theory

Can 3D Printing Make You Antifragile? Surviving Current Economic Shocks

In this, series we’ve looked at what being antifragile means and whether or not 3D printing can make a business antifragile. However, can 3D printing be antifragile as a good…

Can 3D Printing Make You Antifragile? An Argument for Skunk Works

The idea of being antifragile means that you as a person, company, or other system can withstand shocks well and then emerge even better from them. In part one of…

Can 3D Printing Make You Antifragile? First, What Is Antifragility?

Antifragile as a desirable concept was popularised by Nassim Taleb. In the 2012 book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, he postulates that there are fragile things, people, and organizations…

Uses for 3D Printing Exist. Companies Just Suck at Finding Them

I’m seeing something curious happening. In personal conversations, I’ve heard people exclaim that there are not enough 3D printing applications. People are arguing that it is this lack of use…

Business Development: The Worst Idea in 3D Printing Ever

One application that changed my view of 3D printing forever was Hans Boodt’s 3D printing of mannequins. The Dutch firm is a leader in high-end displays. I was flabbergasted when…

Whose 3D Printing Platform Is It Anyway?

I’m bombarded daily by so many people building “ecosystems”, I think I’m living in a dog’s mouth or the Amazon river basin, so teeming with life is our 3D printing…

Eco Friendly 3D Printing? Designing for Ruins

Sustainability is usually seen as a move towards using recyclable or recycled materials. Some see it as a means of ensuring that the product that you make will be recyclable….

Implementing Additive Advantages: Stacking 3D Printing Advantages

In this series, we’ve seen how only a few clusters of 3D printed application implementations have been very successful. We’ve seen how often people in many business development projects stop…

Implementing Additive Advantages: Orthopedics

As we’ve seen in this series, there are a number of clusters of success in 3D printing. Where we can see small, unique, drop-in, disruptive and sidestep parts, we have…

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Implementing Additive Advantages: Why 3D Printing Fails

If we carefully look at the successful 3D printing applications, we can see some commonalities. We can also see relatively few clusters where we have been wildly successful. If we…

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Implementing Additive Advantages: What Parts Should I 3D Print?

When people are developing new 3D printing applications, they often look for an advantage that additive has over conventional parts. We’re almost always more expensive than conventional manufacturing, and we’re…

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Why Are 3D Printing Projects Always Delayed?

You may have noticed that industrial 3D printing projects seem to perennially be delayed. Desktop 3D printers also always suck, initially. New designs for systems are finicky and underperform no…

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…

Fast Things 8: The Shape Game and Mrs. Incredible

Imagine the answer to life, the universe, and everything is: donut. In a world of Fast Things, 3D Printing is the logical production technology. With our technology, you can go…

One Thing That We Can Still Not 3D Print is the Balance Sheet

With all the progress in 3D printing, we must remind ourselves to stay humble. We are in a very capable industry with accelerating growth and adoption rates. In the eyes…