So, i’ve been a 3D printing addict for the
last six years.
It all started out during my bachelor’s
degree, where a friend and me decided to try
something new and build a 3D printer from
scratch.
And at that time, it was a choice between
the overly simplified Prusa Mendel or the
original Sells mendel, obviously, we went
down the harder route and built this.
So this was my first 3D printer, and things
were a bit different back then, you couldn't
just buy the parts and expect everything to
work, you actually had to figure out every
little detail and make it work.
And i still fondly remember that smell of
burnt mosfet and wood as we tried to add a
heated bed to it.
So with that background of approaching 3D
printing from both an angle of using it as
a tool to make things but also as a project
to learn from, and, you know, just being fascinated
by the technology, i want to talk about why
i think 3D printing in a Consumer application
still has ways to go and in my opinion, just
isn’t a valid concept in its current form.
So you can basically squeeze 3D printers into
three categories, the Professional machines,
with prices ranging anywhere from 50k to 500k
and beyond, and those machines are in a great
spot.
You’ve got applications in prototyping,
in micro-batch production and increasingly,
even 3D-printer-specific uses like customizing
goods or producing structures that aren’t
feasible with traditional means of fabrication.
Then there are the “Maker” or “Enthusiast”
grade machines, I’d actually consider both
$3000 premium machines and $200 far-east kits
to fall into this more category of more involved
users.
This bracket also has its specific set of
applications, and that’s everywhere someone
wants produce things with the machines that
he or she wouldn’t otherwise be able to
buy at the price or not even be able to buy
at all because they are fully custom parts
for a project or just one-off things you need,
so they design and print them.
Now, 3D printers aimed at consumers, as in
the everyday person, are in a bit of a weird
position there.
Imagine your typical consumer, someone who
goes to an electronics store and buys a 50€
2D printer and supposedly goes, hey, wouldn’t
it be nice to be able to print in 3D, too?
Now think about how much they know about the
technology behind 3D printing and how much
they know about 3D design and customizing
things.
If you thought, “well, they don’t know
about any of that”, then you’re on the
right track.
Because they don’t.
Many “consumers” don’t even know enough
about their 2D printers to use them properly.
So to stick with that 2D printer analogy,
the core reasons i see why everyone now has
one of them is because they are comparatively
easy to use, they are reliable, though some
people might disagree here, and most of all,
they allow you to do things that aren’t
easily possible any other way, specifically,
creating and printing your own documents,
photos, cards, whatever you want.
That’s really the kicker for them, if all
you were able to print was pre-made graphics
and forms, then what would be the point of
owning a 2D printer when everything it is
able to make is also available in a store,
ready-made, cheaper, and in better quality?
So, on the same terms, why would anyone want
to buy a 3D printer without having the same
level of ease of use and usefulness as a 2D
printer?
Well, they wouldn’t if they were in their
right minds.
What’s still pushing consumers towards owning
a 3D printer is plainly marketing, good or
bad.
When every single Kickstarter printer claims
to be the new best machine that now finally
allows you to print everything you could ever
imagine and even established 3D printer manufacturers
start doing the same, then the consumer is
just going to give in eventually and just
buy one of those damn things if they really
are so great.
But then what?
Sure, they are going to print the first sample
files and vases and trinkets from one of the
3D file sharing platform, but what do they
do once they run into the first issue - and
trust me, they will.
What do they do when a print doesn’t stick
to the bed or just doesn’t come out with
the level of quality they were hoping for?
Or even worse, what happens once the euphoria
wears off and they run out of things to print.
Because that’s going to be that moment of
enlightenment - and disappointment - when
they start asking themselves “what did i
even buy this thing for?”
So really, what makes 3D printers great is
that you can produce original things that
you come up with, and not just reproduce desings
someone else uploaded.
So that should really be the first thing we,
as a community and as an industry need to
start focusing on, allowing people to more
easily create things that truly are their
own.
And that doesn’t even have to be full-blown
CAD knowledge for everyone, even simple things
like Makerbot’s Thingiverse customizer are
a great start there, since they allow you
to change the dimensions, features, lettering
of the part you’re going to print.
Because that’s what 3D printing is awesome
at, producing things that you can’t go out
for and buy at the store, like you would when
printing exact replicas of ready-made models.
It’s a start, but creating your designs
that are completely your own is an even better
use for the technology, so somehow, we need
to work out a way for, no offense, normal
people to use some sort of CAD tool.
Now, the thing about CAD and designing 3D
parts, is, in my experience, that the actual
program you use isn’t the biggest challenge,
because frankly, 3D CAD programs have become
insanely good and accessible in the recent
years, so the tools are there.
What’s the bigger challenge, unless you’re
regularly creating physical things, like building
and making structures, is that it’s incredibly
hard for people to imagine in detail what
their design should end up looking like, because
that’s simply not a region of our brains
we’re regularly using and training.
And i realize that is pretty much the definition
of a “consumer”, as opposed to a “creator”.
You’re often going to see people have an
initial idea, but no concept of what it should
look like in the physical world.
And even worse, the process of then reproducing
the design they thought of into a 3D model,
that process then doesn’t use tools and
methods that people are familiar with or even
have a direct, physical, real-world equivalent
to.
Sure, clay-like sculpting modelling is very
much based on a physical process, but it is
a very limited approach that is only really
useful for one specific type of 3D model.
So the one company that stands out here is
Autodesk, and they’re placing themselves
in that exact void that will need to be filled
if more accessible 3D printing is really meant
to become a thing.
Tools like Tinkercad that are simply based
on combining existing shapes to make new ones
are a great place to start; they’re “Enabler”
technologies that give even the uninitiated
a chance of using 3D printing in a meaningful
way.
Sure, the tools aren’t perfect and could
definitely use a bit more “intelligence”
that tells you how to best 3D print a model
and how you could refine it to make it more
suitable for the technology, for example how
you could avoid overhangs or orient your part
optimally, but still, it's amazing to see
what even third-graders can achieve with these
simple tools.
Because they are tools that are very accessible,
but still powerful enough.
So what I think would really give this area
a boost would be 3D printer manufacturers
not just selling their hardware, but also
going, hey, these are the software tools you
can use to make your own awesome stuff with
our machines, and this is how you can use
them.
Now, the 3D printers themselves could use
some extra intelligence, too.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing to see
how far the hardware has come and how sophisticated
many of the low-end 3D printers already are,
but these machines are still way too complex
and way too dumb to be properly used by non-tech-heads.
Like I mentioned earlier, what do you do when
a print doesn’t stick to the bed, what if
the extruder grinds through the filament,
what if a stepper motor keeps skipping on
the exact same part of a print every single
time?
Those are issues even somewhat experienced
users might not be able to immediately solve,
and frankly, these problems shouldn’t even
exist in the first place for a user-friendly
machine.
If you look at 99% of the 3D printers out
there, they’ve all got mostly the same hardware
and the same lack of feedback about what they’re
doing.
So to paraphrase it, most filament-based 3D
printers work like they were doing open-heart
surgery with their eyes closed, no sense of
smell and touch and someone who also doesn’t
know how things are looking, whispering into
their ears, a bit left, now forward, now plunge
down, yeah, you can do it, you can do it.
So what i’m trying to say is, there is so
little self-awareness in these machines, that
some of them could literally set themselves
on fire, melt down an entire axis and not
even realize that anything has gone wrong.
They'd just keep following their routine and
hope for the best.
And this requires a bit of a change in mentality
by the manufacturers, a 3D printer that’s
usable by everyone shouldn’t just have the
bare minimum of components that make it function,
it should have the bare minimum of features
that make it foolproof and reliable, even
when not used by a specialist.
And many of these features wouldn’t even
add that much to the raw component cost of
the machine, the biggest part would be a one-time
development project for the hardware and the
software.
And that would include things like sensors
for the filament path - so monitoring things
like: is the filament loaded properly, is
it being transported properly, is it running
out in the middle of a print, maybe even a
diameter sensor that can have the machine
compensate for filament irregularities.
And by the way, these are not things that
are completely science-fiction, these are
all things that are known to work and are
basically just waiting for a broader implementation.
Then things like ambient temperature sensors
which can either automatically adjust printing
temperatures and cooling fan settings or even
suggest to the user that they might want to
think about moving the 3D printer to a warmer
room.
And if a manufacturer really has too much
cash to blow, they could even consider adding
current and voltage monitoring for each stepper
driver to predict when an axis is about to
lose its positioning.
Editor’s note (which is also me): We now
actually have this functionality, the Trinamic
TMC2130 can report when it thinks a stepper
motor might have skipped step.
We’re getting there.
Still, There are so many options out there
that just need to be implemented, but would
each make these machines so much more reliable.
Maybe that up front research and development
investment would have to be something done
by the community, but because “the community”
now is such a fragmented mess, I think there
needs to be at least one bigger manufacturer
involved to set a pace and drive the project
forward.
I'm not really sure who would be suitable
for that, though, most manufacturers just
seem to be interested in producing closed-source
machines that are more of the same for maximum
profit these days.
But it doesn’t even need to be entirely
new concepts, even already functioning and
commonly used ideas like sensor-based bed
adjustment should just already be implemented
in every single printer.
Not just the in consumer types, because there’s
just almost no drawback to it even for the
more involved machines.
Sure, you can get exactly the same results
with three-point adjustment and a piece of
paper, again, in that case the machine itself
has no clue about how well it is adjusted
or whether it’s even adjusted at all.
And it’s not just about adding “more”
to the machines to make them easier to use,
it’s also about making them better.
Most of the time, it’s not about feature
count or sheer size, it’s about how well
everything works as a unit.
I mean, most enthusiasts can work even with
a barely functioning product and make them
produce great results - whether that’s 3D
printer geeks or Linux users, it’s the same
principle.
But most users will prefer something that
just works, even if it means they’re getting
less for their money, at least when it comes
to marketable number games, which is why Apple
products sell so incredibly well in the IT
space.
For a 3D printer, that’s mostly no-brainers.
Use decent components instead of more of the
cheap ones and you’ll be preventing user
headache in the first place.
So in the end, even though they look like
the same type of machines on the surface,
Consumer and Enthusiast type 3D printers really
require a different mindset in their design
language.
The more involved 3D printers are doing great,
by the way, and they are very much on the
right track when it comes to their feature
set, but they are also used for entirely different
things than what you’re looking at with
a true consumer-grade product.
For the Maker-grade machines, whether it’s
individual projects or a part of a larger
collective like the e-nable project that designs
and 3D prints prosthetic limbs, there’s
always a straightforward reason for them to
use 3D printing, and the machines and software
are already good enough to be used productively
by these more involved users.
But to really reach, dare i say, the masses,
to make 3D printing more than just a fad,
and actually an appealing concept for everyone,
there needs to be a change in pace from just
making more of the same machines to actually
creating approachable workflows and bullet
proof machines.
I know this isn’t going to be an instant
event where all manufacturers just suddenly
flip a switch, there’s a bit too much fragmentation
going on in the market right now, but maybe
we can start that slow process of convincing
manufacturers that 3D printers need to start
moving forward instead of 
just sideways.
