Rather than more effective, I'd wish 3D printing were faster. My main grip with 3D printing stuff is the time it takes - and, depending on the printer, the noise it makes.
Most consumer FDM printers are using 0.4mm nozzles. I've found that 0.6mm is more suitable for general use, and that cuts print time by ~50% - it lays down 50% more material, which accounts for a 33% reduction, but the fact that it results in fewer discrete motions accounts for the rest.
When I'm printing something bigger than, say, 100mm^3, I switch out to a 1.0mm nozzle. Larger objects generally don't require such fine detail in all dimensions.
As for noise, my primary printer is a modified Creative3D Elf CoreXY, and it sits about 5' from my computer. It's quiet enough that it doesn't interrupt my flow. TMC2209 drivers and StealthChop go a long way.
IMO it is a stunning success if your biggest pain point is around the delivery time of the parts.
(Not necessarily disagreeing with you - it would be better if the parts were made faster - just lending my perspective).
Even faster would be better, but print speed often isn't the bottleneck, solving engineering problems often is.
That said, of course faster would be better.
I would love to see automatic print failure detection (with a camera, even a micro camera at the nozzle).
Figuring out the correct settings for unknown plastic seems like it would be hard to solve, but perhaps there’s some base material properties that could be determined automatically which might help. I’ve noticed that the Prusa 3D printer software has a sizable database of filament brands in its material settings section. I’d be curious how foolproof those settings all are for each brand of filament. But of course a manufacturer could change formulation at any time...
I solve this problem by only buying one of two brands and keeping custom settings for them.
I started my career in CNC machining. People always thought that meant software did everything for me, but no I had to choose tool sizes, spindle RPM, feed rates, depth of cut, etc. The CNC is not a magic machine that makes parts for you, it’s a tool. So I guess I’m a bit biased for thinking that current 3D printers are super useful tools that require a certain amount of operator competency. You cannot put any random filament in and expect good results, and actually that might be a hard problem to solve on the back end. Much easier to pay attention to what brand you order and feed in good quality stuff.
But idk. You’re right that they’re fiddly AF and I’m just used to it. If they could solve those problems it would surely help adoption.
Other factors that affect print quality are: filament diameter consistency (must be very precise), absolute filament diameter (must be known), nozzle wear (changes over time), environmental humidity and air temperature, and air flow. Michigan, Florida, and Arizona might require different settings. And then part geometry matters a lot. Someone up the comment thread mentioned curling. This can happen even with perfect temperature settings if part geometry is not ideal. Once I was totally unable to print a large rectangular part without curling until I replaced the 0.4mm nozzle with a 0.8mm nozzle. The thicker layers eliminated layer delamination that allowed the curling.
It really takes a bit of learning and experimentation to get things working sometimes. It’s not a perfect process by any means.
You probably already know about it, but Spaghetti Detective is pretty decent at detecting print failures - although as you say it'd be great to have this built in (and more reliable...)
But yes, a cheap undeniably safe resin (there’s no MSDS on cheap resins) would be a boon! The sticky toxic mess my SLA printer leaves behind is a real issue.
its still several orders of magnitude faster and cheaper than sending a schematic out to a traditional manufacturing prototyping shop, at least for parts that are appropriate for this particular method of manufacturing
My main gripe is with the weakness along layer lines.