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Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#121

Post by pfych »

johnny_canuck wrote: post #53
sottol wrote: post #25

I think it's probably correct that few people *really* cared until the Reprap project showed a real DIY 3D printer was possible. Early machines were industrial machines with huge price tags, proper linear motion systems, complicated extrusion systems and so on. There is a bit of a mental leap to go from seeing $100k+ machine and dreaming to design something that can be built for $200-500. The problems were: no "refer…

I'm curious how much better the printers are these days as I'd love to get another one. I had a Wanhao Duplicator i3 in 2015 and found it required a lot of tinkering and calibration every time I wanted to use it. I ended up selling it as it was so time consuming to get everything correctly set up that it just killed any interest I had in it.

I had an old Ender 3 kit that was nothing but a hassle from 3-4 years ago. My partner bought a BambuLab A1 & it was insane to see how it "just worked" out of the box. Highly recommend

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#122

Post by fragmede »

kragen wrote: post #65
jerf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also easy to underestimate how much computation is involved and how little there was in the 70s. The 3D printer slicers generally require several seconds on modern hardware to calculate their final path. The resulting files are in the several megabytes. My Bambu 3D printer is all but festooned with sensors and is constantly adjusting things, but even the simple ones have more to their firmware than meets the eye…

It's plausible that our current 3-D printing design workflow has grown up in the computationally intensive way that it did because all that computation was available; it's easier to just use a least-common-denominator but bulky file format like STL than to worry about the incompatibilities that would result from using more expressive files. People have been doing CAD/CAM since the 01950s. Boeing started using CNC in…

Computation for the printer was possible, but home computing definitely was not there enough to let someone model something up in fusion 360 like we think of today. That was the realm of srs workstations like the ones SGI made.

I don't think that's a show stopper though. If we had had 3D printers in the 1970's and 1980's, sold at Sears, between the computers and the tools, you'd bring home a paper catalog from the 3d model company, thumb through it for models you wanted to build, send off a cheque (and a SASE) and they'd mail you back a cartridge that you plug into your printer so you can print that model. And then get that catalog in the mail forever after.

As reference on how much home computing power was available back then, the original Apple I came out in 1976 with a "character generator" and was not capable of advanced graphics - the cost of the amount of ram it would take to draw an entire screen from ram would have been astronomical, so characters were stored in ram and the card was in charge of outputting the characters and rudimentary graphics.

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#123

Post by esperent »

kragen wrote: post #106
inglor_cz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An offtopic question: how do you manage to write all the years consistently with 0 at the start (I know why, but how ), when everyone around you uses a different standard. If I decided, IDK, to write "cnow" instead of "know", or "J" instead of "I", I wouldn't be able to do so consistently. Not in a world that massively uses the other word. Or it would take me twice as much time to double-check everything that I have…

I usually double-check everything I write anyway. I just have to be careful not to "correct" literal quotes that include dates or accidentally talk about the Intel 08008 and the 06502.

Why just one leading zero?

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

hagbard_c wrote: post #101
cityofdelusion wrote: post #55

The pieces did NOT exist in the 1970s. Fast microcontrollers, stepper motors, precision miniaturized manufacturing, reliable and cheap miniaturized DC electronics, and far far more technology was non-existent at any kind of affordable price point. Look at kitchen appliances or metal/wood shop machinery from this era, still heavily analog, mostly made from sheet steel, mostly non-computerized. The 80s would bring bett…

Given that it is possible to make a 3D printer out of old dot matrix printer parts and given that matrix printers were introduced in the '70s (Centronics [1] claims its model 101. launched in 1970 was the first impact dot matrix printer) it would have been possible to create 3D printers in the '70s. While the hardware and controlling firmware would have been possible to build back then it would have been quite useles…

> Given that it is possible to make a 3D printer out of old dot matrix printer parts

Using no other parts, at least none others that would not also have been available in the 1970s?

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#125

Post by tdeck »

dragonwriter wrote: post #124
hagbard_c wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that it is possible to make a 3D printer out of old dot matrix printer parts and given that matrix printers were introduced in the '70s (Centronics [1] claims its model 101. launched in 1970 was the first impact dot matrix printer) it would have been possible to create 3D printers in the '70s. While the hardware and controlling firmware would have been possible to build back then it would have been quite useles…

> Given that it is possible to make a 3D printer out of old dot matrix printer parts Using no other parts, at least none others that would not also have been available in the 1970s?

Possibly? This guy made a 3D printer out of wood and unipolar stepped motors salvaged from old typewriters:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yz_DKXIuL8U

However getting the right thermoplastic filament would be a major challenge, and slicing would require a high end mainframe with graphical terminals. Everything would be prohibitively slow. Also regular 2D printers were much more expensive back then.

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#126

Post by ProllyInfamous »

knowitnone wrote: post #81
jdietrich wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of, but not really. Air fryers have a much faster rate of airflow than any convection oven, which results in significantly faster and more even cooking. The air fryer really is a meaningful technological development.

if you consider adding a fan as "meaningful technological development"

I just purchased my first air fryer summer 2023 — it has changed my cooking life, allowing me to rarely ever "eat out" without much meal prep.

"Just adding a fan" is actually an extremely meaningful tech development.

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#127

Post by Suppafly »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #55

The pieces did NOT exist in the 1970s. Fast microcontrollers, stepper motors, precision miniaturized manufacturing, reliable and cheap miniaturized DC electronics, and far far more technology was non-existent at any kind of affordable price point. Look at kitchen appliances or metal/wood shop machinery from this era, still heavily analog, mostly made from sheet steel, mostly non-computerized. The 80s would bring bett…

Sure but they did by the 80s and 90s. I had a cad/cam class in the 90s and the pen plotter we used, not sure which model but HP 7090 from the 80s is similar, had all the technology necessary to build a 3d printer. Hell you could build a 3d printer from essentially first principles using old broken tech and stuff from a hardware store. The first time I saw a 3d printer years ago, my first thoughts was why it took so long for them to happen because the technology was really basic.

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#128

Post by Suppafly »

actionfromafar wrote: post #74
kragen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microcontrollers and stepper motors were already controlling 2-D printers in the 01970s and early 01980s at higher speeds and similar powers to currently popular 3-D printers. The first RepRaps did not "use a full-power PC as their host machine"; they were controlled by AVRs, just like Arduino (which didn't exist yet). Generating motor control waveforms on a full-power PC is a nightmare nowadays, and was already a ni…

Now I'm very tempted to build a 3D printer with an 8-bit home computer and vintage parts.

My son is into vintage computers and I'm pretty sure I could make a 3d printer from the old c64s, disk drives, and printers in my basement. The hot end would be the only issue and I'm pretty sure you could rig one up from a glue gun or soldering iron.

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#129

Post by Suppafly »

inglor_cz wrote: post #78
kragen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microcontrollers and stepper motors were already controlling 2-D printers in the 01970s and early 01980s at higher speeds and similar powers to currently popular 3-D printers. The first RepRaps did not "use a full-power PC as their host machine"; they were controlled by AVRs, just like Arduino (which didn't exist yet). Generating motor control waveforms on a full-power PC is a nightmare nowadays, and was already a ni…

An offtopic question: how do you manage to write all the years consistently with 0 at the start (I know why, but how ), when everyone around you uses a different standard. If I decided, IDK, to write "cnow" instead of "know", or "J" instead of "I", I wouldn't be able to do so consistently. Not in a world that massively uses the other word. Or it would take me twice as much time to double-check everything that I have…

>An offtopic question: how do you manage to write all the years consistently with 0 at the start (I know why, but how), when everyone around you uses a different standard.

Never underestimate what lengths someone will go through to appear to be unique.

Re: Ask HN: Why did consumer 3D printing take so long to be invented?

#130

Post by Suppafly »

dcminter wrote: post #79
actionfromafar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm very tempted to build a 3D printer with an 8-bit home computer and vintage parts.

That sounds like a delightful project! This contemporary book from Usborne demonstrates the point that basic stepper controls from an 8-bit computer were well within hobbyist reach: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxv0SsvibDMTZ2tQMmpyOWtsRFk... I do think that the limitations of memory (and disk) will require some ingenuity in 3D printing more than the most trivial procedurally defined objects!

That's a great book, it looks so simplistic and then the next thing you know it's teaching you about resistors and soldering and programming, all in like 50 pages of mostly graphics.
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