3D打印工厂Shapeways实地探秘

    每天，总部位于长岛市皇后区Shapeways工厂那些年轻的、留着胡子、刺着纹身的工程师们都会聚在一起吃饭，就好像他们生活在19世纪的企业生活区一样。在他们工作的工业区里没有太多美食可以选择，所以他们要么叫披萨外卖，要么叫生鲜直达。Shapeways是一家3D打印公司，它以这种方式一边向旧工业致敬，一边试图彻底改造传统的工业制造模式。

    在Shapeways公司开放式大办公室里的几乎每个平面上，你都能看到各种异想天开的作品，比如五颜六色的人型雕像、某种虚构生物的骨架、某种看起来是受大自然的启发而成的抽象雕塑等。甚至还有一座分形鹿头雕塑，让人一见就不由得想象，这头鹿真实的样子是什么。

    这些都体现了3D技术的强大潜力——它能制造出的物体几乎是无限的。3D打印背后的技术基础已经存在几十年了，只是通常只用于航空航天等高精尖行业里，作为一种制造原型机的工具来使用。但是近年来，DIY爱好者和所谓“自造者运动”的拥趸们开始使用3D打印技术制造新奇的玩意儿。现在这项技术已经不再神秘了，Shapeways公司相信，3D打印技术将在每个家庭都拥有一席之地。

    Shapeways公司于2007年创立于荷兰，是由飞利浦等电子行业巨头孵化的。它拥有一家像Etsy.com那样的网络市场，上面有13500多家线上商店。设计师们把数不清的产品拿到上面销售，从小雕塑到信用卡套、厨房用具等等，应有尽有。去年，这家公司从安德里森霍洛维兹基金（Andreessen Horowitz）等大牌风投那里拉来了3000万美元的风险投资。这家公司的总部现在位于曼哈顿，与它的工厂隔河相望。

    Shapeways网络市场的原理是这样的：顾客首先在Shapeways的网络市场里搜索一样物品，找到一个感兴趣的设计方案，选择他们喜欢的材料，然后，顾客的需求就被发送到Shapeways工厂的员工那里，员工会确定它是否具有可行性。然后3D打印机就开工了。Shapeways公司并不研发自己的3D打印技术，而是把它转化成一门面向消费者的生意。它先把产品打印出来，然后检查瑕疵、上色、抛光，最后把货物发给客户。

    “3D打印”指的并不是一道特定的工序，而是一整套工艺流程，每道程序都能制造出一种特定的物品。台式3D打印机一般依赖的是一种“喷印”工序，也就是把一种材料喷成一个形状，然后让它凝固成型。它有点像一种喷胶枪，可以把胶和打印材料一起喷出来。

    Shapeways工厂使用的是一套叫做“激光烧结”的工序，每个物品都是一层一层地熔凝在一起。打印材料最初是粉末状的，经激光扫描后，它会凝固成一个材料层，最后一层一层地堆叠成最终产品。

    主流的注塑成型法等工艺流程非常适合生产大量一模一样的产品，但是在可制造的物品种类上却存在物理上的限制。3D打印技术至少在两个方面改变了这个生产流程。首先它可以制造出一些极为复杂的设计（比如一串预先链接在一起的链子），另外它可以更容易、而且更便宜地生产出一些一次性的、或者不需要长期使用的物品。3D打印设计软件就像连接设计师的大脑与3D打印机之间的渠道，他们的唯一限制就是设计师的想象力和物理原理。

    Every day, the young, bearded, and tattooed team at the Shapeways factory in Long Island City, Queens gather to eat together, as if they lived in a 19th century company town. There aren't many dining options in the industrial area in which they work, so they order takeout pizza or food from FreshDirect and convene. Their routine is fitting: Shapeways, a three-dimensional printing company, tips its hat to the industrial past even as it seeks to reinvent manufacturing.

    On almost every flat surface in Shapeways' open plan office are whimsical creations -- multicolored figurines of humanoid creatures, skeletons of imaginary animals, abstract sculptures that appear inspired by nature's curving forms. There is even a fractal design of a deer's head that looks like the frame on which you'd hang the real thing.

    All of this illustrates the powerful potential that 3-D printing has to create an infinity of objects. The technology that makes 3-D printing possible has existed for decades, often employed as a prototyping tool in sophisticated industries such as aerospace. More recently, the do-it-yourself community and other hobbyists in the so-called Maker movement have adopted it as a way to create novel items. Now that the technology is no longer in doubt, Shapeways is betting that 3-D printed objects have a place in every home.

    Shapeways was founded in the Netherlands in 2007 and incubated by the electronics giant Philips. It hosts an Etsy-like online marketplace of more than 13,500 online storefronts where designers showcase countless products, from figurines and credit card holders to jewelry and kitchenware. Last year, it raised $30 million in venture capital from heavyweight firms including Andreessen Horowitz. It's now headquartered in Manhattan, across the river from the factory.

    The Shapeways marketplace works like this: Customers search for items at the Shapeways site. After finding a design of interest and selecting a preferred material, the request is sent to staffers at the Shapeways factory, who determine if it is feasible. Then the printers whirr into action. Shapeways didn't develop its 3-D printing technology, but it turns it into a consumer-facing business by manufacturing creations, reviewing them for defects, and dyeing or polishing them into finished products before shipping them.

    The term "3-D printing" doesn't refer to a specific process so much as a category of processes that are each capable of creating one-of-a-kind items. Desktop 3-D printers often rely on an "extruding" process in which a material is fired into a shape and then solidified. It's sort of like a glue gun shooting both the glue and whatever it's holding together.

    Here at the Shapeways factory, the company uses a process called laser sintering in which each item gets fused together layer by layer. The material starts in a powdered form, and when a laser scans across it, it hardens into a layer that will, in aggregate, comprise the final product.

    Mainstream manufacturing processes like injection molding are very good at producing an infinite number of identical products, but there are physical limitations to what can be created. 3-D printing changes the manufacturing process in at least two interesting ways: It allows for the creation of incredibly intricate designs (such as a pre-assembled chain of links) and makes it easier and less expensive to create one-off or limited-run creations. The design software acts as a conduit between the designer's brain and the printer, limited only by her imagination and the laws of physics.