{"id":215,"date":"2013-05-21T14:57:52","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T14:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dave0.nfshost.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2013\/05\/21\/mandatory-reading-for-folks-excited-about-3d-printing-whove-never-used-a-3d-printer\/"},"modified":"2017-11-14T16:15:49","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T21:15:49","slug":"mandatory-reading-for-folks-excited-about-3d-printing-whove-never-used-a-3d-printer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2013\/05\/mandatory-reading-for-folks-excited-about-3d-printing-whove-never-used-a-3d-printer\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandatory Reading for Folks Excited about 3D Printing Who’ve Never *Used* a 3D Printer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I touched on this briefly when I wrote about DefDist’s 3D-printed plastic pistol<\/a>, but this piece is much more detailed and written by someone who actually knows something:
\nWhy 3D Printing Is Overhyped (I Should Know, I Do It For a Living)<\/a><\/p>\n

We are still firmly in the honeymoon period with 3D printing \u2014 we\u2019re in awe of it and what it can do. But when you look at just the parts produced and not the way they were produced, printed parts are a long way behind in terms of quality, and when there often is no cost advantage, Captain Everyday will always go for the mass-produced one.<\/div>\n

He makes an analogy between the 3D printer and the bread machines of the 80s and 90s that I think is quite apt, in terms of hype vs. utility. But the clearest analogy–the one built into the damned *name* of the device, yet still alludes lots of folks when they *talk* about 3D printing–is to the desktop printer.
\nWhen desktop printers and “desktop publishing” became ubiquitous, no one predicted a future where we’d all buy books and magazines on diskette, then print and bind them ourselves–not because ebooks were even a gleam in anyone’s eye yet, but because just a glimpse at any “desktop published” material made the comparison laughable. Printers are super handy, and desktop publishing basically maturity into its own unique, all-electronic medium, but they’re basically for *prototyping* literature, not mass-producing and distributing it. And someone still has to sink a lot of swear an time into actually creating something worth distributing and printing. 3D printing? Same-same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I touched on this briefly when I wrote about DefDist’s 3D-printed plastic pistol, but this piece is much more detailed and written by someone who actually knows something: Why 3D Printing Is Overhyped (I Should Know, I Do It For a Living) We are still firmly in the honeymoon period with 3D printing \u2014 we\u2019re … Continue reading “Mandatory Reading for Folks Excited about 3D Printing Who’ve Never *Used* a 3D Printer”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[212],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1682,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/1682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}