Hi,
I’ve wrote a small post on Medium about the Distributed Manufacturing and how this could enable a new kind of product: Indie hardware.
As someone may remember I’m the founder of 3DRacers, a 3D Printed and smartphone-controlled car game, that we’ll produce through 3DHubs, and I’ve shared my experience:
https://medium.com/@3DRacers/distributed-manufacturing-hardware-is-the-new-startup-5be6c2bc4774
“The customer is in charge of the production, and can even become the designer, driving a positive feedback loop that can lead to a new wave of innovation, akin to the one from the IT and the start-up world.”
What do the community of 3DHubs think about it? What difficulties do you foresee?
Marco D’Alia
Founder @ 3DRacers
4 Likes
Hey Marco,
Obviously a bit biased, but I think distributed manufacturing is very much a step in the right direction. The difficulty I see is the integration of addititive manufacturing techniques like 3D printing and electronics. However, there are already a solution may be closer than imagined with machines like the Voxel8 coming out that can 3D print conductive paste.
Alex
1 Like
I agree,
conductive filament can ease the assembly of the object, binding the electronic parts together, without the need of cables or soldering.
And when you need more complex electronics, there are also machine that fabricate PCB boards like Cartesian Co. or Voltera.
These machine aren’t quite ready yet, but today engineers can design the electronics around the 3D printed plastics to overcome some of the limitations.
