A Factory in Every Home
Building and Using a 3D Printer
In 1943, less than 70 years ago, IBM Chairman & CEO Thomas J Watson1 said “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”.
Thirty two years later a visionary young man who began his company in a garage had a vision of a computer on every desk and in every home.  Folks thought that vision grandiose, but they were wrong, and he was right, and now he’s one of the world’s richest people.
Adrian Bowyer of the University of Bath, England, didn’t invent the 3D printer any more than IBM invented computers or Bill Gates invented PCs, but he did dream of a machine that could, at least in part, make copies of itself along with many other useful things.  Looking at the result, the RepRap printer, Chris diBona, Open Source manager at Google said, “Think of RepRap as China on your desktop”.
Bowyer has written a now-famous essay, “Wealth Without Money”, in which he suggests that RepRap printers could change the world, and I agree with him.
However, I suspect that you aren’t reading this book as a political act. You probably just want to know what a 3D printer is, how you can get a good one within your budget, what you can do with it, and how to use it.
I hope that’s what you want to know, because that, and more, is what we’re going to set out to discover, but before we do, I need to “set some expectations”.
There are industrial 3D printers that cost many thousands of dollars.  We may touch lightly on what they do, but they aren’t our concern here.  Nor are the 3D printers used by the University of Loughborough in the UK to print buildings, or those used by the Institute of Regenerative Medicine to print human organs.  Or even those used by British Aerospace that print by fusing titanium dust to produce aircraft parts.
Ours are rather more prosaic.  They print by extruding thermoplastic, rather like a never-ending glue gun.  With one or two interesting mods they could print with chocolate, or even cake frosting (or “icing” as we say in the UK).  And they typically cost around the same as a PC.
But the clever thing is that a significant part of these 3D printers are made of plastic parts.  In the early days it was about 50%.  Now experts are working to change designs so that a) more parts of the printer are plastic, and b) the printers can print using other substances (like solder, so that they can print their own printed circuit boards).  Thus more and more of these printers are printable.  Once you’ve got one, it’s easy to produce another for a friend or family member, or for sale.  At a price much *less* than a PC.  Indeed, to coincide with the publication of this book, we are producing some of the first “below $100 kits”.
But the physical nature of the printer isn’t the most exciting thing here, although it’s 99% of what this book is about.
Bowyer, in his essay, “Wealth Without Money” says that Marx and Engels (the original thinkers behind communism) had three key ideas and that they got one right and two wrong.
1. If you have nothing then you can never be wealthy, because all you have to “sell” is your time and your labour.
2. The only way to address this problem is by a revolution of the proletariat whereby they seize the means of production by force.
3. The revolutions will begin in the most highly industrialised nations.
They got number 1 right, and 2 and 3 wrong.  Today we can see that there is an altogether more humane and effective way to correct the problem.  The “hardware” part is self-replicating machinery (I tend more towards the “self-replicating workshop” than just the self-replicating printer, but more of that later).
The ideas part is the Open Source movement, and the General Use License, and the spirit that goes with it.
You can search online for people who make 3D printers and just buy one.  You can find people who make kits, and just buy one of those, and build it (well, assemble it) yourself.
But in the world of Open Source and General Use Licensing you can also find all the plans, blue prints and designs online, where you can download them for free and build your own.  And sell it, or them.
Further, you can download the plans and improve them, and put them back online.  You can become part of the global team that is developing these machines.  And you can do that by being a major engineer, or simply by using the designs and equipment, and giving feedback about any errors or problems that you’ve found, or enhancements that you’d like to see.  This is major.  This is revolutionary.  This really is “power to the people” without revolution, destruction, or bloodshed.
I’m not a political writer, so I have no desire to convince you of all of this.
What I want to do is to show you that:
1. A 3D printer will be useful to you.
2. You are, with suitable help, advice and guidance, more than capable of building a 3D printer.
3. All the help you need is freely available,
4. It makes financial sense for you to build at least one, but preferably more, 3D printers.
5. It’s time to get going without delay!