I don't think killer app is the way to think about it. Blogging has been a world changing technology (though ho hum by 2013 standards), and back in 1999 (when blogging was at its infancy), what would you have replied was the killer app of Blogging?
If you are looking to buy a 3d printer as a business investment/opportunity, let me know. I'm exploring that market and would like to talk to people with the same mindset.
Note that 3D printing is a huge, huge industry. Due to how it will allow companies to print or buy parts for their machinery at a fraction of the current costs.
I dunno, 3D printed ABS parts are nowhere near the injection moulding strength of ABS. The construction of a part tends to be porous, and the inter filament bonds are weak. Geometry alone suggests layering tubes ontop of tubes is not the best way to make a strong solid. If a machine keeps breaking due to wear you don't want to replace its metal parts with ultra fragile plastic parts. Maybe it depends on the machine a bit.
I seen people try to make a usable prop shaft out of 3D printing, it broke immediately.
I have built three 3D printers so far and a CNC. I like the CNC best and am designing my second. I use shapeways over using any of the 3D printers I have to hand, if the purpose is to build a working part (or the CNC).
I am in the process of acquiring a 3D printing machine because I have some factories interested in buying plastic parts from me. These are not for precise machining, but mostly maintenance parts. You don't need to compete with CNC machining, because there are so many things you can do with this that its ridiculous.
No, and I'm unlikely to buy one until there's a particular killer application. I'm excited by the potential, but I don't have any concrete ideas to explore, nor the time/disposable income to tinker.
I haven't got one. I'm unlikely to buy one for myself. (My son is 2 and a bit. I may buy one for him when he's old enough to make use of it.)
I am interested in them and I love reading about stuff people are doing with them and I see that they're an important innovation. But I'm happy for other people to be doing that stuff.
I have seen some 3d printed stuff that I wanted to buy. Someone made some ceramic mugs, and the first iteration was cool and clunky and not neat shaped. There are some cool puzzles and math toys too.
I'm in the same position. I like them intellectually, but so far I am >95% sure that if I bought one it would be used about as much as my inkjet printer is currently used. Part of it is that most of what I would personally want to build out of plastic is fairly macro-scale, and approximated surprisingly well by Legos.
I voted "I don't have one now but I may have one," but after seeing on in person for the first time a week ago I am a little more hesitant. It took 3+ hours to print a chess piece!
I definitely see the value, but it will certainly take another five years before I'd be ready to actually buy one.
I'm in the camp of - any printer I could afford or justify spending money on in the discernible future would not produce the quality of product I would want. Until that machine eventually arrives, I will send out or find a hackerspace.
I'm not sure if it makes sense as an investment to own a 3D printer when you can order anything custom from Shapeways when you need. I don't have a constant need for 3D printed parts, so it probably wouldn't pay itself back.
Edit: To add, I've never even needed to order anything from Shapeways to date. For sure I'll need it when I start building robots. I think there should be some kind of new trend hobby which requires or is complementary to custom 3D printed parts, like robot building or something similar.
I bought a Makerbot Thing-o-Matic two years ago because I thought they were neat.
For certain kinds of people, having one would really be helpful. Some of the designers in the 3D printing space obviously get a lot of use out of them, and having to order all that stuff through shapeways and wait for the designs would be slow and expensive.
I find that now that I own a 3D printer, I use it more than I thought I would. There is a ton of cool stuff on Thingivierse, and it's fun to just print out someone's cute little design. I've taken to painting them like little models for fun.
I only recently bought a regular 2d laser printer. For so many years I almost never needed one, and would just go to Kinko's or somewhere like that to print things. Seriously, like twice a year I would maybe need to print something.
Another advantage to Shapeways (and similar services) is that they offer significantly better printing technologies than the affordable hobby printers. SLS Nylon produces very nice parts, with relatively tight tolerances, and useful strength and stiffness properties, but last time I checked, the cheapest SLS machine was on the order of $50k US.
The difference is in turnaround time. With your own, the turnaround time is shorter by half or less, depending on the part. That said, it assumes you have a 3D printer that prints reliably without fail. The current generation of desktop 3D printers finally are pretty hands free operations for short runs.
I'm excited by the potential of 3D printers but they aren't quite at the price/convenience/quality intersection I'm waiting for.
I'd pay current prices for machines (the relatively consumer-level ones that are like $500-2000) that are faster and produce better output without having to do acetone-based "post-processing". I'd pay less than current prices for the current tech just to dick around with, but I don't want to pay the current prices for the current tech. As impressive as the price levels are already, I'm unlikely to get enough practical benefit out of one to make it worth laying down "real money".
I'm absolutely sure I will own one sooner or later, but not today.
What would you do with a 3d printer in your house? For manufacturing and business use, it kind of makes sense to me. But personal use? After you print off a few cups and toy soldier molds, what would you want to do with a 3d printer?
Seeing what me and my friends already do with firearms and the like, i can say addons and mods. But thats just one application, i'm sure there are many others in other niches.
You print out the things you weren't able to imagine, but other people were.
3D printers allow objects that don't need the economy of scale to work in its favor to come into being. If you're to compare 3D printed objects to things you can buy at Walmart, then of course, in most specs the 3D printer would lose. However, what a 3D printer allows you to make are all the things that you can't get at Walmart, either because the volume wasn't big enough to get it made, or people that could imagine didn't know how to get something made.
These are useless gimmicks, and in the worst case they can't be recycled. I didn't know of shapeways before, and I couldn't find a single useful thing on it. Are there more pragmatic 3D printing sites?
One person's useless gimmicks are another person's stylish nick-knacks. I can't see myself buying a 3D printer just for stuff like that, but the ability to accent my home in an individual fashion is not unappealing to me.
Absolutely agreed. I love a stylish nick-knacks and neat design details as much as the next person but there seems to be a disconnect in the 3D printing world. On the one hand everybody talks about the revolutionary effect of home 3d printers, and on the other hand the only examples people have ever shown me are children's toys and stylish nick-knacks. Where are the at least mostly functional examples?
Also note Clay Shirky's belief that the most disruptive tech initially appears to be a toy to most.
I have to admit, I have the same problem with 3d printing and think that some of the newer materials (stainless steel for example) will really improve the functional designs, especially as the cost decreases.
I absolutely agree with your last sentence, but why can't it at least be sustainable? (It's really only the non-biodegradable stuff that I have a problem with)
I also know that people should have fun in their lives, and yet I can't help but facepalm at people happily driving SUVs around. In the grand scheme of things, the impact of each is tiny, but it confuses me that it's being celebrated by so many smart people. :/
Since it enables you to make things you can't imagine, lots of people will make a large variety of things--a long tail of objects. For any subset of examples that people give you, it's easy to dismiss it as gimmicky. You'll need to find your own subset that means something to you.
If you want to print out things you weren't able to imagine, but other people were - then it's an argument for not getting a 3D printer but having it printed at a 3d-printing service; it will be cheaper, higher quality, less hassle, and more options for materials/techniques than a single printer can provide.
Somewhat. It depends on what you value. There are other considerations. If price is important to you, but time is not, it's cheaper to have a home desktop printer. 3D printing services are quite expensive. The size of the object also affects your decision. The larger the object, the more economic it is to print it yourself.
If price is less of a consideration, but time is more important, then you may find it's better to use a 3D printed service, so you don't have to maintain the machine. Or if you don't print very often. Or the object you want to print is relatively small, so it doesn't break your wallet.
The advantages you cite, such as higher quality and less hassle, will diminish, given the pace and directions for improvement of the current generation of 3D printers. I believe different materials and hence printing techniques, will remain a differentiator of online printing services for the foreseeable future.
Mostly enclosures for electronics projects in my case, it would be nice to use something more custom made for the device than an altoids tin or plain ugly project box.
You can get a laser cutting machine for about 1.5 grand off Amazon. I might consider one in few years if my projecting gets more serious. The Adafruit ice cube clock enclosure is laser cut and it looks sharp.
Currently, I'm working on getting my first laser cutting order through Ponoko. Hopefully that's all going to work out.
I can see how it has application to very small micro needs like this, but seriously....is this what all the 3d printing hype is about? With all the hype I read from VCs, you'd think 3d printers are the next personal computer. I'm really trying to make the connection, but it feels more like the venture capital IPO machine is in full force just to crank up the IRR on their funds.
I think that it could be very plausible to say that "it feels more like the venture capital IPO machine is in full force just to crank up the IRR on their funds", but I think that you are missing that the powerful thing about personal computer wasn't that everyone would do the same thing (I suppose it was general computing calculations), but that people were free to explore many different things (solve individual pain points) in the same way 3d printing will (I think it may be even more than that but I'm limited by the contraints of my own insight into potential future applications[imagination] at this time).
I guess if you even look back on the origins of the personal computer, people gave very narrow reasons for its use and failed to make the connection to how it could be valuable outside of those reasons (outside of the angels/venture capitalists and entrepreneurs).
A buddy has one at work: he prints replacement appliance knobs. Think of all the little things that break and there's really no easy way to get replacements.
One popular use is newly designed custom Rubik's Cube type puzzles. In all sorts of polyhedral shapes that go way beyond cubes. There's a thriving forum at twistypuzzles.com with all sorts of new inventions that can be realized quickly with 3D printing.
I do mobile robotics. Printing off a frame for a small robot or a sensor enclosure at home is a lot easier than sending away to commercial shops. And 3d printers are a lot "cleaner" than a mill (CNC or manual). I can also use it for prototyping basic gearboxes and such for larger robots.
I have a Replicator 2X coming in the mail within a month.
I use it to fix things. Ever broken a handle off a drawer or snapped a catch on something? Print it, sand it and paint it. Done. I also use it for making little plastic doodads (like those you see on home shopping channels) where the idea was the hard part but reproducing it is pretty easy (think wall mounted bag hooks or egg cutters). Not the most practical uses but I see them as a way of answering the "what if I had that?" type of question.
I think this is the most useful use for one I've heard so far, but when I think about how often do I need a little plastic knob - maybe once a year? I'm sure a couple of shops could do this as a business but other than that it seems crazy to think people will buy these things en-masse for homes.
Why you'd want a 3D printer? Isn't that kinda obvious? To make parts for your next 3D printer of course!
Joking aside: I have a few spare time projects where I am going to need some way of producing mechanical parts. For instance I am designing an integrated device for controlling the flow rate of dialysis fluid during peritoneal dialysis fluid exchange. I've been working on this for a while and have gone through many designs. Mostly as a learning exercise.
I think that in a few years it will be more common for people to make simple objects in their home. Brackets, mounts, adapters etc. I'm not sure if a lot of people will necessarily be involved in designing parts, but through the wonder that is the internet: you'll have vast repositories of ready made designs that can be printed.
Like there old russian saying goes: there is element of joke in every joke.
A friend of mine got a 3D printer and I think he spent the first few weeks printing upgrades to the printer itself. Then he started printing parts for his CNC machine. And right now he is building a really exciting-looking, large 3D printer from scratch using ... his 3D printer.
But he also prints parts for lots of other projects. Among them various DIY medical equipment that we have been designing together.
I think the biggest obstacle for putting 3D printers to good use is that people just are not used to having the capability to make physical objects. It is like when the first personal computers came on the market: people played around with them and in theory you could do useful things with them -- but programming was new to people. It took a good decade or so before computers were useful at home, but in that time they had served a much more important purpose: to make programming a relatively mainstream skill.
Designing mechanical objects is unfamiliar territory for most of us. Traditionally this has required really, really expensive, specialized software that up until now only professionals were into. Compare it to when digital photography went mainstream and companies like Adobe were too dumb to catch on -- I still hear people defend the exorbitant price of Photoshop with "oh, only professionals would want that kind of power". Which is utter nonsense.
I have to say that Autodesk have impressed me in this respect. Although their software lineup is extremely confusing at times they have released some really neat software for free. For instance I have been using Inventor Fusion lately and it is great. (I've also used Fusion 360, which is not so great because their intent seems to be to combine it with some cloud service, and that cloud service is very far from being usable. They probably saw Thingiverse and figured they wanted a piece of that action). But I think it is brilliant of them to make good tools available for the Mac -- the people you want to reach use Macs and Linux).
Also, designing physical objects requires skills that are not mainstream. I find myself looking at objects in a very new way. I try to understand how the shape is modeled, how it is supposed to deal with stress etc.
These are very exciting times. I wish I was 18 again.
I can't wait to buy one, even if it's just to print gifts for friends and nameplates for the office.
Every time I hear more about this domain (typically from folks like iamwil at CubeHero) I become more excited by the possibilities. It's a enabling technology, so looking for a "killer application" is probably the wrong way to think about it: the impact is likely to be more fundamental and spread across a variety of small use cases for a long time until it's ingrained in our culture. I still remember walking into a VC's offices and seeing a row of neatly-printed 3D 4-polytopes sitting along the counter to welcome entrants.
Sadly, it's the one piece of equipment where I can't think of even a tangential application in crowd labor, so there's not one here at the office yet. I expect this'll be as ubiquitous as a 2D printer in offices within a few years, though.
Thanks for the shout out. :) I still maintain the same stance. Many people look at the technology as it is now, or too far in the future, rather than where it's headed in the next year or three.
As for crowd labor market, there might be an application. 3D printers are slow compared to other types of manufacturing, and thus, to get any volume to sell, one needs to operate a printer farm, or try to do distributed 3D printing.
When people do operate printer farms, where they have racks of printers to print out parts that they sell. However, the current crop of 3D printers still requires manual labor in the beginning and the end of the print. There's no mechanism yet to automatically remove the piece and start a new job. This may be where labor can come in.
As for distributed printing, I do know of a guy that's trying this out as an experiment, since he doesn't have the capacity to print every piece he's selling, he pays others to help him print, and then it's shipped to him. So that is a possibility as well.
Hey. I prototyped an automagic part remover for unattended continuous operation for a client who prints continuously. Contact me if you are interested (kliment@0xfb.com)
I think that rapid drone delivery will become a reality before 3D printer costs will come down enough so that it makes sense to have one in your house.
Same here. I don't own one (yet), but we have one at SplatSpace for members to use.
That said, I plan to build one for myself at some point. A fellow Splat'er has offered me his partially assembled Reprap, but I don't have time to work on it right now. :-(
Had access to a commercial 3D printer at a hackerspace. After the initial few cool test objects, the annoyance of dealing with broken STL files and waiting hours for tiny fragile parts overtook the "convenience". But I think those will both improve with time.
My sub-poll question would be: for those who do have a 3D printer, do you create your own content or print only third-party STLs?
I have a small printer on the cheap end of the spectrum. I started off printing things from Thingiverse because I was having a hell of a time trying to create STLs from the 3D modeling software I already knew (Lightwave and Maya). It worked but my toolchain was a huge pain and the resulting geometry was not always sound for slicing to gcode.
In recent months I started using openSCAD and now almost exclusively print things I generate with it. I still check Thingiverse to see if people have already created things I'm attempting to make, which I see as the real power of this whole experiment.
In my opinion, current generation 3d printers have to be looked at as tools, not a holy saviour of manufacturing industry. It has it's strong points (fast turnaround times, low price) and has it's weaknesses (subpar resolution, support material is required for many types of parts, being finicky).
Nonetheless, I'm really happy with mine- I built a RepRap around 2 years ago. It took full 1 year to get from starting to read about it, to first prints good enough to be useful. After building, it gathered dust for some time because I didn't know what to do with it- the process of building was more interesting than process of using it :>
That being said, I'm also experimenting with DIY SLA printers- by using UV laser and rotating mirror assembly (found in 2d laser printers). Don't know if it works yet- I'm finishing up electronics/firmware and trying to come up with mechanical design.
I think 3D printers are firmly in the "Linux desktop" stage for now. You will hear it's revolutional arrival announced every year, but it will never materialize.
I don't know, all my close friends and family are running Linux as their main OS. You might just wake up one day to realize that Linux on the desktop has already happened.
Linux and BSD are not nearly the same thing. And I'm not even being overly pedantic here. They have 2 things in common:
* They try (and arguably succeed at) cloning Unix.
* The adopt a permissive license for sharing and copying.
Beyond this, they're 2 completely different projects with nothing more in common. Heck, even the "permissive licenses" they each use are contradicting in philosophy.
You seem to imply that Linux has reached ubiquity on the desktop because MacOSX is based on BSD. This is just wrong.
Are you sure about that? I would say that Linux is in that position because there are similar alternatives (Windows, OS X) that require less technical knowledge for equivalent competency.
3D printers on the other hand have 3 big barriers: 1) they're rather expensive, 2) creating an CAD object ≢ creating a word document and 3) there are not many truly compelling printable objects yet.
I don't agree. The main obstacle for computers was cost and size, which naturally scale down as technology improves. Applications were already everywhere even decades ago.
3D printing on the other hand fundamentally has difficulty delivering many things people want it to do, and the things it actually can do are fairly niche. Mainly prototyping, to my knowledge.
If 3D printers could already print forged steel or 14nm transistors (but at great cost) I'd say the future is very bright, because cost and size naturally come down, but they can't do that yet.
There's been some work already into printing circuits, but I think it will probably look different than the traditional electronics we're use to thinking about, as metal may not be the only way to print circuits.
I admit that 3D printing is a long, long way off from this, but I'd argue that every item I bring into my home and every material purchase I make is a potential application of home/consumer 3D printing waiting for a solution.
Computers had evident uses people craved for even when nobody had one at home: coin-op arcade games for example drove huge crowds. Writers used electronic typewriters with small displays and would be better off using an editor program. And a spreadsheet was a killer app for any small office -- they already used calculators. Add communications and entertainment to that (mail, chat, www, video) and computers had tons of killer uses.
A 3D printer is a one trick pony. It merely prints stuff. (Well, a computer is a one-trick pony too, it just "processes information", but in the realm of information this amounts to infinite possibilities).
People that like tinkering and DYI will love one -- but they are not that many. The general public, not so much.
They can create any thing/part they want themselves? Well, the thing is, generally they don't want stuff created. And when they do, they can also have some factory create them somewhere and buy them. And even if they needed something extra-custom, they could order it to a 3D printing shop down the road, and be spared all the trouble of owning a 3D printing, managing supplies, learning the software, etc.
The analogy with the home computers is interesting, because people are even scaling down on buying home computers. The general public finds that the limited stuff they wants to do, they can do it with a smartphone and a tablet (and maybe an ultraportable, for the more needy).
Heck, tons of normal people don't even like owning 2D printers (and have always had lots of problems configuring and operating even them, as evident by any support forum).
I got together with 15 of my friends and bought one for us to share. We each had to pay under $50, which made it very attractive. None of us use it enough to justify owning one ourselves, so sharing was the obvious solution.
I'm in high school, so it was pretty easy to find some interested friends. It also helps with the logistics--we keep the printer in the computer lab so everyone can access it.
I'm going to guess your situation is a lot more common than RaphiePS'. I know quite a lot more than 15 people, but not 15 who live in close enough proximity to make this work and who are also likely to be interested in co-oping on a 3D printer.
In any case, 15 sounds like a bit of a logistical nightmare even if you did have that many people in your local friends circle interested enough to go in for a 3D printer.
(If there's not one nearby, you could always start one... when I cofounded a hackerspace I met a lot more than 15 new people who wanted to share 3d printers and the like!)
Wozniak had this great insight. It's like lathe. Everyone knows a guy who has one, but no one is actually bothered to get one. It's a nice thing to have in your workshop, but also requires lots of skill.
I disagree. I think it's more like how microwaves were in the 50s. Some people have probably heard of them, but are still suspicious of their usefulness...
And then one day everyone has one, and you can buy them at your local appliance store.
But microwaves solve a problem people have several times a day (low-labor way to get some hot food or drink). I'm having trouble envisioning a world in which an average person needs or wants a new 3d-printed object on a daily basis, even if it were completely free.
I have a Solidoodle 2. I've replaced the extruder with a printed one that's much better than the laser-cut acrylic that's included, but otherwise, it's been an excellent piece of hardware.
Lately I've started printing in "618 Nylon," a polymer which prints detail more easily than ABS, does not require bed heating (saves lots of time), and is much stronger than PLA.
I don't feel that 3D printing lets me do anything I couldn't before, but, as someone who makes things, it does let me take hardware from idea to conclusion much more quickly. So far I use it mostly to make parts for hobby projects, like the frame and landing gear for my quadcopter as well as enclosures and fastening hardware for an electric bike and control system.
I don't see FDM 3D printing disrupting traditional volume manufacturing in almost any industry simply because it's slow and finicky compared to subtractive CNC (milling) or molding. However, if you make things personally or professionally 3D printing turns any situation where you'd be Dremeling, drilling, and sanding a prototype to test before paying a shop to make samples for you into a pleasurable and cheap experience instead of a painful and expensive one.
I have an Solidoodle 2 also (see my other comment.) Which extruder are you using? I still have the original on mine. What about the 618? Where do you get it?
I use a Lawsy's Mark 4 extruder ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:47561 ). It's simpler, easier to maintain, and more durable by leaps and bounds than the stock extruder, in addition to being fewer pieces. If you're printing a replacement extruder, print several copies of the extruder parts in case you break one in assembly. Once you take apart the stock Solidoodle extruder, you won't want to put it back together. It breaks easily and is called "the jigsaw" for a reason.
I got my 618 from Octave Systems, but it's pretty common at most of the online printer suppliers now.
618 is a little iffy with the stock Solidoodle 2 hot end because the insulator is PTFE, which could start to decompose around the upper end of 618 extrusion temperatures. Thankfully, 618 has a wide range of temperatures at which it works (albeit with a bit less strength), so you can compromise and still get wonderful results.
I don't own one, and I'm not sure where I would put one presently. I have access to one through my membership at my local hacker space, and that's enough for me at the moment.
Here's one of the more practical things that I made: http://www.heroicrobotics.com/img/pixelpusher_case.jpg (We used another "consumer grade" 3d printer for the first 60 units; it's about time to switch to injection molding)
You'll be waiting for a couple of years (if not a decade). While there are conductive plastics, it's not nearly practical enough to achieve what you want.
I don't know enough about current 3d printing to really know when this is possible, but I'm pretty sure it won't be tomorrow. If you could combine Soylent Green with 3d printing, you'd have a recipe for Star Trek food :)
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 352 ms ] threadNote that 3D printing is a huge, huge industry. Due to how it will allow companies to print or buy parts for their machinery at a fraction of the current costs.
I have built three 3D printers so far and a CNC. I like the CNC best and am designing my second. I use shapeways over using any of the 3D printers I have to hand, if the purpose is to build a working part (or the CNC).
I am interested in them and I love reading about stuff people are doing with them and I see that they're an important innovation. But I'm happy for other people to be doing that stuff.
I have seen some 3d printed stuff that I wanted to buy. Someone made some ceramic mugs, and the first iteration was cool and clunky and not neat shaped. There are some cool puzzles and math toys too.
I definitely see the value, but it will certainly take another five years before I'd be ready to actually buy one.
Edit: To add, I've never even needed to order anything from Shapeways to date. For sure I'll need it when I start building robots. I think there should be some kind of new trend hobby which requires or is complementary to custom 3D printed parts, like robot building or something similar.
For certain kinds of people, having one would really be helpful. Some of the designers in the 3D printing space obviously get a lot of use out of them, and having to order all that stuff through shapeways and wait for the designs would be slow and expensive.
I find that now that I own a 3D printer, I use it more than I thought I would. There is a ton of cool stuff on Thingivierse, and it's fun to just print out someone's cute little design. I've taken to painting them like little models for fun.
I'd pay current prices for machines (the relatively consumer-level ones that are like $500-2000) that are faster and produce better output without having to do acetone-based "post-processing". I'd pay less than current prices for the current tech just to dick around with, but I don't want to pay the current prices for the current tech. As impressive as the price levels are already, I'm unlikely to get enough practical benefit out of one to make it worth laying down "real money".
I'm absolutely sure I will own one sooner or later, but not today.
3D printers allow objects that don't need the economy of scale to work in its favor to come into being. If you're to compare 3D printed objects to things you can buy at Walmart, then of course, in most specs the 3D printer would lose. However, what a 3D printer allows you to make are all the things that you can't get at Walmart, either because the volume wasn't big enough to get it made, or people that could imagine didn't know how to get something made.
http://www.shapeways.com/model/24470/gyroid.html
http://www.shapeways.com/model/335195/the-code-prize-fire-co...
http://www.shapeways.com/model/683524/super-mario-mobius-str...
Not everything is the world is purely functional.
Absolutely agreed. I love a stylish nick-knacks and neat design details as much as the next person but there seems to be a disconnect in the 3D printing world. On the one hand everybody talks about the revolutionary effect of home 3d printers, and on the other hand the only examples people have ever shown me are children's toys and stylish nick-knacks. Where are the at least mostly functional examples?
Also note Clay Shirky's belief that the most disruptive tech initially appears to be a toy to most.
I have to admit, I have the same problem with 3d printing and think that some of the newer materials (stainless steel for example) will really improve the functional designs, especially as the cost decreases.
Disclaimer: I work at Shapeways
I also know that people should have fun in their lives, and yet I can't help but facepalm at people happily driving SUVs around. In the grand scheme of things, the impact of each is tiny, but it confuses me that it's being celebrated by so many smart people. :/
Disclaimer: I work for shapeways
If price is less of a consideration, but time is more important, then you may find it's better to use a 3D printed service, so you don't have to maintain the machine. Or if you don't print very often. Or the object you want to print is relatively small, so it doesn't break your wallet.
The advantages you cite, such as higher quality and less hassle, will diminish, given the pace and directions for improvement of the current generation of 3D printers. I believe different materials and hence printing techniques, will remain a differentiator of online printing services for the foreseeable future.
Currently, I'm working on getting my first laser cutting order through Ponoko. Hopefully that's all going to work out.
I could even see custom modeling my own miniatures for other games, either tabletop RPGs like D&D or wargames like Warhammer or any of the others.
I guess if you even look back on the origins of the personal computer, people gave very narrow reasons for its use and failed to make the connection to how it could be valuable outside of those reasons (outside of the angels/venture capitalists and entrepreneurs).
Some examples:
http://www.shapeways.com/model/56260/crazy-comet.html
http://www.shapeways.com/model/138720/icosaix-read-instructi...
http://www.shapeways.com/model/184114/constellation-six.html
I have a Replicator 2X coming in the mail within a month.
Joking aside: I have a few spare time projects where I am going to need some way of producing mechanical parts. For instance I am designing an integrated device for controlling the flow rate of dialysis fluid during peritoneal dialysis fluid exchange. I've been working on this for a while and have gone through many designs. Mostly as a learning exercise.
I think that in a few years it will be more common for people to make simple objects in their home. Brackets, mounts, adapters etc. I'm not sure if a lot of people will necessarily be involved in designing parts, but through the wonder that is the internet: you'll have vast repositories of ready made designs that can be printed.
A friend of mine got a 3D printer and I think he spent the first few weeks printing upgrades to the printer itself. Then he started printing parts for his CNC machine. And right now he is building a really exciting-looking, large 3D printer from scratch using ... his 3D printer.
But he also prints parts for lots of other projects. Among them various DIY medical equipment that we have been designing together.
I think the biggest obstacle for putting 3D printers to good use is that people just are not used to having the capability to make physical objects. It is like when the first personal computers came on the market: people played around with them and in theory you could do useful things with them -- but programming was new to people. It took a good decade or so before computers were useful at home, but in that time they had served a much more important purpose: to make programming a relatively mainstream skill.
Designing mechanical objects is unfamiliar territory for most of us. Traditionally this has required really, really expensive, specialized software that up until now only professionals were into. Compare it to when digital photography went mainstream and companies like Adobe were too dumb to catch on -- I still hear people defend the exorbitant price of Photoshop with "oh, only professionals would want that kind of power". Which is utter nonsense.
I have to say that Autodesk have impressed me in this respect. Although their software lineup is extremely confusing at times they have released some really neat software for free. For instance I have been using Inventor Fusion lately and it is great. (I've also used Fusion 360, which is not so great because their intent seems to be to combine it with some cloud service, and that cloud service is very far from being usable. They probably saw Thingiverse and figured they wanted a piece of that action). But I think it is brilliant of them to make good tools available for the Mac -- the people you want to reach use Macs and Linux).
Also, designing physical objects requires skills that are not mainstream. I find myself looking at objects in a very new way. I try to understand how the shape is modeled, how it is supposed to deal with stress etc.
These are very exciting times. I wish I was 18 again.
Every time I hear more about this domain (typically from folks like iamwil at CubeHero) I become more excited by the possibilities. It's a enabling technology, so looking for a "killer application" is probably the wrong way to think about it: the impact is likely to be more fundamental and spread across a variety of small use cases for a long time until it's ingrained in our culture. I still remember walking into a VC's offices and seeing a row of neatly-printed 3D 4-polytopes sitting along the counter to welcome entrants.
Sadly, it's the one piece of equipment where I can't think of even a tangential application in crowd labor, so there's not one here at the office yet. I expect this'll be as ubiquitous as a 2D printer in offices within a few years, though.
As for crowd labor market, there might be an application. 3D printers are slow compared to other types of manufacturing, and thus, to get any volume to sell, one needs to operate a printer farm, or try to do distributed 3D printing.
When people do operate printer farms, where they have racks of printers to print out parts that they sell. However, the current crop of 3D printers still requires manual labor in the beginning and the end of the print. There's no mechanism yet to automatically remove the piece and start a new job. This may be where labor can come in.
As for distributed printing, I do know of a guy that's trying this out as an experiment, since he doesn't have the capacity to print every piece he's selling, he pays others to help him print, and then it's shipped to him. So that is a possibility as well.
That said, I plan to build one for myself at some point. A fellow Splat'er has offered me his partially assembled Reprap, but I don't have time to work on it right now. :-(
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
My sub-poll question would be: for those who do have a 3D printer, do you create your own content or print only third-party STLs?
In recent months I started using openSCAD and now almost exclusively print things I generate with it. I still check Thingiverse to see if people have already created things I'm attempting to make, which I see as the real power of this whole experiment.
In my opinion, current generation 3d printers have to be looked at as tools, not a holy saviour of manufacturing industry. It has it's strong points (fast turnaround times, low price) and has it's weaknesses (subpar resolution, support material is required for many types of parts, being finicky).
Nonetheless, I'm really happy with mine- I built a RepRap around 2 years ago. It took full 1 year to get from starting to read about it, to first prints good enough to be useful. After building, it gathered dust for some time because I didn't know what to do with it- the process of building was more interesting than process of using it :>
That being said, I'm also experimenting with DIY SLA printers- by using UV laser and rotating mirror assembly (found in 2d laser printers). Don't know if it works yet- I'm finishing up electronics/firmware and trying to come up with mechanical design.
Edit: I stand corrected.
* They try (and arguably succeed at) cloning Unix.
* The adopt a permissive license for sharing and copying.
Beyond this, they're 2 completely different projects with nothing more in common. Heck, even the "permissive licenses" they each use are contradicting in philosophy.
You seem to imply that Linux has reached ubiquity on the desktop because MacOSX is based on BSD. This is just wrong.
> * They try (and arguably succeed at) cloning Unix.
No, the BSDs actually are Unix, in a genetic sense.
3D printers on the other hand have 3 big barriers: 1) they're rather expensive, 2) creating an CAD object ≢ creating a word document and 3) there are not many truly compelling printable objects yet.
Relevant: http://youtu.be/rO54gzfite4?t=1m41s
3D printing on the other hand fundamentally has difficulty delivering many things people want it to do, and the things it actually can do are fairly niche. Mainly prototyping, to my knowledge.
If 3D printers could already print forged steel or 14nm transistors (but at great cost) I'd say the future is very bright, because cost and size naturally come down, but they can't do that yet.
Computers had evident uses people craved for even when nobody had one at home: coin-op arcade games for example drove huge crowds. Writers used electronic typewriters with small displays and would be better off using an editor program. And a spreadsheet was a killer app for any small office -- they already used calculators. Add communications and entertainment to that (mail, chat, www, video) and computers had tons of killer uses.
A 3D printer is a one trick pony. It merely prints stuff. (Well, a computer is a one-trick pony too, it just "processes information", but in the realm of information this amounts to infinite possibilities).
People that like tinkering and DYI will love one -- but they are not that many. The general public, not so much.
They can create any thing/part they want themselves? Well, the thing is, generally they don't want stuff created. And when they do, they can also have some factory create them somewhere and buy them. And even if they needed something extra-custom, they could order it to a 3D printing shop down the road, and be spared all the trouble of owning a 3D printing, managing supplies, learning the software, etc.
The analogy with the home computers is interesting, because people are even scaling down on buying home computers. The general public finds that the limited stuff they wants to do, they can do it with a smartphone and a tablet (and maybe an ultraportable, for the more needy).
Heck, tons of normal people don't even like owning 2D printers (and have always had lots of problems configuring and operating even them, as evident by any support forum).
The egg cup manufacturing cost using the FDM was only £7 for the material.
In any case, 15 sounds like a bit of a logistical nightmare even if you did have that many people in your local friends circle interested enough to go in for a 3D printer.
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
(If there's not one nearby, you could always start one... when I cofounded a hackerspace I met a lot more than 15 new people who wanted to share 3d printers and the like!)
And then one day everyone has one, and you can buy them at your local appliance store.
Lately I've started printing in "618 Nylon," a polymer which prints detail more easily than ABS, does not require bed heating (saves lots of time), and is much stronger than PLA.
I don't feel that 3D printing lets me do anything I couldn't before, but, as someone who makes things, it does let me take hardware from idea to conclusion much more quickly. So far I use it mostly to make parts for hobby projects, like the frame and landing gear for my quadcopter as well as enclosures and fastening hardware for an electric bike and control system.
I don't see FDM 3D printing disrupting traditional volume manufacturing in almost any industry simply because it's slow and finicky compared to subtractive CNC (milling) or molding. However, if you make things personally or professionally 3D printing turns any situation where you'd be Dremeling, drilling, and sanding a prototype to test before paying a shop to make samples for you into a pleasurable and cheap experience instead of a painful and expensive one.
I got my 618 from Octave Systems, but it's pretty common at most of the online printer suppliers now.
618 is a little iffy with the stock Solidoodle 2 hot end because the insulator is PTFE, which could start to decompose around the upper end of 618 extrusion temperatures. Thankfully, 618 has a wide range of temperatures at which it works (albeit with a bit less strength), so you can compromise and still get wonderful results.
Here's a working turbine compressor model that I built http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjU-1aS_mHQ
Here's one of the more practical things that I made: http://www.heroicrobotics.com/img/pixelpusher_case.jpg (We used another "consumer grade" 3d printer for the first 60 units; it's about time to switch to injection molding)