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Comment by hospadam | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: what can average people use 3d printers for realistically? Every time I read more - I want one. But then I try and figure out what kind of thing I'd print. Besides custom chess pieces and my own Legos - am I missing anything? Or are they just for engineers, "builders", and architects.

I know they're expensive now - but lets assume they come down to ~$500 (price point where tablets took off).

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When computers first came out and you found out about the internet, you might have wanted one. And you could say, hey, that's awesome, but at most, I can chat and email with other nerds. I can't figure out what else I'd do with it. I don't think anyone could have predicted twitter, facebook, and wikipedia back in 1980's.

Same with mobile phones. I remember when they came out in the 90's, the common use case cited was that when you walked by, starbucks would message you a coupon based on your location based services, or that you can leave location based messages for people to discover, like a cache-box. Turns out, people want to instagram, foursquare, and uber.

I think it is the same with a 3D printer. People often cite that you can replace parts around your home. Or other people might say it's only for makers and tinkerers. I don't think that'll be the main use case. It's so new that we can only make analogies of what we'd do with it. But in actuality, it would probably enable new kinds of behavior.

pretty sure the major selling point of mobile phones was to have a phone, that was mobile. They existed in various forms before the 90s, but were far too bulky and expensive for popular use; it was the reduction in those factors which resulted in the original uptake wave.

Not to mention that they were backwards compatible (and useful) even if not everyone had one - they were still able to call/be called from landline phones, albeit expensive.

I should have been more precise. I should have said smartphones with location-based services, as that was really what I was making the comparison to how people thought its use case was going to be one thing, but it was actually another.

I'm with you, but I have a cousin who makes a similar comment with a slight difference. He says if he could get one that could print very hard materials (for mechanical parts to be used in engines, I believe) he'd consider one around $500, just for convenience.

He tells me such printers that can do that definitely exist, but they're just too costly to bother with.

He's the kind of guy with a spare building out back full of broken things people give him. They collect for five months, and then in the span of one he realizes he's accumulated enough stuff to fix a few projects, and churns them out. It's funny how he'll have a hole in the wall of the building, a pontoon boat, and a car or two out there... And then a week later all the vehicles have been fixed, returned, and he's now got a new wall, paint job, refrigerator, and fan for his building.

Any idea what those printers use? I've heard of C&C machines carving hard parts out of blocks of metal, but 3D printing them would be really cool.

There are 3d printers that use a laser to sinter metal powders. It's hard to make that as strong as cast metal parts, but it can certainly make parts that are harder than the extruded plastic that the more affordable 3d printers work with.

http://production3dprinters.com/slm/direct-metal-slm

They use small layers of metal particles fused with lasers.

There exist metal 3D printing technologies, but usually the mechanical properties of the finished material are not as good as an equivalent cast version, although can be as good as about 80%, in terms of Youngs Modulus.

At the cheap end of metal 3D printing, shapeways.com will make you stuff out of stainless steel at $8.00/cm^3. More b2b companies will provide more detailed mechanical info about their process and the results.

A site close to my hobby interests is http://rocketmoonlighting.blogspot.com , where this chap has printed a rocket engine, complete with internal regenerative cooling channels (where you keep the combustion chamber and nozzle cool by pumping the fuel in channels around it before it gets injected in the chamber). I think it's wonderful, and is a reason I'm excited by 3D printing. Also, being able to print Printed Circuit Boards, i.e. printing copper tracks onto a fibreglass substrate, would be a serious boon.

I think similar questions were asked of the early PCs. Specifically 'personal' and 'home use' seemed absurd.

That being said, I have no idea what I'd do with a 3d printer.

Early PC's had word processing and spreadsheets. They were immediately useful. Checkout WordPerfect, pfs:Write, Lotus 123, and VisiCalc on Wikipedia.

To be more accurate, and pertinent, early adopters of PCs wrote software that made the PC useful. The PC did not arrive with VisiCalc, or even an OS.

We are still at Altair II level - where looking at a wooden box with switches on it makes Lolcats quite hard to imagine.

Just sail west.

Higher-end 3d printers are already heavily used for prototyping and architectural design work, which puts them about on par with very early computers (I'm not referring to home PCs here).

Your comparison is wrong. For 3D printers, we're still at the hobby-ist level, trying to move to consumer. That means, we're still in the Altair trying to move to Apple IIe phase. During that time in computer's history, VisiCalc, WordPerfect, and Lotus123 hadn't been invented.

I make my own modular synthesizers, for fun and creativity.

For me, 3D printing represents a chance to build a synth panel of my absolute dreams. Not just knobs, but levers, dials, and so on. The recent revelation that Teenage Engineering were giving away the 3D models of their synth knob accessories was really interesting, to me at least.

So, there's that.

Also, I make model airplanes, RC stuff. I have a small list of about 12 things I want to be able to 3d print myself, instead of purchasing - engine mounts, aileron/rudder assemblies, custom frames for mounting a camera, and so on.

So I'm just waiting to get the space (and a bit more $$$) before I set up with a 3D printer in my workshop somewhere, and start making my own parts and things. In the meantime, a local hackershop provides access to this wonderful tech ..

As far as I can figure out:

- various "cool looking art pieces" including interesting looking costume jewelry.

- "action figures" without moving parts/transformation. Possibly for series that don't have licenced models, or fan models or just being cheap.

- Useful things without moving parts such as phone/tablet stands, photo frames, food holders, etc.

- individual moving parts- such as centrifuges, cogs, perhaps for some sort of rube goldberg machines

I think a lot of people are hoping both that the technology improves to allow more types of creations and that a successful market for printers will lead to a healthy blueprint market which will think up new innovative uses.

There's also another: parts for 3D printers or upgrades.

But I think the common theme is stuff that you would never find in a Target or Walmart, because the cost of production is high enough that people wouldn't have taken the risk to make wacky and wild things.

Just as with blogs and the democratization of online publishing or youtube with online videos, you get lots of wacky and wild blogs/videos (or as some would say, weird crap), but out of the weird crap are lots of gems. You'd never get Charlie bit my finger, Cat videos, etc greenlighted on HBO, and yet, Youtube has demonstrated those things entertains millions.

I think the same will happen with these objects. At first, there will be a lot of copying of things that we already know, like replacement parts, shower rings, art pieces. Things that traditional manufacturing is better at. But once we discover what 3D printing is really good at, we'll probably see objects for uses we've never seen before.

For "Action Figures" read also "Miniatures And Board Game Pieces". 3D printing will be a boon for anyone developing their own board games, and a nightmare for wargaming companies like Games Workshop that survive by selling things that can now be 3D printed.

Your assumption has already really come to pass - my school's printer club is building >30 of them with a $250 price point. Assembly/labor cost should turn out to be trivial, add 25% handling cost, add another 25% profit margin, and you're still under $400 for a device that certainly rivals most $1000-5,000 commercial models. Such a cool machine: foolproof mechanism and folds up to ~8.5x11x4" but has the same build area as most RepRap Prusa Mendels.

"... Honest question: what can 'average people' use 3d printers for realistically? ..."

8088/DOS 1.0 were useful as personal computers. Right now 3D printers don't justify their cost--why buy a $5k printer when you can just contract someone else to print for you?

Along those lines, 3D printers seem to be in the "mainframe" era. I.e., it'll bring down costs for commodities such as toys and cheap plastic parts (like mainframes brought down costs for accounting-like work), but they're years away off from changing up day-to-day life, even for nerds interested in them.

Does printing shelving braces count as useful? I printing out two, stuck a piece of plywood on top, and now I have a shelf that supports 20+lbs.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying they don't have uses. But being able to print shelving braces isn't the killer app I'm waiting for.

I thought that 3d printers were "soft". - what is the strength of the material ? What printer did you use?

It's printed from ABS plastic, the same plastic legos are made out of. It melts at 220C. The strength of the piece is both contingent on its shape, material, and its in-fill pattern. I've never done controlled experiments with the pieces, So I can't really give you a specific measure. However, with certain parts with certain shapes, I've been able to stand on it, or make wall hooks from it. I used the Makerbot replicator.

Wait a minute.. people pay good money for Cherry Mx Keycaps, can't you do those?

I think I should be able to, though I've never tried.

Strong wink wink

"... why buy a $5k printer when you can just contract someone else to print for you? ..."

I didn't add making a business out of it, good point. I think the cost would be made back if you use the printer to produce custom packages for electronics like say Ninja Blocks (co-founder Marcus Schappi) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ninja/ninja-blocks-conne... or if you're an artist like Micah Ganske http://micahganske.com/index.html who wants total control to experiment, build then create limited edition builds.

I think the greatest use case isn't printing stand-alone objects, but rather replacement parts for existing products. Say, your laptop screen hinge breaks. Instead of ordering a new one from the manufacturer, you could print your own replacement at home.

The problem with that is that the current tech can't print anything with material that has any sort of reasonable mechanical properties - the stuff is quite fragile.

That's very true. But for smaller parts or cosmetic parts 3D printers can already be used to print replacements, as evidenced in a recent HN post[1].

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4589528

That won't be the case until 3D modeling tools get much easier to use. Current 3D modeling tools are either expensive, or hard to use. In addition, most average people aren't versed in thinking about objects in 3D in their minds. There are software like Matterport, where you can scan things, but until you can scan the broken parts, and "glue" it together in software easily, this won't happen.

It's like saying the greatest use case for computers is that you can program your own accounting program to do your own taxes. No. I went to the computer history museum, and they had a model of "easy to use" computer for moms in the kitchen. What was on the controls? Loading and unloading registers. They were completely off the mark on that one.

Chances are, it'll enable makers to offer services that have a real world component that other people can order easily, and enable new kinds of behavior.

I know several kids who have, on their own, discovered and learned how to use SketchUp, without anything like access to a 3d printer as motivation - just a fascination with the idea of building virtual objects. It's a severely limited tool, but that's not enough of a turn-off to prevent them from learning the basics of 3d modeling. Since completed models can be readily shared amongst those who use 3d printers, I think it's safe to say that a lack of competent 3d modelers won't be a limiting factor for the growth of 3d printing. And as 3d printers become more affordable, the market for better affordable CAD tools with absolutely explode, with SketchUp racing to add more advanced features, and companies like SolidWorks trying to find a way to release an affordable product without completely cannibalizing their existing business model.

I don't doubt the kids will pick it up quickly, just as kids picked up programming in the computer's early days.

But to the originally stated use case of fixing broken parts, I don't think that will happen as kids aren't usually running around fixing parts. And for the rest of us, only some of us have enough umph to learn how to 3D model. The vast majority need something easier to make the fixing broken parts scenario a reality.

However, I guess I can see a scenario where older people hire kids to fix parts, like how older people hired kids to do websites in the 90's.

The internet exists though. So all it takes is a handful of enthusiastic folks who are good at creating 3D models uploading those so that anyone in the world can use them.

The laptop hinge is probably metal.

The top to my blender is made of two materials, a very soft pliable plastic that is food safe and a ridget clear plastic for the handle.

These two very simple examples have at least three very different materials with very different properties.

It is going to be one very expensive printer that could work with lots of different materials. Even if it could be made cheaply, small batches of each material in custom colors and sizes would also be very expensive.

All the discussion, press, headlines- they are almost all predicated on the improvement of 3d printers to the degree of being able to print a quality replica of anything you can think of.

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