Or cast resins or injection moulded plastics, or formed ceramics or any one of a gazzilion other methods that are already part of the diversity of conventional manufacturing methods.
The benefit of fabricators is that you can make most things cheaper than buying the finished product at retail rates, not that you can make them cheaper than using any other manufacturing technology.
They will not necessarily be quicker or more efficient than conventional manufacturing. You can stamp out washers far more quickly than you can 3d print them. If you watch industrial manufacturing it usually has to be slowed down to see what is happening. 3D printing needs to be speeded up to make it watchable.
Fabricators primary advantage over conventional manufacturing is in saving cost and time for retooling. You can print a gun and once it is finished you can immediately print a bicycle without significant retooling. To do that with conventional manufacturing would take hours, days or even weeks of retooling and reorganisation (and in all that time you are not producing product and running at a loss). Fabricators are great for one-offs (R&D or responsive manufacturing) or very limited production runs.
Conventional manufacturing can produce 1000's of items per day, but it needs to in order to take advantage of economy of scale and will probably be running at a loss until it is well into it's production run. Once it is past that point it will make more profit per item than if the products were made with a fabricator. However having to produce 10,000 toasters is not really a disadvantage in an interstellar trade environment.
You should also not forget design cost. Most peoples experience of 3d printing is using free patterns or hacking one themselves. This can be very satisfying, but it is not necessarily commercially viable. The design cycle is a fixed cost in a commercial manufacturing context which front loads the cost. You could buy the rights for a certain number of iterations and the cost be amortised over the production run, but it will be more cost effective to do the designing in house (which means you can iterate your product) or buy an unlimited license. The more you make the cheaper it becomes per item.
Commercially viable designs will generally go to the highest bidder and that generally won't be small run factories or individuals. Any cheap design will usually be out-of-date or flawed and need tweaking. This is one of the reasons why retro tech is often cheaper (both in game and IRL). Those outmoded designs have already paid off their investment and goods produced using them are less attractive to the consumer. Small companies can then buy them up cheap, produce them using less modern machinery (which they may have acquired second hand) and can crank them out to support the probably stable residual market, while the big boys chase the riskier but infinitely more profitable innovative markets. Far enough down the line if they were good designs they might even become considered classics and enjoy a resurgence and a small producer might enjoy disproportionate success.
The benefit of fabricators is that you can make most things cheaper than buying the finished product at retail rates, not that you can make them cheaper than using any other manufacturing technology.
They will not necessarily be quicker or more efficient than conventional manufacturing. You can stamp out washers far more quickly than you can 3d print them. If you watch industrial manufacturing it usually has to be slowed down to see what is happening. 3D printing needs to be speeded up to make it watchable.
Fabricators primary advantage over conventional manufacturing is in saving cost and time for retooling. You can print a gun and once it is finished you can immediately print a bicycle without significant retooling. To do that with conventional manufacturing would take hours, days or even weeks of retooling and reorganisation (and in all that time you are not producing product and running at a loss). Fabricators are great for one-offs (R&D or responsive manufacturing) or very limited production runs.
Conventional manufacturing can produce 1000's of items per day, but it needs to in order to take advantage of economy of scale and will probably be running at a loss until it is well into it's production run. Once it is past that point it will make more profit per item than if the products were made with a fabricator. However having to produce 10,000 toasters is not really a disadvantage in an interstellar trade environment.
You should also not forget design cost. Most peoples experience of 3d printing is using free patterns or hacking one themselves. This can be very satisfying, but it is not necessarily commercially viable. The design cycle is a fixed cost in a commercial manufacturing context which front loads the cost. You could buy the rights for a certain number of iterations and the cost be amortised over the production run, but it will be more cost effective to do the designing in house (which means you can iterate your product) or buy an unlimited license. The more you make the cheaper it becomes per item.
Commercially viable designs will generally go to the highest bidder and that generally won't be small run factories or individuals. Any cheap design will usually be out-of-date or flawed and need tweaking. This is one of the reasons why retro tech is often cheaper (both in game and IRL). Those outmoded designs have already paid off their investment and goods produced using them are less attractive to the consumer. Small companies can then buy them up cheap, produce them using less modern machinery (which they may have acquired second hand) and can crank them out to support the probably stable residual market, while the big boys chase the riskier but infinitely more profitable innovative markets. Far enough down the line if they were good designs they might even become considered classics and enjoy a resurgence and a small producer might enjoy disproportionate success.
Last edited:
