The Future of Fabrication

Описание: Manufacturing and fabrication often evokes visions of endless conveyor belts of things made at large sale. For many things, this is indeed the way they are made, it is efficient, and this approach will largely continue. But increasingly we are also making small batches of things. This drive toward one-of manufacturing is fed no only by the desire for personalization, but also by efforts to uncover the next great niche thing, to innovate. 3-D printing has been the great enabler for this exploration in personalized and niche fabrication, and it has come a long way from the days of simple plastic layering. Now, 3-D printers commonly fabricate in all kinds of metals, but we can also print food stuffs and tissues for the body. The cutting edge for this technology is multi-material printers, with tremendous resolution and scale capabilities. These printers can materialize products from an expanding library of digital-first designs, with a variety of materials and at a level of production not possible with conventional milling. This is the gateway to the on-demand manufacturing economy, offering benefits including the digitization of inventory, flexible manufacturing across individual machines, and innovation accelerated by easy duplication, modification, and improvement. These benefits will be nurtured in the technologies of rapid prototyping and one-of production, but they will also inform and advance the broader future of making, including mass manufacturing.

This video on “The Future of Fabrication” was commissioned by China Mobile as part of an online course. It is one of 36 lecture videos. A version with Chinese subtitles is available at Citic Migu: http://citic.cmread.com/zxHtml/listen...

A transcript of the lecture in English is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/162n6...