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Two others: They are big, and they are expensive. That makes owning a 3D printer something that still doesn't make a lot of economic sense for me. I'm not certa

Two others: They are big, and they are expensive. That makes owning a 3D printer something that still doesn't make a lot of economic sense for me. I'm not certain it ever will. I'm waiting for the equivalent of a Kinko's for 3D printing. That will make 3D printing much more accessible to me, and I assume it would also get me access to 3D printers that can do much higher quality work than the at-home models are capable of.

gh02t 9y ago
> I'm waiting for the equivalent of a Kinko's for 3D printing A lot of universities offer this to their students already. Commercially, off the top of my head, Staples and the UPS store have some 3D printing services available at a limited number of stores but I don't think it has been terribly successful. Problem is, 3D printing is IMO not much more than a novelty unless you are designing your own parts, but then iterating on a custom design is painful and expensive with a commercial service. I use my 3D printer a ton, both for work and for hobby stuff, and it usually takes a few tries to get a design right. That's hard to do sitting in a store or by mail and typical markup for those services is like 10-20x actual cost. It quickly gets expensive enough that buying your own printer starts to make sense, especially when quality printers can be had for <$500 nowadays and quite serviceable printers for <$200. There's really not a huge difference in quality between the higher end printers and the good examples of the affordable ones (at least, comparing FDM printers to their kin, SLA/DLP is a different beast entirely). Most of the difference is in convenience and secondary features like dual extrusion or self-leveling.
jcl 9y ago
FWIW, some UPS store locations offer 3D printing (although it seemed pretty expensive): https://www.theupsstore.com/print/3d-printing https://www.theupsstore.com/print/3d-printing
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
The Monoprice delta is neither big nor expensive.
jstanley 9y ago
They're not that expensive. I bought one for £150 earlier this year, just to see what all the fuss was about. It is a fantastic machine and I use it for something new almost every week. It took quite a lot of assembly, and there is an ongoing maintenance burden (there's nearly always something that isn't quite working as well as it could) but I couldn't imagine living without one. I'd like to upgrade to a higher-quality machine but I'm putting it off as long as I can tolerate because they just keep getting better and cheaper the longer I wait. But if you're at all interested, I highly recommend getting a cheap one, learning how to use it, and learning some basic CAD. It's a great hobby all of its own, and is a great addition to almost any other hobbies you might have.

gh02t 9y ago

> I'm waiting for the equivalent of a Kinko's for 3D printing A lot of universities offer this to their students already. Commercially, off the top of my head, Staples and the UPS store have some 3D printing services available at a limited number of stores but I don't think it has been terribly successful. Problem is, 3D printing is IMO not much more than a novelty unless you are designing your own parts, but then iterating on a custom design is painful and expensive with a commercial service. I use my 3D printer a ton, both for work and for hobby stuff, and it usually takes a few tries to get a design right. That's hard to do sitting in a store or by mail and typical markup for those services is like 10-20x actual cost. It quickly gets expensive enough that buying your own printer starts to make sense, especially when quality printers can be had for <$500 nowadays and quite serviceable printers for <$200. There's really not a huge difference in quality between the higher end printers and the good examples of the affordable ones (at least, comparing FDM printers to their kin, SLA/DLP is a different beast entirely). Most of the difference is in convenience and secondary features like dual extrusion or self-leveling.

jcl 9y ago

FWIW, some UPS store locations offer 3D printing (although it seemed pretty expensive): https://www.theupsstore.com/print/3d-printing https://www.theupsstore.com/print/3d-printing

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

The Monoprice delta is neither big nor expensive.

jstanley 9y ago

They're not that expensive. I bought one for £150 earlier this year, just to see what all the fuss was about. It is a fantastic machine and I use it for something new almost every week. It took quite a lot of assembly, and there is an ongoing maintenance burden (there's nearly always something that isn't quite working as well as it could) but I couldn't imagine living without one. I'd like to upgrade to a higher-quality machine but I'm putting it off as long as I can tolerate because they just keep getting better and cheaper the longer I wait. But if you're at all interested, I highly recommend getting a cheap one, learning how to use it, and learning some basic CAD. It's a great hobby all of its own, and is a great addition to almost any other hobbies you might have.