Universal Replicators

I was looking at thingiverse today and thinking about my old supercuber website - it would host stl files online - which is basically what thingiverse does. It was focusing on specifically embedding stl files in your blog with an iframe which makes me think that I was thinking about the problem wrong - it was a feature not a business. To make the business I really needed to make thingiverse.

Interestingly, thingiverse seems like its going through a lot of organizational challenges - people really don’t like the website and numerous redesigns have ended badly. Heres my guess - 3D printing isn’t what it was going to be. This means that the originally well hyped and well funded site wasn’t getting as much traction as it promised it would and thus it was handed to new ownership, then to new ownership, etc. Basically startup problems.

Now, why did I want to make supercuber? Why was thingiverse so hyped? Why haven’t I thought about this in 11 years and meanwhile, thingiverse has struggled through those 11 years? The idea of universal replicators is still really cool - the idea that every product in your house can be made by you and by one machine, and for which the blueprints are available online. These blueprints can be collaborated on so that in the future, when you need a hammer, you can make your own best possible hammer that everyone else has too.

Obviously 3D printing technology isn’t there yet - the manufacturing process for hammers is suprisingly complex and 3d printers can barely print metal well. Even assuming 3D printing was perfect - where you can build a hammer atom by atom starting with a block of carbon or some metal, Im not sure that these replicators would be that great. Basically everyone would keep large stashes of pure elements in their houses for anything they hoped to build rather than go to the store.

The thing is, everyone pretty much uses the same stuff. The hammer that works for you works for me - even the iphone that works for you works for me. Even the car, and the bike, etc. This makes mass manufacturing efficient. Now a hammer factory can make hammers for everyone with a process that consumes less energy than building them atom by atom - it just isn’t that hard to go to the store to buy something. Theres a reason our homes pile up with endless stuff. None of this would work if we all needed different stuff but we don’t so it works great.

In summary, I don’t think universal replicators would be that useful. Thus even if 3d printing evolved to that level, I still don’t think it would be that useful. I guess its still cool, but I can no longer see the light.