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"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world." - Margaret Mead
3D Printing is hyped subject. It is however a part of bigger economical transformation that has began lately. In this article I describe Commons Design Economy, which is one side of the bigger picture. Data used in this research is mostly statistical and thus this research uses statistical methodology. Data from surrounding world, namely open design related world, was gathered during October 2012. Data for this article has been collected with two methods. Firstly, author has been in personal contact with companies such as Ponoko, Shapeways, i.Materialise, 3DTin and TinkerCAD. Some of the statistical materials are from those connections. The other statistical material is collected with web scraping, which is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites. In addition, some previously collected statistics was also used in this research.
![[INFOGRAPHIC] DRAW ME A HACKER](http://surveys.peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/draw-me-ahacker.png)
Hackerspaces, makerspaces, DIYbio communities and fablabs targeted survey was conducted this summer once again! This survey was the third year in a row. Results are more about ‘Peer Production community core persons’ than about general community. This was not intended, but turned out to be so.
The first ever live survey conducted under the auspices of Peer to Peer Foundation is directed to 3D Printing community. The survey was open from May 1st to May 15th 2012. The survey starts longitudinal research project and continues with annual surveys. The survey contained 20 questions and was directed both the 3D printing service users (end users) and developers.
The 3D manufacturing ecosystem is still immature in nature, as can be seen from the survey in several ways. Firstly, some of the participants see lack of organisation (especially in RepRap) as a bottleneck. Lack of organisation is not just lack of bureaucracy. It causes several other unwanted results such as lack of proper documentation, lack of quality control and lack of test plans. In other words some social co-operation model could solve some of the issues and thereby increase the maturity of the ecosystem. Secondly, 3D manufacturing processes are still too complicated (require too many pieces of at least somewhat separate software). Thirdly, usability and reliability are poor. This is visible in open source CAD/CAM software, which are lagging behind in features and usability compared to commercial ones and in the printers themselves, which should be more easily assembled, used and more reliable.
Keep in mind that all survey data from every survey will be open sourced eg made available for all to use. This enables you to do your own analysis.