Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
The amateur car enthusiast sells the printed steering wheel online. Its buyer
installs the wheel in his car. A few weeks later, he discovers too late that the
custom printed steering wheel disengages if turned sharply to the left at high
speeds. Its buyer dies in a tragic car crash.
Imagine you're the attorney defending the family of the amateur car enthu-
siast who died in the car crash. Where would you assign fault? On the person
who made the faulty design ile? The person who 3D printed and sold it? The
website that advertised the part? Perhaps the manufacturer of the car the faulty
wheel was installed onto, the printer manufacturer, or the material supplier?
Standards can help set clear boundaries of responsibilities. In the early
days of steam engines, boilers used to blow up, frequently causing injury and
damage. It was insurance companies that insisted on delineating responsibili-
ties by setting clear standards of production. A set of criteria were eventu-
ally created that speciied the minimum requirement to certify a boiler for a
certain operating steam pressure, such as material thickness, safety margins
and pressure release valves. A boiler that did not meet the standard would
likely not be insured.
Similar standards will develop for 3D printing to help create boundaries
of responsibility. Printer manufacturers will strive to get their printers certi-
ied, and material producers will try to meet or exceed minimum material
performance standards. It's possible that in the absence of clear and standard
boundaries of responsibilities, manufacturers of complex 3D printed products
will have no recourse but to disclaim all responsibility altogether—a situation
you will be familiar with if you ever read the end user license agreement you
hastily agree to every time you install new software. Most software is sold “as
is, without any warranty of itness for any particular purpose.”
Criminals will quickly learn to apply 3D printing technology to improve
their illegal wares and services. All of us face new risks if we have the bad
luck to purchase a shoddily made or counterfeit 3D printed machine part that
fails at a critical moment. 3D printed weapons and new chemicals could be
devastating if they fall into malevolent hands. Far in the future, maybe the
black market for organ donation will shift into a black market for unregulated
and bioprinted body parts.
In reality, these dramatic concerns will likely not affect most of our daily
lives that much. I suspect that the legal challenge that most of us will run into
will be that of navigating out-of-date intellectual property laws.
