3D PRINTERS 21 …OR IS IT A THREAT TO THE INDUSTRY?
The Universal Construction Kit (above) links different toy bricks together, which can be downloaded from 3D printing portal Thingiverse (right)…
LAST YEAR, a hobbyist named Thomas Valenty designed a pair of table top miniatures and uploaded them to the 3D printing portal Thingiverse. However, Games Workshop, creators of the popular Warhammer miniatures, contacted Thingiverse with a request to remove the designs, citing copyright infringement. The designs were removed, but Valenty continues to make 3D printed models for personal use. Could this case signal the beginning
of toy piracy? Provide people with the means to create and copy physical objects, and an online portal on which to share them, and it’s not hard to imagine a future where piracy is a very real threat to future toy sales. Does this mean that sales of plastic
toys are to be damaged by 3D printing? Well no, not in the near future, anyway. Lego’s famous six bobbled system brick is out of patent and open to other
So, are we all doomed? Well, no. At present, the toy industry just has too much going for it and is comprised of so many different categories – from plush, to wood and robotics – that are not yet replicable by 3D printers. But with boffins at the cutting edge of additive manufacturing
toy makers, yet its sales are better than ever. For now, this industry has the ability to innovate and add value to its product, and that’s exactly what Lego has done. However, who saw the last digital
revolution coming? Piracy has hurt the music and games industries. Why would we be so naïve to think it could never happen to us?
OPEN SOURCE TOYS
Although 3D printing is a disruptive technology, it will be an empowering tool for good. Meet the Universal Construction Kit.
It’s a set of adapters that allows consumers to link ten types of construction toy together – made possible by 3D printing. Kids have always liked to mix and match their toys (most of us have witnessed an encounter between
aiming to even print working mobile phones, anything seems possible. 3D printing can clearly be a benefit to toy makers, by making prototyping and manufacturing a more agile process – as well as more rapid, practical, cost-effective. But will it become standardised?
Action Man and Barbie) – just look at Toy Story. Well how about linking your K’Nex to your Stickle Bricks for example? The ‘Kit’s maker, The Free Art and
Technology Lab, or F.A.T. for short, is a collective of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers and more committed to ‘supporting open values through the use of emerging open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies and patents’. So bearing that in mind, then, it’s not a huge surprise that almost as much as it is a toy, the Universal Construction Kit is a statement. The Free Art and Technology Lab explains: “The Free Universal Construction Kit is simply one ‘toy’ illustration of a coming grassroots revolution, in which everyday people can – with desktop tools – overcome
This technology is a double-edged sword. It has the potential to both empower people and disrupt business, and toy sales could be under threat from 3D printed toy copies, or substitutes, in the future. Lessons learnt from the music industry’s embarrassing wrangles with
arbitrary restrictions in mass- manufactured physical culture. “The simple fact is that no toy company would ever make the Free Universal Construction Kit. Instead, each construction toy wants (and indeed, pretends) to be your only play-set. “The Free Universal Construction Kit
presents what no manufacturer could: a remedy providing extensible, post- facto syntactic interoperability for construction toys. Let the fun begin.” Thinking about it, it’s also not hard to imagine that households in the not- so-far future might resort to open source toy alternatives. Could toy sales be hurt in such a world? Possibly. Will others still crave the wow factor and magic offered by a top toy brand? Certainly. And what’s to stop toy makers selling 3D printing schematics to consumers?
consumers and copyright law prove that it is better to embrace change rather than fight it. Perhaps a day will come soon, when toys will be available both physically and digitally – to print at home – on the day of release. Until then, 3D printers will continue to improve.
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