4 ms·

I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer would be makin

by bane 12y ago

I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer would be making for me, at huge effort in time and materials, is solvable with a cheap, sub-$1 Chinese made part or some other more convenient alternative. The lack of real use-case is what's killing consumer-level 3d printers. Most people just don't need to run off a couple copies of a 3d trinket or toy with enough frequency to make it worth it. And the subset of those people with useful 3d-modeling skills is some tiny fraction of that number. Whenever I see somebody using a 3d printer at the consumer level for something useful, it always seems to have just been for a one-off Arduino case or something like that. That's really just not incentive for me to spend the time and money to get setup with 3d printing, when I can just buy a case off of Amazon or whatever and be done with it. The cost of the parts is the cost of your time + materials + setup costs (the printer). Is an Arduino case really worth $1400-$6500? That price only comes down if I print off more stuff I suppose, but at what point do the trinkets and dodads I'm printing off start to make economic and time sense? That's pretty far down the production chain, and I simply don't have that much stuff to print.

auxym 12y ago
I'm in mechanical engineering and love tinkering with stuff, and I also can't really find an excuse to get a 3D printer. In the research lab I used to work in, we had both a printer and trotec laser cutter (for acrylic and similar), and the cutter was used multiple times every single day while the printer was fired up once a month or so. Note that we also had two CNC milling machines, a lathe and a full complement of power tools, which likely contributed to the printer seeing very little use. Also, your post reminds of a recent blog post by a friend of mind who is cofounder of a makerspace in the college town we were in. Loosely translated, he deplored how the maker culture has shifted from a utopia where everyone could learn to make their own durable and useful objects instead of buying into mass-production, planned obsolescence and consumerism, to a bunch of people manufacturing mostly useless plastic trinkets. All in all though, when I move into a home with a garage, I'd love to get of those chinese mini-lathes which can be had for sub-1000$ :) And I wish laser cutters were less expensive (the trotec we had was bought around 40k I think, actually more than our CNCs).
justifier 12y ago
just this week: (i) an arm on my glasses broke, i went to the shop i bought the glasses from, for 400$, and their suggestion? buy a new pair and my prescription has expired since the last time so i will need to have an eye exam for another 200$ (ii) the little plastic latch on my girlfriend's bike helmet broke in half, it still latches but can pop free with enough pressure (iii) the clip on my compass broke so now i just tape a pencil onto it (iv) variably sized plant pots (v) mechanism holding the wheel on our closet door broke (vi) clip on accessories: front and rear lights, phone nav; for bike it's little annoyances that crop up and cause me to think i wish i could just print this little solution out also.. (vii) i think parents would love the long term savings :: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/12/29/arts-and-crafts http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/12/29/arts-and-cr... (!) tinkering .. 'all this and more' for 100$ .. http://www.peachyprinter.com/#!blog/c16fp http://www.peachyprinter.com/#!blog/c16fp i think we need the printers in homes before we start to think about what we can print with them the biggest problem i see is print time and recyclability of old parts it is funny thought though.. i hate personal printers, all this useless paper lying about: "print me a reciept", "print me a boarding pass", "print me a copy of the report"
- chrisbennet 12y ago
  The thing is, the parts you can make with 3D printers would be too weak for most things on your list.
vonnieda 12y ago
I was in the same boat, until very recently. I am the founder of OpenPnP, an Open Source SMT pick and place platform. I eschewed 3D printing for my design work for several years thinking that it was not accurate enough, not strong enough, etc. Having experience with CNC mills I kept comparing 3D printed parts to ones cut accurately from aluminum and found them lacking. What I recently came to realize is that the power of 3D printing is in it's instant turnaround and the ability to quickly iterate. Now, I design my parts for 3D printing. They look and function differently than they would if I had cut them from aluminum and I have to take the limitations of 3D printing into account, but they work. And most importantly, I can test a new design simply by hitting "Print" and waiting an hour or two. I agree that much of the consumer market is dominated by people who buy a 3D printer and then use it to print trinkets until they get bored, but there are also a lot of people out there who are engineering new devices and machines using the ability to quickly test new designs on a 3D printer.
- nkurz 12y ago
  Are there advantages to the 3D printing process besides the speed? That is, if a fool-proof CNC mill was available for the same price, would you switch back? Is the price difference of the consumables a significant factor? I have trouble shaking the feeling that printing 3D parts with little dabs of plastic has a lot in common with putting ink on pages with a dot-matrix printer. While they were revolutionary for the time, you don't see many dot-matrix printers these days.
  - vonnieda 12y ago
    The primary advantage is that a 3D printer is truly able to create features in any orientation in 3D while a typical mill cannot. The price of consumables isn't really something I consider important, especially when prototyping. The thing that a lot of people don't realize about traditional machining operations is just how long they take to set up. I didn't, myself, until I bought a CNC mill. I thought it was just a matter of sticking a big hunk of metal in it, hitting Go and then coming back when it's done. The first problem is that for a typical 3D axis milling machine you have to find a way to mount the material you intend to cut without getting in the way of the cutter, and if your part is at all complex this can be very tricky. Different materials and thicknesses all require different methods of mounting, and learning how to mount and setup a part is an education in itself. The second problem is that a 3 axis mill can really only cut down. That means if you want a hole in the up/down Z axis, you are fine. If you want one in the X/Y axes you are out of luck. You have to finish your Z axis operations, unmount the part, turn it, find a new way to mount it, zero the machine to the new part configuration and then do more operations. If you have a part that has, for instance, mounting holes on several sides you are looking at a LOT of manual work to complete that part. And each time you remount the part you have to be able to tell the machine exactly how the part is mounted so that everything lines up. Industrial machine shops get around this by using 5 or more axis mills. These are insanely expensive and not really available to the home / hobby engineer, although I am quite interested in what http://www.pocketnc.com/ http://www.pocketnc.com/ is doing. 3D printers, on the other hand, are truly 3D. You can have features in almost any configuration and it's no more difficult to print than a simple cube. It is literally a matter of starting it up and coming back when it's done. I don't think 3D printing is the be all end all of machining, especially FFF, but for the home or hobby engineer it's an incredibly powerful and easy to use technology right now.
bborud 12y ago
If I had been born 10-15 years later I might have held that opinion too. But I was born in the early 1970s and I have seen computers, mobile phones, Internet and a few other things go from not being a clear consumer product to where the consumer sector completely dwarfs the corporate sector. I'm not really disagreeing with you: right now it doesn't feel like 3D printers are a typical consumer item. But experience tells me that this intuition is probably wrong. As for "who needs it right now" I usually ask people if they own a plunge saw. Most people don't, but a lot of people do. In particular carpenters and DIY'ers. 3D printers are still unfamiliar territory for most people, but that'll change rapidly as they become better and cheaper. In the future, as they become cheaper and better I don't see it as impossible that manufacturers of physical goods might use 3D printing to distribute spare parts and accessories for whatever they sell.
- bane 12y ago
  Well, I absolutely believe a 3d printer should find a home in tinkerer's workshops. It seems like it would yet another tool for building or crafting things. But I think the market for them is vastly overstated. Opening a dedicated store for the devices seems like opening a store dedicated to selling nothing but a couple tiers of tablesaws. Hardware stores sell all kinds of DIY equipment, it seems to me that this is where they probably ultimately need to be channeled through.
  - bborud 12y ago
    Yeah, I think you are probably right about 3D printers being just another tool found at hardware stores. Something that is a bit sad right now is that the printers you get from traditional retail stores are mostly the bad ones. When I saw Makerbot make it onto the shelves in hardware stores I was a bit sad because I knew that this will lead to disappointment. I have seen a few other "brand" 3D printers which are not very good (and which try to develop a razor blade business model) as well. I would also agree that they are a bit over-hyped. Just like home computers in the early 80s. And that there will probably be a backlash when people conclude that the Makerbots and the Dremels and the whatnots are really terrible products.

by bane 12y ago

auxym 12y ago

I'm in mechanical engineering and love tinkering with stuff, and I also can't really find an excuse to get a 3D printer. In the research lab I used to work in, we had both a printer and trotec laser cutter (for acrylic and similar), and the cutter was used multiple times every single day while the printer was fired up once a month or so. Note that we also had two CNC milling machines, a lathe and a full complement of power tools, which likely contributed to the printer seeing very little use. Also, your post reminds of a recent blog post by a friend of mind who is cofounder of a makerspace in the college town we were in. Loosely translated, he deplored how the maker culture has shifted from a utopia where everyone could learn to make their own durable and useful objects instead of buying into mass-production, planned obsolescence and consumerism, to a bunch of people manufacturing mostly useless plastic trinkets. All in all though, when I move into a home with a garage, I'd love to get of those chinese mini-lathes which can be had for sub-1000$ :) And I wish laser cutters were less expensive (the trotec we had was bought around 40k I think, actually more than our CNCs).

justifier 12y ago

just this week: (i) an arm on my glasses broke, i went to the shop i bought the glasses from, for 400$, and their suggestion? buy a new pair and my prescription has expired since the last time so i will need to have an eye exam for another 200$ (ii) the little plastic latch on my girlfriend's bike helmet broke in half, it still latches but can pop free with enough pressure (iii) the clip on my compass broke so now i just tape a pencil onto it (iv) variably sized plant pots (v) mechanism holding the wheel on our closet door broke (vi) clip on accessories: front and rear lights, phone nav; for bike it's little annoyances that crop up and cause me to think i wish i could just print this little solution out also.. (vii) i think parents would love the long term savings :: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/12/29/arts-and-crafts http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/12/29/arts-and-cr... (!) tinkering .. 'all this and more' for 100$ .. http://www.peachyprinter.com/#!blog/c16fp http://www.peachyprinter.com/#!blog/c16fp i think we need the printers in homes before we start to think about what we can print with them the biggest problem i see is print time and recyclability of old parts it is funny thought though.. i hate personal printers, all this useless paper lying about: "print me a reciept", "print me a boarding pass", "print me a copy of the report"

chrisbennet 12y ago
The thing is, the parts you can make with 3D printers would be too weak for most things on your list.

vonnieda 12y ago

I was in the same boat, until very recently. I am the founder of OpenPnP, an Open Source SMT pick and place platform. I eschewed 3D printing for my design work for several years thinking that it was not accurate enough, not strong enough, etc. Having experience with CNC mills I kept comparing 3D printed parts to ones cut accurately from aluminum and found them lacking. What I recently came to realize is that the power of 3D printing is in it's instant turnaround and the ability to quickly iterate. Now, I design my parts for 3D printing. They look and function differently than they would if I had cut them from aluminum and I have to take the limitations of 3D printing into account, but they work. And most importantly, I can test a new design simply by hitting "Print" and waiting an hour or two. I agree that much of the consumer market is dominated by people who buy a 3D printer and then use it to print trinkets until they get bored, but there are also a lot of people out there who are engineering new devices and machines using the ability to quickly test new designs on a 3D printer.

nkurz 12y ago
Are there advantages to the 3D printing process besides the speed? That is, if a fool-proof CNC mill was available for the same price, would you switch back? Is the price difference of the consumables a significant factor? I have trouble shaking the feeling that printing 3D parts with little dabs of plastic has a lot in common with putting ink on pages with a dot-matrix printer. While they were revolutionary for the time, you don't see many dot-matrix printers these days.
- vonnieda 12y ago
  The primary advantage is that a 3D printer is truly able to create features in any orientation in 3D while a typical mill cannot. The price of consumables isn't really something I consider important, especially when prototyping. The thing that a lot of people don't realize about traditional machining operations is just how long they take to set up. I didn't, myself, until I bought a CNC mill. I thought it was just a matter of sticking a big hunk of metal in it, hitting Go and then coming back when it's done. The first problem is that for a typical 3D axis milling machine you have to find a way to mount the material you intend to cut without getting in the way of the cutter, and if your part is at all complex this can be very tricky. Different materials and thicknesses all require different methods of mounting, and learning how to mount and setup a part is an education in itself. The second problem is that a 3 axis mill can really only cut down. That means if you want a hole in the up/down Z axis, you are fine. If you want one in the X/Y axes you are out of luck. You have to finish your Z axis operations, unmount the part, turn it, find a new way to mount it, zero the machine to the new part configuration and then do more operations. If you have a part that has, for instance, mounting holes on several sides you are looking at a LOT of manual work to complete that part. And each time you remount the part you have to be able to tell the machine exactly how the part is mounted so that everything lines up. Industrial machine shops get around this by using 5 or more axis mills. These are insanely expensive and not really available to the home / hobby engineer, although I am quite interested in what http://www.pocketnc.com/ http://www.pocketnc.com/ is doing. 3D printers, on the other hand, are truly 3D. You can have features in almost any configuration and it's no more difficult to print than a simple cube. It is literally a matter of starting it up and coming back when it's done. I don't think 3D printing is the be all end all of machining, especially FFF, but for the home or hobby engineer it's an incredibly powerful and easy to use technology right now.

bborud 12y ago

If I had been born 10-15 years later I might have held that opinion too. But I was born in the early 1970s and I have seen computers, mobile phones, Internet and a few other things go from not being a clear consumer product to where the consumer sector completely dwarfs the corporate sector. I'm not really disagreeing with you: right now it doesn't feel like 3D printers are a typical consumer item. But experience tells me that this intuition is probably wrong. As for "who needs it right now" I usually ask people if they own a plunge saw. Most people don't, but a lot of people do. In particular carpenters and DIY'ers. 3D printers are still unfamiliar territory for most people, but that'll change rapidly as they become better and cheaper. In the future, as they become cheaper and better I don't see it as impossible that manufacturers of physical goods might use 3D printing to distribute spare parts and accessories for whatever they sell.

bane 12y ago
Well, I absolutely believe a 3d printer should find a home in tinkerer's workshops. It seems like it would yet another tool for building or crafting things. But I think the market for them is vastly overstated. Opening a dedicated store for the devices seems like opening a store dedicated to selling nothing but a couple tiers of tablesaws. Hardware stores sell all kinds of DIY equipment, it seems to me that this is where they probably ultimately need to be channeled through.
- bborud 12y ago
  Yeah, I think you are probably right about 3D printers being just another tool found at hardware stores. Something that is a bit sad right now is that the printers you get from traditional retail stores are mostly the bad ones. When I saw Makerbot make it onto the shelves in hardware stores I was a bit sad because I knew that this will lead to disappointment. I have seen a few other "brand" 3D printers which are not very good (and which try to develop a razor blade business model) as well. I would also agree that they are a bit over-hyped. Just like home computers in the early 80s. And that there will probably be a backlash when people conclude that the Makerbots and the Dremels and the whatnots are really terrible products.