The Next Big Thing

Is this.  3D printing is not new; if it were, trucks and other major components would be an idea, rather than a product.  But it's a great idea, and it has incredible potential, because it promises to get around one of the requirements that has always bedeviled model railroading - the challenge of volume. 

The key problem in tooling for an expensive and inflexible manufacturing process like die-casting has always been volume - how do you generate a sufficient number of sales to recoup your investment?  Given that casting and molding have usually been preferred techniques for mass production, since they minimize manpower requirements, the challenge has been to maximize the potential sales volume for your investment.  Alternate methods such as etching have been tried, but they've always been low-volume methods, because the combination of cost and skill level have combined to keep the number of potential customers low - which in turn forces costs upward.  Resin casting, which is cheaper and easier, has been a step in this direction, since you can easily make rubber molds and cast parts and pieces in 2 part resin.

But 3D printing literally breaks the mold: you invest not in a set of molds that can be used to replicate the same object, but a printer that can be programmed to produce a tremendous variety of objects.  Obtaining the unusual, in other words, is no longer a matter of being one of a group of at least five thousand people who are willing to put up the money to obtain it; it's now a CAD drawing away. 
Reactions to this are naturally mixed.  Tim Warris, the creative mind behind the beautiful Port Kelsey Railway and Fast Tracks has a typically perceptive take: it's the ultimate disruptive technology.  Tim thinks that's frightening, and I can see why he would think that: he's engaged in the sort of William Morris-style craftsmanship that every Industrial Revolution threatens to engulf.  I'm less pessimistic than Tim is.  After all, Fast Tracks wasn't put out of business by Atlas or Shinohara; it followed them by a couple of decades, just like William Morris followed the Industrial Revolution.

As someone who engages in an occasional act of attempted craftsmanship, there are a couple of great merits to 3D printing: not only does it make things available that would otherwise be attainable only at great cost in time or effort, it allows me to focus my work on areas that I'm really interested in.  For a guy like Tim, who loves to handlay track, that could mean obtaining hardware such as switchstands.  Many carriers had their own switchstand designs, and commercial manufacturers further increased the range.  Today only a relatively limited number are available from manufacturers in the larger scales, because of the economics of the manufacturing process.  But I'm anxious to see what else come down the pike, because I'm an optimist on matters of this kind - and much as I love to build wooden kits, the fact is that every new method or technique I have seen has ultimately served to enhance the range of choices in the hobby, rather than reduce them.