3D Printing
Today Terry Wohlers started a interesting discussion on the RPML. Terry has been an active advocate of the term "Additive Fabrication" as an all encompassing term for what we in the Rapid Prototyping industry do for a living. He admits that "3D Printing" is the most popular term now and will remain so in the near future. Adrian Bowyer agrees with him and credits journalists for that since they don't seem to use any other term.
I believe that’s because journalists know that the Rapid Prototyping industry (or whatever you want to now call it) has convoluted itself with technical terms flying left, right and center, and keeps adding more terms every now and then. The journalists do not want confuse their readers with these terms, that’s assuming that they understand the terms in the first place. All they want to do is give their readers some information that will help them get a 3D physical part from his 3D virtual CAD model.
And I believe we can learn something from these journalists. They know what their target audience wants to hear and tell them stuff in a manner that they can comprehend. Any idiot will understand "3D printing" if you give him 2 seconds to think about it.
Take a look at this video from Autodesk. I know people in the RP industry will laugh at the video. I did too. But it gives you an idea of the nature of our target audience. We in the industry should be educating our target audience and talking to them in a language that they understand, not confusing them with more technically accurate terms and acronyms. We seem like a bunch of neuro-surgeons discussing the biological composition of the human brain when the person whom we have to treat is simply asking for an aspirin to clear his headache.
So to answer Terry's question, in my opinion, whether we like it or not, "3D Printing" is the term that will be most popular, not just in the near future, but for a long time to come.
Little wonder that we chose "Print3D" as the name of our company.
I believe that’s because journalists know that the Rapid Prototyping industry (or whatever you want to now call it) has convoluted itself with technical terms flying left, right and center, and keeps adding more terms every now and then. The journalists do not want confuse their readers with these terms, that’s assuming that they understand the terms in the first place. All they want to do is give their readers some information that will help them get a 3D physical part from his 3D virtual CAD model.
And I believe we can learn something from these journalists. They know what their target audience wants to hear and tell them stuff in a manner that they can comprehend. Any idiot will understand "3D printing" if you give him 2 seconds to think about it.
Take a look at this video from Autodesk. I know people in the RP industry will laugh at the video. I did too. But it gives you an idea of the nature of our target audience. We in the industry should be educating our target audience and talking to them in a language that they understand, not confusing them with more technically accurate terms and acronyms. We seem like a bunch of neuro-surgeons discussing the biological composition of the human brain when the person whom we have to treat is simply asking for an aspirin to clear his headache.
So to answer Terry's question, in my opinion, whether we like it or not, "3D Printing" is the term that will be most popular, not just in the near future, but for a long time to come.
Little wonder that we chose "Print3D" as the name of our company.
posted by Deelip Menezes at
3:21 PM
1 Comments:
Clarity is something that's missing from the RP industry, from the CAD industry. What tech companies tend to do is obfuscate what they're trying to do, by making up new names, new terms, new abbreiviations. What should be the concentration is the process, the task. You don't CAD, you design, you don't additively fabricate, you print.. in 3D.
When I'm discussing these systems and processes, I use two terms and the differentiation is key.
3d printing
Direct manufacturing
Why?
The reason is that its about the end result, not the process, the vendor or otherwise. I use 3d printing as the general term for everything.
Direct Manufacturing I use when referring to using any of the systems to build end-use parts. But this will end soon. 3D printing is the perfect term. Why use anything else?
With vendor's trying to differentiate what they do, they confuse things horribly. Additive fabrication, direct digital manufacturing, e-manufacturing - its all nonsense.
The 3D printing term has gained ground because the interest in these systems has spread far and wide beyond where we were just 5 years ago.
Its gaining traction and interest by the general public rather than the design and engineering world and that will lead how these systems are referred to from now on.
Al @ develop3d.com
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Anonymous, At
January 15, 2009 at 2:46 AM
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