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Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#271

Post by wunki »

simonsarris wrote: post #128

You know, I never even owned a 2D printer until last year. And my girlfriend bought that. Someone else always owned a printer and I just used it (Kinkos, library, work, school). I would hope it would be the same with a 3D printer. I don't want to have one. I don't want to buy ink or parts or worry about it or have it obsoleted in 2 years time. But if I want something 3D printed, I certainly hope that there will be st…

Friends of mine are solving this exact problem by supplying a platform where 3D printer owners can earn some money by letting others use their printer. Check them out at 3D Hubs [1].

[1]: http://www.3dhubs.com/

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#272

Post by ajross »

cookrn wrote: post #137
ajross wrote: post #52

Where's the selection for "I have a partially assembled Prusa Mendel I'll finish some day?"

Would have been a funny addition to the poll :) Been working on one from a MakerGear kit for 6 months now on and off. Down to the calibration and a bad endstop now it seems. There was a good article recently on how to know which path to go down re: purchasing a printer prebuilt vs. a kit vs. buying individual parts that was a good read. Did you use a kit or by individual parts?

I bought parts, and had it all unit tested, really. All four axes worked, I had the board running my own firmware build I could play with. The extruder got hot and appeared to be functioning correctly with the thermistor. But I had a goof getting the bed assembled/leveled which forced me to tear it off and order new bearings. And by the time those arrived family and distractions had pulled me away. And of course by now the Prusa is old news. But I'll get back to it someday, if not with this printer than with another.

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#274

Post by jmharvey »

iamwil wrote: post #94
jmharvey wrote: post #88

Whenever I think of 3d printers, I think of this essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html I'm not sure whether 3-d printing will result in my having more stuff or less. In the long run, I could see it working out either way, but with the technology in its current state, it would definitely result in a net increase in the amount of stuff I have.

In my own experience, only at first. I started printing anything willy nilly, just to try it out. Then when I felt like I just had too much stuff, I became more selective with what I print. I keep all the discarded parts, objects, and failed prints in a box, since I'll be able to re-melt and reuse the plastic eventually.

I'm not really worried about printing useless items, I'm more concerned that the 3-d printer itself is one more (fairly significant) item of "stuff" to have to deal with. For a 3-d printer purchase to result in a net-negative amount of stuff, it would need to allow me to get rid of a lot of other stuff in my life.

If 3-d printers eventually reach the stage where I can print an item only when I need it, and then I can recycle it into something else, that would be worth owning. Looking around my kitchen, I see a lot of things that I don't use every week, but I use enough (and are useful enough) that they're worth keeping around: a gravy separator, multiple salad bowls, a ladle, a colander, steamer baskets, multiple slotted spoons, multiple potholders, storage containers, various sizes of bakeware, enough placesettings to have guests, etc. I can imagine 3-d printers eventually getting to the point where there's no reason to keep drawers and cabinets full of this stuff. But with today's technology, if you're printing something that you need to use today a month from now, you're generally better off throwing the one you have on a shelf for a month than printing a new one the next time you need it. When that changes, I'll be more interested.

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#275

Post by soggypenny »

brittohalloran wrote: post #187
simonsarris wrote: post #128

You know, I never even owned a 2D printer until last year. And my girlfriend bought that. Someone else always owned a printer and I just used it (Kinkos, library, work, school). I would hope it would be the same with a 3D printer. I don't want to have one. I don't want to buy ink or parts or worry about it or have it obsoleted in 2 years time. But if I want something 3D printed, I certainly hope that there will be st…

My thoughts exactly. I'm the engineering manager (mechanical engineering) at a design / manufacturing firm and I've come to the conclusion that it's not worth it to buy our own machine. I'd prefer to have access to all the different print types (fdm / sls / sla / objet) and not deal with the upkeep and machine obsolescence issues. There are a ton of shops that can make parts now, which is driving the part cost down.

As a fellow mechanical engineer, that's exactly why my co-founder and I launched SupplyBetter.com. Our goal is to match you with the right supplier to make what you need. Especially when it comes to engineering-grade requirements, service bureaus specializing in additive manufacturing provide immense value. When desktop 3D printers can reach the consistency, accuracy, and detail of commercial printers we'll be more than happy to embrace them as well.

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#276

Post by fotbr »

dchichkov wrote: post #227
fotbr wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take a sub-$1000 benchtop mill (Sieg X2 or X3, for example), add less than $1000 of new parts and less than $1000 worth of motors and electronics, and have a benchtop CNC mill capable of working with aluminum and brass with no problems, and with steel in light passes. If you don't want to do it yourself, you can buy complete from-the-factory benchtop CNC mills (Little Machine Shop: $4500, Tormach: $6k-$8k). I…

The only way to have good results with metals is to back it up with a huge mass. So Tormach will work. Everything else, that you've mentioned would not. Ask me how I know... But Tormach puts you at least 6.5k behind. Add tooling, table, box to keep the dust out, soundproofing, vacuum. Add PC, monitor. And CAD/CAM software. And you are looking at 10k.

I've done the first, and get good results with aluminum, brass, and both mild and stainless steel (although stainless is probably pushing the limit here). Your anecdote + my anecdote don't equal data, but your use of absolutes -- specifically "the only way" is incorrect. It can be done, and many have done exactly that.

Also, your magic $10k price-point mill doesn't include the cost of tooling, or workholding, or CAD/CAM software, etc. So now you're just reaching for anything to inflate the cost back up to your number.

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#277

Post by gurkendoktor »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #209
gurkendoktor wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are useless gimmicks, and in the worst case they can't be recycled. I didn't know of shapeways before, and I couldn't find a single useful thing on it. Are there more pragmatic 3D printing sites?

One person's useless gimmicks are another person's stylish nick-knacks. I can't see myself buying a 3D printer just for stuff like that, but the ability to accent my home in an individual fashion is not unappealing to me. Not everything is the world is purely functional.

I absolutely agree with your last sentence, but why can't it at least be sustainable? (It's really only the non-biodegradable stuff that I have a problem with)

I also know that people should have fun in their lives, and yet I can't help but facepalm at people happily driving SUVs around. In the grand scheme of things, the impact of each is tiny, but it confuses me that it's being celebrated by so many smart people. :/

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#278

Post by gurkendoktor »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #277
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person's useless gimmicks are another person's stylish nick-knacks. I can't see myself buying a 3D printer just for stuff like that, but the ability to accent my home in an individual fashion is not unappealing to me. Not everything is the world is purely functional.

I absolutely agree with your last sentence, but why can't it at least be sustainable? (It's really only the non-biodegradable stuff that I have a problem with) I also know that people should have fun in their lives, and yet I can't help but facepalm at people happily driving SUVs around. In the grand scheme of things, the impact of each is tiny, but it confuses me that it's being celebrated by so many smart people. :…

...and I think that this might simply be the case because 3D printing was oversold to me personally :)

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#280

Post by bborud »

tlrobinson wrote: post #258
bborud wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you'd want a 3D printer? Isn't that kinda obvious? To make parts for your next 3D printer of course! Joking aside: I have a few spare time projects where I am going to need some way of producing mechanical parts. For instance I am designing an integrated device for controlling the flow rate of dialysis fluid during peritoneal dialysis fluid exchange. I've been working on this for a while and have gone through man…

You joke, but I bought a MakerBot and pretty much the only things I've printed are "upgrades" for the printer itself.

Like there old russian saying goes: there is element of joke in every joke.

A friend of mine got a 3D printer and I think he spent the first few weeks printing upgrades to the printer itself. Then he started printing parts for his CNC machine. And right now he is building a really exciting-looking, large 3D printer from scratch using ... his 3D printer.

But he also prints parts for lots of other projects. Among them various DIY medical equipment that we have been designing together.

I think the biggest obstacle for putting 3D printers to good use is that people just are not used to having the capability to make physical objects. It is like when the first personal computers came on the market: people played around with them and in theory you could do useful things with them -- but programming was new to people. It took a good decade or so before computers were useful at home, but in that time they had served a much more important purpose: to make programming a relatively mainstream skill.

Designing mechanical objects is unfamiliar territory for most of us. Traditionally this has required really, really expensive, specialized software that up until now only professionals were into. Compare it to when digital photography went mainstream and companies like Adobe were too dumb to catch on -- I still hear people defend the exorbitant price of Photoshop with "oh, only professionals would want that kind of power". Which is utter nonsense.

I have to say that Autodesk have impressed me in this respect. Although their software lineup is extremely confusing at times they have released some really neat software for free. For instance I have been using Inventor Fusion lately and it is great. (I've also used Fusion 360, which is not so great because their intent seems to be to combine it with some cloud service, and that cloud service is very far from being usable. They probably saw Thingiverse and figured they wanted a piece of that action). But I think it is brilliant of them to make good tools available for the Mac -- the people you want to reach use Macs and Linux).

Also, designing physical objects requires skills that are not mainstream. I find myself looking at objects in a very new way. I try to understand how the shape is modeled, how it is supposed to deal with stress etc.

These are very exciting times. I wish I was 18 again.

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