3D Printing Viability

I imagine this will end up like 3D printing though.A 3D printer is fantastic to prototype your own designs. Or to build custom parts in low volume.But it will never replace traditional manufacturing at scale. And even CAD is a massive barrier to entry.And 3D printing is far more useful for everyday things but we still haven’t figured out a model to make the technology accessible to the general public.This is a very impressive project though. I’m envious.

those are the tradeoffs. It sounds to me like 3d priting isn't even a good fit for what the guy wants to do.

I'd also like to add: make sure you actually need a 3D print. Most of the stuff I see people printing could be made faster and more reliably with more traditional manufacturing methods. For example: a 3D printed case for just about anything is a terrible idea. It's very hard to get square, true prints of specific dimensions. I've seen many a warped Raspberry Pi case.

Instant 3d printing. It is too costly and slow now but things will change.

Agree. For me personally, 3d printing has been a "hit" and the printers keep getting better, cheaper and more reliable. Good bed levelling, multi-head, failure detection etc are reaching the mainstream and the printers I have now are amazingly better than what I started with.But most people (reasonably) don't seem that interested in making small plastic things. It's a niche thing to want to do and as you point out, there's a learning curve. Plus materials and process

Nope the article does not focus so much on price. It says 3d printers are getting cheaper and cheaper. But his points are valid: just like it does not make sense to carve your own furniture for everything, it does not make sense to do 3D printing for everything in your house either, because you need different kind of materials for different kind of purpose and no 3d printer is going to be able to reproduce every kind of plastic used around you. Plastic is not just plastic, there are thousands of

Honestly, I find the 3D printing to be most useful for rapid prototyping. No more sending schematics out, waiting for the results to come back via post, and repeating the cycle until you have something you're happy with and ready to take to the actual manufacturer.It's a better small CNC machine* for inventors and hobbyists. As much as its proponents will claim there will be one in every home which you'll use to re-create broken pieces of appliances, tools, and equipment and how you'll be dow

I don’t think 3D printers will ever get that ubiquitous. I think more likely modeling tooling will improve to the point that 3D prints can be done by 3rd parties for cheaper and higher quality than you can do yourself and those vendors can post the results to you. Sort of like PCB Way does with electronics.I can imagine all sorts of things I’d like to design and make but unless I make it a full time job the amortized cost of the equipment will never make it worth while. I don’t think 3D print

I 3D print a lot and I don't own a printer. I don't think the comparison is sound.

I don't think this is the future of 3D printing. They are not nearly as general-purpose as computers. They can be put to excellent use in certain applications in all sorts of industries, but these are all fairly niche. The general-purpose tools required to make art, to fix things, and to make new things, have existed for centuries.They are simple, inexpensive, versatile hand tools. Files, hammers, chisels, knives, saws, drills, etc. But still, many people have only a meager collection of