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What's Holding Back 3-D Printing
An anonymous reader writes "An article at MIT's Technology Review makes the case that the complexity of the design tools behind 3-D printing are what's holding it back from widespread adoption. Many of the devices are indeed prohibitively expensive, but the inability for your average person — or even your average tech hobbyist — to pick it up and start experimenting is an even bigger obstacle. 'That means software innovation could be more important to 3-D printing than gradual improvements in the underlying technology for shaping objects. That technology is already 30 years old and is widely used in industry to create prototypes, molds, and, in some cases, parts for airplanes. ... Although additive manufacturing allows for designs that can't be made easily in any other way — such as complex shapes with internal cavities — so far, companies have mostly used 3-D printing to create prototypes or models of familiar products.'"
Tech sites like Slashdot are ignoring innovations like 3D printing, bitcoin, Raspberry Pi.
I don't really want a reprap or similar printer. The print quality is too low. And the cost of the high end machines is prohibitive.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What's holding back 3-D printing is that it's only good for making plastic crap.
Doing something useful, like replicating a new carburetor for my 30-year-old roto-tiller, is more difficult and more expensive.
What's holding back 3-D printing is that there's hardly anything worthwhile to be done with it.
Other then printing an AR-15 lower receiver or magazines what can you do with a 3-D printer that's worth the bother?
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
As long as the raw materials are priced in tens of dollars per kilogram, printing out random stuff is always going to be too expensive. Really, it is bulk plastic. It should be priced nearer 40 kilograms per dollar than 40 dollars per kilogram.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
That is the thing. How hard is it to just make a mould to mass produce regular plastic stuff.
Really, it is going to take the same effort to design an object to be printed as it would take to make a mould to more easily and cheaply mass produce something with normal materials. The only benefit 3D printing has is potentially one off custom stuff. But how many people actually want an action figure of themselves; which is the only use case I have heard thus far that seems legitimate.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
A friend of a friend made this:
http://www.printcraft.org/
Make something in minecraft on this (free) server and it emails you a 3D printer file of your object when you disconnect.
Been using 3D solids for rapid prototyping new medical equipment for over 15 years.
Job shops can make your parts quickly and relatively inexpensively compared to other machining and hand working methods, so that part is OK for prototyping and functional parts that can stand being done in the limited rapid prototyping materials & processes available.
Skills need are the understanding of the design of physical parts with all the subtleties and the desire to learn to use a competant 3D solids modeling environment. You don't walk in to this expecting a familiarity with PowerPoint as enough skill to do the job.
Competent 3D solids software from the likes of SolidWorks, AutoCAD or other similar programs start at about $5,000 per seat and they don't become highly usable until you get near $10k. It easily takes 1000-2000 hours to become good at doing 3D modeling, assuming you are already familiar with design and 2D CAD.
There are 3D solids RP machines in half a dozen types and you can't afford to buy them for hobby uses. Stratysis laser sintering for Nylon, SS & Titanium type things cost more than a Ferrari, so forget it, unless you are Jay Leno.
This is the exact reason I haven't picked one up. I can make and use a vacuum former. I can sculpt, and make castings. All of these things are easier for me than working with the current set of 3D printers. I'm sure I could learn to work the thing, and make the programs, but it's just not worth my time, when I can do it the old fashioned way faster. Not everyone is a programmer. If the interface was slick and easy, I'd cough up the cash in minutes. I've been watching the progression of these little things for ages, and would love to have one. However, even my most tech savvy buddies have to spend more time trouble shooting than making. Hell, even the Mojang guys were tweeting about a new 3D printer, and damn if they didn't have to trouble shoot, and replace a part straight off. So the article is right. It's not the $2000 that is holding me back from buying one. It's the learning curve, and the inhospitable user interface. I may be a techy artist, but I'm an artist, not a programmer.
almost a year now, on and off. Here are my comments...
Trying to use Arduino Mega2560 controller board with RAMPS 1.4 and LCD/encoder/SD card reader and Marlin firmware has been a nightmare of surfing through thousands of posts on dozens of internet forums to try to get info on how to get the compiler to run, what needs to be modified in the firmware for my machine- no documentation but the often cryptic comments in the source code.
The latest, greatest firmware, Marlin, was developed using an old version of the Arduino-0023 IDE and cannot be compiled on the latest Arduino IDE. The old IDE attempts to define the "round" math function that is already defined in the AVR-GCC compiler, so it will not run unless you comment out the "round" function definition in the old Arduino-0023 IDE.
Next, you have to modify the firmware to fit your machine- it needs to know things like steps/mm in each axis, how big is the print bed, etc. How do you know what needs to be changed? Read through the poor comments in the source code because there is no other documentation, or start hunting through forums. Just figuring out the logic for the endstops is a game of trial and error even though proper comments or better yet, a manual of some sort telling what the defaults are/mean and how to change them, would be a huge help.
Once you get he machine running, there are about 50 variables in the firmware that can be used to tune its performance, if you can figure out what they are and how they affect the print results.
Open source is a nice idea, but I'll take thoroughly documented, reliable PIC hardware and IDE over an Arduino any day of the week, but I'm getting off topic...
Using a printer is a whole different set of problems. Unless you just want to print other people's designs, you need to create a 3D model, requiring knowledge of CAD software. Once you have the model, you have to slice it up using yet another piece of software and requiring knowledge of intimate details of the printer's mechanical, electrical, and thermal characteristics to get maximum quality results.
I used to use PCB milling machines in the 90s and processing the files for cutting a board was a major PITA back then. Here we are 15 years later and the software situation hasn't improved. Until someone integrates the model creation, slicing, and printer control software into a single package and makes it easy for almost anyone to use without a lot of special knowledge or training, 3D printing will remain a hobby for hard-core geeks.
When people get excited about 3D-Printing, it's because they are envisioning Picard saying "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot", or because they picture themselves inventing a thing that solves that problem that's always annoyed them, or because they see themselves upgrading the plumbing, wiring and gadgetry around the house. Or they're a parent with delusions of making cool stuff for their kids.
Then they find they have a friend who already got a 3D printer and discover that with do-overs and experiments, it costs more - in time, money and hair - to make whatever it is that you want to make than it would to just go take James Dyson to dinner and see if he would make one for you.
3D printing is not taking on because people have cognized that it's in it's infancy, pathetically pointless and utterly wasteful of time stage.
Affordable, extant desktop 3D printing lets you make PROTOTYPES, moulds, plant pots and coasters. It's useful for NOTHING unless you have some skill/talent as a design engineer (I don't!) and it also turns out that you kinda need to be a cad/graphics artist if you want a remote chance of designing anything that won't end the way of a digitally conveyed gorignak.
Today's 3D Printing tech is to accessible, open-source, desktop manufacturing what the IBM 402 is to accessible, end-user open source software development.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
I detect internet rage from an anonymous individual with an unknown UID... if your going to tell people to get off your lawn at least wave your beard tangled cane in their faces and let them know who you are.
That is the thing. How hard is it to just make a mould to mass produce regular plastic stuff.
Ummm... good question. Would you like to try making a mold for this?
What? You say it's art but doesn't have a practical use? mmmm?!
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
OpenSCAD seems to be relatively unheard of, but just what I needed for getting a couple of bits 3D printed (and one milled from metal).
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
I've been experimenting with 3D printing, and my observations agree with TFA.
For starters, 3D CAD is difficult. Designing a 3D object on a 2D screen with 2D controls (mouse) is a lot to get your head wrapped round no matter what. You need to be able to translate between 2D and 3D. Having experience in drawing or creating objects (sculpting, model building, anything) helps.
Second, 3D CAD software is a mess. Simple programs are too simple: you quickly run into the limitations of programs like Sketchup and AutoCAD 123D. Complex programs are expensive and require training, or are free and require more training (Blender).
All of them have odd limitations. Try subtracting two shapes from each other. Sounds simple, no? Forget it; it works sometimes, but other subtractions convert your model into a mess of triangular fragments that takes hours to correct.
All too often, CAD programs can't create a true arc or circle, but approximate them with lots of straight line segments. This will come back to bite you in the ass later on.
There's a whole category of CAD programs that you shouldn't use (surface modelers) because they create lots of problems when preparing the CAD file for 3D printing.
(third) Then there's the software you need to prepare the CAD file for printing. For some reason, 3D printers care about the normal of a surface. Why should that matter?
At this stage, you'll find out that your carefully-created CAD drawing is full of problems: holes, degenerate faces, etc. Your preparation software can often fix this, but at the cost of having to learn another language (Meshlab, I'm looking at you).
Oh, and those straight line segments? Thanks to those, a simple cone shape consists of 100,000 tiny triangles, and Shapeways has a 10E6 triangle limit, so you have to simplify your model (preferably without sour simplifications becoming visible).
(/rant)
When you succeed, there's a big reward. Seeing the 3D drawing you created from scratch come alive as a plastic object is very satisfying. But it is a steep hill to climb.
Maybe the problem is that 3D printing is mainly for prototyping products. How many consumers are going to do that? Probably very few, particularly at today's price points. Hobbyists may, but even then, it is often cheaper, faster and better quality to send the design off to a specialty house than purchase the equipment yourself, unless the hobbyist is going to be doing a lot of work.
In short 3D printing isn't taking off in the consumer market for the same reason that CNC machines aren't. There really isn't a consumer need.
This is precisely it. Remember the desktop publishing revolution? There were two parts to it, the Apple Laserwriter and...Adobe Pagemaker. Pagemaker made it trivial to manipulate text and graphics, to allow text to flow from one section to another, to create columns, number pages. Right now, 3D printing is just the Laserwriter. Sure there is Sketchup, but it's been taking over by Trimble and it's not clear what they are going to do with it. They aren't marketing it and neither are any of the 3D printer companies.
It's just very expensive to get into 3d printing. A makerbot is over $2k, a lulzbot is almost $2k. (It probably also doesn't help the cause that lulzbot sells 3d printed parts like this or this printed on the very same almost $2k machines that look like crap.) Even build-it-yourself machines cost close to $1k, not even factoring in time spent.
Then there's filament at $40/kg, the occasional hotend replacement, material wasted on prints that don't come out or stop halfway, etc.
The print quality and material strength is also questionable. PLA is water soluble so it doesn't work outdoors, cracks easily, on the other hand ABS releases toxic fumes when melted.
It's hard to justify all that cost even for someone with money to burn to print a $20 stove knob, or odd $5 broken plastic pieces for a car's door to open. It's a great tool for rapid prototyping and for nerds, but not for mainstream.
You know what's holding 3D printing back? As someone that's fighting with one, I've got a few thoughts.
I'm building a Prusa Mendel, with hardware mostly donated by a friend that also has a Prusa Mendel. It *should* be straightforward. It's not. At all. My friend and I got the frame built, but I brought everything else home to finish on my own.
I managed to get the mechanical end sorted out fairly well, to the point where I need the entire printer to run right to get the rest of it dialed in. I managed to get the software side sorted pretty easily, too. The electronics, however, are proving to be a major pain.
The machine has a few problems that I can not seem to sort out. The hot end temps vary wildly, in about a thirty-degree Celsius range...However, it's all built "right." At this point I'm going to build a second heatcore and replace the thermistor attached to the nozzle with a new one (that I had to order from somewhere else) in hopes that something is wrong with either of these two items.
I am proficient with electronics assembly and repair, to the point where I build my own pedals to use with my bass, repair my own bass gear, repair other folks' pedals and gear, etc. I do computer software troubleshooting and programming for work, so I'm fairly proficient with that. I'm also a hard-core gearhead; I've been playing with mechanical things from guns to cars to motorcycles to machine tools and just about everything in between for as long as I can remember...But I'm having a hell of a time sorting out a *basic* 3D printer. I've spent the past three weeks of weeknights and weekends working on the thing and, honestly, I'm about ready to throw the whole pile in the trash and forget the whole thing.
It doesn't help that no one local to me has any more experience with building these things than I do, and all the people that have pre-built 3D printers are also hating them right now...My old employer has a MakerBox Replicator 2X that they can not get to run right. It seems like the vendors themselves don't really know what's going on, either...The vendor I got the hot end parts kit from seems to supply wire that I would consider wholly inadequate for moving 12V@5A around, but apparently it works.
The guy that supplied the parts for me to build my Prusa Mendel purchased a Rostock kit for no small amount of money...And is having all kinds of trouble getting it working right, too.
What's holding back 3D printing? The fact that even people with higher-than-average technical proficiency in all the areas required to make a 3D printer run well are having problems with their 3D printers indicates that they are in no way ready for mainstream use.
The design software isn't the problem. The problem is that the low-end 3D printers suck.
The ultraviolet stereolithography machines work fine, but so far, they cost too much. The Form 1 machine ($2300) is supposed to ship Real Soon Now. That's probably the first low-end machine that will really work.
The low-end plastic extruder approach (MakerBot, RepRap, Up, etc.) is fundamentally flawed. You're trying to weld a hot thing to a cold thing. That never works reliably. Cold solder joints and bad welds are the usual results of trying to do that in other materials. It sort of works for small objects where the previous layer doesn't have time to cool completely. But the time between one layer and the next being laid down has way too much effect on the weld quality. You need some way to heat the layer below the weld just before the weld, like a laser or a hot air jet. It probably would only take a few watts of laser power aimed at the join. You'd have to enclose and interlock the build area, as with a laser cutter, but that's not hard.
The plastic extruder machines will probably go away once stereolithography gets cheaper. It's a sort-of-works technology. Printers went through this. There was wet electrostatic printing (Versatec), magnetic printing, ink jet printing by electrostatic deflection of a stream of ink drops, electrolytic printing (dates from the 19th century), and spark printing. Commercial products using all those technologies were manufactured and sold, but xerographic and ink jet technologies were just better.
The design tools have nothing to do with it.
There is no marketable benefit of a 3D printer.
It's cheaper to buy your plastic widget from China than to buy the ABS or PLA reels to print your own, so there is no cost benefit.
There is no "plug and play" 3D printer that costs less than $1000. Try 10x that - So there is no ease of use benefit.
It doesn't matter how easy the software is or how good it is, someone still needs to design what you want to print. Mr or Miss Consumer doesn't have the skill or effort to do so.
It's not instant. Printing a complex object takes hours upon hours. You could get some things delivered overnight quicker than it takes to print them.
You can't print everything. Sure its nice to print some xmas decorations, but you can't print a chip. Your widget is going to be plastic and plastic only (or what ever other material your printer prints).