User manufacturing: apoc, ponoko, fab@home

The relatively new and fascinating prospects of using mass customization in architectural practice seem to find their forerunner to the “user manufacturing” processes. New infrastructure is enabling consumers to become instant designers and manufacturers. User manufacturing is enabled by three basic technologies: (a) Easy-to-operate design software that allows users to transfer their ideas into a design format. (b) Design repositories where users upload, search, and share designs with other users. (c) Easy-to-access flexible manufacturing technology. New rapid manufacturing technologies ("fabbing") realize the process of translating any 3-D data files into physical products - in a desktop scale. Combining this technology with recent web technologies we arrive at a radical new way to provide customized products skipping the entire line of product development, central manufacturing and transporting. To define better this process of mass customization, three examples will be briefly examined.

1. 'a-poc'
'a-poc' is based upon miyake's design concept, a piece of cloth, is a unique suggestion for everyday life, which goes far beyond the boundaries of fashion.It is made using an industrial knitting or weaving machine programed by a computer. This process creates continuous tubes of fabric within which lie both shape and pattern.The customer cuts sleeves and skirts exactly to the length he wants. 'a-poc' is made in a sequence in which thread literally goes into a machine and re-emerges as a piece of clothing, an accessory, or even a chair. This interactive new method not only reduces leftover fabric, but also permits the wearers to participate in the final step of the design of their clothing: they determine the final shape of the product.
Mass production and custom-made clothing, seemingly opposing ideas, become compatible with each other through the wizardry of technology and the fire of imagination.

2. ponoko
For most companies, product design and development is a long process of trial and error, involving, among other things, in-house designers, committees, timed product releases, and, ultimately, customer feedback. Until a product sells, or if it doesn't sell, it takes up costly shelf space in either stores or warehouses.
But by letting individuals dream up, make, and then sell unique products on demand, Ponoko
is attempting to eliminate the product-development wing. Ultimately, it hopes to eliminate the need for a centralized manufacturing plant as well, by recruiting a large enough community of digital manufacturers--people scattered around the world who have 3-D printers, CNC routers, and laser cutters. Moving the site of production as close as possible to the point of purchase will reduce the need for long-distance shipping.

3. Fab@Home
Creativity is a uniquely human trait, but Lipson is driven by the idea of allowing machines to do design and manufacturing for us. Lipson has now created the fab-home machine for anyone to build for a cost of around 2000 euro. Pushing the boundaries beyond simple shapes, Lipson has made a working battery, an electrically-activated polymer muscle and a touch sensor by printing different layers of material. The possibilities are limited by what you can extrude from interchangeable cartridges - quick-hardening plastic is the favourite, but the machine can also handle and layer plaster, Play-Doh, silicone, wax and metals or mixtures with a low melting point such as solder (made of tin and lead). Some users have found chocolate, cheese and cake icing (which may also be used as a temporary soluble support material for hollow structures) rewarding too.

If you make a conventional part in manufacturing, you either machine away a block of material or form the part in a mould. And as any manufacturer will confirm, 'tooling up' is incredibly expensive. Rapid manufacturing techniques use digital data to make the part additively, laying down layers of material which do not need a mould.If these technologies take off, it may spark a new industrial revolution.
"In 1975, people were soldering together Altair 8800 computers - that's where RepRap and Fab@Home are now. The Apple II came out in 1977, the BBC Micro and IBM PC in 1981, and then the world was never the same," says Bowyer. "I think that within 10 years private individuals will be able to make for themselves virtually any manufactured product that is today sold by industry. I sometimes wonder if politicians realise that the entire basis of the human economy is about to undergo the biggest change since the invention of money."
In that case, fabbing won't just break the mould - it will throw it away entirely.