I took a stab at what could lead to wholesale adoption of 3D Printers by consumers a week ago on Make’s blog, and really it boils down to bringing the ability to create parts into the reach of your average computer user.
Be sure to scroll to my response/clarification further down in the comments.
I actually don’t disagree with your basic argument, @Greg_Kail , 3D printers do not need to be in every home yet. The tech is too temperamental and complicated and most people wouldn’t have the patience for it, let alone have ideas of things to make.
That said, as an artist, 3D printing has opened up many avenues of exploration in form and materials that simply weren’t possible before. As a partner in a design firm, we use the printers every day for prototyping our own designs and running prototypes for our manufacturer clients.
We also work with local schools on incorporating 3D printing as a part of STEM curricula, and it’s impossible to deny the benefit of connecting digital models and tangible objects in the minds of the next generation of engineers and scientists.
All of this neglects to mention that 3D printers print parts for other 3D printers. You may argue that I injection molding would create better, more consistent parts, but the cost of tooling and quantities required also slows evolution. There’s no reason NOT to print new parts if you see something that could be improved. The software is also generally open source and improving every day. This rapid evolution may just make 3D printers indispensable tools for every home sooner than we can imagine.
@Richard_Betel seriously, I’d love to do something like this, it’s just, as I have explained, I have no experience in 3D printing, because I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.
I would argue with you on the point, that a very distinctive difference between “home” and “medical” or lets’s say generally “professional” use lays in the base price of the equipment (it’s got to hit ROI at some point, otherwise it is a novelty purchase, bought by some rich kid, which can not account for the majority of population, even of USA or Europe), as well as the application - even with the best resolution 3D printer, the kid from the top comment wouldn’t be able to print the ear or help a girl with her hand. So this would be a seep learning curve + access to certain knowledge + skills.
As the last point, in terms of the “privilege” - it can play two ways. What I mean is, more people have access to simple cheap plastic spareparts from China, than to a USD 2’000 printer, that will print a cheap shower curtain, that breaks once in a while.
Having said all this, I think your point on a complete customised solutions for everyday objects for people, who are thinking outside the box is completely valid and I am reevaluating my view on 3D printing right now.
There are of course the economical uses, like @Anthony_Truss has mentioned, which make perfect sense too. And the mattes of convienience, like in @Jonathan_Maize case.
The question of course is how mainstream is it? It will be mainstream for sure, but for now it seems a bit limited. Having said all this, I do hope in couple of years we all will have 3D printers at home and we all will know what to actually do with them.
So as things stand now, we can only print 1-material pieces - does anyone see a PVC/metal printing model? Or a printer that uses more than 2 materials? Of course there are differing melt points for each material, but I don’t think this would be an insurmountable challenge. So how about if we could print using multiple materials? How about open source tools for people in developing countries? How about licensing and printing car parts for people? How about printing bio-materials to fix human parts or other things? How about printing a licensed coffee mug or new dish set? The idea’s not just a printer that can make a thing or two that costs considerably less in the retail market once, but many parts and things that can eventually enhance our environment over the lifespan of a printer. So $1500 for a printer that would possibly last long enough to print 1,500 things worth a buck each at the retail store. Or 3,000 things worth 50 cents, whatever. Is the market incapable of manufacturing more advanced and sturdier printers that will last long enough for this? Let’s ask the Germans…
As things are now, we need the hobbyists and creators to push the design/fabrication of new and better 3D printers so that stuffy business heads like me can use them to make money when the printers become more practical. Nothing against makers and creators - you guys and gals are the dreamers and inspiration behind the whole thing, and without you we wouldn’t have anything to argue about, let alone hope for a new industry that will likely, in some part, help enhance our personal and dare I say (perhaps) state/national economies.
So I say that in the near term, it looks like greedy capitalists like me will have to wait while the Alan Turings of 3D printers keep on plugging and making the designs better. In the meantime, I’ll keep watching and waiting until I can make mad-ass profits. !
The whole idea behind the home use use is not even supposed to be lifechanging. The examples behind saved baby’s life are not valid here, because in this case the 3D printer is just a tool in hands of a surgeon. This is a pretty seep learning curve (and official licensing), as you all would know. I doubt most people in this community wold be in the capacity to do such a thing, regardless of the hardware, they have access too.
My main concern is how and when this particular method can go mainstream.
@Jonathan_Maize I am sorry too for a harsh comment. You did indeed bring a valid point on maker’s attitude and I have changed the comment to something, that expresses my general view, rather than criticizes you and the other gentleman.
When: From a 50k foot view, my opinion is 5-10 years before the 3d printer is “transformatively useful.”
How: How did the useless Linux OS become mainstream? How did Blue Ray overcome the ubiquitous VHS cassette? Through personal incentive to make money. Just an opinion.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.”
Adam Smith, The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter II, pp. 26-7, para 12.
I’d go as far as to say, that to the tech savvy it will be quite useful in 2 years (or perhaps this is my wishful thinking).
Concerning the BlueRay, however, IMHO it actually never made it, because cloud came along and the tech behind BR was not really revolutionary - just higher capacity DVD really. Anyway, we do t have to fight about that. This really does not matter at this point in time.
For me, my printer is just a replacement for sawing, sanding, chisseling, drilling and bolting things together.
I can make a part of my robot exactly the way i like it.
As for the quality of the prints:
The scan that was made from the person (printed object) was made with a kinect sensor. Allthough this is the best we can get in our homes (at a reasonable cost), the quality is not very good for small details.
If you would design a part in a 3D CAD envirement, the quality would be much better.
Also everyone’s personal calibration of the printer can make a huge difference.
@Greg_Kail I am sorry, I did not mean to insult. 3d printers are not for everyone but it’s like welding, sewing, or carpentry it’s nice if you know someone with the skill.
first off,cost. the low end of 3D printers is about 500 bucks, not 2k. Having a couple of makerbots and a prusa at my disposal, I don’t beleive the 2k is worth the cost.
If you search through the history of thingiverse, you’ll find in there somewhere a page about posthetic arms. The poster explains the complexity of prosthetics that leads to high costs, and explains how a 3D printer destroys the cost model. He planned to travel to south america, to disaster zones, and bring prosthetics to people who will never be able to afford it any other way. This is medical crossing with home use. A 10k medical device replaced by a 100 bucks in time&materials from a volunteer.
The hard part of 3D printing today is not the printer. For low volume, I can go to places like ponoko or shapeways. Or find a hakerspace if I’m in a big enough city. A personal printer only makes sense if you’re going to print enough. at current ABS 3D printing prices from the services, its a surprisingly low bar, though.
I strongly beleive that right now, for there to be innovative uses of 3D printing in non-engineering applications, you need to experiment with it. That’s going to drive a lot of home adoption. Think of the home computer: In the 70s, people with computers at work were in no rush to get a toy like a Altair 8800. People who had no computer access but understood there was a storm coming (even if they didn’t understand the nature of the storm) wanted the Altair. The 3D printer is there today. The altair was almost useless, but people learned and improved its toolchain, which became CP/M and MS-DOS (and hence Windows). And that’s whats happening here too. Understanding how to use OpenSCAD to feed a slicer and then tweaking the g code is what we all need to learn to do and then do better.
I would think someone could have just posted a link to
Robohand and we could all move on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT3772yhr0o
Unlike the 3d printed splint that may not apply to home printers, the above replacement fingers and hands were printed on home printers, and could be printed on pretty much the cheapest home printer available, though in fact they were printed on one of the more expensive ones.
Personally, I printed a bunch of stuff that could have been made other ways - replacement stands for a bird feeder, a nice handle grip for the pull cord for our attic stairs, small constriction bands the exact size to rescue cracked plastic rabbit-waterers and preserve their function, a stack of yin-yang’s for party favors, an awesome little model of Sergent Schlock’s blaster from Schlock Mercenary that I would not have been otherwise capable of making myself, replacement filters for the bathroom sink.
If nothing else, the printer is awesome for me, precisely because I am not a competent maker in other departments. I can’t carve wood into fantastic shapes, I can’t model things coherently in clay, I can’t paint beautiful pictures. But I can write code, and through the 3d printer, I can write code that creates real things, and that is more than enough justification to me for the six hundred or so I’ve spent on it.
I ignore the media hype and am happily printing stuff with my 3D printer. Wall mount for a remote, a small mount for an IKEA lamp, wall mount for my Apple TV etc. With a 3D printer and some basic OpenSCAD knowledge you suddenly walk around with a caliper in your pocket and start printing things that you need. No need to look around the web for a specific holder, charger cradle etc. You just design and print it. That’s the true revolution. Design and print. Share the designs.
Brackets to mount my blinds when I lost the mounting H/W http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:73835 you can’t buy just the brackets.
Custom shower screen hooks, you can’t get then in a store http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:36753
Aluminium tube connectors, much cheaper than shop bought, and I could make (working on it now) custom angles etc not available in shops http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30942
Once you can design, anything you need is a possibility.
Need to wall mount some power tools to get them out of the way http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:70938
etc.
The more I read, the more I understand, that it is not about ROI yet and perhaps, yes, there is no economic justification for the 3D printer at home at the moment, but it is still worthwhile for the tinkers just to play with it and hopefully all these cases and uploaded models will implore the technology in the near future. Despite the rocky start of the discussion, the contribution of the members is amazing. Guys, thank you all - I am sold. Now I know I need a 3D printer at home and at my office. Any recommendations?
“Any recommendations?”
hacker-maker or user = kit v’s prebuilt,
poor/rich ditto,
Need for output quality = >$
You need to define what you want to do with it and whether your happy to experiment . Probably your home needs and office needs will be different, less likely to justify tinkering at work.
Kit, because I want to know intimately the thing I am using. High resolution is the priority, because I don’t want to be printing bullshit like on the TechCrunches picture. Not really ready to spend over a grand for a perhaps useful, but mostly a novelty at this moment, product. Would be nice if it can make something larger, than a coin size figurines.
Perhaps I got overexcited about the office thing, so I am taking it back. I’ve looked at Type A Series 1 - seems like a fitting machine, but these are just my superficial observations, hence the request for suggestions.
This space is evolving quickly, there are still plenty of kits of http://reprap.org style semi-self-replicating models made of printed parts and ‘vitamins’ (the non printed bolts/shafts/electrics etc).
But there are two types becoming more numerous, both more ridged solid materials, firstly with standard aluminium profile, then those made with custom casing such as folded/pressed steel.
Examples of each type;
Reprap
http://reprappro.com/Mono_Mendel
http://portabee3dprinter.com/
Alu-profile
http://www.imprint3d.com/
old mendelmax, v2 is hybrid moving toward next type
Custom
http://www.makergear.com/products/m-series-3d-printers
http://www.mendel-parts.com/index.php/catalog/3d-printers/orca-v0-43-complete-kit-unassembled.html
http://store.makerstoolworks.com/printer-kits/mendelmax-2-0-beta-kit/
The difference is important, being degrees of lock-in and ability to enhance/customise/develop. If you just want a printer go for the last type, if you want to experiment go for the first type where you will find lots of peoples contributions on Thingiverse.com and elsewhere.
It appears, others may want to comment as all I have ATM is a printrbot, that the more solid/custom part models have evolved to meet higher quality goals.
I have not used any of the above, so others should comment. Quite a long post for no particular recommendation /:
@Jasper_Janssen next time, when you have nothing to contribute, better keep your insults to yourself and out of civilized discussion.