What's the biggest issue 3D printing must overcome?

I was discussing this with a colleague of mine last night over a glass of scotch, and I told him I'd pose the question to you guys.

What do you guys and girls believe is the biggest issue that 3D printing must overcome before it will be in the majority of homes?

My answer was speed. They need to print at least 5 times faster than they do now. It's something that will take a lot of innovation to overcome but i truly believe we will see faster printers. He argued with me and said that people "need bigger garages". He doesn't think people will have 3D printers in their homes, but rather in their garages, thus requiring greater garage work space. He believe that SLA and SLS technology is the future and not FDM. He believes that larger printers will win out in the long run, once prices are greatly reduced.

We'd love to hear your input.

Donny

You'll see them in home mostly, not garages. Think about the early days of computers taking up an entire room, now they fit in your pocket, and on your wrist (Galaxy Gear, etc). When I think about the future of 3D printers, I visualize "FDM"-type printers using natural filament (or whatever the equivalent will be), with micro-particle ink droplets (think inkjet) being infused in the molten material during printing, for full color prints. Size probably won't change, afterall, you'll need it to be the size of the object to print, at minimum. I think we'll continue to see FDM, SLA, SLS alongside one another. Afterall, we have inkjet, laserjet, etc. No one technology needs to replace the other. One might just be preferred for different tasks / outcomes.

Atoff, the reason for most FDM printers being a garage machine rather than an office one is noise, fumes and childproofing. Granted, SLA is almost silent, and SLS keeps fumes to a minimum, but households with children will still have big problems with keeping either of these in their living space.

The closest look we get at the future of 3D printing is PolyJet printers like the ObJet lines from Stratasys or the ProJet line from 3D Systems. The problem with these is that the technology for PolyJet is locked behind layers of patents that won't expire for years, and neither company seems to have an entry level printer planned. Additionally, the PolyJet process is pretty much guaranteed to use proprietary material cartraiges no matter what competition does to the price of them in the future, meaning material prices will remain outrageous for them.

FDM, SLA, and SLS will remain the "peoples' printer" for the forseeable future, but barring a major game changer in either 3D Systems or Stratasys, the real future of 3D printing will remain in the boardroom for decades to come.

The biggest issue is the lack of a "killer app". People would have to have a good reason to dedicate the money, time and space to purchasing and operating a 3D printer in their homes, and it's hard to think of one at this point. Even if every family with young children bought one to print toys, for example, that still wouldn't be a majority of households, and there are good reasons why families with children would not want one in their houses, safety issues being one (as was pointed out above), and the space required being another.

Since the footprint of a printer is directly related to the size of the objects it can print - I've never seen an exception to this rule - it's hard to see how miniaturization would change the amount of space a 3d printer would require. The fact that so many people have 2D printers in their homes seems to have led some who should know better to analogize and predict that the same thing will happen with 3D printers, but while most people have the ability to create and the need to print out documents, reports, letters, or school themes, the number of people who can create 3D models and who need to print out small plastic objects is small and likely to remain so.

For that part of the population with the need for it, it seems likely that 3D-printing service bureaus will be the way that need will be fulfilled, rather than the purchase, installation, operation and maintenance of a 3D printer at home.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

Another way to look at the difference between 2D and 3D printers in the home is that if internet-based document printing services predated affordable and accurate document printers, then we would not likely see document printers in very many homes.

The main point of difference is that by the time it became practical to send files to a big centralized service, the printer had already become a normal (and cheap) addition to the household. Now that one-off customizations can be sent to a printing service practically instantly, the numbers stack up against buying a 3D printer for the home unless the buyer has an exceptional amount of stuff they want to make, or they want tight control of the files they print, or if they want to start their own local printing space for profit (which might become pretty common since small, local printing shops will have a moderate speed advantage over big, distant ones by virtue of shipping times).

Don't get me wrong, 3D printing is still going to be huge, there will be 3D printed goods in almost every home in America within five years, just not necessarily 3D printers themselves. Eventually printers themselves will be as common as the table saw, but those are very far from being an essential home appliance.

#1 Cost Reduction - for printer/material/maintenance
#2 Reliability - quality, usable parts with each print = less waste material
#3 Safety - fumes/hazardous liquid resins
#4 Software - easy to design software - already available and more to come - plenty of freeware with video tutorials

Bennyboo, I think you hit the nail right on the head. The only one you missed is speed. It needs to get a lot faster. I'm sure it will take a new innovation in order to get us there, but imagine having something made in a matter of minutes.

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Originally Posted by donny

I was discussing this with a colleague of mine last night over a glass of scotch, and I told him I'd pose the question to you guys.

What do you guys and girls believe is the biggest issue that 3D printing must overcome before it will be in the majority of homes?

My answer was speed. They need to print at least 5 times faster than they do now. It's something that will take a lot of innovation to overcome but i truly believe we will see faster printers. He argued with me and said that people "need bigger garages". He doesn't think people will have 3D printers in their homes, but rather in their garages, thus requiring greater garage work space. He believe that SLA and SLS technology is the future and not FDM. He believes that larger printers will win out in the long run, once prices are greatly reduced.

We'd love to hear your input.

Donny

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I agree, but before speed needs to come consistency and quality and most importantly reliability. You need to be able to press print and be absolutely guaranteed everytime of an identical print, not the odd curl of plastic here or strange extrusion.

But, in improving all of the above they will of course work on speed, so it will be a natural progression of technology, not unlike Dot Matrix getting faster and faster and more reliable (less feeder jams etc) and then moving onto bubble and inkjet printers which themselves improved in quality and speed over their respective lifecycles.

3D printing will evolve and is evolving in the same manner, the beauty is with this technology - we are not waiting on the HP's or Canons or Lexmarks of the world to push the technology forward. For all we know, in this day and age the advancement in 3D printing we all hope for may very well come from the genius sitting in his garage googling and tinkering away on the next improvement in 3D printing.

I think with FDM printing we need better quality or some sort of auto smoothing feature. SLA prints look really good, but it's a pain messing with resins. If FDM prints could look just as good as SLA, then we would be onto something. The progress I have personally seen in the last 2 years have been remarkable, however the quality of FDM prints ave not improved all that dramatically. I do look for this to change in the next couple of years though as competition is certainly heating up.