Digital Craftsman | How has 3D Printing Changed Design?

I’ve recently re written the ‘about’ section of my website which gave rise to the question, what am I? A designer/maker, a craftsman, a digital modeller, an engineer, a machine technician, an artisan? The truth is that all these terms are applicable but none fully define what I do. The best term I came across was ‘digital craftsman’.Since the industrial revolution an ever increasing manufacturing speed has evolved and mass production for wide consumption has seen skilled craftsmen almost disappear. Designing products with mass production in mind is however very skilled. There are also some substantial barriers to take a design into production. Tooling costs can be daunting, whether its injection moulding, thermoforming or die casting and as a newly formed small company looking to produce their own products these processes can be out of reach. They also put a lot of restrictions on the design.Enter the desktop 3D printer. I bought a desktop 3D printer 5 years ago. It came in a kit that I had to assemble and it was made primarily out of ply wood! If anyone is interested in owning a 3D printer I would recommend an Ultimaker.I cannot tell you how much 3D printing has changed the way I designed and produced things. It suddenly made high quality custom components attainable relatively quickly and cheaply. It also had very few restrictions on what could actually be made.However 3D printing isn’t without drawbacks. When I tell people about the 3D printer they seem to assume you press a few buttons and out pops what you want. That couldn’t be further from the truth! Firstly it’s slow. This isn’t a root to mass production. Secondly the printer can and does go wrong. There’s a real skill in configuring temperature, feed and speed settings along with cooling, structural support, model density and detail. I’m not sure I would ever want to see a tally of all the hours I’ve spent fixing the machine and tinkering with the settings.  If I had spent those hours consulting on an hourly rate I’d be considerably better off! The satisfaction at the end of it all when a perfect print comes out and does exactly what you want it to is definitely worth it though.I now own three 3D printers. The 3D printers have also given birth to other CNC based machines, printing out the components and combining with open source electronics. Hopefully they won’t start spontaneously replicating themselves and taking over!So the 3D printer really opened up new ways to produce things for me. Coupled with other traditional fabrication techniques and materials I produce unique products in small batches.  Not quite one off artisan pieces but also a long way from mass produced products. It’s also worth mentioning that this way of producing products is much friendlier to the environment. There’s nothing being constantly shipped from China, very little waste material, relatively low power consumption in the processes and I print the prototypes from bio-degradable plastic.If you would like to see some examples of things made by digital craftsmen/women check out my Pinterest board on the subject.Why not also check out my "Gold Pendant Light"[product_category category="Gold Pendant Light, Contemporary Floor Lamp, Modern Floor Lamp"]