3 ms·

> What are you talking about? Show me one survey that shows DIY crafts as a whole becoming more popular in the past several decades. Entry level 3D printer sal

> What are you talking about? Show me one survey that shows DIY crafts as a whole becoming more popular in the past several decades. Entry level 3D printer sales (the kind you buy from Prusa or Bambu Labs) have been surging for years. You could Google this and find a thousand articles about it. The entry-level segment has grown massively and continues to expand https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/context-industrial-growth-and-entry-level-boom-reshape-am-market-253208/ https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/context-industrial-growt... > Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently. I built my first 3D printer over 10 years ago. The latest printer I bought is much more refined, but it's still stepper motors, belts, a gear driven extruder, and a nozzle like my original printer. The technology has been around for a long time. The popularity explosion is recent. > A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them. We're talking about hobbies and that's how hobbies work, yes. The hobby is growing significantly, though. Arguing that most households don't have a 3D printer is just a strawman.

apercu 13d ago
I know exactly one person who has a 3D printer. I would argue strongly that “most households” do not in fact have a 3D printer.
- WillAdams 13d ago
  "Most households", no, but a statistically significant number? Yes. Two of my co-workers have one each, and another is planning on buying one for her kids for Christmas --- DJI revenge-investing in Elegoo to spite the folks who left their company to start Bambu Labs pretty much knocked the bottom out of the market and halved (again) the price with the Centauri Carbon, resulting in a glut of ~$300 CoreXY printers, many of which are enclosed and hence have a higher perceived value. Most estimates are that 2024 had ~4.5 million shipped, and 2025 looked to be even more, and no signs of the upward trajectory decreasing for 2026. For one small snapshot see the recent Snapmaker campaign for the U1, >$20M raised from >20K backers. With most sales to the U.S., for ~135M households, while not at 10%, it is almost certainly past 5%, so approximately 1-in-20 households.
tomcam 14d ago
> You could Google this and find a thousand articles about it. Such articles are frequently by the people who would benefit the most from them and usually lack specifics. My favorite version of this is to do a web search for "fastest growing hobby in the world". Lots of hobbies are the fastest growing hobby in the world, it turns out.
- margalabargala 13d ago
  And from that you conclude what?

apercu 13d ago

I know exactly one person who has a 3D printer. I would argue strongly that “most households” do not in fact have a 3D printer.

WillAdams 13d ago
"Most households", no, but a statistically significant number? Yes. Two of my co-workers have one each, and another is planning on buying one for her kids for Christmas --- DJI revenge-investing in Elegoo to spite the folks who left their company to start Bambu Labs pretty much knocked the bottom out of the market and halved (again) the price with the Centauri Carbon, resulting in a glut of ~$300 CoreXY printers, many of which are enclosed and hence have a higher perceived value. Most estimates are that 2024 had ~4.5 million shipped, and 2025 looked to be even more, and no signs of the upward trajectory decreasing for 2026. For one small snapshot see the recent Snapmaker campaign for the U1, >$20M raised from >20K backers. With most sales to the U.S., for ~135M households, while not at 10%, it is almost certainly past 5%, so approximately 1-in-20 households.

tomcam 14d ago

> You could Google this and find a thousand articles about it. Such articles are frequently by the people who would benefit the most from them and usually lack specifics. My favorite version of this is to do a web search for "fastest growing hobby in the world". Lots of hobbies are the fastest growing hobby in the world, it turns out.

margalabargala 13d ago
And from that you conclude what?