3 Dec 2013
Insight
The hype about 3D printing has been going high for several years. While the industry insiders try to dodge the pressure by dispelling the myths that “you can print everything”, the think-tank Gartner has recently started monitoring and analyzing the “nascent market” of 3D printers. Yes, 3D printers are reaching mainstream – the mainstream psyche at least. It is expected that 98,065 units of sub-$100,000 3D printers will be sold in 2014. Compare that to 9 million units of iPhone 5S and 5C sold in a first weekend after they had been launched or 293,000 conventional 2D printers sold daily and it is obvious that 3D printing still has a long way to go.
3D printer industry is not slow though, even if compared to personal computing. More than twenty years passed from the invention of computing machine till the first personal computer appeared in 1964. It took more than 30 years until it became a necessity for virtually everyone. 3D printing technology was first developed in 1984 - so the industry is still young. However, Gartner predicts that the market of 3D printers for consumers will grow almost twice per year.
It is too early to tell if 3D printers will follow the same path as personal computers. It is also too early to tell if the inflection point of 3D printing will be based on personal devices, or on 3D printing services like Shapeways and Sculpteo. But it is already obvious that personal 3D printers will have to overcome a few obstacles to become a must-have item in every household. Here are a few of them:
Price
Desktop 3D printers have fallen in price dramatically over the last few years. In theory, you could buy a 3D printer by skipping Lattes for a month – think about The Peachy Printer, the 100-dollar printer just announced on Kickstarter. And this project remarkably shows the demand for a cheap 3D printer – authors asked for $50,000 and collected $651,091 from 4,420 people. However, even $100 could be a lot when you spend it on a device that requires an engineering degree to churn out fancier iPhone cases that cost $30 each.
Also, it is expected that 3D printing will explode in 2014, when the key patents will expire. Experts think that this will let to make the most advanced and functional 3D printers much cheaper.
Killer application
Rather than the price, thus, the key challenge in convincing your Mom to buy a 3D printer is to find the killer application for mainstream consumer in order to make shedding a $1,000 on a 3D printer a no-brainer. The usual suspects of course are highly customizable, high-value, small-scale items – jewelry, toys, parts, selfies-figurines, interior items, phone accessories. A report on 3D printing claims that by buying a 3D printer you could save from $300 to $2,000 per year.
But the findings of the report have been widely debated. It is hard to believe that someone will need a dock for both iPhone 4 and iPhone 5. (Those are two of 20 items in the list, which is used to calculate how much the owner of a 3D printer could save in a year.) And the jewelry made by desktop - not industrial - 3D printers can still be fairly limited. It is no surprise that expectations of consumers are often higher than what happens to come out of a 3D printer. It is possible that such killer application will emerge as the industry grows.
Multi-material printing
Look around. How many items in your household are made of single material? Not so many – so a useful 3D printer should be able to combine few materials into one print. This is already available in industrial printers, so it is likely to reach consumers at some point as well.
Of course, ability to print a working hi-fi device with a desktop 3D printer is something you still need to wait, but using plastic and a rubber for the same object is a matter-of-course right now.
Material cost
In order to make sense to 3D print items, an example of wedding ring could be used. It would cost from ten cents to $95 to 3D print it from different materials. It is doubtful that you would want a wedding ring from ABS FDM thermoplastic material for ten cents. To make one from silver would cost approximately $45 and it would cost $95 to 3D print a ring made from titanium.
How does it differ from the traditional market? Well, you can find wedding rings, made from plain silver for just approximately $13 and plain titanium rings cost about $20. So, there is still a way to go in reaching an appealing price.
Agility and moving parts
It is hard to believe that someone would like to pay $1000 or even $500 to just print a simple toy made of plastic. Therefore, if we agree that one of the main condition for 3D printing to become widely used must be the ready-to-use production, then, 3D prints definitely must have moving parts.
It is clear that 3D printed objects with moving parts should be designed to be ready to use straight after printing. There is an example of printing moving objects made from single-material right now. However, it is still not convenient – as you must cut it out after printing and it takes a lot of time to make it ready for the end user.
Access to 3D design software or design libraries
Customized objects are always mentioned as one of the main advantages of 3D printing. However, your Mom, probably, is not a 3D designer or a sophisticated user of software for 3D printing.
So, how does will she make a customized fork holder for example? Well, she could use libraries or marketplaces of 3D designs. They are growing rapidly and can offer a service of 3D designers who can model 3D objects on demand. Nevertheless, this market is still in a growth stage as well and needs to become even more user-friendly not only for professionals, but also for an average Joe who is just looking for a product - without being a hacker or a maker.
Durability and reliability
Finally, one of the most common questions we encounter from end customers of 3D printed items is the realistic appearance of a 3D printed object. Both consumers and producers of the 3D market still anticipate to have a desktop 3D printer which would print objects with a perfect accuracy and would not have any rough surface left as it has now.
There is another not-so-positive side of desktop 3D printing - pollution. Scientists of France have made an experiment and found out that people could inhale ultrafine particles of the material if they stand near the 3D printer and poison themselves this way. Therefore, this imperfection must be improved as well to make desktop 3D printing more user-friendly.
So it might be still a few years until the industry figures these issues out and your relatives start asking you for advice on 3D printer choices. On the other hand, 3D printers are great for kids – so, more likely, that The Mom, who will ask for 3D printer will not be your mother, but the mother of your children.
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