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Ask HN: Why 3D printing still sucks?

7 points by gingabriska ↗ HN
There are so many YouTube videos and you need to print calibration pieces so many times for even slight change in filament or seasonal change.

Are there companies which are making 3d printing better using better technologies?

2 comments

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noobiemcfoob
Consumer grade 3D printing might be finicky, but I have a hard time saying easily available tech that can create shelves, doorknobs, or pretty much anything smaller than a foot squared "sucks".

For your last question, absolutely. There are $10k+ 3D printers available that are a marvel and have dramatically reduced design time of mechanical components.

h2odragon
My impression is that the patent minefield is keeping any significant commercialization from happening. The individual led efforts and bubbling ferment of "whats been invented in china this week?" are still too rapid to credit.

When scale does happen, the machines will be several generations ahead of what they are now. This could be in the next year or two. If scale happened now, those innovations would take a take a decade to spread. That can be expressed better but its not unique to 3d printing by any means.

There's an end user problem that isn't often addressed: These things are slow and energy hungry still. Speeding them up takes even more energy. The 3d printers of today have not really addressed the issue of how does a 500+ watt appliance live in the home and operate for hours to days at a time.

Things like cases and boring work like UL certifications are going to have to happen too, and the core design is going to have to be static for enough hours in a row for paid people to do that. The commercial 3d printers you can buy in a hardware store show how lethal lag is.