Quote Originally Posted by ralphzoontjens View Post
3D Printers should be used sparingly and wisely....
Yea, I couldn't agree more. Sure, 3d printers are fantastic and I'm so thrilled we have them. When I was in school getting my degree in Industrial Design, 3d printers were decades away from being even invented. So we had no choice to learn other manufacturing techniques. We spent a great deal of time in the shop building our prototype models by hand with wood, plex, plaster and all kind of other methods. We could not 3d print part, we had to cast them or mill them on a milling machine. To this day, those shop skills have been some of the greatest life skills I ever aquired. I fear that modern ID students are spending more time printing than fabricating by hand. And I'm not sure that's a good thing.

There are 1000's of other fabrication methods that aren't going away. 3d printing will never eliminate the vast majority of manufacturing methods. Knowing when to use it to take advantage of its unique capabilities is what's required and what makes it such a great addition to the toolkit.