Effects of Digital Nanofabrication

The effect of DN depends on how expensive it will become compared to mass production and other forms of digital fabrication.

Additive fabbers will at first only have an effect on very specific markets that can afford the relatively expensive machinery. One such market that has already established itself is model building. Models are, however, only the beginning of long list of products that we can expect to see in the not too distant future. The list will grow as better techniques are developed and the price drops and will consequently include most products. Fabbers thus have the potential to take over most of today’s products, depending on how cheaply products can be made on a fabber comparable to mass produced products. There is already a clear tendency towards consumers wanting customized products that meets their exact needs, and there is nothing that indicates that this tendency will change in the future. Customization is digital fabrication’s main strength, because one is only making one sample and can thus alternate the original design to meet one’s specific needs. Digital fabrication is destined to succeed, but how much success depends on what portion of the market it will control. At first there seems to be certain products that are so standardized that they will always be mass produced, but even products like toilet paper and tooth brushes have hundreds of different brands, because consumers have various demands. The vision is that every household will eventually have their own personal fabber, similarly to how the average household today has a PC. A fabber does, however, in addition to power and data, also need materials to manufacture products. This could provide a significant problem, because one would have to store the necessary materials in a society where lack of space is already a problem. Whether this problem has an ingenious solution or we will need 24-hour suppliers of raw materials or we will have certain places that can produce the products remains uncertain. It is, however, certain that large quantities of materials will have to change hands and that new needs will come about with DN. Some people have voiced concerns about the many jobs that will be lost, if or rather when digital manufacturing and later digital nanofabrication becomes a reality. This fear is, nevertheless, not new, but it has been seen throughout history that the market always manages to adapt to new areas. There will always be a need for services, regardless of how advanced our society becomes.

Assuming that regular digital fabrication will have it’s breakthrough before digital nanofabrication, DN will do nothing but enhance the effects already created by digital fabrication. DN will enable all possible products to be created in a fabber and thus completely fulfill the role of fabbers. Factors that will determine the success and competitiveness of DN are the benefits from building atom by atom compared to regular digital manufacturing, time, and the price of the final product. It seems obvious that a product in which every atom has been carefully placed must be better, but this might, however, not make a difference for certain products that are either only meant for temporary use or already possess adequate qualities. It will in addition also take longer time to build a product atom by atom (this might not become a factor once the process is so advanced that the difference in time between the two types of digital manufacturing becomes insignificant). The final and most important factor becomes the competitiveness of DN compared to regular manufacturing and regular digital manufacturing. The process and thus also the equipment will without a doubt be more sophisticated and thus more expensive to produce and maintain. How much more expensive is the important question.

Many of the previously mentioned effects have been very positive in nature, but to maintain an objective perspective, please look at this page, Will Nanofabrication become a Reality?, which includes possibly negative effects as well)