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Comment by esw | Hacker News Reader

3D printing reminds me so much of the early days of personal computing - it was an expensive hobby for techies, the equipment was hard to configure, and the everyday (practical) uses of the technology weren't immediately clear. But like personal computing, I have no doubt that 3D printing will become an essential part of our daily lives in the decades to come.

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Just like today's printer cartridges, the 'print material' used by 3D printers is insanely expensive. That's gotta change for any essential daily lives application.

Really? My impression has been that filament is pretty cheap e.g. < $30 per kg. For printing small objects, enclosures, small replacement parts etc, the filament cost has been pretty much negligible. That's why a lot of 3D print shops end up telling people just to buy their own printer if their doing any reasonable volume, because once the capital cost is out of the way, the consumables are fairly inexpensive.

$30 is ridiculous. ABS plastic is around $1,000 per ton (or cheaper if you buy 10 tons). Does it really cost so much to make a wire out of the granules?

That means there's approximately a 30x markup from raw ABS to a spool of 3D printing filament being sold over the counter in a shop to a consumer. I don't know how much filament costs if you buy industrial quantities rather than consumer ones.

To be honest I don't know enough about industrial pricing to understand if it's ridiculous or not, 30x from raw material to something being retailed at a consumer level doesn't seem unbelievable to me.

Markup on a black ink cartridge (the original comparison) is something in the region of 200x, so nearly an order of magnitude higher.

But today's printers share lots of daily lives applications despite the high cost of supplies. It all depends on the value of outcome and how easily one operates the device.

I'm sure 3d printer tech will end up with ready to use devices, printing metals as well as various kinds of other materials. I may prefer buying a panel and electronics, and print my own metal enclosure for my next monitor (or external disk or electric outlet or back cover of my phone or... you get the idea). Cost will be a factor, but after the utility.

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