Exactly. There’s a pretty good 3D printer at my local hackspace, and I love it, but it’s utterly inconceivable that I would print enough household stuff to justify it in those terms.
The chosen list demonstrates that point pretty well, actually. (Cellphone accessories? I spent a total of £7 on all my Nexus accessories, and that’s with a second silicon protective case - something I can’t print. Shower head? How often do they replace theirs, weekly? Garlic press and spoon holder - seriously, these are things you would routinely spend a twentieth of your $312 to $1944 on?)
A 3D printer has huge domestic value, but this isn’t it.
Now, printing new starship miniatures for my Full Thrust games, that’s another story…
I know nothing about “capos” or guitars, but a quick search finds me a whole range of items so described, from $6-20, many with metal parts a printer would struggle to equal for durability. Even if we discount the materials cost for the printer, you’d have to use your printer to supply a need of a similar scale at least once a week for a few years for the savings to justify owning the printer. This just doesn’t happen.
There are other reasons to own a 3 printer: it’s a cool thing, it offers convenience, arts, hobbies, etcetera. And even if you can’t economically justify owning it yourself, it’s an interesting technology and great to have access to. You ask why a critical poster on this forum “is so certain [3d printing] can’t happen” - I don’t think many of us are certain of that. We’re just fairly certain the study being cited is utterly ludicrous; this doesn’t mean we think 3d printing is, or that it has no future. This sort of easily discredited puffery is not the sort of boosterism any idea needs; if anything, it hurts the idea, even if it’s a good idea.
Fair enough - if the study is ludicrous, I have no issue with that. But I’m absolutely sure this is an unstoppable progress. The tech will improve rapidly, multi-materials will become standard, and multi-handling of those materials - whatever will be needed to get the job done. There’ll be a spectrum of printers, from low-tech household for printing a new Barbie head, to high-tech do-it-all.
As for discrediting the idea - well, the longer the bankers stay away from all this, the better. Consumers will instantly buy the custom-built running sneaker for $10 rather than the ill-fitting and injury-inducing $90 pair.
We really, really aren’t that far off that kind of concept. Some marketing people and money people are drooling over the cash potential, but this will be such a tide they’ll simply be left standing if they try to over-manage it in the way the media companies tried to over-manage the introduction of digital. And look what happened to them.
Over the course of history there have been a number of discernible major technological advances (be it the replication of nuclear fission or the invention of reliable timepieces) that have changed history, and this is definitely one.
Let me know when a 3D printer can make a Star Trek replicator, because that’s what a lot of people seem to think they are.
I typically buy things that will last many years with the intention of keeping them that long. I only have two plastic plates, and few plastic cups, and all my plastic flatware came from take out places… I wouldn’t buy a plastic shower head, and I most certainly wouldn’t trust a 3D plastic printed plumbing part (not over the next 20 years).
Like a lot of others have said, it’s a good technology and coming along nicely, but it’s not going to replace Amazon anytime in the near future.
Yes, someone who’s really into 3D printing may be able to save money by printing everyday objects, but for those less dedicated, is it really worth pursuing?
My weekends are extremely valuable to me and (sorry) I’m not inclined to spend them tinkering with unfamiliar technology, investing time and effort into trial-and-error. It really is more ‘economical’ for me to buy something manufactured, and move on to something more fun or important.
However, I say that with an outsider’s perception, perhaps mistaken, that 3D printing is still something for professionals and dedicated hobbyists - once it becomes as quick and easy as microwave cookery, I can see it making more sense.
I totally agree with you, but I’ll mention a counter-argument that came to mind…
When printers (the old-fashioned kind) were first affordable enough to put in homes as well as businesses, and especially when they developed the ability to be photocopiers too, there were many articles detailing the cost-per-page for printing and photocopying which concluded that for most people who did not actually work from home, it was cheaper to just go to Kinko’s (e.g.) for those times one might need copies. I was one of those people who looked at the numbers and determined for myself that the time and energy savings of not having to go to a copy shop every time I needed a copy, plus the convenience factor of instantaneous copying (even at 3am on a Sunday, back when copy shops weren’t 24/7…not that it’s a likely scenario in my personal experience) made the slightly higher per copy cost totally acceptable.
My guess is that we’ll see the same weighing-of-the-options for 3D printers too. Convenience is a major factor, often more so than bottom-line price. Inventory of raw material is the big drawback…pounds of plastic take up a lot more space then a ream of paper and replacement ink cartridges.
Had to laugh…data point of one: we’ve done that in this house, but it was a gerbil bowl, and that distinction is important because gerbils chew plastic into piles of sawdust. (Their teeth are like beavers: they have to chew.) A 3D printer is absolutely useless to replace things in a gerbil cage.
It’s awfully convenient that $300-$2K is the same as the price range for a consumer 3D printer. My house is full of 3D printed kipple, but I could do without all of it except my 3D printed towel rack. That would have cost $5, but instead it cost $0.25—and two hours of my design time. So I would need to print 63 more towel racks for this study to not be bullshit in my house.
My career depends on 3D printing expanding, but it’s shit like this that proves to me 3D printing has crested the hype cycle. The uninitiated are going to read this, get a cheap 3D printer, expect to print the world, and get disappointed. Besides, there is nothing indispensable to print yet. There is so little market for 3D printed stuff in the home today.
True…but a lot of people ate the new low flow shower heads too. That’s the first thing I thought of when I was this, I could make illegal shower heads! I would spend $1000 if I could make a good old fashioned working high flow toilet…instead of the low flow toilet I have now that gets so dirty I have to use more in chemicals to clean it than the water I’ve “saved”.
Well then, the replacement blade on your plastic lawnmower sounds like a great option for a 3D printer, if you have one and don’t mind spending on the material. But I see the flymo site sells replacement blades for a mere £4, direct from the manufacturer. Can you beat that price with your printer? I doubt it.
But no one thinks 3D printing won’t happen – obviously it’s been happening for quite some time now. The problem is really for home manufacturing, which for most non-toy applications requires a) high quality materials, b) precise tolerances, and c) assembly of complex parts, none of which are available from cheap 3D printers. There are clearly some applications for which soft, brittle, or crudely rendered parts are just fine even today, but it’s not exactly going to be a near-term revolution, because most useful objects can’t be made with these machines.
You can hold the handle/button down longer to manually add more water volume to an individual flush. With many toilets you can adjust the rate inside the tank for a more permanent solution.
You are touching on two points here: Feed Plastic for the printer and the power of convenience/laziness.
As for the feedstock, you’d never consider going to the store to buy the 3 sheets of paper you were going to use in your inkjet printer for that one printout so why would you approach a 3D printer’s “paper” any differently? You’d buy in bulk a couple three times a year. Same could be said for burning CDs or buying flour. (Beating a dead horse but this is fun and I just thought of this one!) Do you buy your toilet paper 6 squares at a time?
Then there is the power of convenience. Or perhaps more properly, Never underestimate the power of laziness. Sure you could get a shower head shipped from China for free in two days but who wants to wait that long? Who even wants to be bothered with running up to their local home improvement store? It’s like DVRs/Netflix vs DVD/BlueRay. Yes, I could get up from my chair, dig around to find the movie I want and put it in the player. Or, I could just pick up the remote and search netflix or my DVR.
This could be the death of the big box stores and the cheap but insanely wasteful worldwide shipping of crap based on where labor is cheapest and environmental laws are loosest.
Just imagine if the feedstock could be something other than a petroleum based substance. The world could become a wildly different place if we didn’t “need” to ship goods or energy around long distances.
