Acronym of the Week - - D.I.Y.

D.I.Y. stands for "Do-It-Yourself" - - as in D.I.Y. manufacturing, D.I.Y. drones, and D.I.Y. biotech.  In an open-source and decentralized world of global collaboration, D.I.Y. is an interesting trend to follow.

All scientists and engineers start as amateurs.  Bill Hewlett and Dave Pachard started their information technology behemoth is a garage.  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were part of the original group of hackers in the Homebrew Computer Club when they built their first Apple in the 1970s.  Sergey Brin and Larry Page invented Google in a friend's garage.  Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in his dorm room.

We have always been a nation with a dominant D.I.Y. gene.  In fact, the new thing is, in fact, things.  In recent years, a nationwide movement of do-it-yourself aficionados has embraced the self-made object.  Take one model radio controlled airplane and a Lego Mindstorms Robotics Kit - - put the two together and you end up with a Lego robot that can fly a plane.  In our open-sourced and decentralized global world, you can count on Internet instructions and a YouTube video to show you the steps (Note - - Building an air force of Lego based drones with GPS capabilities will probably get you on a list that the NSA has).

Other DIYs have a focus on manufacturing.  Within this group is a quixotic band (40,000 factories have shut down in the last decade) of soldering, laser-cutting, software-programming types who, defying all economic logic, contend that they can reverse America's manufacturing slump.  America will make things again, they say, because Americans will always make things - - not in factories but also in their own homes, and not because it's artisan or faddish, but because it's easier, better for the environment and more fun.

Neil Gershenfield, a M.I.T. physicist who is an intellectual godfather to the D.I.Y. maker movement, has suggested that the new tools would over time change the global industry as we know it.  He predicts a wave of new competitors for the megacorporation that designs, makes, and sells products all under one brand.  Instead, Gershenfield imagines a consumer of the near future downloading a design for a mobile phone through an iTunes-like portal; buying an add-on from another firm that tweaks the design; and having it printed at a neighborhood shop in a plastic shell of your choice.

It is important to understand the potential of D.I.Y. in the context of printing - - as in 3D printing.  Three-dimensional printing from digital designs will transform manufacturing and allow more people to start making things.

Using 3D printers as production tools, has become known in the industry as "additive" manufacturing (as opposed to the old "subtractive" business of cutting, drilling, and bashing).  The additive process requires less raw material and because software drives 3D printers, each item can be made differently without costly retooling.  The printers can also produce ready-made objects that require less assembly and things.

How would this translate to D.I.Y. manufacturing?  Most obviously, it changes the economics of making customized components.  If a company needs a specialized part, it may find it cheaper and quicker to have the part printed locally or even to print its own than to order one from a supplier a long way away.  This is more likely when rapid design changes are needed.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of additive manufacturing is that it lowers the cost of entry into the business of making things.  Instead of finding the money to set up a factory or asking a mass-producer to make something for you, 3D printers will offer a cheaper, less risky route to the market.  An entrepreneur could run off one or two samples with a 3D printer to see if his or her idea works.  He or she could make a few more to see if they sell, and take in design changes that buyers ask for.  If things go really well, they could scale up - - with conventional mass production or an enormous 3D print run.

The most interesting area of D.I.Y. is on the biotech front.  As one D.I.Y. biotech fan stated, "Biology is really fundamentally no different from cooking, most of the time."  (Note - - It is one thing to burn a hole in the kitchen table with a soldering iron putting together your latest gizmo - - it is another thing to "wipe out" your subdivision with some new strain of swine flu.  D.I.Y. Biotech manuals point out that pets are really good safety officers.)  Many in the biotech D.I.Y. crowd come from backgrounds in bioengineering - - the convergence of open-source and biotechnology.  Home-brew DNA dicers and slicers with sophisticated homemade equipment - - with the potential to engineer bacteria to produce malaria medicine in their kitchens.

D.I.Y. meets the world of open sourcing in the context of an increasing flow of global ideas.

Check out the following - -

DIYdrones
Adafruit Industries
Digital Forming
littleBits
OmniCorpDetroit
CloudFab
DIYBio
DIY Garage Biotech