14 DAY TRIAL // Google is developing a modular smartphone called Project Ara. Modular meaning that the phone will be made of various interchangeable parts. 3D Systems is collaborating with Google. What we have just learned is part of the plan to 3D print the thing.
You see, the cases of the various parts making up the Project Ara modular consumer electronics device will be made via 3D printing technology.
If this were a product, it would have a single shape that everyone would get upon buying the phone/tablet, meaning that conventional manufacturing technologies could be employed just fine.
Customization is the core of the project, however, so it's a good thing that 3D printing technology exists. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to come up with so many different trays and sockets.
Well, not impossible maybe, but too hard and expensive to mass-produce, since each different component would need its own assembly line.
3D Systems is already making a continuous, high-speed 3D printing platform that will work quickly enough to be a viable substitute for regular methods. A continuous motion system was put together, with an architecture reminiscent of a racetrack.
However, there is one big issue that needs to be solved before everything settles into place: the speed of 3D printing technology.
Right now, it still takes hours for a single, small item to be 3D printed, regardless of whether it's made drop by drop (fused deposition modeling, FDM) or grown by curing resin via light exposure (stereolithograpy, SLA).
So, even if 3D Systems makes a huge print bed that can churn out more than one casing at the same time, the speed of 3D printing has to grow.
The company has now announced its intention to achieve just that. Its next order of business is to increase 3D printing manufacture speed considerably. Estimates place the boost at a factor of 50. We can only hope that everything else made via 3D printing benefits from the advancement.
“3D Systems is collaborating with Google to develop a very high throughput, high-quality, full-color, fully-automated printer designed to print thousands of parts per day,” wrote Weston Twigg, an analyst for Pacific Crest Securities.
“The printer is expected to be 50x faster than current state of the art. This type of printer could catapult 3D printing forward in the manufacturing industry, with or without Project Ara’s success.”
Google Project Ara phones will only become available in 2015, assuming no problems arise that push back the formal introduction. It seems to happen on the tech front really frequently.