3D printers in the developing world

I am a global MBA student at the College of Charleston, and I have spent the last few months working on a study to target innovations that can be utilized to improve the quality of life in developing countries. It seems to me that open source 3D printers have a huge potential to produce essential products at a low cost. From what I can see, one could make anything from salt shakers, to chairs, to toilets, to actual shelters. It would really help me out if you all could give me some personal insight on the matter, especially with understanding the limitations of the 3D printers and the cost associated with printing. It would also really help with your thoughts on other things that 3D printers could provide to developing countries.

I think the thing to me that makes a 3D printer useful to developing countries is the reduction in need for transporting lots of unique items.

As long as you can get the plastic filament (ie: in bulk), you no longer need to ship lots of individual items from around the world, which saves on shipping costs (which seem to become a larger and large part of the cost of commodity items, especially as fuel prices rise), and their associated wastes (ie: pollution).

And while you most likely need the plastic shipped to you to make things, you should be able to order an appropriate amount to maximise the weight/shipping cost. If you plan far enough ahead, you can use slower, lower cost and less wasteful methods of shipping (ie: surface/sea shipping).

I like this topic. You should see the video promoting the fablab, talking about what happened when they set one up in a developing country, I think it's on TED.

personally I would recommend something like the UP! 3d printer before a reprap one for the type of purpose you mention, or maybe even the Fab@Home with paste extruder. One of the criteria should be a diversity of materials it can use, which would actually exclude the UP! and might veer you towards a thingomatic by makerbot or something. but even the makerbots are very quirky and in development.

The reprap stuf is still very much in development, fast moving quirky and experimental. It's for these reasons that I love it, but for a developing country you would need to have someone who really enjoys tinkering and tuning this stuff to get it right... not just run it like a production line.

The positive point is that you don't have to predict or restrict what people make with it... it's much easier to bring a machine and a bunch of materials to a place than be able to predict ahead of time what they will need and in what quantities.

The thing that really holds this back though is software. In order to realize the full power of what this technology can do you need to have easy to use software to design something quickly, print, try it out and go back and revise the design. This is certainly possible today but the design packages are often costly and/or difficult.

I hope that helps. I summary the potential is all there... requires a stable product + variety of materials + software... all things that are being worked on but aren't quite there IMO

I'm actually doing work in "frontier markets" Perhaps this perspective is useful...

For 3D printers.... I see an opportunity for waste reduction. Not needing packaging for every single thing can help a lot. Every piece of clothing you're wearing came in it's own polyethylene bag. New product is the same way in every continent regardless of OECD rating of the country.

For cost - I'm not convinced that you'll be able to beat many products on cost.

1. There's some interesting price economics for products - the price of a bike axle is X regardless of a change in quality (it's rediculous, but that was how it's working in E. Africa in bike shops)
2. Cost of goods for 3DP is constant for each item (which is great for small scale)
3. COG for mass production decreaes with volume (which is great if you want to sell a lot of salt shakers, chairs, etc.)
4. You still have to ship raw material to the destination (no savings for 3DP over mass production)
5. You still have "last mile" problems (because you still have a material supply chain)

I can guarantee that raw material for 3D printing will cost more than raw material for mass production... Unless you're literally buying tons if raw material per printer in bead form and sending it to each 3D printer.

For the above Example: I can buy a brand new steel bike axle for my "black mamba" with 2 cone nuts, 2 nuts and washers for 42 cents (retail)... Using the cheapest plastic filament available, I couldn't print that for less. Plastic is cheaper than steel, but not appropriate for this application and if I'm operating the machine, I need to make a profit somewhere. There's a factory somewhere in India (this was "aman" branded) making hundreds of thousands of these things which drives down cost.

If you need unique things.... I am, frankly, envious of what I could make in Africa at some random rural city compared to the united states. I literally walked out of the inn, across the street, showed a guy that was welding chairs a picture of the parts I needed made and a few hours later I had 30 parts for dirt cheap - cut, welded and ground. Ignoring that anecdote... If you need unique things (or even slightly tweaked version of the same thing) for every thing, there's going to be a problem with getting the scale necessary to reach critical mass...


Scale is important to make have impact... Paul Polaks "Don't Bother" Trilogy:
If you haven’t talked to at least 25 of your customers - don't bother
If it won’t pay for itself in the first year - don't bother
If it can’t reach a million people - don’t bother

If not familiar with Paul Polak - I highly recommend his book "Out of Poverty." He's one of the few people that actually has had an impact.


My 2 cents

trebuchet03 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For cost - I'm not convinced that you'll be able
> to beat many products on cost.
>
> 1. There's some interesting price economics for
> products - the price of a bike axle is X
> regardless of a change in quality (it's
> rediculous, but that was how it's working in E.
> Africa in bike shops)

Could it be that a fair proportion of that may be due to the shipping cost of the object (or materials) outweighing the actual cost of the object?

> 4. You still have to ship raw material to the
> destination (no savings for 3DP over mass
> production)

Shipping IMO is governed a lot by two variables: Weight and Volume. Shipping raw material (where there is no excess volume enclosed) fits in the weight category. Pre-built or pre-assembled objects tend to fit into the volume category, as the space it takes up means less room for smaller objects to be shipped at the same time. Surface shipping (eg: by container) is almost always a 'container load', so weight isn't usually an issue. To get the most for your shipping dollar, you want everything to be as dense as possible. Flat-pack kits were a major step in reducing the volume/weight ratio. Reducing the volume/weight ratio also helps with storage, as less volume is needed to store things prior to purchase.

> 5. You still have "last mile" problems (because
> you still have a material supply chain)

If you're printing JIT style (Just In Time), then you reduce the need to warehouse stuff. This leads to less overheads in many cases, which is definitely a plus. Most large scale fabrication has gone to JIT methods (ie: only holding a small stock and fabricating what they need to be ready when they need it), particularly the automobile industry. IMO, 3D printing brings that much closer to the end user, which cuts down the need (or overheads) of storage prior to purchase, potentially at many points along the line (eg: at the manufacturer, during shipping, at the local distributor and eventually at the point of purchase).

That said, trebuchet03 is quite right that the remaining costs are not cheap, and that things such as volume production can be massively cheaper than 3D printing.

If the costs of shipping and storage however are substantial (or if the costs grow due to higher transport costs or space shortages), then 3D printing may be able to fill a need.

Cefiar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> trebuchet03 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > For cost - I'm not convinced that you'll be
> able
> > to beat many products on cost.
> >
> > 1. There's some interesting price economics for
> > products - the price of a bike axle is X
> > regardless of a change in quality (it's
> > rediculous, but that was how it's working in E.
> > Africa in bike shops)
>
> Could it be that a fair proportion of that may be
> due to the shipping cost of the object (or
> materials) outweighing the actual cost of the
> object?

When asked why they didn't charge more for the higher quality, the responses have been "because that's not how much a bike axle costs."

>
> > 4. You still have to ship raw material to the
> > destination (no savings for 3DP over mass
> > production)
>
> Shipping IMO is governed a lot by two variables:
> Weight and Volume. Shipping raw material (where
> there is no excess volume enclosed) fits in the
> weight category. Pre-built or pre-assembled
> objects tend to fit into the volume category, as
> the space it takes up means less room for smaller
> objects to be shipped at the same time. Surface
> shipping (eg: by container) is almost always a
> 'container load', so weight isn't usually an
> issue. To get the most for your shipping dollar,
> you want everything to be as dense as possible.
> Flat-pack kits were a major step in reducing the
> volume/weight ratio. Reducing the volume/weight
> ratio also helps with storage, as less volume is
> needed to store things prior to purchase.
>

Doh! Totally forgot abut that detail! 40' Shipping containers are generally limited to 45,000 pounds (limited by road requirements). It'd be better to go with a 20' as you can stuff 35,000lb inside... Using the "door volume" of a standard 20, you can theoretically get 71,000lb of ABS assuming no pallets, 100% packing efficiency and 1.04g/cc density. So we can stick with 35,000lb

You're totally right though - it's not just your opinion 20' containers are generally for weight restricted items and 40' containers are generally for volume restricted. Almost all the time are you volume restricted (in the case of many finished goods). There's also a 20' HEAVY for things like industrial machinery - but I'm not sure how that works...


> > 5. You still have "last mile" problems (because
> > you still have a material supply chain)
>
> If you're printing JIT style (Just In Time), then
> you reduce the need to warehouse stuff. This leads
> to less overheads in many cases, which is
> definitely a plus. Most large scale fabrication
> has gone to JIT methods (ie: only holding a small
> stock and fabricating what they need to be ready
> when they need it), particularly the automobile
> industry. IMO, 3D printing brings that much closer
> to the end user, which cuts down the need (or
> overheads) of storage prior to purchase,
> potentially at many points along the line (eg: at
> the manufacturer, during shipping, at the local
> distributor and eventually at the point of
> purchase).

I was referring more to the last mile of the raw material So you got this shipping container of 35,000lb of raw ABS.... Now, you're going to have to truck it. One doesn't have to warehouse finished goods in this case, but you still need to warehouse shipping containers of ABS. You then quickly discover that the trucking portion of the trip is more expensive than the shipping container (especially if theres a border crossing - Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda are good examples). Frontier markets can't always just truck shipping containers (oh yes, breaking apart a shipping container full of pallets - such a shame).

There is then, of course, taxes. Tariff on finished good will vary based on the good (in some cases, free). I have no idea how this would be taxed (anyone know what it might be for harmonized code HS9023 - that's what my customs form for raw plastics uses). The raw materials might be better here as they haven't been transformed and therefore probably have lower value compared to the finished goods they would replace...


>
> That said, trebuchet03 is quite right that the
> remaining costs are not cheap, and that things
> such as volume production can be massively cheaper
> than 3D printing.
>
> If the costs of shipping and storage however are
> substantial (or if the costs grow due to higher
> transport costs or space shortages), then 3D
> printing may be able to fill a need.

For the product I've been working with... Shipping is expensive, but the cost of goods and margin is still driving price.

I don't want to call thinking about 3D printing in frontier markets premature... In many places, they're embracing cell phones before central banking. 3DP hasn't yet reached critical mass in the OECD first world but perhaps the cell phone/banking example is indication that they would embrace the concept (I do recall a surprising number of photocopying shops in the E.A.T. :p). Its good to think about, I'm still not sold on scale though. If you want to print teacups, you're literally competing with 21 cent plastic injection molded teacups (landed cost).

Shipping costs could be offset by using PLA. Figure out that last step of dehumidifying the air and you can make PLA directly at the location out of starchy things.

The utility of a printer would be dramatically improved with the addition of sandbox casting. People here have already shown that you can use the ABS itself to hold the shape of the mold. Pour molten metal into it and the ABS just disappears. Anyone can figure out how to that. So they could turn complex plastic parts into complex metal parts with a step they already understand and have the tools for.

Additionally, you can use the ABS part to creat a negative for any other kind of traditional molding. That can help increase the scale.

And if you get someone trained up on the computer they can design custom parts/products for people. Hell, give them an internet connection and they can just ask someone else (anywhere in the world) to design the part. Then they can download the file and print it themselves. Cell phone penetration in Africa is remarkable; they're getting wired up. It could be a nice way to connect the developed world to the developing world. Someone who designs something useful or entertaining would get to see it used in real life in less than a day. That would also help highlight the game-changing nature of 3d printing: that it speeds up the prototyping process. A breakdown in communication means that it takes you two days to design a working thing instead of getting it right on the first try. If the dongle needs to move an inch to the left, just redesign it, upload a new file, and it's printing out in an African village in five minutes.


LOL, personally I would LOVE to see African outsource some work to Americans! That would be the day

I'd suggest you run this by the team at Design for the Other 90 Percent (D-REV) www.d-rev.org. Paul Polak is crazy busy these days. I'll ask for his input, and cross my fingers he has time for reply. Either way, D-REV is an excellent resource for such an idea. Hope this helps!
www.paulpolak.com
Follow Paul Polak on Twitter @OutofPoverty

Saw Paul's tweet and thought of a talk I recently heard at Design Indaba (http://www.designindaba.com/) by Dirk van der Kooij. He developed a low-res 3d printer that can manufacture chairs etc. In my opinion it has lots of potential uses in the developing world.

[dirkvanderkooij.nl]

Hope this is useful

Kyle

When reading about aid projects something that often seems to pop up is the problem that we in the west just dumps some high tech stuff in the developing world and then if fails miserably due to lack of infrastructure for repair and service. My thinking is that a benefit with 3D printers for making objects, over ordering them is that by building them yourself, you will also learn how to fix and maintain them. Even if it is more expensive than ready made, it might make sense simply because it will allow people to learn how products work and how to fix them themselves.

Maybe one should look into how one can make stuff with materials which are easily accessible in the developing world. I am thinking about stuff like the earthships which can be made by stuff you can find anywhere. They help Haitians build houses with that approach.

Awesome that there's a thread on this topic...I've been noodling on this subject. Right now Im in Bolivia working for a solar energy company and i've been trying to convince them to buy a 3D printer to make a lot of their own parts and products. One of the biggest issues for finding parts and products is the postal service and the import duties. Importing things is a real hassle. Bolivia doesn't rreally have a high-tech industry...most things are imported. The saddest part is that there are quite a few well-educated yet under-employed people out here who would jump at a chance to use these printers. Having a printer here means we can design an effective flashlight with local materials - thus keeping their jobs here instead of outsourcing the work to China. I also have an arduino solar tracker idea in the pipeline, plus a million others - i think if we actually do get a printer and get it working, we're gonna try everything and see what works best.

What I really hope to do is to travel into the countryside with our printer and a solar system (we're aiming to buy a BFB3000+...something really sturdy) and go from town to town offering our catalogue of products and printing them off as they're needed. Of course, it seems debatable about how doable this is...i think we'd be a popular attraction.

Check out my blog for updates and other rambles - reinventtheprintingpress.blogspot.com

JF

Developing countries don't need chairs and pepper shakers to improve their quality of life. They simply need the quality of life to improve. Self Governance and Rule of Law are at the top of the list. And by this, I mean legit government and equal justice.

If you introduced reprap into almost any third world country, and it gained wide acceptance, you would quickly find that the only place to get filament would be from the president's nephew, through an exclusive contract with some big chemical company like DuPont. That's the reality today.

I've actually heard stories of places where you can be fined for collecting rain water because it competes with the privatized water utility. I think it's one of the South American countries. Not sure. Oh wait! It's the U.S.A.! Yes, that's right. In many states, it is illegal to harvest rain water.

This is going to become a rant if I don't stop...

"I've actually heard stories of places where you can be fined for collecting rain water because it competes with the privatized water utility. I think it's one of the South American countries. Not sure. Oh wait! It's the U.S.A.! Yes, that's right. In many states, it is illegal to harvest rain water. "

Its funny that you mention this....that happened in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000...its where I live right now.

Anyways, you're thoughts on DuPont and President's nephew are unfounded - the RapMan can print with HDPE - the same stuff in water bottles. One of the ideas being throw around in my office is melting down bottles into usable stock. So I dont think 3D printing is going to be threatened by centralized authority as you claim - rather the opposite.

Salt shakers and chairs seem pretty trivial to you, but actually it isn't. Increasing the quality of life here comes in many shapes and sizes - if your a fruit seller and your chair breaks - it sucks..you have to stand all day now. And it could cost a lot to get a new one. If you own a tiny little restaurant and you need a saltshaker...or its missing a cap or whatever....printing the cap off instead of buying a new one makes a difference. People in Bolivia are very resourceful - they have to be. lots of things are imported. No one really buys books out here (they're too expensive!) so they often download them and print them. There are millions of photocopy stores outside University Mayor San Simon in Cochabamba - usually a bunch of students buy one textbook for one class and photocopy the whole thing (not very revolutionary - i do that in Canada). But you get the idea right?

Disposable water bottles are not made with HDPE. They are made with polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE). I don't think you can use this as feed but perhaps you can make print beds with it. Heated PET tape on aluminum is Nophead's material of choice for ABS.

Shoot my bad. You're absolutely right. But they do use HDPE to make consumer bottles like laundry detergent bottles...and plastic packaging/grocery bags. (Wikipedia) While I may be wrong about the bottles, my point still stands that there are plenty of sources for a 3D printer in the developing world. Plastic bags are a curse out here too, unsurprisingly. It'd be nice to turn them into something useful after I get back home.....another source of income for the legions of kids and old people that scrounge up recyclables from garbage bins.

In a pre-edited version of my two cents up there, I was arguing that chairs and pepper shakers can be made out of almost anything, so they are not the kind of things people will find themselves wanting.

So the real question is: How does having a machine that can make things out of plastic, benefit people in the developing world?

Can it make water safe to drink? I've heard of a simple filter...
Can it educate? Certainly.
Can it lead people out of poverty? Start small manufacturing business. Commercialize the design. Import hard to find parts. Open a hardware store. Make hardware.
Can it help yield better crops? Non-chemical bug traps, etc...

If sustainable scenarios can be developed around questions like these, you can definitely argue that RepRap, or something like it can work in the developing world. Without a clear path to follow, it becomes very difficult to introduce such things and maintain momentum

3D Printers - in their current form cannot make a difference for third world countries.

They cannot be used to provide these 3 basic things: water, food and shelter.
Once these are abundant everything else automatically follows.

So if there is a printer which can be used for that purpose it would make sense, otherwise it is just another useless tiny possession.
In order to do that you have to think on a different scale:

How can water treatment facilities, aqueducts, train tracks, food silos, cities and industry be constructed without outside resources?
We take those for granted, and even if you live on welfare in the industrialized world you have access to them. Nobody will benefit from some trinket as long as the fundamentals aren't satisfied.

If you think about it you quickly come to the conclusion that these are all things which are in some way either are provided or indirectly granted by the government. So either you need to come up with a cybernetic system which makes it obsolete or have something that even those banana republic regents would utilize.

"3D Printers - in their current form cannot make a difference for third world countries.

They cannot be used to provide these 3 basic things: water, food and shelter.
Once these are abundant everything else automatically follows. "

That couldn't be farther from the truth. But perhaps we're talking about different sorts of developing countries - not all countries are made the same. In Bolivia (where I am now) lots of people have adequate food, shelter and water. The quality isn't great...but basic necessities are fulfilled for a vast majority of people here. And just because people have these things doesn't mean "everything else automatically follows." ... there are lots of other factors that lead into economic development.

For Bolivia, a lot of people here are fairly well educated - they just dont have the sort of means of production that allow them to keep the economy well oiled. If you have a water filter enclosure thats broken...you have to buy a new one from Europe or other richer latin american countries. The buying power here is predictably low - so when you buy imported products you are paying for the higher labour and intellectual costs of richer countries.

However, with a 3D printer, you could simply take the measurements, create the model on a computer and print it off. Anyone in my office could do that for significantly less than someone in the US or Europe. When you add up the costs of using recycled products or plastic refined here (Bolivia has a few refineries and lots of oil) then costs drop, ETAs drop and there is less down time for said water filter. Overall, less people get sick because its back and running quicker than usual.

I suppose there is strong evidence that a RepRap wouldn't work in very poor countries (Say, the new nation of South Sudan) because they may not have the level of education and resources that are necessary at bare minimum. I wouldn't dismiss a RepRap in marginally richer countries like Bolivia....

Voronoi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That couldn't be farther from the truth. But
> perhaps we're talking about different sorts of
> developing countries - not all countries are made
> the same.
Yes.

> For Bolivia, a lot of people here are fairly well
> educated - they just dont have the sort of means
> of production that allow them to keep the economy
> well oiled. If you have a water filter enclosure
> thats broken...you have to buy a new one from
> Europe or other richer latin american countries.
> The buying power here is predictably low - so when
> you buy imported products you are paying for the
> higher labour and intellectual costs of richer
> countries.

Of course that would help, if the filament wouldn't have to be imported in the first place. But I don't exactly see a real difference between "2nd world" countries and the western industrial world. There may have been a difference in the nineties but not anymore. As for western produced goods: We have come to a point where we basically cannot afford our own labor anymore. Goods made in the EU and US are mostly used by international corporation where the costs are subsidized anyway. If you look at it that way counties like Bolivia might be even better of in the long run, since local goods can still be afforded by individuals.

> I suppose there is strong evidence that a RepRap
> wouldn't work in very poor countries (Say, the new
> nation of South Sudan) because they may not have
> the level of education and resources that are
> necessary at bare minimum. I wouldn't dismiss a
> RepRap in marginally richer countries like
> Bolivia....

That was what I was thinking. The challenge lies there, meaning is it possible to invent a 3d Printer which is able to operate under these conditions?
Lets say the only resource are empty PET bottles and broken PCs.

I just returned from a three week vacation in Puerto Rico. While there, I tried building a RepStrap with only items that I could find on the island. Keep in mind that Puerto Rico is not a third world country. It has all the big companies, fast food joints, hotels, banks, pharma, etc.

I managed to build a RepStrap frame using stuff I found at The Home Depot, and the Radio Shack had supplies for etching my own boards, but there were a few of things I could not source anywhere on the island: Stepper Motors, Plastics (PTFE, PEEK), Electronics Connectors, Kapton Tape, and the Arduino MEGA.

Other stuff, like Pololu Drivers, Plastic Parts, and Filament, I would order on-line anyway, but most of the things I mentioned are easy enough to acquire locally where I live, and add significant cost to the build when you include the shipping costs.

I wonder if Hawaii or the Philippines are similar? Maybe it's possible to make PLA from seaweed...

Nice work jcabrer! Interesting you couldnt find some of those materials.... I figured they'd be common....but being a part of the US means they can get lots of things shipped there pretty cheaply. Out here, if you ship anything over 100 bucks you get taxed through the yingyang.

I spent Friday driving across Cochabamba checking out plastic factories....there are more than a dozen and all of them are fairly big operations. One promising lead said he's going to see if he can get us uPVC (for a BFB3000) ... PLA is common out here too....but its a little more difficult to find in stock plastic. ABS exists....but not in 3mm filaments. There are producers in Argentina and Brazil but my boss wants a local producer.....according to a few plastic factory foremen here they can make it the way we want it...but not in the small qualities that we want...looks like we need more 3D printers!