The Age of Making

In recent years, some manufacturing technologies have become affordable to general public, to the point that today people can buy devices that allow them to make simple products at home in an economical and highly personalized way. Great technological changes as the massification of communications, the exponential increase of PC's power, the birth of "the cloud" on Internet, the proliferation of "open" hardware and software, among others,  have contributed to lead manufacturing into new user-centered stages...to a personal fabrication scenario.

Personal Fabricator (PF) is a concept that encompasses the evolution of manufacturing technologies to the point where a computer-guided machine is able to fabricate complex three-dimensional products from digital files, in an easy and economical way. 

Today, 3D printing seems to meet the requirements to become standard technology for home manufacturing: compact devices, good accuracy, low cost and low emission materials are some of the features of this group of technologies, based on the stacking of layers of material.

But, are people ready for this? How much money are people willing to pay for a 3D printer? Are they technically prepared? What about industrial property issues? Is the end of massive manufacturing? These are some of the questions I research about.

A new age...the Age of Making is almost here...and we all are going to live revolutionary changes in manufacturing. PC's brought the explosion of bytes .... PF's will bring the boom of atoms.