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Eucl3d Closed?


AlamoVampire

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printers are getting so cheap now its probibly going to be hard for the print houses to stay in buisness. and you can get a printer and enough filiment to get started for less than the price of a new phone.

Edited by Nuke
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19 hours ago, Nuke said:

printers are getting so cheap now its probibly going to be hard for the print houses to stay in buisness. and you can get a printer and enough filiment to get started for less than the price of a new phone.

True, but the learning curve required to get high quality prints, suitable for collectibles, can be quite high, and that can be off putting.  And most of the cheap printers don't have the fine tuning to do good quality right out of the box.  It takes a skilled hand to get one tuned in properly.   Yes, you can get acceptable prints immediately, but high quality takes some work.   And most people (general public) have trouble typing up a document correctly, let designing and printing an object.   In my 3d printer circles, we've discussed this topic a lot, and we predict that printers, at best, will be eventually owned by 2/5 people, probably far less.   Unless there are major advances were printers start acting like replicators from Star Trek, where you can just dial up what you want and out it pops with no stress to the user, then printers will remain a specialist's domain, just like other CNC crafts.   And there will probably always be a need for commercial print houses, as there are lot of companies that only need one print of something a year or so, like custom repair and refurb shops.   

 

There's always shapeways of you are looking for mail order prints. 

Edited by gargamel
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3 hours ago, gargamel said:

True, but the learning curve required to get high quality prints, suitable for collectibles, can be quite high, and that can be off putting.  And most of the cheap printers don't have the fine tuning to do good quality right out of the box.  It takes a skilled hand to get one tuned in properly.   Yes, you can get acceptable prints immediately, but high quality takes some work.   And most people (general public) have trouble typing up a document correctly, let designing and printing an object.   In my 3d printer circles, we've discussed this topic a lot, and we predict that printers, at best, will be eventually owned by 2/5 people, probably far less.   Unless there are major advances were printers start acting like replicators from Star Trek, where you can just dial up what you want and out it pops with no stress to the user, then printers will remain a specialist's domain, just like other CNC crafts.   And there will probably always be a need for commercial print houses, as there are lot of companies that only need one print of something a year or so, like custom repair and refurb shops.   

 

There's always shapeways of you are looking for mail order prints. 

there is always a place for this kind of buisness. but 3d printing wasnt as hard as i thought it would be. but then again i had realistic expectations. i knew that there would be limits to what could be printed, and that most prints would need finishing. the print houses are still useful especially if you need high resolution or needed a very large print, or other print methods/materials.

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23 hours ago, Nuke said:

printers are getting so cheap now its probibly going to be hard for the print houses to stay in buisness. and you can get a printer and enough filiment to get started for less than the price of a new phone.

Look at 2D printing. There's plenty of business selling 2D photo prints even though a printer can be bought for less than the price of a movie theater visit (with soda and popcorn, I'll admit). Granted, shipping & handling is a trivial cost for paper prints, and obviously not for 3D prints, but the promise of a multi-color high-quality printer (as opposed to the home models) is there, together with the issues of having a 3D printer at home (bulky, sofware, setup, etc).

The dropping price is not the threat to 3D printing; it's the opportunity. Not that many people are going to order a hand-sized model of their KSP rocket for $30. But an arm-sized model for $10? Once 3D printing gets really cheap we'll see many more of these companies, and they will thrive.

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23 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

 

The dropping price is not the threat to 3D printing; it's the opportunity. Not that many people are going to order a hand-sized model of their KSP rocket for $30. But an arm-sized model for $10? Once 3D printing gets really cheap we'll see many more of these companies, and they will thrive.

I would argue that once the basic parts are accounted for, scaling a printer up in size in trivial compared to base cost.  If you can build a Delta that will do 200m, there is no difference in know how, just a few bigger aluminum arms and longer belts/screws.  

That's for building rockets, if you want a bigger base, that's more, but building tall thin things is fairly easy to scale up. 

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18 hours ago, gargamel said:

I would argue that once the basic parts are accounted for, scaling a printer up in size in trivial compared to base cost.  If you can build a Delta that will do 200m, there is no difference in know how, just a few bigger aluminum arms and longer belts/screws.  

That's for building rockets, if you want a bigger base, that's more, but building tall thin things is fairly easy to scale up. 

you can scale up all the dimensions but with it also comes a small decrease in accuracy. of course sub millimeter accuracy is not neccisary if you are printing a house for example (its being done). at the small scale it seems jumping from a hobby machine (mine only has a 160 cubic inch build volume), to something bigger is about a thousand bucks. its sort of like computer monitors, size is expensive, resolution is expensive, both are really expensive. increases in slop as the printer gets bigger necessitates closed loop control instead of the discreet stepping that desktop scale printers can get away with. even going as far as camera based systems or even radio beacons precisely positioned by a surveyor for the machine to use as reference points. its only a matter of time till some lunatic puts a hot end on a quad copter and creates an infinite volume 3d printer.

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My printer is 480 cu in, and cost me about $500 3 years ago.  The next one I'm looking at is bigger, and about the same cost, with a lot more features, and higher accuracy.

I think you need to take a closer look at things of this nature.  I build a variety of things for a living, from furniture to motion control robotics on occasion (rare occasion).  Reducing slop is very easy, jsut make the structure more rigid, which means using parts scaled appropriately.    The cost of scaling up things like we are talking about follows a path similar to Sqrt(x), when done correctly.  The difference in stepping up scale is reduced with each step you take. 

Edited by gargamel
Edit to reflect correct function.
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37 minutes ago, gargamel said:

The cost of scaling up things like we are talking about follows a path similar to 1/(x^2)

I always had the impression that it was more logarithmic, like /\v. Inverse square sounds a little weird, considering that it gets less as you go away. Or are you actually talking about the cost to upgrade from n to n+1? Still, that's -1/x, which, while it does increase, is asymptotic. Maybe x^2? Cost scales by surface area? Could be. Machining larger parts requires larger equipment, and we're right back where we started if we try to find how that scales.

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I woke up from a dead sleep bothered by this.  Booted up desmos to check, and that is the wrong function.  I meant Sqrt(x), not 1/(x^2).  

7 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I always had the impression that it was more logarithmic, like /\v. Inverse square sounds a little weird, considering that it gets less as you go away. Or are you actually talking about the cost to upgrade from n to n+1? Still, that's -1/x, which, while it does increase, is asymptotic. Maybe x^2? Cost scales by surface area? Could be. Machining larger parts requires larger equipment, and we're right back where we started if we try to find how that scales.

 

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