What happened to 3d printing?

Do you think eventually we will all have a 3d printer at home?

probably, but i don't expect it will be like the future everyone is imagining for it. it'll probably end up like every other kitchen appliance that is world wide innovation changing like a blender or microwave.
"hun, can you print me out another bowl so i can put the leftovers up" :P

They are not affordable and this is one of their major drawbacks. If you take into account the base price for the main unit, the precision level (usually crappy) and the cost of the consumables the end result isn't satisfactory.

It's still just mainly a thing in product developement to build prototypes and models. Producing stuff in larger quanity makes no sense atm since it takes forever and is not cost effective. It's also too complicated for your average user.

"Future is now" . It's never just waking up one day and realising you live in sci-fi setting instantly. These things do come really slowly. For example i would have 0 uses for 3D printer and i imagine that's true for a lot people. It will come someday,slowly and quite changed from it's original concept.

Same for VR. Now it just a gimmick. It might become part of future's entertainment tools but i doubt it will replace it.

Well, there is some use in industry to build complex parts or prototypes. But i doubt it will be interesting for private users in the next couple of years.

http://the3doodler.com/

http://3doodlerpro.com/

it's not gone.
i know some people who bought it for home. there are some easy programs to work with it...

I'd say in the future it will be having the same fate as normal printers now.

Not everyone have one, because not everyone needs one. It will be a norm for companies and offices, and technology will advance itself to like today's printer ie. you can easily print stuff out, and there will be tools easy for even average computer users to print stuff out.

Manufacturers like shoes or other stuff won't go out of business, because printing shoes will still not be as cost effective as buying a shoe. Just like how people have printers now doesn't mean people will stop buying books and newspapers. It is still cheaper and easier to buy than to print everything yourself.

3D Printed duck-face 😗 selfies of all your IG/FB friends delivered right to your living room. The future is a scary place 🙀

3D printer may be a revolution but it will be next big thing only when it will help in recycle waste.

at the moment many people use 3d printing to print out cheap plastic pieces. there are no high tech plastics and materials which are used from normal people to create a comfortable shoe or other stuff. Maybe in the future we can select our own good quality materials for printing that are affordable.

Is it probably a materials problem too. You just cannot print a decent pair of shoes because shoes require some specific materials, that are both robust and flexible, something 3D printers cannot currently achieve (AFAIK). Things that you can actually print and use in everyday life (with affordable materials) are usually cheaper to simply buy (mostly kitchen stuff, toys, or small tools). You cannot print a jacket, a TV, a watch, or anything you might save money on.

not in the homes of common people i think. might become the backbone of the industry of tomorrow once theyr price are accessible even to small companies. but not everything that glitters is gold. the are of course drawbacks expecially for the labour class, just like during the industrial revolution and the mechanization of the production. indeed what it is passed off as a conquest is nothing more than another instrument of the capital useful only to swell its pocket further, with associated new forms of imperialism for its own sake.

with the super expensive 3d printers you can print 3d printers, metal metal circuits and all

theres a 3d printer at my college.. its pretty cool, they thing is buying stuff is cheaper that designing a printing the thing you want.

I can't wait to 3d print my very own VR glasses which I will be using to enter a virtual world where I can use a 3d printer.

It'll come back in twenty years or so when the technology matures. There's only so many fiddly little bits of plastic a single person needs.

Well the technology is still fresh and expensive so now it's being used mostly by people that can actually do something useful with it. It is becoming to be more and more used in medical sector, automobile industry, aerospace engineering and so on and it is in fact pretty revolutionary. The technology will evolve now for a while and when it's perfected it's gonna get cheaper to produce and therefore more accessible so even households will be able to purchase them. Companies will start to mass produce 3D printer models for home use and that will be the time when everybody will buy it and print stupid shit with it, take photos of it and then post it online in order to get them sweet internet points. That will last about a year or two (depending on pricing of the mass produced shit, but the main, biggest wave of buyers won't last more than that) and then the main use of home 3D printers will be to catch dust.

Technology takes time, they were starting to get more affordable, but there's still a while before it actually becomes affordable for everyone.
But there are still breakthroughs coming, not all intended to make it available to everyone, at least not for a long while, like this that was announced a couple of weeks ago.

There are some cheap ones worth only $150 (Anet A8 for example) if you want to get into it. There are active communities, most of them focused into aeromodelism

one day i will print my sg entries, or even better, my wins :O

but for now, i will print my food

View attached image.

It's still going pretty strong. This is a trap which takes away 1 point of your score. 3D printing is mostly being used to create concepts or test designs before mass production.

I want to be able to 3D print someday, sounds awesome :D