3D Printing and the cassette tape.

When I was in my teens, cassette tapes were very popular. You could make your own mixes and carry them about with you. You could share music with friends who couldn't afford to buy. Some people made copies of whole albums to sell on for pocket money. Cassette tapes were cheap and you could buy a C120 tape, take it to bits, cut it up and make four copies of Dark-Side and spool them into equally cheap empty cassettes. This was the beginning of what later became Napster, Bit-torrent and peer-to-peer hell.

3D printing, if you don't know, is the process of laying down layers of material to build up a solid object in slices. Most of the 3D printing systems of today have been created from an open-source hardware perspective where people create the equipment from their own ideas or ask other people who have already built a printer print up parts to build a replica.

The raw materials for printing at the moment are usually some sort of thermo-plastic that can be melted in a nozzle and squirted into place to make the layers. Some experimental setups are using ceramic materials and there is a great deal of interest, especially in professional engineering, in using arc and MIG or TIG welding techniques to build up solid metal objects. For those who have a smelting facility or a little foundry, wax is a great medium for creating the objects which can then be cast in a lost-wax process.

Possessing a 3D printer is one thing, having something to print on it is another. Most hobbyists are also geeky enough to be able to run some sort of computer-aided manufacturing tool but unless you're a top-flight  engineer you won't be printing gas-turbine engine blades or disc-drive parts. However, given a suitable design, and even tough what you can print today is limited to materials like APS plastic there would be a possibility of printing something almost indistinguishable from the same doohickey bought in a shop. Given a bit of investment you could probably print yourself a shoe today. In the not too far distant future, you will probably be able to print yourself the latest Nike trainer, and indeed, it's other-foot partner.

Given that 3D printing is a huge open-source movement today and that commercial printers don't have data standards that can "DRM" a Nike shoe, what's the likelihood that many companies will subscribe to a common format, that printers will become mainstream enough that no one will build their own and that data files will become a commodity?

My own opinion on those subjects are that a single standard is very unlikely, at least in the short term. 3D printers will take hold first as a high-street shop service and then become cheaper home gadgets later. One thing is for sure though, if you have a not-very good lathe, you can use it to build yourself a better lathe...This is to say that the process of bootstrapping a printer from a crummier printer is definitely possible and in a few iterations you could have a very good printer indeed. This means that there will be a burgeoning market for high-quality object files that can print stuff of all sorts. Ultimately of course, you truly will be able to print parts for your own jet engine but that day is a ways off. Until then, the open-source hardware movement will have an opportunity to re-open the old Cathedral and Bazaar debate all over again.