you're getting a reduced return, like you you
Speaker 1: might be paying five dollars more for what appears to
Speaker 1: be a relatively subtle improvement in performance. Uh, fewer and
Speaker 1: fewer people are willing to make that leap. Same thing
Speaker 1: is true, and lots of different technologies obviously, but this
Speaker 1: was kind of fun to look at. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where you know you can't
Speaker 1: help but feel maybe a little sad that the hype
Speaker 1: was overinflated things so quickly, because you know, it makes
Speaker 1: it harder to make progress. Once that bubble bursts. Doesn't
Speaker 1: mean necessarily everything goes away. The Internet didn't go away
Speaker 1: after the dot com bubble burst, but man, things were
Speaker 1: messy for about two years. It was it was not
Speaker 1: an easy industry to work in. Uh, but that's a
Speaker 1: story for another time. So this was interesting, and Joe,
Speaker 1: thank you for suggesting it. It was Joe's idea that
Speaker 1: we revisit this particular topic. And uh so, guys, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future topics or a topic
Speaker 1: you would like us to revisit, why not write us
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