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> The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even smal

> The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. > The ability to make things at home is disappearing I do not know what you are talking about. 3D printing at home is more popular than ever. Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them. > People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines I think this is an appeal to 3D printing purity that drove me away from many of the communities. In the early days we all swapped tips and shared reviews of parts (like the Smoothieboard I still have) with other people who liked to build machines because that was the only way to do 3D printing at hobby level prices. When asked what we used the 3D printers for, the joke was that they were used to print parts for our 3D printer. It wasn’t really a joke, though. We spent more time keeping the printers working and trying to tune them than we did printing other things we needed. That has flipped. Now it’s easy to get a cheap 3D printer and start getting parts out of it without thinking about the printer much. This is great if you’re a person who wants to use the output of the printer. This is boring if you think the value is the process of building and changing the printer hardware all the time. I’m tired of hearing takes about how this is wrong or bad. Most “makers” want to make other things, not spend their precious free time trying to debug failing prints. There are more opportunities and knowledge available now for people who do want to build their own machines and it’s very cheap. People who want to do that can, but don’t look down upon the people who don’t want to do that.

Teever 6d ago
> There are more opportunities and knowledge available now for people who do want to build their own machines and it’s very cheap. And what happens if China decides that it is no longer in their interest to allow Americans access to cheap aluminum extrusions, hotends, motors, and controllers? Between the American tariffs and Chinese prioritization of 3d printing in a past five year plan American hobbyists and small scale producers are in a potential bind.
- Aurornis 6d ago
  > And what happens if China decides that it is no longer in their interest to allow Americans access to cheap aluminum extrusions, hotends, motors, and controllers? Then home 3D printing will be the least of our concerns? What kind of question is this?
  - Teever 6d ago
    Decades of prioritizing manufacturing capacity and talent lead to China being able to prioritize the development advanced additive manufacturing for industrial purposes and to being able to dominate international sales of consumer level 3d printers. Ignoring the development of the sorts of skills and abilities in the general public that come from tinkering with small bench top machines like lathes and 3d printers is detrimental to nation’s ability to be self sufficient and raise the next generation of mechanically inclined people. China seems to get that while other countries don’t.
    - aaronblohowiak 5d ago
      It has never been a better time to be able to make parts at home in USA than right now. A formlabs form 4 is cheaper than a Bridgeport, there is a glut of desktop CNC mills (aluminum routers) under ~5k, in wood the shaper origin and sienci altmill are pretty strong as is the avidcnc router family which happens to use domestically sourced extrusion from 8020… Frankly, I am confused by much of what in reading here
    - Aurornis 5d ago
      > Ignoring the development of the sorts of skills and abilities in the general public that come from tinkering with small bench top machines like lathes and 3d printers is detrimental to nation’s ability to be self sufficient and raise the next generation of mechanically inclined people. I replied to your topic about China stopping exports of stepper motors and aluminum extrusions, now you're switching to yet another goalpost. For what it's worth, I've spent a lot of time with 3D printers in the past decade. The amount I've learned doesn't hold a candle to any of the deep dives I've done for real engineering work. A couple months of paid full-time engineering work on in a new area would bring any engineer up to speed. 3D printers are cool, but the self-importance some people attribute to this hobby is a little too much some times.
jfengel 6d ago
We had a similar discussion about computers the other day. A lot of us miss the days of tiny memory and optimizing for that. It takes all kinds and I see no reason to gate keep either way. It's too bad that we do t often segregate around those opinions and don't share as much
- Aurornis 6d ago
  > It takes all kinds and I see no reason to gate keep either way. Gatekeeping is a good way to describe it. This happens to a lot of niche hobbies that go mainstream. Some of the old ingroup that were into the hobby before it was cool get irrationally angry at the new waves of adoption because they're in it for different reasons. I don't care why someone is in a hobby. If you want to do it the easy way, good for you. Nothing has been taken away from those who want to do it the hard way. It's much easier to get started building custom machines now than it was when I was starting out.
in_absentia 6d ago
> I do not know what you are talking about. What are you talking about? Show me one survey that shows DIY crafts as a whole becoming more popular in the past several decades. It's just not a thing. People increasingly don't have room for it, computers and cell phones have won as a way to spend the bulk of our free time, and even if you want to create, the primary outlet is the digital world. > 3D printing at home is more popular than ever Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently. I can also say that Tesla Cybertruck is more popular than ever, but that doesn't mean much, right. > Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them. A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them.
- bluGill 6d ago
  A vanishing small number of people ever did those things. Many people owned tablesaws but they rarely used them to make something for fun. They owned the dream and subscribed to the magazines but they only rarely made anything.
  - hilbert42 6d ago
    Yeah, unfortunately you are correct. Life's too busy nowadays and there's not enough time to do a quarter of the things one wishes especially projects that require planning and months to implement. Moreover, the reduction in or loss of manual trades (woodworking, machining, toolmaking, etc.) whether at home or in industry, amounts to an overall deskilling of the citizenry which has strategic implications.
    - bluGill 5d ago
      Not nowadays, it always was like that. Nothing is different today.
      - ElevenLathe 5d ago
        I don't see how that holds. Detroit and other cities it we're once filled with skilled machinists, pattern makers, carpenters, pipefitters, etc. Now they're not. None of this has anything to do with what those people did for fun in their spare time (and you're right: that was rarely "the same thing I do at work but in my garage"). We are certainly deskilled in these areas compared to times in decades past.
ChrisMarshallNY 6d ago
It's a lot less of an issue, now, but Linux used to be a "mechanic's hot rod" operating system. It's like that kid down the block, with the sweet hot rod that rattles the windows, when he drives past, but whenever you drive past his house, the car is up on blocks, and he's working on it. Working on tools can be a lot of fun, but I like working on stuff that ships, so I prefer tools that don't require much work.
- bluGill 5d ago
  Also I have a hobby that requires tools. If I'm fixing my 3d printer that means I'm not using that printer to make parts for my hot rod (or whatever it is I'm doing for fun)
regularfry 5d ago
It's just a colossal misread of the demographics. The community was always a mix of people who wanted to build a printer, and people who wanted a printed thing. The community has massively exploded since the early years, and it's almost entirely made of people in the latter camp who, critically, no longer have to go through the former campsite to get there. It doesn't mean there aren't people in the first camp, or even that there are fewer of them. They're just a rounding error now. You can tell when it happened, because the E3D v6 nozzle pattern went from being a de facto standard across everything to something you need to buy an adapter for, and nobody really seemed to blink.
- Ccecil 5d ago
  Heh... I think it was a bit earlier. The Groovemount was the "standard" for a while there (Makergear, Jhead, etc) then when E3D came in they used the same idea but changed the measurements. It was pointed out to the devs...they left it the way they modified it. So E3D was incompatible with the mounts that were the "standard"...others later followed and also made their own mounts. The E3D clones advertised themselves as "jheads" and "E3D" when they were neither...rode on the popularity of other hotends via false advertising. It also happened with the electronics that were popular at the time leading to a lot of issues when people were confused about what firmware would run on the boards they purchased.

Teever 6d ago

> There are more opportunities and knowledge available now for people who do want to build their own machines and it’s very cheap. And what happens if China decides that it is no longer in their interest to allow Americans access to cheap aluminum extrusions, hotends, motors, and controllers? Between the American tariffs and Chinese prioritization of 3d printing in a past five year plan American hobbyists and small scale producers are in a potential bind.

Aurornis 6d ago
> And what happens if China decides that it is no longer in their interest to allow Americans access to cheap aluminum extrusions, hotends, motors, and controllers? Then home 3D printing will be the least of our concerns? What kind of question is this?
- Teever 6d ago
  Decades of prioritizing manufacturing capacity and talent lead to China being able to prioritize the development advanced additive manufacturing for industrial purposes and to being able to dominate international sales of consumer level 3d printers. Ignoring the development of the sorts of skills and abilities in the general public that come from tinkering with small bench top machines like lathes and 3d printers is detrimental to nation’s ability to be self sufficient and raise the next generation of mechanically inclined people. China seems to get that while other countries don’t.
  - aaronblohowiak 5d ago
    It has never been a better time to be able to make parts at home in USA than right now. A formlabs form 4 is cheaper than a Bridgeport, there is a glut of desktop CNC mills (aluminum routers) under ~5k, in wood the shaper origin and sienci altmill are pretty strong as is the avidcnc router family which happens to use domestically sourced extrusion from 8020… Frankly, I am confused by much of what in reading here
  - Aurornis 5d ago
    > Ignoring the development of the sorts of skills and abilities in the general public that come from tinkering with small bench top machines like lathes and 3d printers is detrimental to nation’s ability to be self sufficient and raise the next generation of mechanically inclined people. I replied to your topic about China stopping exports of stepper motors and aluminum extrusions, now you're switching to yet another goalpost. For what it's worth, I've spent a lot of time with 3D printers in the past decade. The amount I've learned doesn't hold a candle to any of the deep dives I've done for real engineering work. A couple months of paid full-time engineering work on in a new area would bring any engineer up to speed. 3D printers are cool, but the self-importance some people attribute to this hobby is a little too much some times.

jfengel 6d ago

We had a similar discussion about computers the other day. A lot of us miss the days of tiny memory and optimizing for that. It takes all kinds and I see no reason to gate keep either way. It's too bad that we do t often segregate around those opinions and don't share as much

Aurornis 6d ago
> It takes all kinds and I see no reason to gate keep either way. Gatekeeping is a good way to describe it. This happens to a lot of niche hobbies that go mainstream. Some of the old ingroup that were into the hobby before it was cool get irrationally angry at the new waves of adoption because they're in it for different reasons. I don't care why someone is in a hobby. If you want to do it the easy way, good for you. Nothing has been taken away from those who want to do it the hard way. It's much easier to get started building custom machines now than it was when I was starting out.

in_absentia 6d ago

> I do not know what you are talking about. What are you talking about? Show me one survey that shows DIY crafts as a whole becoming more popular in the past several decades. It's just not a thing. People increasingly don't have room for it, computers and cell phones have won as a way to spend the bulk of our free time, and even if you want to create, the primary outlet is the digital world. > 3D printing at home is more popular than ever Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently. I can also say that Tesla Cybertruck is more popular than ever, but that doesn't mean much, right. > Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them. A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them.

bluGill 6d ago
A vanishing small number of people ever did those things. Many people owned tablesaws but they rarely used them to make something for fun. They owned the dream and subscribed to the magazines but they only rarely made anything.
- hilbert42 6d ago
  Yeah, unfortunately you are correct. Life's too busy nowadays and there's not enough time to do a quarter of the things one wishes especially projects that require planning and months to implement. Moreover, the reduction in or loss of manual trades (woodworking, machining, toolmaking, etc.) whether at home or in industry, amounts to an overall deskilling of the citizenry which has strategic implications.
  - bluGill 5d ago
    Not nowadays, it always was like that. Nothing is different today.
    - ElevenLathe 5d ago
      I don't see how that holds. Detroit and other cities it we're once filled with skilled machinists, pattern makers, carpenters, pipefitters, etc. Now they're not. None of this has anything to do with what those people did for fun in their spare time (and you're right: that was rarely "the same thing I do at work but in my garage"). We are certainly deskilled in these areas compared to times in decades past.

ChrisMarshallNY 6d ago

It's a lot less of an issue, now, but Linux used to be a "mechanic's hot rod" operating system. It's like that kid down the block, with the sweet hot rod that rattles the windows, when he drives past, but whenever you drive past his house, the car is up on blocks, and he's working on it. Working on tools can be a lot of fun, but I like working on stuff that ships, so I prefer tools that don't require much work.

bluGill 5d ago
Also I have a hobby that requires tools. If I'm fixing my 3d printer that means I'm not using that printer to make parts for my hot rod (or whatever it is I'm doing for fun)

regularfry 5d ago

It's just a colossal misread of the demographics. The community was always a mix of people who wanted to build a printer, and people who wanted a printed thing. The community has massively exploded since the early years, and it's almost entirely made of people in the latter camp who, critically, no longer have to go through the former campsite to get there. It doesn't mean there aren't people in the first camp, or even that there are fewer of them. They're just a rounding error now. You can tell when it happened, because the E3D v6 nozzle pattern went from being a de facto standard across everything to something you need to buy an adapter for, and nobody really seemed to blink.

Ccecil 5d ago
Heh... I think it was a bit earlier. The Groovemount was the "standard" for a while there (Makergear, Jhead, etc) then when E3D came in they used the same idea but changed the measurements. It was pointed out to the devs...they left it the way they modified it. So E3D was incompatible with the mounts that were the "standard"...others later followed and also made their own mounts. The E3D clones advertised themselves as "jheads" and "E3D" when they were neither...rode on the popularity of other hotends via false advertising. It also happened with the electronics that were popular at the time leading to a lot of issues when people were confused about what firmware would run on the boards they purchased.