is printer market similar to 1910 radio market?

[jferguson]

Reading here for a year or so has revealed a lot of very bright commenters. I suspect you all, maybe except for guys running commercial printshops, are designing most of what you print. The point of my question was that when radio first came into use, it was considered a two-way communication medium. You received and transmitted. By the mid twenties things had changed in a significant way. Most radios became broadcast receivers incapable of transmission and were tuned to one of the local broadcast stations.

The analogy is that when we design and print our work, we're really transmitting and receiving. On the other hand if we download .stl's from ThingiVerse, we're basically receiving. What made me think of this was that I recently bought a Sony A7 which with an adapter can mount old Nikon lenses of which I have a box-full. Suddenly I needed body caps for the cameras and thought there might be some on thingiverse. There was a very good one and now my 3 old nikons have body caps. there was also one for Leica M - bayonet. I needed one of those, too, but the only one available wasn't as good as the others, but good enough -- and I didn't have to spend the several hours it would have taken to model one. I design most of what I make myself - no other way to get exactly what i want, but...

Had radio stayed a mostly two way affair, it is unlikely that the industry would ever have grown much. the mass market is pretty unskilled, to say the least.

On the other hand, printers are getting within shouting distance of being fool-proof. Certainly not there yet, but wouldn't most of you agree that the problems we solve every day could be designed out?

obviously people didn't buy radios in the twenties without broadcasts they wanted to listen to. People who do not design themselves are not going to buy printers unless they are easy to use and there is a large available array of designs which they might want to make themselves. I think we're close to that, but again not quite there. There may be an upper limit to the number of GoPro brackets which can be absorbed.

This market that i think i can see is not people like us. My guess is if it does develop, it will be served by printer manufacturers we've never heard of.

The future might also be how things looked in 1981 before GUI's made it possible for anyone to use a small computer, and those of us who were good at command line became mostly irrelevant, at least to the consumer market.

Have any of you thought about this sort of thing?

John

[Jules]

I like your analogy. Basically, once the 3D printer gets it's "GUI", it will be off and running.

[ednisley]

designs which they might want to make themselves

From what I've seen, the mass-market potential for an achingly slow device that produces low-strength plastic parts with mediocre surface quality rounds off to zero. Fixing any of those liabilities kills the low price that might convince people to buy an appliance with a near-zero duty cycle.

Exotic technologies with higher resolution or faster throughput, like laser-sintered dust and light-cured goop, are not family friendly household activities: hazardous materials, staggering consumable costs, and even lower mass-market potential.

Basically, after you sell printers (and laser cutters, for that matter) to all the "people who already make stuff", there's no further market. Makerbot has been discovering that the hard way, although I'll grant they've incurred some nasty self-inflicted damage along the way.

The carnage will be a wonder to behold, though...

[jsc]

I like the modeling/reverse engineering part. 3D printing has given me an excuse to learn some interesting skills that would normally be useless to anyone not an industrial designer or engineer. And it's so much more accessible than learning "real" machining. For me, it's been a fascinating gateway drug to 3D modeling and design, because of the (relatively) low expense and flexibility. If it never reaches mass market acceptance, I wouldn't care either way. Not everybody owns a Bridgeport mill, either, or even a table saw.

[wmgeorge]

I got into 3D printing and also my laser engraving hobby because I did own a large metal lathe (much smaller one now) medium sized milling machine and decided I could not take it with me.... to the retirement home or village that is. Needed something that would fit into a spare bedroom and keep my mind and hands busy.

Sometime in the future I will sell off the rest of my wood working and metal shop to be ready for that move. So many uses for the 3D printer however, I am finding new projects every day.

[zemlin]

I'm not very good at predicting the future, but I suspect 3D printing will become much more mainstream and accessible that it is now. I don't expect it will become a household item though. I don't think enough folks have the design skills or the desire to make stuff, even if it were plug-and-play-simple.

I've only been at this for a few months, but I'm surprised at the part quality and strength that can be obtained from a machine like the M2. I am looking at making a new base plate for my router and some custom templates for cutouts. I made parts for carrying 4" PVC pipes on my car rack (for photography backdrops). I've also made templates for drilling and tapping parts that allowed me to achieve surprising precision with just a drill press. I worked as a machinist decades back and this machine has quenched a good part of my thirst for a lathe and mill in the garage.

[insta]

I'm waiting for standardization enough that companies can consistently offer STL files of replacement parts (battery covers, knobs, brackets) for free/very cheap.

[ednisley]

companies can consistently offer STL files of replacement parts ... for free/very cheap

And their motivation would be ... what, exactly?

Killing the aftermarket replacement market, perhaps, but that doesn't go along with "cheap". Also, I don't see any company supporting repair parts produced by random consumer printers: when a "genuine" STL file produces a part that doesn't fit (or, worse, fails when used), who's liable? Better to sell a known-good injection-molded part and eliminate all the support issues.

For folks like us who already make things, 3D printing is indispensable, fer shure. For everybody else, it's a solution to large set of non-problems...

[zemlin]

And their motivation would be ... what, exactly?

Maybe you should ask MakerGear

[insta]

companies can consistently offer STL files of replacement parts ... for free/very cheap

And their motivation would be ... what, exactly?

Killing the aftermarket replacement market, perhaps, but that doesn't go along with "cheap". Also, I don't see any company supporting repair parts produced by random consumer printers: when a "genuine" STL file produces a part that doesn't fit (or, worse, fails when used), who's liable? Better to sell a known-good injection-molded part and eliminate all the support issues.

For folks like us who already make things, 3D printing is indispensable, fer shure. For everybody else, it's a solution to large set of non-problems...

That's why I said standardized. Sort of like the UL rating -- its optional, but defacto. Granted, that's for safety, but a third-party independent vendor can do the verification. China will still stick UL ratings on things that were never tested, people will still wonder why their $0.99 "5A multi-port charger" burned their house down, life goes on -- but for the majority of devices it's easy to say "your crappy Chinese printer wasn't verified, so your replacement knob broke. Sorry brah."

There's a few companies now who already offer downloadable STLs (free of charge) to repair their devices that are out of manufacture and support. It means the company gets goodwill among the community for the nearly-free cost of hosting, and the company can free up warehouse space for storing molds / a million replacement knobs.