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Hi everyone, I am a Junior student studying in Hong kong, also a 3d printing enthusiast. Currently I am doing a personal project on 3d printing. My goal is to promote the 3d printing technology, and I would really want to know what are the purposes of a 3d printer??, specifically in the eyes of a average household. Is it just for business or household? What are some reasons why an average person may want to own a 3d printer?

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Hey Bruce,

3D printers can be used for both business purposes and as a hobby. The main purpose is to create items with only minimal material used. In industry products are made cheaply with mass production due to techniques such as injection moulding to ensure there is no material wastage. These moulds are far too expensive for ā€˜one of productsā€™ and other methods can also be costly like cuttin, sanding and finishing materials like wood, plastic or metal items. 3D printing allows people to create new ideas/ products, construct low cost prototypes and find replacement parts at a low cost.

Custom designs that can be ā€˜one of a kindā€™ and rather cheap construction of items makes 3D printing desirable

Hope this helps. If you have further questions just ask.

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It is amazing how much use a 3D printer is at home. Of course, I do my own design work, but there is so many design files you can download as well.

For a few examples: I built an attachment for tying two wire shelves together (so one doesnā€™t fall down again). I build an enclosure for my Pine64 that is my new streaming system for the TV. Cell phone stand, mount for an antenna (OTA HD TV antenna in attic), replacement pointer for a weigh scale, book ends and other things.

People also use them for making toys for their kids (until the kids start making their own). RPC gamers are creating miniatures. People are creating costume parts. The possibilities are endless. As the price of printers drops and quality and speed increases, more printers will be showing up in peopleā€™s houses. Itā€™s another manufacturing revolution.

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Bruce,

An average person wonā€™t have as much use for a 3D printer as a business will. While the price is coming down, and you can print tons of toys/gadgets from pre-made models online (thingiverse, myminifactory, pinshape, etc.), if you truly want to make things for yourself, you have to learn CAD programs. This is one of the biggest bottlenecks to 3D printing really breaking into the consumer market, in my opinion. People see these really cool models they can print, and how people are using them to print replacements for all sorts of home appliances, even car parts and prosthetics, but donā€™t realize the amount of modeling time and software experience it takes to make said models. Without any CAD knowledge or the time/desire to learn new software, a 3D printer is really just a toy that has very limited use.

That being said, if someone is willing to learn some new tricks, they have tons of options and 3D printing opens a lot of doors for them. Free software, like Blender and Onshape, when combined with YouTube and Udemy, allow for makers to learn to model just about anything from home for free (or fairly low cost with Udemy).

Businesses benefit significantly from 3D printing due to reduction in prototyping times and cost. Traditionally, an engineer would model a design then send it to a shop to be fabricated and had to wait for the fabricated model to come back before making any edits to the design. With a 3D printer, you can mock up a design and have a physical model in your hands within hours instead of days.

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Iā€™ve been wanting to get a 3D printer for the past several years.

I needed to determine how much use I would get out of the printer as I did not want it sitting around gathering dust.

As Bruce said in a previous post, you need to learn CAD.

Iā€™ve been learning to draw over the past 3 years.

Iā€™ve been using printing services like 3D HUBS to get my designs printed.

Once my drawing skills became sufficient and efficient, I keep coming up with 3D printing projects on a quite regular basis.

My designs are small, around the house, automotive, gardening and bicycle repair and invention parts.

As a result of my 3D printing experiences so far, Iā€™m planning on purchasing a 3D printer for home use.

Iā€™m still unsure if my 3D printer purchase will happen this year or next, but Iā€™m getting very close to purchase time.

ā€¦

I hope this helps you in some manner.

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Like your shelf scenario, my primary use is repair and sometimes prototyping. Steam valve on my Gaggia Classic snapped off, made a new one in Tinkercad and printed it off in polycarbonate in about two hours flat. An official replacement would have cost me Ā£20. One thing I think thatā€™s an even bigger bottleneck is the price of a decent scanner - if someone could just scan their favourite mug and print twenty more we wouldnā€™t have to rely on CAD so much IMO.

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Hereā€™s that handle if anyone likes their coffee with steamed milk. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1671472

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As an average user with a 3d printer, at the moment I just print up stuff I can find models for. I can at best resize them using the slicer. Iā€™ve found a bunch of neat stuff and mostly print for the sake of making stuff - I pulled 40 smileys off my printer last night for tokens represent civilians in Infinity. I think the biggest thing thatā€™s need to be pushed is that CAD abilities are insanely useful for making anything more than what you find online. It doesnā€™t help when youā€™re reading a 3d printing blog and the guy says ā€œoh and then I whipped up this nifty bracket/holder/whosawhatsit in 15minsā€ which makes it sound easy - if you read the guys bio you find out heā€™s being doing CAD stuff for 15 years. Which I suppose itā€™s like computer science at high school. 15 years ago I got a crash course in Visual Basic, now Iā€™d imagine itā€™s significantly more than an introduction for 14 y.oā€™s.

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This is unrelated to the original post, but how many of you guys would be interested in learning some CAD skills using free software (OnShape) and videos I post here? Like make talk posts once a week going over different skills starting from very basic to advanced? The comments can serve as kind of a forum.

Iā€™ve been kicking around the idea of doing a Udemy series for CAD, and think doing this first would be a great starting point. Yes, no, maybe?

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It is true that the CAD programs are not keeping up with the speed that 3D Printing is evolving. But as CAD gets better and easier, this will change. Right now, yes, Iā€™ll agree that most people would find a printer of limited utility. Remember when computers were thought of that way?

Take a look at some of the new devices like Microsoftā€™s HoloLens if you want to see where 3D is going in the computing world. Their design program allows the user to walk around a model and push and prod it to change a design. Sure, HoloLens is still only available to developers and expensive, but that will change too.

So, I think, as the CAD gets easier, 3D printers will be much more useful and be in more homes.

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Iā€™d be interested, as long as I get to ask stupid questions. Iā€™m sure thereā€™s a bunch of other people who would be if you started it up.

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No such as thing as stupid questions when youā€™re learning something new!

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As a personal request - if youā€™re doing a tutorial, please make sure that there is good closed captioning. Iā€™m happy to say that most of the existing OnShape tutorials have good captions and the ones produced by the OnShape team have transcripts available as well. Yay.

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The OnShape team is fantastic, and really do care about their users! This is definitely easy to implement and I myself get annoyed when videos donā€™t include this.