The future of 3D printing?

I do think that the media has over sensationalised a lot of the recent news about 3D printing. Its hard to agree with the argument that intellectual property infringements is a risk given that 3D printing has been available for so long. Even for the masses it's possible to buy items from 3D printing services for the price of a takeaway meal.

The recent developments I've seen in this area are those which should make it more mainstream rather than hardcore nerd.

• A greater range of printers that are just plugged in and are ready to go.
• Printers that take a memory card and can print without a printer.
• Also new materials such as wood based filaments and glow in the dark filaments.

Colour is not to be dismissed either, although full colour printing is not quite there yet there are more colour options and techniques such as tiedied colours.

The 3D printed gun I also think is a bit of a non event. The design behind that could have been made using more traditional machining techniques such as a lathe and mill and the print quality is still not quite there for people to make one at home and have it work correctly.

There has also been a few new services partnering printer owners with people needing prints made opening up over the last year. This could be many people's intro to 3D printing or via a service such as Shapeways.

makie.me is an interesting development where they are using 3D printing to produce a customised model for people. I'd be surprised if there are not a more of these customised products appearing over the next few years.

3D printing has a very long way to go before it is a useful mainstream production rather than short run/prototype technique. I got quite excited by the Stratasys Mojo printer but when I looked more closely it's still a filament extruder with only a 5" cube envelope. About £6000.

I think it's the cheapest (how shall I say this nicely) ready to use machine from an established and experienced supplier.

If you want something bigger or better (like laser sintering) you are very quickly over $100,000.

These machines are still slow and can only handle a very limited range of materials.

I looked recently at making an instrument case by printing, if the finish from the Mojo (or similar) is good enough it might work out for small volumes (few 100s per year)  (you can get nice curves that CNC machining from solid struggles with) but I fear that extra finishing operations like smoothing and painting will push the cost up.

I don't buy into the "everyone will build their own stuff" concept, even if I had a complete set of parts I don't fancy putting my next car/washing machine etc together myself.

MK

>3D printing has a very long way to go before it is a useful mainstream production rather than short run/prototype technique

It might never be suitable for mass production, it's the short run / "everything is custom" is where it can excel.

I also agree that it won't be a case of everyone building their own stuff in the same way that everyone does not cook their own food.

>3D printing has a very long way to go before it is a useful mainstream production rather than short run/prototype technique

It might never be suitable for mass production, it's the short run / "everything is custom" is where it can excel.

I also agree that it won't be a case of everyone building their own stuff in the same way that everyone does not cook their own food.