The New MakerBot Replicator Might Just Change Your World

The New MakerBot Replicator Might Just Change Your World

The New MakerBot Replicator Might Just Change Your World

Photo: Joe Pugliese


2010 bug- Design Wants to Be Free




Photo: Joe Pugliese



As the printers got more reliable, though, attention shifted from the machines to the designs they could print. At my house, the killer app for our MakerBots has been toys: dollhouse furniture, board game pieces, models. Print, paint, play. Free design libraries like MakerBot's own Thingiverse and equivalents from Tinkercad and Autodesk mean that there are premade CAD files available to do just about anything you can imagine. It's simply a matter of downloading them, modifying them if necessary, and sending them to the MakerBot to be printed.



A generation ago, people messing around with those original Macs produced some terrible layouts—typically a dog's breakfast of fonts and clip art. But then they got better. When those skills moved on to the web, an entirely new way of publishing was born—and a new industry to go with it. Desktop publishing changed the world.



Let's start at the dentist's office. Many custom dental fittings are now 3-D printed—like the series of mouth guards, each slightly different from the last, that are used to change tooth alignment over months. After a dental technician scans the current position of the teeth, all positions intermediate to the desired end point are modeled by software and then printed out in plastic. Also, if you're lucky enough to have a dentist who can replace a crown in a single sitting, it's because models are 3-D printed and then the replacement teeth are milled right there in the office.


Commercial 3-D printing works with only a few dozen types of materials, mostly metals and plastics, but more are in the works. Researchers are experimenting with exotic "inks" that range from wood pulp to sugar. Some devices can extrude liquid foods, like cupcake icing and melted chocolate. Soon we'll be able to print electric circuits, potentially making complex electronics from scratch.



The software then "slices" the object into horizontal layers as thin as the printer can handle. As the printer head moves over the build area, it deposits material along the perimeter of the object, with the software picking a path that minimizes the distance the head must move. Then, once a slice is finished, the printer's build platform moves down a tiny fraction of an inch and the head traces the next slice, laying down another layer of material. And so it goes, layer by layer, until the object is finished.

The whole process is almost magical to watch. That's the beauty of digital fabrication. You don't need to know how the machines do their work or how to optimize their tool paths; software figures all that out. We're moving toward an era when, just like with your 2-D printer, you don't have to think about how your 3-D printer works, only what you want to produce with it.


So once you have a design on your computer, you can prototype a single copy on your desktop fabricator—or upload it to a commercial manufacturing service and generate thousands. Essentially, you "print local" on your MakerBot and "print global" with cloud manufacturing services ranging from Shapeways and Ponoko to Chinese mass-production facilities found through Modern CAD software like the free Autodesk 123D even offers wizards to make it simple to go from one copy to many. All you have to do is click the right buttons, enter your credit card number, and you're in the manufacturing business. The services will even ship the finished goods directly to customers.

Photo: Joe Pugliese

Everything about the Replicator 2—how it's designed, made, and sold—is geared to get it into the homes of ordinary Americans. Start with the printing material: The entry level Replicator 2 uses an ecofriendly bioplastic called PLA (polylactic acid), which can be made from cornstarch. Unlike other materials, PLA doesn't shrink very much when it cools, and overall it requires the machine to be less fine-tuned. It's also compostable, and as Pettis says, it "smells like waffles" when it prints. MakerBot's PLA will be available on its website for as little as $48 per kilogram, enough material to make nearly 400 chess pieces. (The Replicator 2X is designed to use ABS plastic, the same material that Legos are made from—it's also nontoxic, but users should make sure to keep the room well ventilated while printing.)

MakerBot is also hoping to radically cut its delivery time to buyers. Previous MakerBots were essentially manufactured only after an order was already in hand, meaning that six weeks or more could go by while you waited impatiently for your machine. That's the sort of thing that devoted makers will put up with, but it won't fly with the general consumer market—especially around the holidays, when people want gifts to arrive by the appointed day. For MakerBot, though, this means a new level of up-front cost before the company realizes any sales. Pettis' goal is to have 2,100 Replicator 2s on hand by the September 19 release date, far more than it has ever stocked of a previous product.

The company is making an even bigger gamble on retail: It's opening a store that same day in Manhattan, on Mulberry Street just north of Houston. Besides selling the new machines, the store will host a mini manufacturing operation so people can see objects being made. "You'll be able to buy MakerBotted things in the store that have been made right there," Pettis says. "I expect tour buses to stop by and kids' faces to be glued to the window displays as they watch products getting manufactured before their eyes."

All of this adds up to a risky time for MakerBot, but Pettis sees the demonstration effect as key: Just as with the early PCs, the appeal of the devices can't quite be understood until they're seen in action. "Before people buy a MakerBot, they think of all the practical applications—all the stuff they can cross off their 'honey-do' list, the things they can fix around the house"—broken parts on the bike or the dishwasher, or a new toothbrush holder to fit a tight space. "But once they have it," Pettis says, "their mind flips a switch. They start printing out amazing things, wonderful things."


The kids themselves are a given; as I've learned with my own children, they already understand natively how to work with 3-D geometries onscreen, thanks to videogames. (You may not think of The Sims or Minecraft as CAD programs, but that's essentially what they are.) Much as the first generation of software entrepreneurs were kids like the young Bill Gates, who grew up with the first machines and intuitively grasped their potential, so the next generation of 3-D-printing innovators may be children. High schools would be smart to bring back shop class but rename it design class, a shift that really would entail just adding a few MakerBots to the school's existing computer labs. How many students wouldn't rather design and print real things than mock up yet another PowerPoint presentation?


Then there are also the sleeping giants: HP, Epson, and other 2-D printing titans. So far they've been content to either license technology or focus just on high-end professional printers. But how much longer until consumer 3-D volume becomes great enough that these giants awake? Ask Pettis and his response is confident: "By that time, we'll already be way ahead of them."




Digital fabrication also takes the expensive parts of traditional manufacturing and makes them cheap. In mass production, the more complicated a product is and the more changes you make, the more it costs. But with digital fabrication, it's the reverse: The traits that are expensive in traditional manufacturing become free. Consider:




When Star Trek captain Jean-Luc Picard wanted a hot beverage, he'd simply tell the Enterprise Replicator to make "Tea. Earl Gray. Hot." It's no coincidence that MakerBot chose the same name. The tea itself is still a ways off, but the cup? You can make it today.
