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

[Geoff]

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

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.