“While 3D printer sales will experience healthy growth over the next four years, consumer machines remain a technology in search of a purpose, according to researcher IDC,” Lucas Mearian reports for Computerworld.
“The largest technology segment within the 3D printing market is fused filament fabrication or fused deposition modeling (FDM/FFF). Last year, FFF or FDM printers made up 76% of the 3D printers shipped in the U.S.,” Mearian reports. “While the majority of those printers are at the low end of the market, the consumer segment ‘has clearly not materialized as many had predicted,’ IDC said.”
“‘I know it is a bit of a cliché, but I believe the ‘killer app’ that would drive 3D printing in the consumer space has not materialized yet,’ said Tim Greene, research director for IDC’s Hardcopy Solutions,” Mearian reports.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s still early days in consumer 3D printing. Let’s give it a chance first before writing it off!
Very early. Imagine one day downloading your Apple lightning cable and printing it at home.
Agreed that this technology is missing the “killer app” for consumer use. I love the IDEA of a 3D printer, but I’m not sure what I would want to do with it.
If the technology ends up being used mostly for industrial and/or artistic use — like holograms have — what’s wrong with that?
My daughter broke a plastic throttle lever on her weed eater; Download and print, I broke handle off of a tool when it fell; wife said the washing machine quit working; plastic housing for the lid switch scratched. IN each of these, pay $50 – 100 for service alone; and more for the part. OR a $1.00 in print material and do it yourself. I could have fixed all this in a few hours and a $1.00 or $2.00.
This will be handy for the Local Handyman to carry in the back of his van and charge like new prices for instant work. Its coming!
“Lid switch CRACKED” – it should read.
“instant work. Its coming!”
Not!
The most time consuming process of getting a part out of a 3D printer is getting the 3D model to work from in the first place.
3D Printers are slow, finished tolerances are very wide compared to molded parts that can hold sizes to .002″ easily, their surface finish is rough compared to molded parts & their strength is low compared to typical engineered thermoplastics.
And then, if you use printers with finer layer thicknesses and sophisticated materials to get better qualities the price of the 3D printer and parts goes way up. Some of these machines cost $300-500,000.
Articles are mostly hype when it comes to useable, tough, tight tolerance parts.
Wow, Bo, that’s a really good point if 3D printers cease to improve. What do you think the odds are on that, though?
If they DO continue to improve, then “its [sic] coming!” is probably a much more accurate and useful comment than your rebuttal. I mean, really, you rebutted a comment about a likely future by saying, essentially, “it’s not that way today!”
Oh my god, whoever wrote this article is a complete noob and should be fired for trying to predict something that is still in its infancy.
I can see a HUGE market for this in the future. I bet the writer of this article would have said that when the computer first came out in the early 80s.
Give it time….
…YUUUGE!
Just wait for the US Government to ban handguns. 3D printing for handguns will take off. Take about your killer app.
Down votes?!! Oh come on! I thought it was funny!
(People got no sense of humor…)
The TIKO 3D is about ready ship after a Kickstarter funding. http://WWW.TIKO3D.COM
Really, what needs to happen is we need to actually launch commercial, private 3D printers. So long as all we have are the industrial grade 3D printers, that’s the perception people will get in their minds. Once we get the home model, and a few early adopters start doing stuff with them, then more people will be like, “Oh, I can do _that_ with a 3D printer? Yeah, I want one!”
The killer App will arrive when Apple releases its 3D printer, just as what happened with the laser printer almost 30 years ago.
At least in the short term, I think consumer 3D printing might be similar to one hour photo – send your file off to a specialised shop nearby, choose material and finish, then pick it up and pay.
3D printing has a few challenges:
1) First-world consumers have been trained to demand instant gratification. They can get anything they want shipped to their door today in about 24 hours. They have no patience to make or repair anything anymore.
2) Tinkerers face significant startup costs, and it remains unlikely that in the near term 3D printers will be able to make high-value goods of any kind. Cheap plastic stuff, sure, but anything structural is just not realistic.
3) Compatibility/training/overhead. It takes a team of people to be successful at 3D printing. There just aren’t that many ordinary people out there with the engineering, IT, and mechanical skills to build, maintain, design, manufacture, etc. And the specialists who perform these functions aren’t going to give away their labor for free.
I predict that the next wave will look like internet cafes, where the consumer can rent a machine and a support staff is available to consult (for a fee, of course). The direct-to-consumer 3D printer market is a long way off. It’s also not Mac compatible, BTW.
Interesting use of the term “killer” given that these printers release all sorts of toxins that do not belong in an unventilated home. And that’s not knee-jerk reactionary fear of chemicals, speaking, either, these are peer-reviewed toxicologists who came to that conclusion: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/research-rounds/resroundsv1n12.html just came out.
Never say never …
Ooops I just did ..twice😳
I predicted a few years back Apple would step in and sell a cool 3D printer, software to operate the printer that could either generate a new part or download and print an iTunes type file for sale or free on the internet and also sell supplies for printing. Never happened yet…. I bought a FlashForge Dreamer for $1100 and it works pretty well with some learning curve. The software works but isn’t Apple intuitive all though it runs on a Mac. However, AutoDesk Inventor is not dual platform which means I had to buy a PC for my daughter to do STF files for a project I am doing… It was clearly the decision of AutoDesk to not put Inventor out for the Mac but when we get done with the project I could discard the PC in my fish pond and still have saved a bundle of money and months of time investing in my own 3D printer and a PC….
Design by any method is laborious and tedious, therefore most consumers will never even try. 3D printing will continue to struggle until it is married to a 3D scanner so that reproduction is as easy as “Just press Start” the item is scanned, and a reproduced unit comes out.
If it didn’t sell millions of units in the first weekend, then it is a fail!
To be honest, right now 3D printing is way too slow. It may be ok for small things like a gear or a key fob, but if the item is more complex or require multiple printings to fabricate it’s just not all that practical. Especially the filament method. It is built on hacks from old plotter technology. There needs to be an iPhone-type paradigm shift if it is going to become mainstream.