I’ve been thinking about the personal manufacturing idea for a while, but
Derek’s last comment has given me yet another reason to post. I hope
these points can be taken with the spirit of kindness I attempt to deliver
them in.

1. What is it about capitalism that makes it so consumers are not already
in control? Even when a well-meaning entrepreneur begins yet another
business to address this issue, why is it that once that business grows to
even moderate size that our (the users’) voice seems to lose impact? If
you claim that isn’t the case, and there is no problem, then why do we see
such efforts as Ponoko.com? If it IS the case, is there really nothing we
(the users) could ever do to prevent it? What if the users happened to
also be the initial investors, and therefore the owners and controllers of
the Sources of Production? Certainly there would be nobody in the way
then right? But consumer desire changes, so control – and therefore
ownership should probably change too. Could we write a contract that
owners could choose to apply between themselves so that ownership would
‘flow’ to new users according to the amount those new users choose to
invest, and ownership would be slowly taken from old users that fail to
pay the recurring costs of maintaining those sources?

2. Useful living organisms are tiny factories. Notice how the word
‘plant’ is also used to indicate the physical sources of manufacturing.
Fungi, flora and fauna are slow-motion, solar powered matter replicators
producing the raw materials of food, medicine, soap, clothing, shelter and
fuel.

3. Workers could contract to trade the labor and skill needed to create
new free designs – whether mechanical layouts, software, music, GMOs, etc.
*before* performing that work, but trying to earn money through the old
practice of copy restriction will be less and less viable as culture
becomes more free.

I think even when this arises, there will still be a market for trading and selling non-open designs, because it will be up to the original designer to decide how to license the product. And, of course, open source software has not made commercial software disappear. It seems to me like we’ll see an emergence of a healthy market for both Open Design and an easy to enter design market, like Ponoko. Personally, I welcome both. Plus, I think there is hte possibility for a third option, eventually, which is to pay designers a “bounty” or wages to create a design based upon existing Open Design platforms. Once open source software matured, this became more common, and I can easily see it as an eventual option in the design of physical objects.

I think open design will sit alongside trading of designs – perhaps as a ‘loss leader’ pushed through the P2P networks where users of the free version will be able to purchase other designs from the designers they really like.

Why do you think there will be no buy/sell of design IP? Why will creators want to give it away for free? What benefit do they get?

The issues outlined are not so much problems with the Ponoko model, but problems with the existing model of making and distributing products. Today it is really tough to get individualized products made becuase of the problems outlined above (and quite a few others).

But if you begin to think about solving the problems in a radically new way, then they evaporate – and you’re left with just one problem, is there a market for the new solution? And this is the case with all disruptive technologies that changed the world.

In 1975, whoever could have said that we’d be having this conversation right now over a globally connected network of desktop computers? Not too many! But here we are. A few people decided that the desktop version of the mainframe was on the way and hey presto. In today’s context a few people are deciding that the desktop version of the manufacturing plant is on the way – and so what future lays ahead of us because of this?

Ponoko foresees a future where product designs are traded, rather than physical products – and manufacture is controlled from the desktop.

So to answer each of the points in comment #2, one must first place oneself well outside of today’s thinking about the traditional product making and distribution model. This is easier said than done becuase without a frame of reference, it gets kinda chilly 😉

This means expecting things to be more contrained and cost more than current technology – BUT in the market segment called “I want individualized products no matter what” the current manufacturing model will not deliver to this market and if it does it is terribly contrained and terribly expensive (more so than the new path proposed by Ponoko).

The key is to look at the world in a new way, contrained by the undisputable laws of making physical products but unconstrained by the solutions that currently exist to make things:

1) Materials / manufacture hardware – what about looking at the issue from the position of “I have 1,000 materials to choose from and 10 digital manufacturing units to choose from and I can select to have the parts delivered to me or my customer with the click of a mouse”? In other words, rather than looking at the problems of unlimited choice that exists today and the costs involved in harnessing all of that scope, why not redefine the situation and start with a more constrained set of variables and let the creative class loose on it – I trust they will be able to do some amazing things given the chance. And this is the thing, the mass creative class has not yet been given access to making stuff – it’s just too hard to engage inside of today’s model.

2) Labour – what about simply manufacturing the parts and delivering them for self assembly, etc?

3) Supply chain – raw materials need delivery no matter what. But where products are made in the home for example, this eliminates final product delivery and storage altogether – a massive environmental benefit!

4) Design/making process – yip, it’s a process no matter how you do it – so imagine an online point and click system to manage the communications and prototyping process prior to showcasing the final product (also for on-demand manufacture). And yes, the future does hold a time where software will be able to help make a better product with less physical prototyping.

5) Brand – online feedback systems have been proven to work well to rate quality.

To summarize, we do not see ourselves replacing the status quo, but providing access to making individualized products to a segment of the creative market that really want to make stuff, but the barriers to entry are too high in today’s model. And through their experience we will be able to build a solution that has wider appeal via less cost and more flexibility. Again, think about the first PC – it was very limited and more costly in real terms than some of the desktop fabricators out there today, but a small niche picked it up and that small niche grew (quite a bit)!

Hope this helps?

-I guess this would only apply to certain kinds of products? Plastics? Do they do machining? Stamping? Pressing? Bending? Welding? Extrusion? Injection molding? Cut and sewing? Pad printing? Vacuum molding? Painting? Blow molding? And the list goes on… Many of these processes require very expensive machinery, labor that knows how to use them, and materials for each one.

-Who will be performing the labor aspects? If component 1 comes out of the SLA machine and component 2 comes out of the laser cutter, who will fuse the two together? If it’s done dispersed manufacturing plants, then a paying someone to do this in the USA will make a product much more expensive than paying someone to do this in China. Or will all of them be done in low-cost labor countries?

-And supply chains will not be done away with entirely. Someone will still need to supply these places with materials.

-Getting designs correct: I work with designers and businesses and manufacturers in Asia. It can be a very difficult process getting a product right, even with digital information, across parties. It’s a very back and forth process and some things just cannot be determined until one has seen multiple prototypes and samples. This assumes that IT and digital content will just take care of everything and make it a snap.

-Brand: Ponoko is going to have a big hurdle to get over in the consumers mind. If I can’t see or try a product before buying it–but simply must look at a picture of a brand new design on the web that has never been made or used before, how can I trust that my good hard earned money will get me what I truly desire? How do I know the quality won’t be bad? Or the design won’t actually work in real life situations? If Ponoko can get over this hurdle and establish a strong brand with products that are guaranteed high quality, than that will help. But part of the value that a typical manufacturing company adds is the help to determine whether a product works well in a given situation. If a bunch of bad designers submit products to the website and I as a consumer am not an expert, how can they guarantee me that the product I select is actually a good design? How do they control for quality of design?

Anyways, Im not trying to rant. But Im deeply curious. Please educate me. Thanks!