Will 3D printers see the end of consumerism?

As a manufacturing technology 3D printing certainly offers flexibility in terms of form, but this is not the be-all and end-all of making useful, practical, reliable things. Where the technique falls down very badly (fatally?) is in the range of available materials and in ways of controlling and tailoring their properties.

Material properties of components parts are crucial - for all but the very simplest of objects. I have a hard time believing that any but the least-stressed of metal components can be built-up by sequential deposition, and still retain all the right characteristics. Take a look at the metallurgical requirements of a spring, a bracket, a machine screw or even a 'simple' pivot, for example.

At the very 'high-end', undoubtedly, great things are doubtless possible - incorporating in-situ alloy-mixing heads, localised heat-treatment (sintering, hardening, annealing, tempering) capabilities etc. But machines which can do all this will be VERY expensive, and will require a very wide range of feedstocks, as well as considerable operational expertise and significant maintenance.

I'm actually hard pressed to think of a single item that I want/need, for which this would be a good production technique. Maybe a lampshade....

Just as importantly, the embodied energy of the finished product is not obviously going to be less than that of the factory-produced and distributed version, or even of the 'traditional' small/home workshop-maded version. Thermal processing of small objects is inherently inefficient, and the production of feedstock powders and granules probably takes more energy than plate, bar, roll or coil.

I can see the appeal, but I'd caution that it is far greater for people who've never actually worked in a true manufacturing environment. And the real appeal seems to be essentially that it de-skills the production of moderately-complex, reasonably well-finished articles.

Personally, I'm all in favour of increasing our materials skills, not trying to get by without them.

You're right that if 3-d printing does move out of the margins and into the mainstream, it will surely be a transformative technology. But rather than the end of consumerism, it could be the ultimate in consumerism – as the article implies, you could have literally anything printed in the home. It would be like Amazon.com on speed. The 3-d printer would be a gateway to instant gratification. I'd have thought that this was as likely an outcome as the end to passive consumerism and the advent of a 'producer economy' - admittedly a more tempting prospect.

I'm really not as sure as you seem to be about the sustainability credentials. I don't completely buy the idea that the economies of scale that manufacturing industries have built up over decades are less efficient at a system level than devolving that production to the consumer. What about increases in domestic waste (badly printed stuff, stuff you decide you don't want after all) and hikes in local energy use? The distribution of the raw material? Socially and economically there are issues around devolving manufacture – what about all those Chinese jobs so vital for development? And where does the raw material come from? If it is corn-based polymers then we're looking at yet another demand on finite amounts of productive land on top of energy crops and food crops.

It's difficult in the end to assess the impact of something as fundamental (and embryonic) as this – if 3d printing becomes mainstream say 15 or 20 years down the line, it will be part of a whole system shift to devolved networks, microgen, local food production and the like: the triumph of the bit over the atom and the culmination of the ICT revolution. We have to think about that system as a whole and how we can ensure it can support a sustainable world.