3D Printing in Everyday Life: 5 Ways to Move The Industry Forward

Here's an article about [my opinion] a few ways to push the industry forward. My #5 point is already in use (sort of) by the new movie: Big Hero 6.

What do you think? What's missing or could be added to make this list better?

Link: [www.lonestarfilament.com]

---

Craft Beer Enthusiast
Owner, Lone Star Filament

make it appealing to more girls, i.e. more chocolate 3D printers!


Also:

make a movie about 3D printers gone bad, perhaps:
*a 'speed' style movie where bruce willis has to 3D print a Yoda within 30 minutes
*godzilla, but it's a massive printer spewing spaghetti filament everywhere. Printerzilla.
* Grand designs, where Kevin McCloud watches a concrete printer create a house, and it takes months longer than the thought and it's over budget.

My main ideas for better 3D printing:
-Multi color printing with 2 or 3 or 4 extruders to combine colors, create patterns or use different materials (soft / flexible / hard / dissolvable filler) and print complex mechanical parts in one go
-Smooth walls instead if the typical ridges, maybe a pass around the edges with a hot pin after each layer
-Printer software that can customize a design, adapt it easily to a different size or add ornamental reliefs to outer surfaces

I totally agree with your point 3, software needs to be easy to use

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2014 06:52AM by Dejay.

Agreed on the multi extruder (A reliable, sub $1000 price tag printer with ability to print 3 colors would be a hit).

The biggest problem is not about 3d peintres according to me. It s more about the conception of the object. I mean everybody have an inkjet or a laser printer cause everybody have the use of it, cause they know how to usr ms words or page or whatever.... But how many know how to design à 3d model for what they want with SW, catia sketchup or blender ? 3d printer cant become mainstream until 3d design become easy. I know some dev are doing great job to simplify the task, and some free soft do nice stuff, but I dont know anybody who isn't engineer, architect or designer who use them .

Quote
victorjung
The biggest problem is not about 3d peintres according to me. It s more about the conception of the object. I mean everybody have an inkjet or a laser printer cause everybody have the use of it, cause they know how to usr ms words or page or whatever.... But how many know how to design à 3d model for what they want with SW, catia sketchup or blender ? 3d printer cant become mainstream until 3d design become easy. I know some dev are doing great job to simplify the task, and some free soft do nice stuff, but I dont know anybody who isn't engineer, architect or designer who use them .

There is always minecraft Sixense also is developing "makeVR", a software for their 6dof controllers to create stuff easily. And there is also stuff like 3D coat that uses voxel based modeling.

But you're totally right, the ability to print solid objects creates essentially a new need and opens a market for CAD and 3D modeling software.

Highly parameterizable designs that you program in OpenSCad or OpenJSCad and then have sliders and buttons to adjust and personalize what you want to print will help too. You might want to have some kind of box with insets to put different kind of things in, and you could adjust the size and number and diameter of molds with sliders. Project Shapeshifter from autodesk is also an interesting too in that veign, no knowledge needed to create different things.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/06/2014 10:16AM by Dejay.

Well, I'm glad someone else noticed that $30/kG for PLA was completely absurd.

Seconding all of the points about design software; there's no getting around the fact that desktop printing took off in the 80's with the explosion in word processing programs. CAD software is generally over-engineered for the purposes of the consumer.

Also it's may just not be something that everybody need. Desktop printer came to replace typing machine, wich was a thing almost everybody was using. But 3d printer will replace lathe, mill machine cnc etc..wich are only used by a few people.
So I guess, for now, most of the people just don't have the use of it. But it could certainly change if people really start printing insted of buying stuff, but for this, it will need a hudge revolution about how we consume.

another thing that would be nice for everyday life would be if manufacturers of things like appliances posted STLs for parts that break fairly often, or they were interchangeable (like handles and such). Yea they would probably lose some profit from selling the part and they are probably caveats to having the consumer open up and repair the appliance, but it would be another application of 3D printing in the home.

Something else would be a new file format. Something that combines the STL with print settings so all the user needs to do it load it up and hit print. No tweaking of settings of having to guess what infill to print at.

---

greghoge.com

HUGE 3D PRINTER PARTS SALE!!!

Quote
gmh39
Something that combines the STL with print settings so all the user needs to do it load it up and hit print. No tweaking of settings of having to guess what infill to print at.

You can't really give the settings, cause it depends to much on the machine, but for sure, they could give at least some tips!
Ikea could do that, it will be so great to print the missing or broken part!