Professor Studies At-Home 3D Printing Usage

Open source 3D printing advocate and Michigan Technological professor Dr. Joshua Pearce wanted to figure out how cost-effective and practical it was for the average consumer to invest in a desktop 3D printer and use it at home. In a study, titled "Emergence Of Home Manufacturing in the Developed World: Return on Investment for Open-Source 3-D Printers," that was recently published in MDPI's international open access Technologies, he was able to determine that when consumers buy a low-cost, open source 3D printer and use it at home to create household items, over a five-year period, they can actually earn an almost 1,000% return on their investment. To help him compile research data, Dr. Pearce tapped an undergraduate student, majoring in both engineering and materials science but inexperienced in 3D printing, to use a low-cost 3D printer right out of the box, without receiving any instruction first. She 3D printed 26 items over a six-month period, and the results may shock you. Read more at 3DPrint.com: http://3dprint.com/165246/mtu-at-home-3d-printing-study/

http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...Pearce-MTU.png

I am curios how you're able to design the parts you want to produce and the effort behind that necessary action. Is there a CAD-like software available for these printers that's usable for people with only little technical or engineering knowledge?

lots and lots and lots of free cad programs.
And lots and lots of threads round here about them :-)
Here's the latest: http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...558#post105558

But why buy a $1500 machine, when there are so many for under $600.
That gives you return on your investment in around a year.

Given that most of what I print is stuff I've designed myself because it's not possible to buy it - I'd say my return was much faster than that. Given the alternative would have been to pay someone else to design and print it. Very expensive.
Also some of what I print means I don't have to buy a new thing because I've fixed the old thing, that saves even more money.