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What is the big deal about 3D printing?
With all the hype, it seems that 3D printing is coming in a big wave. But I have yet to see an industry or a company adopting it in a large scale.

If I want to make a football, can a 3D printer "print" it?
Fundamentally, I suppose 3 items are required: a 3D printer, a design blueprint and the printing material.

Can there be a "generic" 3D printer that can print anything? Can the 3D printer print out components that form the football like interior fillings, exterior rubber and the threads that hold everything together?
Will the consumer need to provide the design blueprint himself or will a company provide it? Can the 3D printer accept the design blueprint?
Obviously, the football cannot be made of plastic. Does it mean that interior fillings, exterior rubber and the threads all need to be provided?

Through this football example, I am trying to show that 3D printing is impractical.

I cannot see the usefulness of 3D printing. Can you?

I hear you can print medical devices.  Anyway, I think it's useful for circumventing expensive patents.

If the medical devices have multiple parts, the 3D printer will need to first print out these parts and then assemble them together. If the hospital undertakes this job, the hospital is not just an user but becomes a factory as well. The hospital will also need to keep a repository of all design blueprints, a variety of 3D printers (assuming each 3D printer print a limited set of medical devices) and a variety of printing materials.

For the patents, if there is just a single or a few components and the design blueprint is available, then it is useful.

I have the same opinion :v it's not the greatest invention of all time. it's kinda annoying when people keep discussing about it

I think it's a pretty amazing concept and could be revolutionary, but I've not really seen one in action yet. I'm sure they'll be a mixed blessing ie people making shoddy guns / items and injuring themselves with them, but being able to manufacture other things like tools and medical devices could be incredible.

It's a amazing piece of technology. Obviously, if you haven't got any use for them then there's no point even talking about it. For the people who can make use of them they are very helpful and handy to have. It's very early days yet.

In it's current state it isn't very impressive but the idea is that once the technology gets advanced enough and people experiment more you'll be able to make all sorts of extremely difficult to construct and small or big components that would normally take months to build properly and with quite a lot of people or machinery. It's probably going to have the same affect as using robot arms etc. to build cars had on the motor industry which is why people are so excited about it.

I'm not going to be watching it too closely myself until I see the 3D metal printing building the components for a jet fighter and halfing the costs for a lot of the big vehicles out there, I've already seen showcases for Jewellery pieces that have been made through 3D Metal Printing.

I have the impression the technology is pretty amazing too from all the hype from the media.

But when I think deeper, I cannot find its usefulness.

When something is not useful, how can it be amazing?  ??? ??? ???

I think you're looking at this wrong. Your argument is like saying a smoothie maker can't make a cup of coffee therefore it's useless.

You cannot be thinking very deep. How is it not useful? I'd say the technology is pretty amazing, and will only get better.

I had thought that it was useful from all the media hype. But really, I cannot find good examples of useful objects that have been created from 3D printing. If you know some of them, please name them.  :) :) :)

 ??? ??? ???

Use your imagination. What they can make is limitless. Somebody already mentioned surgical equipment.

You could make spare parts for machines that aren't in profuction any more. I'm sure people will build their own cars with them etc. As Guybrush said, their potential really is limitless. Well, unless you want to make a football  ;D.

Honestly, if you can find a need for them, they are well worth the money. They are going to be a big part of our future as the technology gets better. 3d metal printing as mentioned would be a huge leap forward.

i think its UNDERrated! when you think of the possibilties and look in the future , amazing!

Exactly. Just think of all the open source blueprints that will be available to download. It's quite exciting.

Let's try to show that 3D printing is useful.

Suppose the surgical equipment here is a surgical knife. Now that would be easy to make since there is just one component and that component is the knife itself. Suppose also the hospital has the surgical knife 3D printer, the design blueprint and also the metal raw material, would the hospital want to "print" out the surgical knife?

Now, let's extend this to other surgical equipment. Would there be a need for hospitals to "print" out any surgical equipment?

I agree. It's a young product which already has stunned a lot of people around the world, anyone who has had this piece of kit must be impressed.

Well, yes why wouldn’t they use it if they had it?

Imagine if you're in a remote location and you need a tool or some specific surgical equipment but you don't have it. You download the blueprints, print it off, and there you have it. Same goes for spare parts etc.

I would be interested in hearing some stories from some members here about what they have used the 3d printer for and how beneficial is it to have one.

Suppose you are going to make spare parts for machines, what material are you going to use? Where would you get the design blueprints? Would you need the right kind of printer?

Suppose you want to build your own cars and the printer(s) can "print" out all the required components. Would you need a set of many printers, a set of many design blueprints and a set of many different types of materials? If buying and maintaining them is not trivial, wouldn't it be better to just buy a car?

I would be interested in hearing the stories as well.

3D printing is useful when it has benefits. But seriously, I have not seen an object created by 3D printing which has tremendous benefit.

I think people said the same things, but about the internet an Bitcoin.

Well, you use whatever material the 3d printer takes or what material you need. I'm sure there will be many different types of 3d printing machines available for many different purposes. But currently you only need one to make a gun. You could get the blueprints the same places you get music or films or e-books or apps - the internet.

And why do people make their own clothes or grow their own food or design their own stuff - because they can. Why buy a ridiculously overpriced car when you can make one yourself for cheap? etc etc.

You're not going to print out a knife.  It's far cheaper and more effective to run a manufacturing line and churn out a million scalpels.

What you'd use the printer for is stuff like custom-fitted implants (like this jaw (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16907104)).  Rather than having to use an off-the-shelf part (which probably doesn't exactly match the original equipment), you can implant a device that is exactly the right size and shape.


1. Whatever material is appropriate for the part.

2. You make it.  Or you scan the broken part, reassemble it in software, and print it.

3. Yes.  You also need the right wrench to adjust a bolt.

4. "Just buy a car"?  We're talking about stuff like classic cars.  You don't "just buy" one of them.

You can't buy classic cars?

People also make their own kitcars from scratch, so 3d printing is just taking it to the extreme.

I once read an article int he Economist about how they can use 3d printers to create new kinds of animals, like clone dogs, make new organs for cats, etc.  Then I found out it was an April Fools joke.  But the funny thing is I was amazed and thought it was possible  3D printing really does seem cool.  I'm not sure how I would get materials to make the things I want to make.  Maybe plastics can be used for most things?

People like you need to just watch a documentary or two about how something is built, just dismissing 3D Printing technology especially if it involves metal is pretty hilarious, for mass production people have had to rely on wax moulds and the like which can be pretty pricey in itself so just being able to make stuff from a 3D model would decrease the costs massively.

Hahaha, that's hilarious. I'm sure at some point in the future bio-printing will be possible. Maybe they can build new muscles and organs etc.

Ok, go buy me a 1907 White Model G that doesn't require unobtainable parts to run again.

That's what we're talking about using 3D printers for.  You have a antique classic car needing some obscure part (in the White's case, a feedwater heater (http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/jay-leno/technology/4320759)).  You could spend decades searching for that part (and probably never finding it), or you could run the existing broken part through a 3D scanner, put it back together in software, print it out, and now your classic car runs again.

Use a search engine. A lot of links like this will come up:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-27/general-electric-turns-to-3d-printers-for-plane-parts


As 3d printing matures, I think it will have a profound effect because (i) by enabling small scale manufacturing of sophisticated machines, it will lead a decentralization society consisting of small self-sustaining communities and (2) it blurs the disctinction between hardware and software and can destroy the already-broken patent system. All this, like bitcoin, can lead to a weakening of the state, which which would be good news to me.

I'm aware you can build parts, it's been discussed in this thread, but you said classic cars as if they were unobtainable.

I imagine it to be something like that machine from reconstruction scene in The Fifth Element where it rebuilds Leloo from her DNA.

Spot on! One useful application is customised objects which would otherwise be more costly to make.
I am sure companies are able to make the custom-fitted implants with the current equipment if you pay them the right price. With 3D printer however, there is potential to bring down the cost. At the end of the day, patients can pay less.  :) :) :)

3D Printing may very well play a massive role in nano technology as well in the very near future, opening up an incredibly new area of opportunities.

It depends on your needs they are not for everyone. Personally I find 3D printing to be very cool look at a site like http://www.shapeways.com/. All you need to do is submit a 3D drawing and you can get it print a few different types of materials. You can make cool custom art, jewelry, useful knick knacks, or fun gadgets. Home 3D prints are nice too but your limited to plastic and usually a smaller build profile. I could think of many uses for a home 3D printer but the cost is still to high.

As a commercial product they are even better, I recently persuaded my company to buy one. Now when we design cases and housing for customers we send them a 3D sample + the draws. In the past we would send only the drawings and if we wanted a sample made it would take 1 month + cost 500 times more then it does now. It helps our designers as well who now can instantly print out their work and make sure it looks good as a physical product compared to the 3D rendering.

So far I have seen, 3D printed with plastic, purses, shoes, dresses (it used plastic to print, but printed material like chain mail armor), an entire table (made of over 200 printed parts glued together), and humanoid robot made of many moving components.

Not everybody has access to manufacturing lines or to suppliers. If you're in the middle of nowhere in some run down part of the world and a particular emergency needs a specific tool or medical equipment you could quickly print one off. It's not always about cost, but access. And I don't think printing out a scalpel is going to break the bank.

There are all kinds of things that seem to be designed to break at some plastic part.  There is someone on the forum that will sell you printed material if interested.  He has a 3-d printer.  The problem is you can't easily make these 3-d blue prints sometimes you want to take something that already exists and copy it.

And that's where 3D scanning comes in.

What's next? Technology is incredible. When will we have cloning machines?

3D printing is perfect for prototyping for example.
An initial invest of 1 or 2 thousand dollars will get you a pretty decent 3D printer and then the materials for printing 1 prototype goes around 40$ or 100$
It gives you a 3D representation of a product and depending of the product it can be tested just with that or not.

Industrial equivalent before 3D printing was to just stick with sketches or virtual representations that were not tangible or couldn't be tested until production starts.
An injection mold itself costs as much as a 3D printer and the machine that does the injections go for the hundreds of thousands.

On a more casual industry and where printers are going for now, is for home use. You can print useful plastic gadgets, create your own and even print figurines if you are into that.
you could do something like this in a couple of hours
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCKsQB8_698
print it and then paint it.

You probably haven’t seen some of the great use of 3D printing technology. Did you know that it has successfully reconstructed a human face, completely made an aerospace engine, a car model, and whole lot more. If you want to see more proof, take a look at this: http://www.3d2print.net/shop/our-customers-cool-prints/cool-print-gallery/.

But I thought it was overrated?  :D I saw that face reconstruction a while back and thought of this thread. Clearly the technology is underated and also under-appreciated.

It's not  overrated, you can even print guns.

Intresting technology

3D printing is not over-rated but quite expensive.

Isn't all new technology? It'll quickly get cheaper.

It seems they are real, they also print guns. Organs, skin bones. Maybe they can build computers. This will a useful tool in nanotech.

Not sure they can print skin and organs.

 As a mechanical and design engineer I can tell you that 3d printing is the future and it is massively used in prototyping it is also used To produce complexe products Chat would require many processes ( ex casting +machining +assembly+treatement) the on ly thing right now is that it is not good for high quantity production

Dont be fooled by FDS printing which is the most popular ans cheapest form of 3D  printing there are many other technologies

Not a long time ago in I_Dont_Remember_Which_Country quite an interesting operation took place. Some girl received a 3D printed skull (part of it). Her own bone was too small for her brain and this was the decision.

So I don't know about the skin and organs, but hard enough plastic that can be used instead of a skull is a reality :)

Nope they can, search for ghost organs. The organs don't have blood in them yet so they look kinda transparent hence the name 'ghost organs'

3D printing is not overrated. Its still fairly new for most, and I know most dont know it.

Despite the popular youtube videos on Vice with the 3 D printing guns, now they plan on building one that does for houses.

I`ll link the housing one, I just have to find it again. Its supposedly to reduce future labor costs to build a house.

I'm aware of that as I mentioned above, but skin and organs are an entirely different matter.


Pretty sure ghost organs aren't 3D printed.

we don't really need 3D printing, but virtual reality houses.  so we can just store people like sardines in the matrix, but live in a beautiful Minecraft mansion in their thoughts

We don't really need trolls either.

yep with blood and they can use the recipients dna to make . Search google for '3d printed organs

It is potentially useful for a lot of things,.
examples:

new organs
new cars (yes we would download cars)
personal airplane (print an airplane anyone?  ;D)

This technology is not quite there yet, but ideally you could print at an atom level - and print any physical product you want.

Imagine this is only the start. In the future the can create a live rabbit in a 3d printing hat.

I hope it gets cheaper.

It's inevitable. Happens with everything. Just look at how much dvd and Bly ray players were (or any new technology) and now look how much they are. I'm sure they will become as popular as regular printers within a decade.

Many companies already use 3D scanning for reverse engineering, and they combine it to 3D printing to go with an ecodesign (eco-conception)

I hope its gets cheaper so i can get one and build cool stuff

3d printing is great for making models and prototypes, before making expensive moulds.

There is a canal house in Amsterdam being pieced together using parts printed in a giant homemade (opensource design) 3d printer.

Google it

It's not limited to that at all, that's the cheapest and initial form and use of 3D printing

In addition, it's not a new tech at all. There were companies renting earlier machines like 15 years ago.

Everybody will have one in 10 years, for the price of a cheap inkjet today and share sex toy models on the net if they lack the imagination for any other use for it. lol

You can buy a print with BTC online  ;D

Yes 3D printings is not new, but some technics are pretty new and very advanced, additive manufacturing is running at full speed in the most advanced companies

http://www.top43dprinting.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/aerospace-3D-printing.jpg

This is a 3D printed part that saves weight in airplanes. Good luck manufacturing it without 3D printing.

With all the hype...
Over-hyped = Yes
Overrated = Perhaps there will be 2nd gen 3d printers that can easily make your football and other complex items?  :)

Ermm... Not 2nd gen but that would come much much later. It's already 2nd or 3rd gen. :) Because objects with such variety in material features require many different types of plastics to be used.

Hard, soft, elastic, robust, heat resistant, soft in room temps but hard in cold, those that can change form and keep it and those that return to its original form after a while... So many opportunities. The most interesting ones are those that are mixed in the manufacturing process. A single piece/part can be made with various types of plastic. One end can be elastic and the other end, hard like metal all the while keeping a solid rectangular prismatic shape on both ends and throughout the whole piece, for example. This can be done today but not with 3D printing yet AFAIK. I think they'll have to involve different metals in the future to add to this variety.

If you're into modelling, don't wait for all that and start with something like paper modelling with Pepakura designer, then cover it up with epoxy or similar mats to get a solid model. See http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL43D27B96B86684A9 and such for example. Of course, this is a modelling technique and not suitable for production in any way. :)

How is it over-hyped? It's going to be a pretty revolutionary technology and deserves all the hype it can get and more. I don't think a lot of people realise its potential.

It's like smartphones when it is newly launched.

I guess it will be very common in years to come

Definitly not overrated, I cant wait to own one.

You can print a freaking gun with it just at home :D

I Think, that you are only limited to FDS 3D printing which is by far the most useless form of 3D printing, this is the technology you get in your average personal 3D printers, industrial 3D printing is on a whole other level. There are many example just check what guys like GE, Airbus or Shell use 3D printing for

3d print might get big in future, when price of it is going to go down.

For me it is similar to cellphones in 90s

It's going to be big regardless of price.

Yeah, it's still going to be massive for technology and science / medicine even if ordinary people cant afford them initially, but they will be fairly soon.

I cant wait to own one. Hope i can buy one with btc.

I'd love to buy one with Bitcoin. I hope to buy everything with BTC at some point in the future though.

Now they're 3D-printing a whole house using open sourced house design:

http://3dprintcanalhouse.com/

http://vimeo.com/87843940

you don't understand the basic point

there aren't many advantages of it but the main thing why it's so awesome is that it gives us the option to imagine that one day anything we see online we could simply print out and use it

no more waiting for things to come from eBay

just use your god damn printer :D

Cool
Like Star Trek replicators?
Then there would be no need for BTC, except to buy new replicators.  :D

how do you mean there would be no need for BTC?

with what would you buy the replicators?

not $ for sure :D

Well, I was also thinking the same. The 3D printers are so expensive right now, but one day maybe everyone would be able to afford it just like 2D printers.

Wait..  can't I just 3D-print a 3D printer?  ;D

I don't you can print so big stuff :D

besides the material you use for 3D printers is expensive I think  :-\

Technically you can, you'll need many 3D printers that are specialized in different parts to make the whole 3D printer
why? because a 3D printer, is composed of mechanical parts, electronic parts, electromagnetic parts in some cases (lasers and what's not) .............

Today there isn't a single printers that does everything, there are 3d printer that can make most of the mechanical parts but from there you'll need the rest of the parts

and you'll need to put them together by yourself ;)

I want to say no it is not.  You can build you own things for cheap so I don't see how that is a negative in anyway.  

As far as I know, you need to use a single material to print a single object. Now if I have a toy which consists of plastic, some rubber and some metal, I will need to print it in 3-part process and assemble them manually, right?

That's a big hurdle. Maybe some day the technology will allow us to fill different materials in different cartridges (just like colors in 2D printers) and will print the whole object in one go!

that's why we're talking about the future :)

I forget what they are called right now but there are more industrial 3d printers that can build things that would blow you away.  They have them in colleges and places you wouldn't suspect I only seen a short video on it on the news one morning but it was pretty astonishing how how far the engineering field has come and will go in the near future.

yes, but it's still too expensive, not just the printers but the cost of the material that is used to print something

that's why we look into the future for those printers :)

we need them :D

is it really that expensive ? i dont think so ? or is it ?

Not all of them, the thing about 3D printing is that you can get out of the box parts that are already assembled, heck you can build a closed system with components inside lets say something like a gear box for example something that you can't do with traditional process