As COVID-19 wreaks havoc on global supply chains , a trend of moving manufacturing closer to customers could go so far as to put miniature manufacturing plants in people’s living rooms.

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Most products in Americans’ homes are labeled “Made in China,” but even those bearing the words “Made in USA” frequently have parts from China that are now often delayed.

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The coronavirus pandemic closed so many factories in China that NASA could observe the resultant drop in pollution from space , and some products are becoming harder to find. [Photo: courtesy of the author] But at the same time, there are open-source, freely available digital designs for making millions of items with 3D printers, and their numbers are growing exponentially , as is an interest in open hardware design in academia . Some designs are already being shared for open-source medical hardware to help during the pandemic , like […]

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