It's already there working 24 hours a day in many makers home. Why isn't it taking the world faster ? This is a classic chicken and egg problem which is being solved daily via the market invisible hands. As a maker, what reduced my printing usage a few years back was the cost of the filament (which is now cheaper but can still be reduced by a 10x factor), and the noise of the machine (which can be made now noiseless). As a user, what hold me back is that the use cases aren't so numerous in a world where everything is factory made. But as soon as you decide to customize your environment, it becomes the missing component which allows you to adapt two objects together. As a 3d-designer, software wasn't really made for 3d printing. But now with OpenSCAD, objects can be made from source code, making any hobby programmer vastly more productive for the most current usage of 3d printing than an expert 3d-designer.

That's just because plastic trinkets aren't what they are useful for. For useful applications, like prototyping, repairs, bespoke items and so on they are going strong and still getting cheaper and better.

I'm hoping we'll have some affordable SLA printers fairly soon.

In the consumer/household space, sure. 3D printing is huge in prototyping and hardware R&D though. High-end printers are even good enough for mass production runs now.

Adidas breaks the mould with 3D-printed performance footwear

https://www.adidas-group.com/en/media/news-archive/press-rel...

And it's not all plastic

The patents for laser sintering are running out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering

my colleague at my Uni 3D printing society showed me a fully working planetary gear unit about 30mm x 30mm x 30mm yesterday, made from titanium and printed in one pass with zero assembly.

It's coming

My understanding is that 3d printing has greatly transformed product design work. You can do a lot of fast prototyping that used to take a lot of manual labour and turn around designs much faster. Then once the design is finalized you build your injection mold for mass production.

But I agree that desktop 3d printing certainly didn't transform much in the home.

The jury is still out on this one. 3D printing is used for some pretty serious industrial items, like rocket engines. Ultimately I think it's going to replace milling in most applications because you can print shapes you can't mill.

That was the main motivation why i never bought one. I had never good enough ideas to buy it for that price.

And that you can pretty much find anything you can think of on amazon & competitors. I really wanted to design and 3d print something, but it took me several years to find something I couldn't just order for under $5 on amazon. And even then I could have done something good enough and cheaper with lego bricks!

Tesla and other companies are 3D printing metal engines and parts for rockets. 3D printing is amazing and in full effect. It just hasn't become available for the consumer to print whatever they want.

I believe the problem is the sort of plastic used. You need structural strength in most things and filament pieces melted together is just not cutting it.

After reading replies I guess I should have been more specific. Early on there was some hype around the idea that 3D printers would become as ubiquitous in homes as paper printers once were. I bought in to that a little bit, but it seems like that is (and probably always was) tremendously unlikely.

I feel like that technology needs more time. Give it a few more decades, a couple of breakthroughs and lots of small incremental advances and we might yet see something resembling the Feed from Diamond Age.

I don't get it. 3D printing is massive, and is shaping our future. How did it not pan out?

little plastic shapes? no.

but big metal industrial parts that were impossible to machine might be a thing? I confess no knowledge as to their real commercial success so far.