What Is Preventing 3D Printing From Going Mainstream?

Here's an interesting article exploring the possible reasons as to why 3D printing has not gone mainstream quite yet. We are close to a tipping point within the market, but several things such as price, speed, design, and availability are holding it back. Within the next 18 months to 6 years it could happen. The article will explore what still needs to be accomplished. The article is here: http://3dprint.com/2827/mainstream-3...ting-adoption/

I would love to hear your feedback on it. When do you think 3D printing will go mainstream, meaning that the majority of the population has used a 3D printer or 3D printing service in one way or another?

It feels like i've read that article dozens of times now..

The only thing that I agree with is the ease of use. Speed and other things will happen in leaps and bounds, just like dot matrix were overrun by bubblejets and in a shorter time frame.

The problems with ease of use is the steps from export to print - it's not the creation process. We are seeing great programs your kids can pick up and sculpt with like autocads 123dSculpt on the Ipad - free tools like tinkercad , or 123dCreature.. there are quite a few that are truly aimed at the non-technical user that wants to spend their time being creative and not solving problems.

Example, my youngest daughter who's 6 can model something on the Ipad and have it ready to print in a matter of minutes. She starts with a virtual ball of clay and manipulates it like she would a real piece of clay, a few simple tools is all she needs and its amazing what you can actually do with this program (123dsculpt)

The problem is - I need to upload that to Autocad, then stuff around on my PC, then check it in a slicer etc etc. I have been using computers my entire life so even from the get go these things don't seem foreign to me but for people who are not complete nerds :p it can be daunting to actually get your print to that physical creation stage. The process needs to be streamlined, OFF the cloud. Some of the meshes I generate in Zbrush can exceed well beyond 300-400mb in size, and there is no way I am uploading that to the cloud everytime I want to get it sorted out. Luckily Zbrush can fix topology errors so you can avoid netfabb or similar - but there we are again, back to the same problem. the hassle from getting it from the exported stage into the printer to print - and with all this movement to cloud it's actually really bad for people who model large objects and have a slow internet.

I may be old fashioned but I have to say I am not a fan of cloud based services. I much prefer solutions available @home.

You don't depend on the combined reliability of your internet provider and your cloud service provider.

Regarding availability of drawings, you will notice that more and more online 3D model libraries (especially the chargeable ones) require proof of print before display. 3d design is something anyone can do. Designing models that can be produced however require very basic checks but they are very important ones. Perhaps these requirements can be integrated in next CAD software updates (sculpteo already does wall thickness checks before validating your models for production for instance).

I concur with LambdaFF. I dispise cloud based services. I too think that perhaps its because I am old school. I hope 3D printing doesn't go entirely in the cloud.

As for going mainstream. The simple reason is that it is still too expensive, 3D printers are not exactly cost/time efficient. If I need a replacement part, I go to the store. I'm not going to print it out for 14 hours. Once 3D printing can hit a point where we can purchase SLA printers for under $400, and print at speeds that are quite a bit faster, that's when I expect it to go mainstream. Not a moment sooner though.