Royal Mail Pilots 3D Printing Service 59
New submitter MRothenberg writes: Just in time for the holidays, the UK's postal service is testing out a 3D printing service at its central London delivery center. Customers can order "ready-to-print" objects (including shoes, soap dishes and phone cases) or bring in their own originals to duplicate and send via Royal Mail. The postal company's COO predicts consumer demand for 3D printing will grow 95 percent by 2017.
Shape DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't wait to see what they come up with to add DRM to the shape of things so you can't copy them in a 3D scanner/printer.
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Anything with internal elements that cannot be scanned by a laser, or anything with finer tolerances than the printer can produce, or anything made from materials they can't print in, etc. The vast majority of 3d printings is only for cheap crappy plastic baubles because the printers are too slow, too inaccurate, and print with crappy material.
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Yes, 3-D printed hands for children are cheap crappy plastic baubles.
http://enablingthefuture.org/
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Yeah, 'DRM' is what is going to hold it back, not the fact that there is very little desirable stuff that can be printed (at home or locally).
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This is actually kind of interesting.
I'm waiting to see what companies like Citadel Miniatures is going to do in response to gamers printing their own figures.
It's not fair to exactly call them customers since, you know, they're printing their own figures. I guess they can try selling them 3d shape files of figs instead.
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If they could, it might have to be smaller than the printer that printed it.
Why ? (Score:2)
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I think they should skip the whole process and 3D-print their own oil.
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A DeVry MBA on the site. That's a first!
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Why does a postal service think it can make money off of 3D printed stuff better than others ? Sounds very desperate.
The Royal Mail is still upset about losing the phone service. This is their way of fighting back.
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Wait. What?
British phone service used to be run by the Royal Mail. It got split out as British Telecom in 1980 and then it got sold off by the government in 1984.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
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Why don't they start selling groceries? Or getting into the adult webcam business? Or, hell, why not ANYTHING? 3D printing has nothing to do with the postal service and makes as much sense as any of my suggestions.
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But someone's going to make a fortune shipping printing medium.
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Because they are seeing their traditional business model die and are trying to get in on the "future". Can you imagine if you don't need things shipped anymore, rather you just print it out? The entire shipping industry would collapse.
There are still many things (i.e. legal documents, art object, etc.) that will never be digitalized. These things need to be physically delivered. The delivery industrial may be shrunk, but it will never go away or collapse.
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When it comes right down to it, what CAN be printed (in home or at least locally) that is desirable and makes up a significant part of shipped things? It can't really think of anything.
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Why does a postal service think it can make money off of 3D printed stuff better than others ? Sounds very desperate.
Because they are seeing their traditional business model die and are trying to get in on the "future". Can you imagine if you don't need things shipped anymore, rather you just print it out? The entire shipping industry would collapse.
Not everything can be replaced by a coloured plastic equivalent, and I seriously doubt that home 3D printers are going to be capable of printing out mobile phones, leather shoes, engine cylinders, diamond rings, hardback books, chocolates, telescopes, or laptops any time soon.
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i think they are calling that delivery service "Amazon" these days.
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By 2017, they anticipate 1.95 customers.
hrm... (Score:2)
The postal company's COO predicts consumer demand for 3D printing will grow 95 percent by 2017.
So 95% of 0 is...
Their 3D is special.. (Score:2)
Copyright? (Score:2)
If the MafiAA have objections to anytime someone vaguely considers making a safety backup of a piece of digital media, I have to imagine companies across the world are going to unite in objecting to a non-digital "bring us your thing and you can make a copy of it" policy?
Unsustainable business model (Score:3)
Who are the customers of this? I am skeptical of the business model for 3D printing as a service.
There are 2 kinds of people who want to 3D print:
- Makers
- Gimmick lovers
The makers won't use this service. 3 years ago every hackerspace had a 3D printer, and it was a cool reason to join up. Now, the makers just buy their own printer. The cost has gone down, and designing a 3D object is an iterative interactive process.
The gimmick lovers could use the service. There are two types of gimmicks:
- Stock gimmicks that are all the same
- Custom gimmicks
If there is significant demand for a stock gimmick, then it is cheaper and faster to mass produce the item and sell it. This is how we have done it for decades. Popular items on Thingiverse [thingiverse.com] and are now sold on Amazon. [amazon.com]
That leaves custom gimmicks and low-demand stock items for 3D printing. Does the royal mail have a system for customizing gimmicks? If not, then the pool grows yet smaller. I don't know if that customer base is big enough to be profitable. Maybe someone who wants a custom or rare gimmick can find a friend with a 3D printer. That's how it was with 2D printing back in the 80s. You always had a friend with a computer and a color dot-matrix printer, and they could make those "Happy Birthday" banners for you. I suspect that might be the way this really works.
How many places offer CNC routing as a service? That seems like the most equivalent thing to 3D printing. It has been around for decades, but I don't know of the post-office offering that service.
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What about the CNC services from King [imdb.com] Roland [rolanddga.com]?
Re:Unsustainable business model (Score:4, Insightful)
The makers won't use this service. 3 years ago every hackerspace had a 3D printer, and it was a cool reason to join up. Now, the makers just buy their own printer. The cost has gone down, and designing a 3D object is an iterative interactive process.
There was, and is, and will continue to be, a huge difference in what you can do with a 3d printer that costs a few hundred (currency units) and one that costs a few thousand or tens of thousands of (currency units). A Maker who is not interested in mass producing things but instead wants to create a few interesting objects at a time will probably see a huge benefit to being able to just order up the object (instead of outlaying a huge amount for a printer) from a service that has both a very high quality printer, and a delivery chain to get it to them very fast. How many Makers like that are there? Who knows.
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A few hundreds, maybe. When you reach thousands of units, there's already specialized companies offering their services such as Protomold [protolabs.com].
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You can even do small mass production using 3D printers. For a few hundred/thousand pieces, it's likely cheaper to buy 3D printed stuff than to invest in injection molds.
There are moulding processes that are economical from a few tens of units. Mostly these involve making soft moulds from 3D printed forms and the moulds are good for perhaps 50 units each. They are slower though so if you want a hundred units quickly it might be better to print, and just contract out to multiple printing places if you need extra capacity to speed it up.
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I don't know, it sounds somewhat interesting for me. You see, In London, space is expensive. I barely have the space in my tiny flat for a desk, bed and TV. Even having the computers on overnight is annoying because I can hear the fans when I try to sleep.
Much as I would like a 3D printer, I don't have the space for it. Nor could I deal with the noise (and most likely smell) while it spends hours printing.
The only hackerspace is clear across the city for me, so it isn't really convenient to go there to use
95% growth (Score:2)
Just a little bit more.
$40 pencil holder (Score:1)
Royal Mail Pilots 3D Printing Service (Score:2)
"There's your widget, sir!"
*Drops plastic piece out of airplane window*
Poor Demand (Score:2)
"The postal company's COO predicts consumer demand for 3D printing will grow 95 percent by 2017."
That's rather limited vision. I would expect more like 10,000% growth. After all, right now it is teeny-tiny.
"bring in their own originals to duplicate" (Score:1)
And they have the nerve calling us thieves for downloading duplicated computer files.
As soon as a government agency does the same thing - gawd we are innovating and offering a great service to the public.
Fuck You!
Royal Mail spending spree (Score:2)
Clearly, the Purchasing/IT department went a bit crazy with this years budget. Purchasing a crap load of 3D printers to play with.
The CEO found out about the order and asked the marketing department how they could recoup the costs of the printers, whilst making some profit at the same time.
Say hello to "3d printing by a company that delivers mail".
There must be a better way (Score:2)
So you 3D print an object at one location, thereby converting it from bits to atoms, and then you send the result via the post to another location?
I think there is a more efficient way to do this, but I can’t quite put my finger on it...