The Era of Absolutely Fabulous Manufacturing Is Coming

Only 30 years ago, it seemed inconceivable that most American households would have their own computers.

In 1977, DEC’s president, Ken Olsen, notoriously proclaimed, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.”

At the time, computers were mostly huge, expensive mainframes or minicomputers, kept in chilled rooms, and they received instructions on punch cards.

Few people could imagine how computing power and speed would multiply, hardware would shrink to fit onto the desktops or the laps of users, and the user interface would become so simple that a child or a grandmother could use it.

Keep that image in mind as we explore the next revolution in technology: personal fabrication.

Just as the PC brought computing power into the home, the PF, or personal fabricator, will bring manufacturing power into the home.

Among the leading visionaries of the PF movement is Neil Gershenfeld, the director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, which consists of 15 faculty members from a variety of disciplines, including physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and engineering.

In his book, FAB,1 Gershenfeld explains an important distinction between PCs and PFs.

Personal computers made the digital world of bits accessible to individuals.

By contrast, personal fabricators will make the physical world of atoms accessible to individuals.

Also, while PCs have become smaller and easier to use than mainframes, the process for making them is still complex.

That won’t be the case with PFs.

As Gershenfeld explains, PFs are machines that can make other machines, including other PFs.

He compares PFs to printers that can print things rather than images.

They work by digitizing fabrication, as earlier devices digitized communications and computation.

What this means, according to Gershenfeld, is that a PF will be able to make anything ? including itself ? by putting atoms together.

Just as a printer’s ink cartridge contains different colors of ink that can be instructed to reproduce an image on paper, MIT’s research lab is inventing inks that can “print” insulators, conductors, and semiconductors to make circuits.

Researchers are also working to insert structural materials into the printing cartridges that will create mechanical parts in three dimensions.

While a mass-produced, desktop personal fabricator is still years away from the marketplace, Gershenfeld and his colleagues at MIT have already used seed money from the National Science Foundation to create “fab labs” in the field.

These fab labs are prototypes of what a finished PF will be like, in the same way that minicomputers provided a glimpse of the potential impact that PCs would make when they became small enough and cheap enough to be widely used.

A fab lab combines several existing machines with new software and processes developed at MIT.

It includes a laser cutter to cut out two-dimensional shapes; a sign cutter that uses a computer-controlled knife; a milling machine to make circuit boards; and tools for programming microcontrollers to embed logic.

Ultimately, the goal is to use the fab lab to replace its parts with new parts it makes itself, so that the labs become self-reproducing machines.

In 2002, Gershenfeld sent the first fab labs to six locations around the world, at a cost of $20,000 each.

In each location, the fab lab was put to a different use. In the inner city of Boston, children turned scrap metal into jewelry that they could sell on the street.

In Norway, animal herders created wireless networks and tags so they could track their sheep and reindeer.

In Ghana, villagers made machines that ran on sunlight.

But this version of the fab lab is relatively primitive.

Instead of creating finished products, it makes parts that must still be assembled.

The next generation will include a rapid prototyping machine, which is already being used in industrial production.

As BusinessWeek2 explains, these devices are essentially ink-jet printers that follow computer models to churn out layer after layer of plastic, metal, or other materials until they form 3-D images.

In this way, they can ultimately make such products as cell phones.

We expect this fundamental trend in technology to lead to three important developments:

First, fully functional personal fabricators will become affordable and widely used by 2020. By that time, costs will fall to $15,000.

As these PFs become self-replicating in the following decade, the price will fall farther, to $1,000.

At that point, the PF will become a common household appliance, like the microwave oven or computer printer of today.

Users will design a product or download a blueprint for it, then feed it the raw materials it needs in powdered form, and the PF will create the product.

Second, this technology will benefit from the philanthropic tidal wave we discussed earlier.

Why? As the MIT’s fab lab project has shown, this technology is readily applicable to the economies of less-developed countries.

In fact, it already challenges our assumptions about how humanitarian efforts are implemented.

For example, instead of sending finished personal computers or cell phones to impoverished regions of the world, it will be possible to send personal fabricators that will enable people to make computers and cell phones themselves.

Third, before mid-century, personal fabrication will revolutionize the construction industry.

An MIT architecture professor is already working on a fab lab that will build houses using plywood at a cost of about $2,000.

Also, giant printers are being developed that will construct a building or a bridge by printing layers of concrete.

References List:

1. FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop ? From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication by Neil Gershenfeld is published by Basic Books. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by Neil Gershenfeld. All rights reserved.

2. BusinessWeek, May 23, 2005, “If You Can Draw It, They Can Make It,” by Adam Aston. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.