3 ms·
I know it's off-topic, but this simply baffles me about 3D printing. I have a 3D printer and I plan on buying more, but when you look at the most downloaded mod
by iLoveOncall 4y ago
I know it's off-topic, but this simply baffles me about 3D printing. I have a 3D printer and I plan on buying more, but when you look at the most downloaded models on a huge website like printables.com, the number 1 has a bit more than 200K downloads, and the second drops all the way down to only 83K. Only 83,000 people downloaded the 2nd most downloaded model :|
Every time I look at the numbers I realize how niche of a hobby it is, despite being easier and easier (and cheaper and cheaper) to get into and has pretty much endless applications.
- pulvinar 4y agoThe reason for that is that 3D printing's strength is one-off designs. Any popular design would get mass-produced cheaper and better, and would then lose popularity on those sites.
- JohnFen 4y agoI do a lot of 3D printing -- but outside of when I first started and it was a shiny new toy, I almost never download models to print. Being able to make my own custom parts and such, though, has been an incredible superpower, and my printers have paid for themselves many times over that way.
- aix1 4y agoIt's a niche hobby for sure, but I think a slightly better metric to look at is the number of 3D printers sold. This seems to be about 2 million units per year.