6 ms·

What are the more practical uses of 3D printing at this point? Is it still in early adopter phase? Are (everyday) users saving any money by having their own 3

• exelius 11y ago
  I don't view 3D printers as a money saving device -- they're still too inaccurate, which means you can waste a lot of material (read: $$$) on misprints. For anything a normal consumer would buy, it would be cheaper to make 100 injection-molded parts than a single 3D printed one. They save money for engineering firms; but the money they save is the time spent waiting for a part to be delivered. They're invaluable for people who are already "makers" though. Let's say you built an Arduino/RPi weather sensor (lame use case, but insert any use case here) and you need a way to mount it on a pole on the outside of your house. You can either find something on Amazon you think might work and go the trial-and-error route, or you can design a simple bracket in a CAD app and 3D print it.
  • dublinben 11y ago
    Most practical uses for 3D printing parts are still inferior to CNC milling or wood carving. Rapid prototyping remains the most useful task for 3D printers.
    • shiftpgdn 11y ago
      A hammer is better at putting nails into wood than a screwdriver is. Hobby CNC mills like the Xcarve or the shapeoko only have a 3"~ Z axis. That's on top of the normal limits of carving out of a solid block of material vs printing from nothing. I don't disagree though. Much of what people demonstrate with a 3d printer would have come out better with a hobby CNC mill.
  • hippich 11y ago
    for the range of 100 parts 3D printing is still more viable for many cases than injection molding. mold alone will cost on average $5k in China. Also, not everything can be injection molded. There is certainly a place for 3D printed products (I know, since I am selling some)
    • riskable 11y ago
      Just curious: What are you selling?
      • hippich 11y ago
        some odd things, which are not worth mass production: * http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPA3K92 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPA3K92 * http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TTCHHJ2 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TTCHHJ2 * http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RYFM3R2 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RYFM3R2 I have few more ideas in a pipeline. It is not bringing much money, but it does pay for my hobby. EDIT: I am also open source all of the stuff i am selling (under non-commercial license for obvious reasons) - https://github.com/hippich/stl https://github.com/hippich/stl
    • exelius 11y ago
      Very true; I just made that number up :) But I guess my original point was that it will almost never be cheaper for a consumer to 3D print something than it will be to buy the mass-produced version of that same thing. Unless that thing is covered by an IP license (i.e. a Mario statue or something) in which case there probably is or will be some law against it that just isn't realistic to enforce against individuals.
• rplnt 11y ago
  Need a a special mount for your camera? Did that weird part in your car break? ... Is it useful? Definitely. Do you need one at your home? Most likely no.
  • protomyth 11y ago
    I wish there was a "Kinkos for 3D printing". It seems like the old copy shop model will work for 3d printing for a while.
    • exhilaration 11y ago
      There is! http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/products/3d-printing/ http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/products/3d-printing/
      • protomyth 11y ago
        There service is provided by Sculpteo and is not an in-store service. I cannot just go into the store and get something printed like I can with a copy job.
    • wandererer 11y ago
      I don't follow this stuff too closely, but isn't that what http://www.shapeways.com/ http://www.shapeways.com/ is?
    • Encosia 11y ago
      There's Shapeways. I've ordered a couple pieces from them and both turned out well.
    • LesZedCB 11y ago
      http://spaces.makerspace.com/makerspace-directory http://spaces.makerspace.com/makerspace-directory They exist, you just have to know what to look for! :) Libraries are increasingly getting 3d printers which you can use. I was at a space yesterday called Hatch in Boston that is totally free and volunteer run. There are monthly subscription based spaces such as Artisan's Asylum[1] in Cambridge, MA that are full of all the equipment you could possible need for larger projects. They are also great because being surrounded by other makers is great conversation! [1] https://artisansasylum.com/ https://artisansasylum.com/
• rfrey 11y ago
  Prototyping. Even for hobbyist builders, it's super useful to be able to 3d print something before committing it to metal, wood, etc. Outside of that, they're basically good for party tricks ("Everyone gets their own customized shotglass!"). If you're genetically required to jerry-rig your own whatsits rather than buy them ("$3.50 for THAT?? I could make that in an hour with a coat hanger and rare-earth magnet!!") you may also enjoy it as it provides another way to stick it to the Homo Economicus dullards.
• jrbedard 11y ago
  I've used it mostly for prototyping and gifts. I've made a photography turntable, a functional arduino robot, and 3D printed my dad's house to put in a shadow box frame as a gift. http://jrbedard.com/printing http://jrbedard.com/printing
  • praveenster 11y ago
    Very interesting 3D projects! Which 3D printer do you use?
    • jrbedard 11y ago
      Thanks, for these projects I used a Dremel Idea Builder.
• Tepix 11y ago
  You can save some money by printing replacement parts to repair stuff instead of throwing it away. Other than that.. it depends on what you do :-) for some hobbies 3d printing is invaluable, for others it isn't.
  • LesZedCB 11y ago
    I fly quadcopters and do a bit of FPV racing[1], and a 3d printer is so incredibly useful for printing parts. [1] http://www.multigp.com/ http://www.multigp.com/
• at-fates-hands 11y ago
  I actually had a friend who went to school for this and uses it for almost everything. He prints silverware, plates, glasses and other things instead of going out and buying them. He prints a lot of other things you probably wouldn't think of. One time the toilet paper roll holder in his bathroom broke so he just printed a new one. He also had a lamp in his study break and instead of going out and buying a new one, he printed a mold of a lamp, then took the wiring out of the old one, wired it up on the new one and boom! New lamp. He really made me think there's a ton of uses people would never think of for 3D printing, the stuff he does really opened my eyes.
  • exhilaration 11y ago
    One of the comments in this thread says "Filament isn't food-safe" -- what is your friend using to print these things?
    • at-fates-hands 11y ago
      They have several food-grade filaments you can use to print stuff that comes on contact with food: http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140111-food-grade-pp-filament-for-3d-printers.html http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140111-food-grade-pp-filamen... http://www.makergeeks.com/fogrplafi.html http://www.makergeeks.com/fogrplafi.html I've also heard a KeyTech has developed an FDA safe filament for printing objects that come in contact with food or skin.
    • LesZedCB 11y ago
      PLA is actually a bioplastic made from veggies and is actually considered food safe[1]. In fact, many of the plastic cups that you use are made from PLA, particularly anything clear. They can biodegrade given enough heat. The non-foodsafe part of 3d printing PLA is the hot end which is not clean, and can also be cross contaminated from printing other plastics such as ABS which is oil based. [1] http://reprage.com/post/36869678168/is-3d-printed-pla-food-safe/ http://reprage.com/post/36869678168/is-3d-printed-pla-food-s...
      • 11y ago
• tfinniga 11y ago
  I bought a replicator 2 when they were new, thinking that it was a consumer device. Difficulties I was aware of: - Modeling is kind of a pain. Thingiverse and other 3d model repositories are helpful, but anything custom modeled can be a pain. TinkerCAD is pretty simple. - Single color limits the kind of ornamental models you can print - Filament isn't food-safe Difficulties I was surprised by: - It is extremely slow to print anything. The simplest model is maybe 10 minutes. For larger models the time can increase to 8-10 hours easily. - Model prep (slicing and supports) took a surprisingly large amount of time. This has been improved, but still not great. - Supports are horrible to deal with and remove. There are other slicing packages that offer better supports, but nothing fantastic. - The hardware was definitely not consumer grade. I was expecting something like a microwave, where I open the door at the end and a model comes out. I have to know far too much about how the 3d printer works. So, here is a short history of issues with my replicator 2: - First few prints worked great. - The nut and bolt print was misaligned by layers - the nut was skewed into sort of a parallelogram. This was due to one of my belts needing to be tightened, causing slippage each layer. - After a few prints, I started getting good prints at the bottom of the part, but then at the top it would get all stringy. I tried various things to fix this like decreasing the distance between the build plate and the print nozzle, increasing it, and so forth. Eventually I needed to open up the print assembly and tighten something that controlled how tightly it pulled filament through. - At one point I had some filament break off inside, blocking the nozzle. I needed to remove the heat sink to get at it, but when I put it back together, I accidentally squished the wire that sent temperature information, so it stopped being able to heat. Took a while to figure out the problem. - I also had a problem where one of the circuit boards was misaligned, so when it was trying to go to its home position it wasn't touching the sensor and would just keep trying to move in the one direction even though it had reached the end. - I had a file with the normals flipped, so it wouldn't print supports properly. It was a minor problem, really. - I had lots of problems where the filament would either be too far away and not adhere properly to the build platform, or too close and jam the nozzle. I also had a problem where some prints were very difficult to remove, I ended up destroying them trying to remove them. Using blue 3M painter's tape solved the issue. If you get the 2" rolls, 3 strips cover the build plate. - I had several prints getting stringy, I ended up having to replace the nozzle and thermal tape entirely
• VLM 11y ago
  Your first question hinges on the definition of practical. Almost 0% of the population defines prototype development, using 3d printers or not, as practical. Or model railroading as being practical. The latter question, if you exclude "everyday", is a yes. You can't sell 10 HO scale model railroad 55 gallon drums for $19.95 at a local hobby store as a boxed scenery kit when the marketplace contains people who own 3-d printers, basically everyone but the mfgrs and retailers is winning due to printed scenery components. So due to supply and demand everyone is paying less, not just printer owners, at least in the short term. In the medium to long term crushing industry segments probably doesn't help much. I'm not thinking "practical" is a useful marketing term for a tool mostly used by professionals and serious hobbyists. A good analogy of why can be seen in my socket set for car work or my table saw, those are fine hobbies but useless for the stereotypical perfect consumer. Then again the stereotypical perfect consumer who has no hobbies other than watching advertisements and shopping probably does not exist in practice. I'm not sure what practical means in the sense of a creative tool anyway. My mom used to pain in acrylics for fun, and it would be very hard to define brands of paint or painting styles as being more or less practical than others. Sound of one hand clapping and all that.
• kefka 11y ago
  I was hired for design/printing of a piece that broke off of a motorized wheelchair. It was a bracket that held a neoprene bag for a cell phone. The plastic didn't respond to superglue, nor epoxy. Unsure of what type, but was not ABS. So I modeled it; took about 20 minutes, and ended up with the FreeCAD file and the STL. Printing took about an hour. I charged $25 for total, with $20 for design and $5 for the part. And I offered future parts printed at the $5 price. They didn't want the design. I found out the bracket, because it was for a wheelchair, was priced at $75. Just crazy..