This article written by Amit Mirchandani, MD, Lucid Design and Chief Creative Officer, Kuliza, was published in issue 07 of Social Technology Quarterly. Summary: 3D printing and the Internet are enabling manufacturing to become more customizable and local. It thereby has the potential to disrupt conventional and large-scale models of manufacturing.

1. Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 07 45
3D printing and the Internet are enabling manufacturing
to become more customizable and local. It thereby has the
potential to disrupt conventional and large-scale models of
manufacturing.
by Amit Mirchandani
Credits: 3D Ocean
The Changing Face
of Manufacturing
Communities
Herein lies the dilemma of getting products
to customers today: it takes a lot of
energy to make, it uses materials that
take a lot of energy to collect, the factory
struggles to achieve the scale with so much
customization. It takes even more energy
to transport and in the end it all ends up
costing too much – both in terms of money
and the environmental toll it takes.
Enter a Paradigm Shift
Teenage Engineering is a Swedish
company that designs and sells a range of
synthesizers. It is a small company offering
innovative and offbeat products and has
a loyal fan base of musicians and sound
artists around the world.
Recently, it launched a range of accessories
for their popular OP-1 synthesizer. These
allow one to create a variety of additional
At the time of the Industrial Revolution,
manufacturers began to make mass-
produced products for consumers to use.
Using vast amounts of energy and enormous
machines housed in large factories, they
were able to stamp, shape, mould, contort,
and wrangle various materials into particular
shapes. These parts came together to serve
a function. It was a far cry to imagine even
one of these machines living in our homes
and inconceivable to have the multiple
machines one would require to make the
various parts of an average product.
Skip forward to today, when brands and
manufacturers are two separate entities.
Consumers are all over the world and
they want things fast, they want things
cheap, they want things in custom sizes
and finishes to suit their requirements and
personal styles.

2. 46
and unexpected sounds and functions
by twisting, turning, cranking, linking and
combining the knobs that exist on the
synthesizer coupled with a software upgrade
that activates those functions. The cost of
the knob attachments, cranks, and rubber
bands range from $8 to $16, however fans
were disappointed with the cost to ship one
of these products, which ran upwards of $25
to locations outside of their base in Sweden.
The company responded by uploading 3D
data files of the products on their website.
If you own a 3D printer you can print the
products for yourself. If you do not you can
print them at Shapeways.com (a 3D printing
company based in the US) at a fraction of
the cost and get it shipped locally to US fans
also for a fraction of the cost!
I see a shift in the brand-manufacturer-
consumer relationship paradigm here.
Moreover, Teenage Engineering has
pioneered a new form of product
manufacture and delivery. One in which
the manufacturing happens locally at a
much smaller and customizable scale, the
value of the products are not determined
by the cost of the finished-shipped-retailed
goods, but the intellectual property that
they provide for your use. What you will be
paying for is a license to use their IP. This
entire customization and delivery method
will facilitate itself over the Internet. You
could even imagine a try-before-you-buy
mechanism in which you print out something
to see whether it fits, works, enhances or
satisfies your requirements and style.
Enter Home 3D Printing
Cubify is a website offering 3D printable files
to download for free or to buy, 3D printing
capabilities through the cloud, 3D creation
apps and a 3D home printer called the cube.
You can even become a Cubify artist and
upload 3D files for products you want to sell
on their site for royalties.
Cubify describes their 3D printer’s
capabilities as, “(it) prints in 3D... which
means that instead of putting ink onto a
flat surface like regular printing, it builds up
material in three dimensions to create a real
object. It melts plastic filament, then draws
with it in a very fine layer. It then builds
another fine layer of plastic on top of this
one, and then another, and another, building
your idea in slices from the bottom-up until
you have a plastic object ready to hold.
Think of it like dispensing frozen yogurt from
a machine: you can build up your cone to be
pretty big! 3D printing on a Cube is like that,
only lets you make way cooler shapes with
more detail, and isn’t edible.”
There are no limitations with what you can
build, except for that it must fit into the print
area. You can print in 10 different colours
in a special type of ABS plastic that is safe
and recyclable.

3. Kuliza Social Technology Quarterly Issue 07 47
Also, with their 3D creation app, you can
generate 3D files that you can print at home
or by using their cloud powered industrial
3D printers.
These capabilities will change the nature
of products, what functions they are
capable of and how we will create, use and
dispose products. I see the ability to recycle
materials and change the functions as your
needs change. I also see a replacement of
the conventional product supply chain with
big savings for the environment in transport.
Enter the Future of 3D printing
NASA has floated a concept whereby a 3D
printer could be sent into space. It would
have the capability to salvage asteroids
or space junk or use material sent from
Earth. These materials would then be put
through the 3D printing process to build a
spacecraft, space station, space telescope
or satellite outwards from the 3D printer!
This would save tremendous resources and
open up the design capabilities of objects in
space without the constraints of having to
squeeze them into a rocket or build them to
withstand earth’s gravity.
This idea is still several years away, but the
project has received funding to see whether
the concept makes business sense.
What this means to people living back on
earth is the ability to launch all projects - big
or small - such as a toaster or a complete
house - from a 3D printer with salvaged
or virgin materials. The printer will not
only build part of itself, but the equipment
required to get any job done, to actual parts
that will make the completed product you
are trying to build. Starting at the printer and
building outwards from it. There will only be
some assembling required!
References
Brandon, “3D Printing, The Future of Customer
Service?”Astro Studios,08 Nov 2012.
“Cube 3D Printer.” Cubify.
Hsu, Jeremy. “NASA Turns to 3D Printing for Self-
Building Spacecraft.”Tech News Daily.Tech Media
Network,13 Sep 2012.
Photo Credits
Top Left: Teenage Engineering
Left: Cubify
Bottom: Unlimited Tethers