What are you printing? Ambivalent emancipation by 3D printing

The purposes of this paper are to study how entry-level 3D printers are currently being used in several shared machine shops (FabLabs, hackerspaces, etc.) and to examine the ambivalent emancipation often offered by 3D printing, when users prefer the fascinated passivity of replicating rather than the action of repairing. Based on a field study and on a large online survey, this paper offers to examine different practices with entry-level 3D printers, observed in several shared machine shops (FabLabs, hackerspaces, etc.). The recent evolution of additive manufacturing and the shift from high-end additive technologies to consumer’s entry-level 3D printing is taken as an entry point. Indeed, digital fabrication has recently received extensive media coverage and the maker movement has become a trendy subject for numerous influential publications. In the makerspaces that were taken for this field survey, 3D printers were very often used for demonstration, provoking fascination and encouraging a passive attitude.

As part of the work for a PhD research on personal digital fabrication as practiced in FabLabs, hackerspaces and makerspaces, since 2012, a large-scale field survey at the heart of these workshops was carried out. Particular attention has been paid to the relationships established between the inhabitants of these places and their machines, observing the logic of developing projects and the reactions or techniques used to counter unforeseen obstacles – that shall be demonstrated to be an essential occurrence for these moments of production. From Paris to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Rome, Lyngen (Norway), San Francisco, New York, Boston, Tokyo, Kamakura (Japan) to Dakar, a means of observing at the heart of more than 30 makerspaces (FabLabs, hackerspaces) has been created, with the aim of looking beyond the speeches relayed by the media and to constitute an observatory of these places. The field observations are confirmed by a quantitative study, based on a survey submitted online to 170 users, coming from 30 different makerspaces in more than ten countries in the world and reached through social networks or mailing lists. This survey offers a rigorous insight on the uses of 3D printing and leads to the consideration of the types of attention applied to 3D printing and the part played by the “default” or “trivial” productions used for their demonstrations or performances.

Based on both the observations and the quantitative survey, it can be discussed how the question of so-called “user-friendliness” is challenged by practices of repairing, fixing and adjusting, more than that of replicating. Indeed, it is claimed that this offers a possible meaning for 3D printing practices. In the description and analysis of the behaviours with 3D printers, this leads to privilege the idea of “disengaging” and the notion of “acting” rather than simply passively using.

3D printing is just one of the many options in the wide range available for personal digital fabrication. As a part of the same arsenal as laser cutters or numerical milling machines, 3D printing shares with these machines the possibility of creating objects from designs or models produced by a computer. These machines execute the instructions of operators whose practices – or behaviours – have yet to be qualified. These emerging technical situations pose a series of questions: who are those who use these 3D printers? What are they printing? What are the techniques, the gestures or the rituals imposed or offered by these machines?