3D Printing for Development in the Global South: The 3D4D Challenge

Abstract

3D printing may remove those economies of scale, making manufacturing, like agriculture, scalable and eliminating the need for distribution almost completely. A self-replicating 3D printer starts to make manufacturing much more like farming. And 3D printing means that material goods can effectively be sent down the wires. So 3D printers may start to do for distribution what the Internet has already done for information.