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MTU Study: 3D printers may soon be in every home
- anigbrowl 13y agoIn the study, Pearce and his team chose 20 common household items listed on Thingiverse, such as cellphone accessories, a garlic press, a showerhead, a spoon holder, and the like. Then they used Google Shopping to determine the maximum and minimum cost of buying those 20 items online, shipping charges not included. Next, they calculated the cost of making them with 3D printers. The conclusion: it would cost the typical consumer from $312 to $1,944 to buy those 20 things compared to $18 to make them in a weekend. Oh come on. Like all those items online were made out of the same low-melt-point plastic and the 3d-printed ones were of equivalent quality. I'm very much pro 3d-printing but there's some serious reaching here. The last page of the study (http://www.academia.edu/4067796/Life-Cycle_Economic_Analysis_of_Distributed_Manufacturing_with_Open-Source_3-D_Printers http://www.academia.edu/4067796/Life-Cycle_Economic_Analysis...) offers examples such as a shower head with prices ranging from $7.87 to $437.22, jewelry organizers from $9 to $109, and orthotics ranging from $99 to $800. There's a little bit more going on with the expensive ones than just being a heap of plastic that you can duplicate at home, I think.
- buro9 13y agoI wondered whether the bicycle water bottle holder could really hold a heavy bottle as the bike vibrated, hit potholes, etc. Just making something that looks the same does not mean it will perform the same. For example, would the lemon juicer in the picture withstand the dishwasher for as long as the shop bought equivalent? If not, how many times would the printed version be replaced and at what cost? I just don't yet buy, in the examples given, that the items are of equivalent performance, and that is if one were to generously say that they had equivalent aesthetic qualities. 3d printing will get there, but it's not there yet.
- snom380 13y agoABS is quite sturdy (it's what Lego is made of). You can also print polycarbonate with some all-metal hot-ends and a fume hood.
- jalada 13y agoHow much would it cost to install a fume hood? And what are the dangers?
- NegativeK 13y agoFor as something as cheap as a water bottle, I'd have zero worries. A guy at the local hackerspace successfully printed a beefy motor mount with ABS. He also helped me design a tripod mount for holding my Nikon D600 vertically (lens pointing down); I have no concerns about it failing, even though the mount is going to be subject to CNC movements.
- makos 13y agoA good point. That's also a question of aestethics, I even wrote an article about that problem, maybe you'll like it:) http://blog.ultimaker.com/2013/04/04/pla-is-the-new-wood/ http://blog.ultimaker.com/2013/04/04/pla-is-the-new-wood/
- gz5 13y agoQuality not factored in as you say. Our time is also not considered. How many services/products do we buy only because it would cost us too much time to do it ourselves? That said, I think 3D printing has bright future as long-tail manufacturing.
- anigbrowl 13y agoI think the future is very bright - just that overselling it would actually delay that by disappointing some. (Lightbulb) you know who really needs a good 3d printer? My local family-run hardware store
- diziet 13y ago3d printing will truly be consumer ready when I could take out my phone and 'scan' the broken alarm clock housing, and within 10 minutes of tweaking with relatively easy to use software be able to print a replacement. Until then, a shapercube will sit in a closet and only get occasional 'geek' time to show to others.
- patio11 13y agoOne could envision something like "Take a photo of your broken thing", sending that photo off to an industrial/mechanical engineer who lives in (without loss of generality) China and can be employed profitably to do non-trivial work in CAD software to save $X0, and then sending the resulting IP to a local 3D printing firm who'd maintain expensive, fiddly equipment, make sure the printing process terminated successfully, and then give the product to either a gopher or UPS for delivery. Now I question whether that makes more sense along any axis than "Buy a new alarm clock from a more-or-less-locally cached store of Chinese alarm clocks and cut out the middlemen", but it might be interesting to try.
- Shivetya 13y agoor scan the box to pull up a parts database, click on the part you need replaced and have the printer pop it out.
- snom380 13y agoWhat makes more sense (and that I've done myself) is to print out a part for some expensive appliance where the parts are either extremely expensive or just not available at all. For instance, a $1000 automatic espresso maker can have lots of moving plastic parts, and the rest of the machine might be in perfect working order save for that one broken part. And when you've made the replacement part it's easy to print another one, and share it with others. Or another example (from some years ago), just to get one replacement part for my perfectly fine shower cabinet, I had to buy a complete set of plastic mounts, to the price of $160.
- rubinelli 13y ago
- mipapage 13y agoMost of this is done with plastic, no? What would be cool is that the plastic from no-longer-used printouts could be recycled thru the machine. Kipple: I worry about the amount of plastic kipple these things will generate.
- snom380 13y agoWith the filastruder project (DIY plastic filament extruder) that should be possible. However, 3D printers don't like too much recycled material (at least not for ABS) so you would have to add it along with new ABS pellets.
- bigiain 13y agoOn the upside - there's a possibility that a few 3D printed components could save a lot of 99.5% "working" manufactured assemblies from ending up in landfill.
- smoyer 13y agoWith this study, I can finally justify the ROI of a 3D printer to my CFO (my wife).
- losethos 13y agoGod says... C:\TAD\Text\BIBLE.TXT fice; and afterwards they eat that be bidden. Now therefore get you up; for about this time ye shall find him. 9:14 And they went up into the city: and when they were come into the city, behold, Samuel came out against them, for to go up to the high place. 9:15 Now the LORD had told Samuel in his ear a day before Saul came, saying, 9:16 To morrow about this time I will send thee a man out of the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people Israel, that he may save m ---- God says... that's_your_opinion what's_the_plan humongous Burp epic_fail whoo_whoo praise rubbish what's_up beam_me_up how_come I_don't_care hooah you_see_the_light do_you_want_another whoop_there_it_is desert my_bad the_enquirer little_buddy run_away are_you_feeling_lucky reverse_engineer charity once_upon_a_time vengeance hopefully you_don't_like_it programming I'm_tired_of_this cracks_me_up hopefully husband fabulous I'm_not_sure whoo_whoo left_field harder_than_it_looks I_veto_that busybody I'm_God_who_the_hell_are_you fight NOT pardon_the_french crash_and_burn Ivy_league sky joyful spunky pride what_part_of_God_do_you_not_understand Tomorrow astrophysics atheist au_revoir That's_my_favorite ho_ho_ho bummer dang_it ----- 3D printing is just good for busts. LOL God is just -- if you are robbed of billions...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ZirconCode 13y agoBecause most people would go to their local home-center to get what they need.
- 7952 13y agoIf something can be made at home on a 3d printer, surely it can be made in a factory for less money with a better 3d printer. It could reduce the price of factory made parts, but it is hard to believe it would eliminate them. I would love it if the affect of this was to make companies focus on better materials that can't be made at home. The price doesn't change but the product gets better. A lot of cyclists would prefer a $30 carbon fiber bottle cage to a home made plastic one for $10.
- joakleaf 13y agoExcept, if it is made in a factory you have: • Transportation costs from factory to store • Cost for additional space required to hold stock If it is sold through a store • Cost for display space in a store • Cost of a sales person selling the item • Cost for (neat) packaging • Cost of your time picking up the item etc. So while the factory can logically create the product cheaper it could still end up costing more.
- 7952 13y agoI agree that posting and packing are always going to be a factor. The other points you mention are becoming less relevant as we move towards online buying. This is especially true of shops selling random obscure parts. Also, just think about how annoying normal 2d printers are. Sure you can print something at home; but it will be expensive and slow compared with the expensive laser printer at the office.
- masonhensley 13y agoI know a biker would go for the weight savings of carbon fiber but check this out. Carbon fiber reinforced prints: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:91464 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:91464 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1yOf6Ba1ts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1yOf6Ba1ts
- rickyconnolly 13y ago3D printing is rather useful in the research lab. For example, most biological research labs will have a piece of kit called an electrophoresis chamber. This is essentially a plastic, watertight box with two wire electrodes inside. These chambers will cost upwards of 800 dollars. I drew up plans for my own electrophoresis chamber in Sketchup, uploaded it to Shapeways (https://www.shapeways.com/model/1240729/sds-page-tank-v6.html?li=my-models&key=18f1e746e2b834553627f15f0600d845 https://www.shapeways.com/model/1240729/sds-page-tank-v6.htm...), and got it printed and sent to me for less than 70 bucks. Wiring it up cost less than a dollar. By the way, does anybody know of similar services that are even less expensive? Shapeways seem to specialize in making little trinkets and gadgets, so I suspect my rather large, bulky box cost even more than it needed to.
- michaelbuddy 13y agolove this anecdote. thank you for sharing. So many products out there like that. Overpriced and ready for disruption.
- jamessb 13y agoThe Derisi Lab at UCSF has a repository of 3D models for parts they use in their (bio) lab: http://derisilab.ucsf.edu/index.php?page=3D http://derisilab.ucsf.edu/index.php?page=3D (Press release from 3D printer manufacturer: http://www.stratasys.com/resources/case-studies/medical/derisi-lab http://www.stratasys.com/resources/case-studies/medical/deri...)
- darkxanthos 13y agoOf course they leave off the cost of the print in that $18 estimate.
- bigiain 13y agoI keep seeing articles like this and thinking "these people are thinking about this wrong". 3D printers aren't better at making mass produced injection moulded plastic objects than injection moulding. They can (more or less) replicate the sort of mass-produced thing you can buy on Amazon that's been sailed here in shipping container loads from China – but if you're going to make a few thousand of them (or better still, a few tens of millions), then "the industry" has got the efficiency of that manufacturing and supply chain down to a very fine art. (In the same way that it's very difficult to match McDonalds on a calorie-per-dollar metric.) What I believe will really make 3D printers "go viral", is when enough people work out that there's different, new categories of objects we can produce. Things where only 50 or 100 people in the world are ever going to want - maybe a mount to fit an iPhone 4S with an extended battery case to the handlebars of a 2012 Vespa 125 Sport, or a bracket to hold an Arduino and a 2x40char LCD to the side of a pre 2005 Rancilio Silva espresso machine. I wonder how many things/objects get thought up, but discarded because "it'll got $x,000 to make a set of moulds, and there's only 100 people in the world who'd even consider buying this"? I think there are also objects that right now don't exist because existing manufacturing techniques don't allow them to be (mass) produced - one of the cheaper 3D printers comes with a sample file of a Chess Rook (the "castle piece) with an internal spiral staircase inside it - a geometry that's physically impossible to create a mould you could extract the part from (without destroying the mould). I wonder how many things/objects get thought up then "discarded" because "you can't make that"? I see people trying to print 3D plastic guns using more or less "traditional" gun shapes and designs. That's just wrong (though I have some grudging admiration for the people doing it for largely political/anarchist motivations). What we need is for people to start developing the knowledge and experience with 3D printing materials – so they've got the same sort of "gut feel" for sizes/configurations/suitability of various options to design parts, as "old school" welders have about what size/shape/configuration of steel stock and gussets/bracing is "strong enough" for your boat-trailer/golf-buggy/go-kart. People who can go "that might work, but how about we over-engineer that section a bit more, 'cause it seems a little close to the material limits". People who can go "Lets 3D scan that metal bracket, then adjust the thickness of those planes and increase the gusset radius along that intersection, and add some webbing around those holes, then it'll be 'strong enough' to replace the original metal part". I look forward to that – and I suspect it'll start happening in a fairly short timeframe.
- noptic 13y agoWhy would i want one at home? I do not even have a 2d printer! I can handle nearly all of my stuff without paper so it is a lot cheaper to go to the copyshop next door. I know a 3d printer is used in a different way but I would rather go to a 3d print shop with high quality printers and a good choice of materials and post print services (polishing, coloring, ...).
- beering 13y agoThe methodology behind this study is pretty shaky. Most concerning is that their main claim - that $312 is a lot more than $18 - isn't held up by much searching. As an example, you can get a decent silicone nano wristband for $2.78 online. They listed $16.98 as the "total retail cost". Similarly, a plastic iPad stand (though of not the same design) can be ordered online for $1.27, while the study listed $16.99. Many items' retail prices were about 2x-5x higher than they could have been. Of course, the RepRap cost doesn't include the cost of getting a RepRap, nor the ridiculous amount of time it takes to even keep it running. And, of course, doesn't include the cost of all the failed builds you'll inevitably run into when trying to print things.
- meapix 13y agowith this, can I print money bills?