brittle spear
3D Printing & the Military: Advanced & Brittle
The U.S. military is currently implementing 3D printing on a significant scale, focusing on areas such as maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO), hypersonics, and strengthening the industrial base. This technology…
Combatting Planned Obsolescence with 3D Printing: Who Owns Your Things?
John Deere is suing customers, claiming that they cannot be allowed to repair the tractors that they bought. Monsanto (now Bayer) has deemed that it is okay to buy seeds…
The Brittle Spear, a Manifesto: We Will 3D Print All of the Things that Matter
Recently, I was rather shocked to discover that some people outside our market still think of 3D printing as a toy technology for making Yoda heads. One individual reminded me…
The Brittle Spear IV: Incentives
Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary responsibility to do what is best for their shareholders. It is all well and good that management should be beholden to the beneficial owners…
The Brittle Spear VIII: Will the New Fade Faster than the Old?
In my Brittle Spear series, I wrote of how the tip of technology’s spear grows ever sharper but more brittle. One of the things I mentioned was that the Cubans…
The Brittle Spear VI: Built to Last
Of course, our utopian vision of making our readymades or using digital kintsugi is a beautiful idea. If we then created a commercial aftermarket to extend the life of and…
The Brittle Spear Part V: Mine Your Den for Aftermarket 3D Printing
There is a thriving aftermarket in automobiles, including spoilers for cars, new Dubs, and, more obviously, mufflers. Air intakes that don’t take in air and optimization kits for engines are…
The Brittle Spear Part III: Digital Kintsugi and 3D Printed Spare Parts
In this series, previously we looked at how we’re creating a system designed to spit out less able things and that these things may be better but will be less…
