
The Inside Story of MakerBot and the 3D Printing Revolution That Wasn't - mirandak4
https://backchannel.com/the-3d-printing-revolution-that-wasnt-60b000c3a3ed#.rkcxgzdox
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ideonexus
3D printing is very much like coding, promising a revolution for those with
the mindset to work with it. My wife, a coder by profession, is extremely
active in the 3D printing community, and her ability to research and stick to
problems is why she is successful at it. This is not an accessible hobby, as
is evidenced by so many of my friends who own 3D printers that started
gathering dust the moment they learned it's not simply plug-and-play. You have
to figure out your infill settings, watch your inclines, your print-speeds at
various points in your prints, know what temperatures work well with what
materials, know how to replace the parts that go bad every few hundred hours
of printing, etc, etc, etc. It doesn't help that you will sometimes be hours
into a print before you realize you screwed something up.

The 3D printing community, like Stackoverflow and coding communities, are very
supportive and incredibly welcoming to beginners, but the skills we use in
coding, the ability to research, experiment, and stick through extremely
frustrating problems, are skills most people don't ever really learn. Our
public education system is actively trying to address this with the much-
misunderstood Common Core standards, but until such a mindset becomes more
prevalent in our culture, things like coding and 3D printing will only
continue to grow slowly in popularity.

In the meantime, nerds should see 3D printing as a still-uncharted territory
for innovation and opportunity.

~~~
vonklaus
> community, like Stackoverflow [ ... ] are very supportive and incredibly
> welcoming to beginners

I have never heard stackoverflow described like this.

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wolfgke
It's all relative. Stackoverflow is clearly by an incredible amount more
supportive and welcoming to beginners than LKML. :-)

~~~
vonklaus
Sure. The author framed it in a way where-- with SO as an example, I was
waiting for something like:

The community is great for beginners who take the time to read the
documentation and try solutions. 3D printing is complex and requires putting
in the time and the community is happy to help those willing to learn.
<joke>Beginners who are actually intermediate or experts with 1 or more CS/EE
degrees are always welcome</joke>

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marssaxman
I was never able to get on board the 3D printing hype train for one very
simple reason: who wants more plastic doodads cluttering up their life? I
could never imagine anything I would actually want to own or use which could
feasibly be created with a 3D printer.

~~~
tdb7893
I could definitely find uses for it but my problem is that it is expensive,
not user friendly, and makes poor quality things.

