What's Holding Back 3-D Printing

An anonymous reader writes "An article at MIT's Technology Review makes the case that the complexity of the design tools behind 3-D printing are what's holding it back from widespread adoption. Many of the devices are indeed prohibitively expensive, but the inability for your average person — or even your average tech hobbyist — to pick it up and start experimenting is an even bigger obstacle. 'That means software innovation could be more important to 3-D printing than gradual improvements in the underlying technology for shaping objects. That technology is already 30 years old and is widely used in industry to create prototypes, molds, and, in some cases, parts for airplanes. ... Although additive manufacturing allows for designs that can't be made easily in any other way — such as complex shapes with internal cavities — so far, companies have mostly used 3-D printing to create prototypes or models of familiar products.'"

Nonsense

[arpad1]

What's holding back 3-D printing is that there's hardly anything worthwhile to be done with it.

Other then printing an AR-15 lower receiver or magazines what can you do with a 3-D printer that's worth the bother?

Cost of the raw materials

[robbak]

As long as the raw materials are priced in tens of dollars per kilogram, printing out random stuff is always going to be too expensive. Really, it is bulk plastic. It should be priced nearer 40 kilograms per dollar than 40 dollars per kilogram.

Re:Nonsense

[evil_aaronm]

I hesitate to say, "You lack imagination." It's too confrontational for my tastes. However, if I had a quality 3D printer, capable of turning out durable pieces, I'd have almost no end of things I'd create: parts for robotics; automated pan-tilt assemblies; custom gears; custom servo horns; project cases for gadgets I've built; toys for my granddaughter; etc. As it is, I cut and drill pieces from stock plastic, and it's a pain in comparison to custom forming things from a CAD drawing.

use minecraft

[jcupitt65]

A friend of a friend made this:

http://www.printcraft.org/ [printcraft.org]

Make something in minecraft on this (free) server and it emails you a 3D printer file of your object when you disconnect.

Seems pretty spot on to me

[ethicalcannibal]

This is the exact reason I haven't picked one up. I can make and use a vacuum former. I can sculpt, and make castings. All of these things are easier for me than working with the current set of 3D printers. I'm sure I could learn to work the thing, and make the programs, but it's just not worth my time, when I can do it the old fashioned way faster. Not everyone is a programmer. If the interface was slick and easy, I'd cough up the cash in minutes. I've been watching the progression of these little things for ages, and would love to have one. However, even my most tech savvy buddies have to spend more time trouble shooting than making. Hell, even the Mojang guys were tweeting about a new 3D printer, and damn if they didn't have to trouble shoot, and replace a part straight off. So the article is right. It's not the $2000 that is holding me back from buying one. It's the learning curve, and the inhospitable user interface. I may be a techy artist, but I'm an artist, not a programmer.

I've been designing/building a 3D printer for

[mark_reh]

almost a year now, on and off. Here are my comments...

Trying to use Arduino Mega2560 controller board with RAMPS 1.4 and LCD/encoder/SD card reader and Marlin firmware has been a nightmare of surfing through thousands of posts on dozens of internet forums to try to get info on how to get the compiler to run, what needs to be modified in the firmware for my machine- no documentation but the often cryptic comments in the source code.

The latest, greatest firmware, Marlin, was developed using an old version of the Arduino-0023 IDE and cannot be compiled on the latest Arduino IDE. The old IDE attempts to define the "round" math function that is already defined in the AVR-GCC compiler, so it will not run unless you comment out the "round" function definition in the old Arduino-0023 IDE.

Next, you have to modify the firmware to fit your machine- it needs to know things like steps/mm in each axis, how big is the print bed, etc. How do you know what needs to be changed? Read through the poor comments in the source code because there is no other documentation, or start hunting through forums. Just figuring out the logic for the endstops is a game of trial and error even though proper comments or better yet, a manual of some sort telling what the defaults are/mean and how to change them, would be a huge help.

Once you get he machine running, there are about 50 variables in the firmware that can be used to tune its performance, if you can figure out what they are and how they affect the print results.

Open source is a nice idea, but I'll take thoroughly documented, reliable PIC hardware and IDE over an Arduino any day of the week, but I'm getting off topic...

Using a printer is a whole different set of problems. Unless you just want to print other people's designs, you need to create a 3D model, requiring knowledge of CAD software. Once you have the model, you have to slice it up using yet another piece of software and requiring knowledge of intimate details of the printer's mechanical, electrical, and thermal characteristics to get maximum quality results.

I used to use PCB milling machines in the 90s and processing the files for cutting a board was a major PITA back then. Here we are 15 years later and the software situation hasn't improved. Until someone integrates the model creation, slicing, and printer control software into a single package and makes it easy for almost anyone to use without a lot of special knowledge or training, 3D printing will remain a hobby for hard-core geeks.