26 ms·

3D printing is inherently limited by what you can do with plastics (until you start getting into laser sintering or something else exotic). The niche applicati

3D printing is inherently limited by what you can do with plastics (until you start getting into laser sintering or something else exotic). The niche application ends up being Yoda figurines and etc that require weird shapes and high detail. For my money, cheap & modular mills like those at http://carbide3d.com/ http://carbide3d.com/ are much more promising because you can actually make structural components. A $500 CNC'd Grizzly mill equivalent (hell, probably $1000 if it was user friendly enough) would be extremely useful and would sell like hotcakes, but of course that's empirically extremely difficult to design since mills are a mature technology that requires things like calibration, knowledge of tools and materials to use, etc. Even their $1100 machine would probably be fun as hell, but it's a price point that actually requires a use in mind. Incidentally, as far as I can tell the most successful home-manufacturing product of the past 10 years or so has been https://ghostgunner.net/ https://ghostgunner.net/ .

nabla9 10y ago
I think the economic model of 3d printing in home is off. The goal should be to have advanced 3D printers, latches and CNC milling machine shops that provide easy to use services for walk-in customers or mail-orders. It should work just as easily as copying and printing services work for PDF files. You don't know if they have Xerox or Canon and you don't care. You want to know if they can print A1 and things like that. As 3D printing advances, having affordable access to several $20,000 - $200,000 specialized printers in your city beats the $2,000 printer in your home for a serious hobbyist or small business. Maybe its worth paying $200-$300 for printer you can use for prototypes before ordering more expensive work.
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  The problem with 3D printing / lathing / milling as a service is that particular parts can have orders of magnitude differences in machining costs, and typically you need humans in the loop to figure out if you're asking for something ridiculous (or dangerous, or harmful to the machine...) These guys are close to that model: https://www.plethora.com/ https://www.plethora.com/ . Their supposed killer advantage is that they have spent a lot of time deriving a cost model for arbitrary designs which allows relatively unsupervised submissions, but because they're very dependent on that cost model, the number of operations and customizations they support is fairly limited.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    That sounds like the PCB prototyping/short run production house model. Which makes more sense. As long as the cost isn't too high and the turn around time is short.
azdle 10y ago
I disagree. Yeah, it's plastics only, but that's not really that big of a limitation in my opinion. Now, I've printed a yoda or two (who hasn't?), but where it really shines for me is small things that need a little bit of precision to be good. And yes, I could use a CNC mill an create a lot of my parts and they'd be just as good, probably stronger. The problem is that I live in a studio apartment. Since I don't have a workshop and I don't want to drive to a hackerspace when I want to make something, I'm going to choose not to subject my girlfriend (and preferably not myself) to to the mess and noise of a mill. Plus a printer is so much easier in my experience, I don't need to worry about setting feed rates or replacing bits, I can just click print and go watch TV while it prints. I'll admit there are things that I can't do that I could do with a mill (I would really like to be able to mill circuit boards), but at least to me a printer makes much more sense for the vast majority of lazy stupid people like me.
- jordanb 10y ago
  Machining plastic on a small tabletop machine isn't very noisy. And it's a lot less messy too since it doesn't involve any liquid chemicals or fumes, you just have the chips.
jordanb 10y ago
Sherline has been selling small mills and lathes to the hobbyist machinist market for many years for about the price you're quoting.

nabla9 10y ago

I think the economic model of 3d printing in home is off. The goal should be to have advanced 3D printers, latches and CNC milling machine shops that provide easy to use services for walk-in customers or mail-orders. It should work just as easily as copying and printing services work for PDF files. You don't know if they have Xerox or Canon and you don't care. You want to know if they can print A1 and things like that. As 3D printing advances, having affordable access to several $20,000 - $200,000 specialized printers in your city beats the $2,000 printer in your home for a serious hobbyist or small business. Maybe its worth paying $200-$300 for printer you can use for prototypes before ordering more expensive work.

h4nkoslo 10y ago
The problem with 3D printing / lathing / milling as a service is that particular parts can have orders of magnitude differences in machining costs, and typically you need humans in the loop to figure out if you're asking for something ridiculous (or dangerous, or harmful to the machine...) These guys are close to that model: https://www.plethora.com/ https://www.plethora.com/ . Their supposed killer advantage is that they have spent a lot of time deriving a cost model for arbitrary designs which allows relatively unsupervised submissions, but because they're very dependent on that cost model, the number of operations and customizations they support is fairly limited.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  That sounds like the PCB prototyping/short run production house model. Which makes more sense. As long as the cost isn't too high and the turn around time is short.

azdle 10y ago

I disagree. Yeah, it's plastics only, but that's not really that big of a limitation in my opinion. Now, I've printed a yoda or two (who hasn't?), but where it really shines for me is small things that need a little bit of precision to be good. And yes, I could use a CNC mill an create a lot of my parts and they'd be just as good, probably stronger. The problem is that I live in a studio apartment. Since I don't have a workshop and I don't want to drive to a hackerspace when I want to make something, I'm going to choose not to subject my girlfriend (and preferably not myself) to to the mess and noise of a mill. Plus a printer is so much easier in my experience, I don't need to worry about setting feed rates or replacing bits, I can just click print and go watch TV while it prints. I'll admit there are things that I can't do that I could do with a mill (I would really like to be able to mill circuit boards), but at least to me a printer makes much more sense for the vast majority of lazy stupid people like me.

jordanb 10y ago
Machining plastic on a small tabletop machine isn't very noisy. And it's a lot less messy too since it doesn't involve any liquid chemicals or fumes, you just have the chips.

jordanb 10y ago

Sherline has been selling small mills and lathes to the hobbyist machinist market for many years for about the price you're quoting.