Tag: open source

Could 3D printing be lurching up the hype cycle?

3D printing is hot, so hot it’s found a place on the hype cycle.

3D printing is undoubtedly a game changing technology that changes the economics and scalability of manufacturing. But is it possible the technology is becoming over-hyped?

Two stories today illustrate the opportunities and potential of 3D printing; a home made SLR camera and NASA manufacturing their own rocket parts.

NASA’s experiment shows how precision, low demand components could be made. One of the problems with procuring parts like rocket engine injectors is that the production runs are low so the manufacturing costs are high given there are no economies of scale involved.

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing also has the advantage that components can be manufactured in one piece rather than requiring assembly from a number of different parts. In turn this reduces production times and errors.

Printing your own camera seems a bit of waste of time and money seeing that cameras aren’t particularly expensive and the one printed isn’t a digital SLR – your have to find somewhere to buy and process the film.

The point though with Bozardeux’s project is that it is open source – anyone can modify or adapt the design and that is where the potential lies.

While the possibilities are endless with 3D printing, it may well be that the technology is being overhyped. Both the rocket engine injector and the SLR camera are early stage proofs of concept, neither are ready for full time use.

It also has to be kept in mind that traditional manufacturing methods aren’t going away – there will always be products more suited to mass production or using materials that can’t be fed through a 3D printer.

Right now we’re on the early stage of the hype cycle with 3D printing and while the potential is clear, the immediate future of the technology being oversold is also becoming apparent.

That of course means opportunity for many entrepreneurs and their investors, but it also means you have to be very careful in choosing technologies or where to place your bets.

In poker it’s said if you don’t know who the patsy is at the table, then it’s probably you. The same is true when a new technology is being hyped.

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Open source manufacturing

Open source hardware promises to change manufacturing and resurrect the art of soldering

Chinese business website Caixin Online has a great video on China’s Open Source Hardware Movement, this is an area that promises to change the manufacturing industry.

Open Source is the philosophy of sharing intellectual property and allowing anyone to improve the idea on the proviso they share their changes with the rest of the world.

The hope is that open sourced products end up being more reliable than proprietary designs due to scrutiny from hundreds, or thousands, of reviewers.

Until recently, open source has been largely restricted to the software world but now it’s moving into broader Engineering and manufacturing circles.

As the Caixin video shows, the open source hardware movement is introducing geeks to a tool which many thought was dead – the soldering iron.

I noticed this a week or so ago when I walked into a co-working space and found the lady I was meeting hunched over a soldering iron putting together a part for a quadcopter.

Right now soldering parts to build quadcopters or game controllers is just the beginning, the really interesting things start when open source meets 3D printing – then we’ll see some real game changing things happen.

Soldering iron picture courtesy of Bomazi through Wikimedia Commons.

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Democratising Big Data

Why a not for profit disrupting Google and the Big Data industry is important for business and society

Common Crawl is a not-for-profit web crawler service that makes the data collected open for all to use. A post on the MIT Technology Review blog speculates how the initiative might spawn the next Google.

One of the problems with Big Data is that it’s held mainly by large corporations and government agencies, both of which have the tendency to keep their data private on that basis that information is power and power means money.

We see this in the business models of Facebook, Google and many of Silicon Valley’s startups; the information garnered about users is as, if not more so, valuable as an utility from the product.

Initiatives like Common Crawl tilt the balance somewhat back towards consumers, citizens, and smaller businesses.

How well Common Crawl and other similar initiatives fare remains to be seen – Wikileaks was a good example of how such projects can flare out, collapse under the weight of egos or be harrassed by corporatist interests.

In search, Google are open to disruption as they tweak their results to suit initiatives like Google Plus. During the company’s earnings call earlier this week Larry Page spoke of the challenges of staying focused on the opportunities that matter, it may well be the company is more distracted from its core business than it should be.

Whether Common Crawl disrupts Google is up to history, it could just as well be a couple of kids called Sergei and Larry with a smart idea.

The imperative now though is to try and keep as much public data available for everyone to use and not lock it away for the privileged few. That will let the future Googles develop while making our societies more fairer and open.

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