

3D printing is nothing special - tomhoward
http://startupblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/3d-printing-is-nothing-special/

======
mercuryrising
Maybe this always happens when something is 'new', but it seems like people
put 3D printing in the same category as computers. A computer is a device that
allows you to communicate with (almost) anyone on the planet, learn about
almost anything, or entertain yourself into oblivion.

A 3D printer is a device that makes plastic doo hickeys. It's cool (I have
one, I printed some cases today and just got done plastidipping them), but
almost no one that I know would benefit from having one. Most people aren't
designers, they aren't driven to design something they have in their head.
There's only so many 'cool' things that you can make from browsing
Thingiverse. Once you print those cool things, what are you going to do next?
Wait until something new and cool comes that you think you need (once a week?
once a month?) then print it?

Most people will not use a 3D printer every day, unlike they will with
computers. 3D printers have a severe print time limitation - it takes me a lot
of time to find/design something, slice it just right, print it, and have it
in my hands. 3D printing has an incredibly high ping. My browser gets me any
information about anything I want to know about in seconds.

~~~
JDDunn9
I agree. Who ever said, "Boy I wish I could manufacture that in my house"?
Plastic goods are already cheap, so what does this save me? 2 days waiting for
my Amazon order?

Revolutions happen when you drastically reduce costs, or increase
functionality. 3D printing does neither.

F.Y.I. The next revolution will be in robotics.

~~~
prewett
I think you could have made the same argument for laser printers. Who ever
said, "Boy I wish I could have my printouts look like they came from a
professional printer"? Yet, now they cost $400 and many people have them in
their homes. And even those that do not have ink jets with output quality
almost as good.

Increased functionality: I can have exactly what I want. It can look exactly
like it was professionally created.

Decreased costs: It saves the cost of shipping it from China, then driving it
on the freeway. This might be worth it for heavier items. If 3D printing can
be scaled to a factory level, this might be very attractive, since you
wouldn't have to hire expensive American workers to produce in the US. It
might make things with high capital cost much more affordable: imagine being
able to 3D print out custom car body parts and have them assembled for the
price of a high-end car. Impossible now.

~~~
Taylorious
I'm in my early twenties and I have never owned a printer and likely never
will. I have always had access to them at libraries, my university (which is
when I actually printed a lot of stuff), work, etc. I can't imagine ever
needing to get one, let alone spending a large amount of money on a high
quality laser printer. Printers just always seem to be around me. Anytime I
need to print something I am giving what a printed to someone or mailing it
etc. Which means that I am going somewhere. So, on the way there, I just stop
somewhere and do my printing there.

~~~
hobs
Sounds like a lot of people have bought printers for you to use.

~~~
daned
Specifically, him (or his parents) through taxes, tuition, fees.

------
stevewilhelm
Let's use my 2D printer as a predictor of the future. It requires really
expensive proprietary cartridges for the raw materials (aka the ink), it takes
a fairly long time to print most things, and the assembly of the more complex
projects (books, photo albums, wall sized posters, etc.) is tedious.

By contrast, 2D printing to online professional printing services is much
easier, generally cheaper, and the finished products are delivered anywhere I
want quickly with no assembly required.

As a result, my family's use of our 2D printer has declined dramatically over
the last five years.

With our subscriptions to Amazon Prime and Google Shopping Express, I
anticipate our use of the 2D printer will dwindle even further and any desire
to own a 3D printer to follow suit.

~~~
andrewmb
Pretty much this exactly. Even as an insider, I don't ever see 3D printers
being as ubiquitous as PCs or microwaves. However, I think that one day,
probably on that 10-year timeline, every printshop and Kinko's will have one.
But for home use? It makes more sense for them to be consolidated and
shared/rented. The laws of physics are actually the limiting part for most 3D
printers--you can only extrude plastic or cure resin so fast without crazy
expensive support hardware. People compare this to Moore's law; the analogy is
sound, but they don't realize how far along the curve we are with respect to
the supporting technologies that go into these machines.

------
nathan_f77
Great article, but I really don't think that 3D printers will be very
ubiquitous in the future. They are a manufacturing tool, just like laser
cutters and CNC machines. Inventors and DIY enthusiasts will keep buying and
building them, but most people just don't need them.

------
jfoutz
The software is what's special. manufacturing of all types is getting cheaper.
The magic comes from the design. The magic comes from imagining something and
turning it into a physical object.

CAD is great for precision, but that's not really what's called for, it's
something that will give good results with a bit of imagination. It's not
minecraft, but whoever captures that freedom of creation in CAD will probably
do really well.

~~~
Tsagadai
Imagine a higher rez kinect and holographic display for CAD.

CAD will always take a long time though due to our limited input abilities (we
can only really do one thing at a time) for highly detailed things. The real
magic comes in assisting people to remix existing designs and components with
built in engineering rules. Imagine being able to tell a schematic of an arm
to hold weight and lift it to X. No calculations, no placing actuators, no
wiring, just an arm that does what you wanted it to do. Software like that
isn't impossible it just takes a lot of work to get there.

These threads always disappoint me because I see so many smart people
struggling to think about what is possible instead of what currently is.

------
stormbrew
The interesting thing about when 3d printers become ubiquitous is what'll
happen to Lego. There's a real chance they'll wind up like Polaroid,
completely behind the technology curve resting on their laurels.

I'd buy a Lego brand 3d printer in a heartbeat, though, if they made one. I
hope they see an opportunity instead of a rival.

~~~
hugs
I see the opportunity. :-) Which is why I'm creating a 3d printable system
compatible with LEGO Technic that I call "Bitbeam". Printing my own beams is
about 1/7 the cost of buying Lego bricks, and I can design parts that Lego
doesn't make, like servo holders [1], or Arduino mounting plates [2]. I'm
currently using Bitbeam to create robots for mobile software testing -
<http://bitbeam.org>

[1]: <http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:74388> [2]:
<http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:19265>

------
mhb
It's a cute story, but my 8 month old thought I could make things appear from
absolutely nothing and make them disappear again.

I'm not surprised that a 3 year old is interested in having another piece of
weak, brightly colored junk around the house and is uninterested in its
provenance.

------
kunai
I don't see how this is a big deal. Yes, 3D printing brings manufacturing to a
personal level, and it _is_ an important step in technology, but it's nothing
that's really _that_ amazing if you think about it. Manufacturing already
occurs on a mass scale every single day, yet no one gives a second thought to
it.

You buy something in Walmart -- do you ever think about how the product is
actually made by robots, made out of metal and powered by real-time operating
systems painstakingly coded by software engineers, who then in turn wrote them
on software that was painstakingly coded by different software engineers, that
ran on hardware that took engineers decades of innovation and miniaturization
to achieve, that was created by slightly more advanced robots in some other
factory?

No, you don't. You pick up the damned thing, walk over to the cashier, and buy
it and move on with your life. It's the same thing with 3D printers. It's a
_PRINTER_. It's not God, it's not the Higgs Boson, it's not the next step in
string theory, no new quantum mechanics theories have been discovered, and no,
Jurassic Park still can't be created, even if we do have mammoth blood.

On another note entirely, it's amazing how articles like these can make a
(supposedly) young 15 year old like me feel like a completely Luddite-esque
curmudgeon.

~~~
daned
> do you ever think about how

Well, yes, but maybe I'm not the average case. For example, How many ice
scrapers do I need to buy for walmart to think it's snowing here? If I go to
the five nearest walmarts and buy all their available ISO400 film will that
land on someone's desk?

------
mkoble11
3D printing today feels a lot like the early 80s did WRT to the PC.

