We got started making repraps but decided to move away from the focus of self replication and start our own thing with the focus of bringing 3D printing to the masses by making a printer that's cheap, uses as many off the shelf parts as possible, and that we could produce with tools we had. We had a lasercutter at NYCResistor and I sat in front of that thing for weeks making the first few hundred MakerBots. We still strive to make our stuff compatible with RepRap machines so that folks who don't want to build the whole thing from scratch can get an extruder or electronics from us and hack it into their built from scratch machine.
note to other entrepreneurs: they pivoted. made something people were willing to pay for. and shipped it, in exchange for money. so, they have the fundamentals down right.
3D printers are going to do for physical products what frameworks did for web apps. Personally, I'm super excited because it's going to chop my product development time into pieces.
Really? What do you use a 3D printer for? Last time I checked they were still imprecise to the point of being useless for real world jobs. What printer/material do you use?
There's actually tons of non-prototype 3D printing projects happening all the time - it's the fastest growing segment.
Examples:
* Invisalign makes custom, clear braces using the SLA 3DP process.
* Custom jewelry is made by 3D printing wax/resin parts for investment casting, and a lot of mass production jewelry molds use 3DP for creating their initial master pattern.
* The aerospace / military uses tons of the SLS/FDM processes for weapons systems
* F1 teams use metal 3DP to make titanium honeycomb housings for assemblies like transmissions that are light and strong.
* We can print customized implants instead of using standard sizes (would you want an "average" knee socket implant?).
* so many more...
Yea, 3DP (and digital fabrication in general) is only just getting started, and there are TONS are of practical applications once we get people educated on how it.
*Full disclosure: my startup, CloudFab, has an API and software tools for designing / sourcing 3D printed products on demand.
In some ways it is incredibly satisfying. In other ways it's disappointing. It's pretty clear this particular device will never pay for itself in terms of what i get out of it. I could buy a lot of plastic tweezers and cups for 1k. I imagine it's like using an apple 1 to fiddle with recipes. A box of index cards is cheaper faster and easier. I think the parallels between people building these things because they want one, and early PC's are pretty clear. Not many people can afford 30k for a really nice metal sintering system. But we can swing 1k for a system that will let us print plastic cups.
To my simple simple mind, objects are getting more diverse every day. There are pretty obvious issues involved with routing and storage when you have more diversity in size shape purpose etc. 3d printing can, in some ways simplify that process by sending just a few raw materials rather than thousands of completed objects. Also the warehouse or retail space taken up by thousands of objects could be used a bit more efficiently with raw materials.
i don't think 3d printing alone will be good enough. the reprap style just won't get the resolution. there's likely a good solution with 3d printing to rough in parts and a cutter to follow along the print head and sand down/polish the rough shape created by the printer. maybe some other technology will appear. maybe the powder style will get a lot cheaper.
I think in the next few years there will be a small shop revolution sort of like the desktop printing revolution. a good, reliable system somebody can produce custom stuff with is going to come about sooner or later.
Perhaps a rental place that prints out "congratulations bob" cups for bob's retirement, then melts them back down when they're returned. That seems pretty doable with the ABS i've been playing with. i haven't turned printed objects back into filament, but that is just one device away.
So, yes, a 1k 3d printer kinda sucks. but my cupcake is the grandfather of something amazing. Also, it's mine. Hackers from the 80's needed work or school accounts, or needed to build their own machine. i'm spoiled, i grew up having a PC and so i want my own manufacturing.
I wouldn't say it's useless but they aren't primetime. You just can't get the tolerances you need out of them yet. The real world is all about tolerances and non mechanical engineers always forget this. We actually adjust our files for the 3D printer to get the tolerances closer. In the end, the speed, material cost, tolerances and finish won't make these printers ready for the real world in 2011. Sorry guys. And yes I do own a very nice Stratasys 3D printer and have access to an Exojet too.
Tolerance gets less important as you move into the consumer market - surface finish is far more important.
Sure, snap-fits need to be pretty tight to work well, but do you really think people will care if their earrings are 0.05" out of round?
The main issue now is really materials and processing cost - it's expensive to get the materials because they're engineered to work with a machine, and there are still things like finish quality, color, etc. that need to improve, but there are tons are good products that can get around these constraints.
We don't use one yet so I may be getting ahead of myself, but it'll help get a proof of concept made in days instead of months. The iterative process of drawing something up in CAD, sending to a manufacturer, and testing the prototype is painfully expensive and time consuming. I'm not suggesting we'd use it for production, just early prototyping.
desktop 3D printers are near the top of my list of geek toys/tools I want to get in the next year or so. i just can't justify them yet financially because I don't have any real need to do home prototyping of a physical product. but the moment I do it'll be like, "here comes a tax deduction!"
