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What would you do with a 3d printer in your house? For manufacturing and business use, it kind of makes sense to me. But personal use? After you print off a few cups and toy soldier molds, what would you want to do with a 3d printer?

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You print out the things you weren't able to imagine, but other people were.

3D printers allow objects that don't need the economy of scale to work in its favor to come into being. If you're to compare 3D printed objects to things you can buy at Walmart, then of course, in most specs the 3D printer would lose. However, what a 3D printer allows you to make are all the things that you can't get at Walmart, either because the volume wasn't big enough to get it made, or people that could imagine didn't know how to get something made.

Any examples?

Some personal favorites I ordered off of Shapeways:

http://www.shapeways.com/model/24470/gyroid.html

http://www.shapeways.com/model/335195/the-code-prize-fire-co...

http://www.shapeways.com/model/683524/super-mario-mobius-str...

These are useless gimmicks, and in the worst case they can't be recycled. I didn't know of shapeways before, and I couldn't find a single useful thing on it. Are there more pragmatic 3D printing sites?

One person's useless gimmicks are another person's stylish nick-knacks. I can't see myself buying a 3D printer just for stuff like that, but the ability to accent my home in an individual fashion is not unappealing to me.

Not everything is the world is purely functional.

Not everything is the world is purely functional.

Absolutely agreed. I love a stylish nick-knacks and neat design details as much as the next person but there seems to be a disconnect in the 3D printing world. On the one hand everybody talks about the revolutionary effect of home 3d printers, and on the other hand the only examples people have ever shown me are children's toys and stylish nick-knacks. Where are the at least mostly functional examples?

Here's an example that is not sexy but is at least functional: http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/940-how-to-repair-a-b...

Also note Clay Shirky's belief that the most disruptive tech initially appears to be a toy to most.

I have to admit, I have the same problem with 3d printing and think that some of the newer materials (stainless steel for example) will really improve the functional designs, especially as the cost decreases.

Disclaimer: I work at Shapeways

I absolutely agree with your last sentence, but why can't it at least be sustainable? (It's really only the non-biodegradable stuff that I have a problem with)

I also know that people should have fun in their lives, and yet I can't help but facepalm at people happily driving SUVs around. In the grand scheme of things, the impact of each is tiny, but it confuses me that it's being celebrated by so many smart people. :/

...and I think that this might simply be the case because 3D printing was oversold to me personally :)

Since it enables you to make things you can't imagine, lots of people will make a large variety of things--a long tail of objects. For any subset of examples that people give you, it's easy to dismiss it as gimmicky. You'll need to find your own subset that means something to you.

Thanks for posting this, cschmidt! Those are some of my favorite Shapeways products as well :D

Disclaimer: I work for shapeways

http://www.thingiverse.com/ has models you can download and print. Lens caps and earbud-wrappers are popular.

If you want to print out things you weren't able to imagine, but other people were - then it's an argument for not getting a 3D printer but having it printed at a 3d-printing service; it will be cheaper, higher quality, less hassle, and more options for materials/techniques than a single printer can provide.

Somewhat. It depends on what you value. There are other considerations. If price is important to you, but time is not, it's cheaper to have a home desktop printer. 3D printing services are quite expensive. The size of the object also affects your decision. The larger the object, the more economic it is to print it yourself.

If price is less of a consideration, but time is more important, then you may find it's better to use a 3D printed service, so you don't have to maintain the machine. Or if you don't print very often. Or the object you want to print is relatively small, so it doesn't break your wallet.

The advantages you cite, such as higher quality and less hassle, will diminish, given the pace and directions for improvement of the current generation of 3D printers. I believe different materials and hence printing techniques, will remain a differentiator of online printing services for the foreseeable future.

Why you'd want a 3D printer? Isn't that kinda obvious? To make parts for your next 3D printer of course!

Joking aside: I have a few spare time projects where I am going to need some way of producing mechanical parts. For instance I am designing an integrated device for controlling the flow rate of dialysis fluid during peritoneal dialysis fluid exchange. I've been working on this for a while and have gone through many designs. Mostly as a learning exercise.

I think that in a few years it will be more common for people to make simple objects in their home. Brackets, mounts, adapters etc. I'm not sure if a lot of people will necessarily be involved in designing parts, but through the wonder that is the internet: you'll have vast repositories of ready made designs that can be printed.

You joke, but I bought a MakerBot and pretty much the only things I've printed are "upgrades" for the printer itself.

Like there old russian saying goes: there is element of joke in every joke.

A friend of mine got a 3D printer and I think he spent the first few weeks printing upgrades to the printer itself. Then he started printing parts for his CNC machine. And right now he is building a really exciting-looking, large 3D printer from scratch using ... his 3D printer.

But he also prints parts for lots of other projects. Among them various DIY medical equipment that we have been designing together.

I think the biggest obstacle for putting 3D printers to good use is that people just are not used to having the capability to make physical objects. It is like when the first personal computers came on the market: people played around with them and in theory you could do useful things with them -- but programming was new to people. It took a good decade or so before computers were useful at home, but in that time they had served a much more important purpose: to make programming a relatively mainstream skill.

Designing mechanical objects is unfamiliar territory for most of us. Traditionally this has required really, really expensive, specialized software that up until now only professionals were into. Compare it to when digital photography went mainstream and companies like Adobe were too dumb to catch on -- I still hear people defend the exorbitant price of Photoshop with "oh, only professionals would want that kind of power". Which is utter nonsense.

I have to say that Autodesk have impressed me in this respect. Although their software lineup is extremely confusing at times they have released some really neat software for free. For instance I have been using Inventor Fusion lately and it is great. (I've also used Fusion 360, which is not so great because their intent seems to be to combine it with some cloud service, and that cloud service is very far from being usable. They probably saw Thingiverse and figured they wanted a piece of that action). But I think it is brilliant of them to make good tools available for the Mac -- the people you want to reach use Macs and Linux).

Also, designing physical objects requires skills that are not mainstream. I find myself looking at objects in a very new way. I try to understand how the shape is modeled, how it is supposed to deal with stress etc.

These are very exciting times. I wish I was 18 again.

One popular use is newly designed custom Rubik's Cube type puzzles. In all sorts of polyhedral shapes that go way beyond cubes. There's a thriving forum at twistypuzzles.com with all sorts of new inventions that can be realized quickly with 3D printing.

Some examples:

http://www.shapeways.com/model/56260/crazy-comet.html

http://www.shapeways.com/model/138720/icosaix-read-instructi...

http://www.shapeways.com/model/184114/constellation-six.html

Custom miniatures for D&D night!

I could even see custom modeling my own miniatures for other games, either tabletop RPGs like D&D or wargames like Warhammer or any of the others.

I can see how it has application to very small micro needs like this, but seriously....is this what all the 3d printing hype is about? With all the hype I read from VCs, you'd think 3d printers are the next personal computer. I'm really trying to make the connection, but it feels more like the venture capital IPO machine is in full force just to crank up the IRR on their funds.

I think that it could be very plausible to say that "it feels more like the venture capital IPO machine is in full force just to crank up the IRR on their funds", but I think that you are missing that the powerful thing about personal computer wasn't that everyone would do the same thing (I suppose it was general computing calculations), but that people were free to explore many different things (solve individual pain points) in the same way 3d printing will (I think it may be even more than that but I'm limited by the contraints of my own insight into potential future applications[imagination] at this time).

I guess if you even look back on the origins of the personal computer, people gave very narrow reasons for its use and failed to make the connection to how it could be valuable outside of those reasons (outside of the angels/venture capitalists and entrepreneurs).

Mostly enclosures for electronics projects in my case, it would be nice to use something more custom made for the device than an altoids tin or plain ugly project box.

You can get a laser cutting machine for about 1.5 grand off Amazon. I might consider one in few years if my projecting gets more serious. The Adafruit ice cube clock enclosure is laser cut and it looks sharp.

Currently, I'm working on getting my first laser cutting order through Ponoko. Hopefully that's all going to work out.

I use it to fix things. Ever broken a handle off a drawer or snapped a catch on something? Print it, sand it and paint it. Done. I also use it for making little plastic doodads (like those you see on home shopping channels) where the idea was the hard part but reproducing it is pretty easy (think wall mounted bag hooks or egg cutters). Not the most practical uses but I see them as a way of answering the "what if I had that?" type of question.

I think this is the most useful use for one I've heard so far, but when I think about how often do I need a little plastic knob - maybe once a year? I'm sure a couple of shops could do this as a business but other than that it seems crazy to think people will buy these things en-masse for homes.

I do mobile robotics. Printing off a frame for a small robot or a sensor enclosure at home is a lot easier than sending away to commercial shops. And 3d printers are a lot "cleaner" than a mill (CNC or manual). I can also use it for prototyping basic gearboxes and such for larger robots.

I have a Replicator 2X coming in the mail within a month.

Seeing what me and my friends already do with firearms and the like, i can say addons and mods. But thats just one application, i'm sure there are many others in other niches.

A buddy has one at work: he prints replacement appliance knobs. Think of all the little things that break and there's really no easy way to get replacements.

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