

A 3D printer in every home? Doesn't sound likely - jonascopenhagen
http://jonasbentzen.com/a-3d-printer-in-every-home-doesnt-sound-likely/

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kbutler
This would be exactly the same with paper printers.

"You can't print and bind books!"

"You have to order paper and ink!"

"Printer paper and ink are much too expensive!"

"The printer you buy will become out-dated too quickly!"

"Home printing does not leverage economies of scale!"

For something you can pick up at the supermarket for a few dollars that
requires a lot of printing/materials (a book) it doesn't make sense. For
something you can't (custom items, small parts, little toys, ...), home
printing is (or will be) great.

3D printing doesn't have to meet every use case of commercial 3D printing to
become very prevalent.

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jonascopenhagen
> For something you can't (custom items, small parts, little toys, ...), home
> printing is (or will be) great.

Custom items? Order them online (if they're semi-custom, e.g. a standard
T-shirt with your custom text on it) - it takes less time and will probably be
cheaper, despite the shipping cost. If it's a custom item you're 3D-modeling
yourself, that's a different story - but that's for hobbyists - it won't be
mainstream.

Toys? So instead of picking up that $5 doll in the supermarket, busy parents
will find something online and wait a half hour while a noisy printer prints a
product which is even more expensive than the $5?

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kbutler
Heard a 3D printer enthusiast's description of his children making their own
doll furniture, RPG miniatures, etc.

Toys.

Barbie? Probably not.

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jonascopenhagen
Sure, I agree that 3D printers have a future as children's toys (I wrote that
towards the end of my blog post). But the factory-at-home idea where you print
cheap objects in order to save money/time is not realistic.

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kbutler
Sure, I agree that paper printers have a future as toys. The printer-at-home
idea where you print cheap books in order to save money/time is not realistic.

~~~
jonascopenhagen
Do the majority of people print books themselves at home? Not in my
experience. And if they did, they'd waste both time and money and have an
inferior product.

~~~
kbutler
But everybody has a paper printer at home. They are ubiquitous even though
they are not economical for a pre-existing use case.

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sophacles
I don't know if we'll ever reach the "in every home" mark, or even say 90% of
homes. This is different from computers for a lot of reasons. However the
prevalence and wide-spread availability of 3d printing makes perfect sense.

Look at it logistically - if the cost of transporting bulk finished goods
rises to a certain point, it makes more sense to just ship containers of
plastic pellets, via slow and less reliable methods. Then local caches of the
pellets are used in local printing facilities to make whatever. I can order a
part, widget, or doo-dad and pick it up anywhere, or delivery by guy on
bicycle happens, or whatever.

3d printing just has less waste and shipping overhead than making goods and
sending them to a destination half way around the world.

There are price points where 3d printing makes more sense logistically than
injection molding. I don't know what they are, but basic logistics suggests it
is true.

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jmatthews
May want to rethink your proposed hurdles. Printers are too small is purely a
function of utility. If the use case changes the technology will change.
There's not even a technical hurdle to bridge. It's simply form following
function.

Your raw material issue is slain by the same slingshot.

The rest of the argument kind of falls apart after that. No disrespect
intended.

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jonascopenhagen
As an aside, I've talked to a number of people involved with manufacturing and
product design who use 3D printers for prototyping. Not a single one of them
believe that we'll have 3D printing factories at home (although one of them
did mention that 3D printers might be popular as toys).

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AdrianRossouw
a 3d printer in every home? probably not. a 3d printer in every kinko's / copy
shop. possibly.

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JoeAltmaier
Compare with laser printers. Similar objections. I imagine when the 'printer
head' becomes an integrated circuit, and the materials become the equivalent
of toner cartridges, we'll see rapid adoption.

~~~
jonascopenhagen
Home laser printers haven't replaced books, magazines, or professional
marketing materials like brochures or flyers. The same way that 3D printing
won't replace factory manufacturing.

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JoeAltmaier
Yet home laser printers have their place. They are ubiquitous. They are
useful. They replaced entire classes of professional (typists, copyeditors,
pasteup artists).

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alan_cx
Oh dear. How many times have we heard similar about various technologies over
the years?

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randomsearch
Indeed. Who would have more than one material to print with? Well, probably
everyone. And material science being what it is, you can imagine it won't be
long before we can combine materials in ways previously unforeseen.

There's also an implicit assumption here that the design of objects will not
change to support their production method. So, if we're limited by size or
number of materials then designers will adapt to those constraints.

~~~
jonascopenhagen
> Who would have more than one material to print with? Well, probably
> everyone.

Currently the number of materials you'd need to stock in your home to be able
to print various kinds of products would be quite large (20 or more). That
doesn't make sense from an economic perspective.

Let's image, then, that we'll see products made from fewer raw materials
because the design changes to accomodate printers. What reason would
designers/manufacturers have to do that when they know they won't be able to
make a living when their products get pirated?

~~~
randomsearch
I agree that it doesn't make economic sense _now_ to hold various types of
material, but then I guess laser printers and cartridges used to be pretty
expensive too. I'm thinking long-term here.

> What reason would designers/manufacturers have to do that when they know
> they won't be able to make a living when their products get pirated?

The same reasons people still write software and make music, even though they
know their products get pirated - you can still make money from it. I agree
though, it will be a completely disruptive innovation from the point of view
of designers and manufacturers.

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pseudobry
A computer in every home? Doesn't sound likely.

~~~
jonascopenhagen
While some technologies (like personal computers) have flourished, others
haven't lived up to the hype. If the tech hype from the early eighties were
true, we'd all have flying cars and intelligent machines in our homes, and
normal passenger airplanes would fly at 5,000 km/h.

~~~
randomsearch
Timescales might be wrong, but do you really think that flying personal
transportation (or helicopters, as we currently call them) and intelligent
machines are an unlikely prospect?

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jonascopenhagen
Flying cars and helicopters are not the same thing. The idea proposed in the
early eighties was that "everyone" (meaning the majority of consumers in first
world countries) would use flying cars instead of normal ones. This isn't even
close to coming true (or being feasible), even if flying cars actually do
exist (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHXnLCIgNug>).

~~~
randomsearch
You're right, it's not even close to coming true. Yet.

However, that doesn't mean it won't happen.

Have you read much about commuting in Sao Paulo or Rio?

e.g.

[http://www.cnbc.com/id/42683749/Traffic_Jams_Boost_Helicopte...](http://www.cnbc.com/id/42683749/Traffic_Jams_Boost_Helicopter_Travel_in_Brazil)

