I have been doing some research on this and was wanting to see if anyone else would like to discuss. A friend of mine who is an executive in the freight business is worried that this technology could impact his business over time.
Forbes article
But what if you could make that replacement part yourself?
Welcome to 3D printing. A vessel’s computers may one day have a database of 3-Dimensional CAD (Computer Aided Design) images of each and every part on the ship, from nuts to bolts, all the way up to complex engine parts. If any of these should fail, the printer could have a suitable, made-to-spec replacement in a matter of minutes to hours.
“3D printing has the potential to change everything” says a former ship engineer. First used in the late 1980′s, this technology has been called Rapid Manufacturing, a term coined by inventor S. Scott Crump who later went on to start Stratasys [NASDAQ:SSYS] I has also been called additive manufacturing or stereolithography, more complicated terms for similar technology created at about the same time by 3D Systems [NYSE😀DD] founder Charles ‘Chuck’ Hull. While both companies have traded publicly for a decade or more, the technology has gained traction in recent years and has launched both companies into an organic growth spurt, prompting acquisitions and strong numbers, with little to no debt. While these two companies are the leaders in market cap, the entire publicly traded market cap for 3D printing companies is comparatively small, roughly 2 Billion USD. And many companies that work in this space are still privately held.
Today, 3D Printers have evolved to make a variety of objects using a laser or extruder (the material output part of the printer, best described as a futuristic hot glue gun) that move along an X, Y and Z axis to build an object in three dimensions, layer by layer, sometimes only microns thick at a time, depending on the desired resolution of the object. This method eliminates a lot of wasted materials, as any leftover powdered substrate can be immediately used on another project, alleviating the need for injection molding, setup costs, cutting, sanding, drilling and having scraps of material left over, as is common with traditional manufacturing methods. The most impressive part: economies of scale cease to
be an issue as costs for single parts become standardized in relation to the costs of the material being used.
Forbes article