3D printer trends are limiting mainstream acceptance: The 3D printing paradox

3d printing has never been more capable and accessible for hobbyists but what if i told you that the current trends and developments in 3d printing are pushing it further away from mainstream acceptance today we discuss the 3d printing paradox [Music] i am a tinkerer i love designing parts and then seeing them come to life quite often with 3d printing 3d printers are cheaper than ever before and there's plenty of 3d printing related channels such as mine to help you get started with the hobby but and this is a big bud 3d printing as it stands is really only suitable for people like me who like to tinker and not the general public today we're going to discuss how as 3d printing advances this becomes even more so i think it's best we start by discussing 3d printing's ultimate potential and in my eyes that means having a 3d printer in every home for decentralized manufacturing but what exactly does that mean let's start by looking at what centralized manufacturing is in essence we have a large central manufacturing plant that can produce many items in large quantities extremely quickly what you're seeing here is an injection molding machine where molten plastic is forced into a mold cavity cools and is quickly ejected as you can see from this one machine in a couple of seconds there's going to be enough bottle caps to provide for many people potentially over a large area that covers the manufacturing part but there's actually a lot more to it as the customer does not visit the manufacturing plant to receive the product that means we also have to take into account packaging and packaging can be one of the most wasteful parts of the whole process like the manufacturing it's highly automated and highly efficient most products will have a combination of hard plastic soft plastic and then a cardboard box around the whole lot clearly this equipment is extremely specialized and sophisticated and needs a great deal of investment from the company to set up but once again the customer does not visit the packaging plan to pick up their item so this means we also need to account for transport in the model whether it's by air sea rail or road or maybe a combination of each transporting the manufactured packaged goods to a store where the customer can then go and buy it represents a huge consumption of resources and of course production of waste products so what changes if we switch from centralized to decentralized manufacturing the most obvious change is the manufacturing now takes place in someone's home or immediate workplace we have a 3d printer which without the need for any molds can make a wide variety of plastic parts and when the parts are finished the consumer has them in their hand without needing to go anywhere and this is incredibly significant in terms of environmental impact because we can negate the packaging and transporting steps altogether it's just like producing your own electricity at home from solar or other renewables or growing your own food at home the product goes directly to the consumer and cuts out a lot of waste besides decentralized manufacturing 3d printing has another great potential which is democratic manufacturing i've mentioned this on the channel before and there was some confusion over voting and things like that the term democratic not only relates to voting in governments but also relates to making things available to broad masses of people obviously the current high volume manufacturing equipment is way beyond the reach of a regular person however if you own a 3d printer and have some sort of unique problem to solve you have the means to design and manufacture the solution with a comparatively tiny financial investment this particular example still suits a tinkerer with cad skills but democratic manufacturing goes further than that let's say we have a small plastic part that's broken on a regular consumer item rendering the whole thing useless democratic manufacturing means you could download the part from the manufacturer's website 3d print the replacement yourself this is not only convenient for the end user but financially rewarding for the company as they don't have to stock heaps of apart that not many people want or retain the manufacturing capability to produce them on demand 3d printing is already good enough to support the home manufacture of many of these items and this approach can help keep rare and obscure parts attainable decades after the manufacturer would traditionally stop producing spares 3d printing will not likely replace high volume manufacturing anytime soon i already have a video explaining that but the widespread adoption of 3d printing by the general public does have several advantages so why aren't we heading towards this where to begin well those really cheap 3d printers you pretty much wouldn't recommend them for anyone starting out recently i made a general 3d printers buyer's guide that broke down the market into categories the first category budget machines that went from very cheap up to around 300 us dollars are best suited to those who are willing to learn about 3d printing and do a lot of tinkering if we spend more money and get something mid-range we can afford something with a much larger focus on convenience and ease of use for instance something like a prusa which has wizards in build to help manage the printer and this removes much of the expectation that the user needs to become an expert in 3d printers just to keep the thing running features such as auto bed leveling so that the user doesn't ever have to do it themselves as well as bundled software that has all of the slicing profiles already set up for the machine with matching materials available from the same shop are all very welcome features and simplify the process of owning and running a 3d printer but the honest truth is things can and most likely still will go wrong meaning the average user will need to dedicate some time and energy into diagnosis and repair this problem becomes even more significant when we compare the operation of 3d printers with the use of products already common in most households something that many households have is a 2d or paper printer as we can see on the display it can detect when and where paper is inserted this 2d printer also has wi-fi and a range of sensors so it knows when you've left the cover open and if you need to change the ink you'll be guided on the screen as well it's incredibly easy to see how much of each ink you have left and if you need to you can find out the cartridge numbers and even follow a qr code to order them with the assistance of the printer when you first use the printer all you need to do is to connect it to your computer and there's a very good chance any drivers will be automatically installed and when it comes time to print the user only needs to know basic settings settings that are universally understood everything else is automatic and 99 of the time the user can expect the printed page to appear on the machine and in the odd case that it doesn't the printer will tell you exactly what's wrong furthermore for anyone buying a 2d printer they are a lot more affordable than the cheapest 3d printers and whether we're talking about the cheapest or most expensive printer the customer can expect it to work out of the box maybe you're listening to this and thinking that a 3d printer is a lot more complicated than a 2d printer therefore making it an unfair comparison so let's up the ante to something a million times more complicated by comparing 3d printers to a car when you buy a car you need very little mechanical knowledge of how it works you only have to make basic decisions on the spec sometimes they relate to cosmetics sometimes they relate to performance you can easily add accessories and once again these are well explained and easy to understand the vast vast vast majority of drivers will have no idea what's going on inside the engine bay but nor do they need to because like the 2d printer the car is capable of monitoring itself and alerting the user if something needs attention on top of this compared to authority printer at least cars are built to last and despite their complexity and even if they're not really serviced there's a good chance a new car will get you from a to b for many years to come maybe you're thinking it's unfair to compare the huge global automotive industry to the much smaller niche 3d printing industry and maybe you're right i use cars however for my example because there's one other key similarity and therein lies the paradox the thing about 3d printers is that some people use them purely as a tool for manufacturing with no interest in tinkering whereas others myself included enjoy working on the printer as much as they do using it the way i see it cars are exactly the same the vast majority of people use them as a tool from getting to a to b but other people myself again included love working on cars as a hobby and for a project car slow and steady progress is just as enjoyable as actually driving it the key point here is that in the automotive industry established manufacturers drive progress and innovation whether it be performance emissions onboard electronics or safety automotive manufacturers heavily invest in r d to constantly improve their product and make it more user-friendly and therefore attractive for potential customers and can i just say thank goodness for that with cars hobbyists are more likely to work on their niche projects often with outdated technologies the end result is that the technology developed by manufacturers slowly trickles down to the enthusiast market with 3d printing ridiculously established manufacturers typically churn out endless clones back to this screenshot where most of these 3d printers look pretty much the same it's simply a race to the bottom to be slightly cheaper than the next most manufacturers just want to seem to get in the game and the fastest way to do this is to produce a printer that's just like the others and choosing which one to purchase is difficult because they're also similar let's take reality for example that once upon a time struck gold with the affordable performance of the ender 3 but now we have the ender 3 the ender 3 pro the ender 3 v2 the ender 3 max the ender 3 s1 and the ender 3 s1 pro these models are quite similar to be fair there are some differences in improvements between them but i really don't see the need to pump out so many different models and saturate the market if we look at the hobbyist for 3d printing they typically band together to form communities and that's where the real innovation has come from in home 3d printing for quite a while now a category that i covered in my buyer's guide is premium core xy kits and i said at the time these printers are best for those that want highly engineered designs and the latest and greatest cutting edge 3d printing features the models available from boron design who were not a company but rather a group of like-minded enthusiasts as well as printers that i purchased and built such as those from rat rig and second represent the peak of current 3d printing performance and features that is available to home users these printers might be the best but they're certainly not ready for the mainstream primarily because you have to build and wire them yourself with 3d printing the work of the hobbyist trickles up to establish manufacturers which when you think about it is quite frankly ridiculous can you imagine an equivalent in the automotive industry where the work done by tinkerers at home was inspiring enough to be adopted by large automotive manufacturers the truth is that the features that we see on generic printers as well as other features that they really should have either now or in the future came from people in the community as well as firmware developers now you've noticed there that i've emphasized the word typically because not every established manufacturer simply pumps out clones prusa is an example of a company with limited 3d printers and each of them distinct they utilize developments from the community but they also keep their work open source in each new printer such as the xl typically has some innovative features that we haven't seen before importantly each version is available fully assembled and tested but they and companies like them are the exception rather than the rule because the market is saturated with me too 3d printers that are certainly not going to help 3d printing reach its ultimate potential the lackluster efforts of these companies slows down the wide stream acceptance of 3d printing and limits their potential profits don't get me wrong the members of the community who are driving 3d printing forward are doing everything right and absolutely nothing wrong even if 3d printing becomes mainstream like with cars there will be plenty of room for enthusiasts who like to tinker instead the blame lies with the majority of established manufacturers who need to put in the work to become leaders and not followers and move towards providing a user-friendly experience that could see a 3d printer in every home which you think would be lucrative i've ranted about this topic before and frustratingly there's been very little change so let me know down below in the comments if you agree that this paradox needs to change thank you so much for watching and until next time happy 3d printing g'day it's michael again if you liked the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click subscribe and make sure you click on the bell to receive every notification if you really want to support the channel and see exclusive content become a patron visit my patreon page see you next time

Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 120,599

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d print, 3d printed, hobby, niche, paradox, quality, clone, innovation, manufacturers, prusa, creality, voron, rat rig, secit, ender 3, cr-10, potential, mainstream, quality control, community, abl, linear advance, input shaping, on demand manufacturing, make at home, tinkering, automotive, print farm, prusa xl

Id: SZEN3Mej908

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022