Are 3d printers still a meme? Should I just check on them again in 10 years?

The price may not go down, but what you get for it is likely to be a lot more than it is now. SLA printers seem to be plummeting pretty fast and I'd much rather have a $1000 or whatever SLA than an equivalent or cheaper filament machine.

Given the choice, though, I'd MUCH rather have a little CNC mill than a 3D printer. They're much more useful for making actual functional stuff, and if you're at all competent with design and have marketable products they can pay for themselves in a couple of years. I'd be all over a Tormach 770 or similar if I had space for one.

>3D PRINTING AN ENGINE BLOCK

LMAO GRENADES ITSELF ON STROKE 1

All you have to do is make a Dildo mold, and all you have to do to make that is design the dildo and subtract it from a cube.
Then you poor the silicon into the mold, but that's for fags and people who wouldn't know how to operate a 3D printer anyways.

That's still wrong. Good try though.

You can do great things with some of the latest 3d printers. They're just not consumer level cheap. In 10 years, it will probably get us closer to atomic printin.

Its a model dipshit.

Ever do an engine swap and need to measure where your motormounts go? Or try to fabricate brackets for your accessory drives? How about mock up the oil pan so it clears the cross member?

Now try all that with a 400lb chunk of aluminum instead of a 15lb piece of plastic.

Pretty much you're going to have to print lots of neat junk or use it for a job to justify it beyond making a handful of things then letting it gather dust.

It's literally a manufacturing tool. It's great for people who actually know how to use CAD to make their own shit

oy vey

Cost can remain the same for all i care, what i went to see is the technology developed more. printable electronics, printers that can create composite metal-plastics, printer can print different material types on-the-fly.

You can buy one for 200 bucks these days, search up Creality Ender 3, there are a dozen different Chinese ones to choose from. They are useful for making the little things you don't want to go to a shop for or even cases for electronic projects. If models is your thing just print them out and paint them.

I got my first 3d printer in the mail from gearbest about two weeks ago and I'm still fucking blown away by the possibilities that are now open to me, and the quality of the printing right out of the box. its an alfawise u20, cost about $300 usd.

a 1kg roll of standard pla filament costs like$15-25. thats cheaper than the ink for my inkjet printer, imho. they're not really directly comparable but the plastic isn't very expensive. abs is like $10 or less a kilo.

the novelty of printing useless knicknacks and toys is wearing off, but the satisfaction of designing basic tools and printing them off in my living room is not wearing off. I've been using tinkercad exclusively as my 3d modeling software, and its like babys first model tier web based cad software. its not hard to make basic tools and design them for a 3d printer

if it wasn't for 3d printers I would have never discovered amateur rocketry as a hobby. its so easy to make a design and manufacture beautiful aerodynamic parts that cost mere penny's and are completely disposable, even compostable. I can design the parts to hold extremely small electronics and camera gear internally. its really pretty cool stuff

honestly the machine is so handy it makes my laser 2d printer seem like a very expensive toy, why would anybody ever need printed paper if they could have just saved the document to their phones? extruded plastic is way handier

if you do any design work, or even just work with cad or 3d modeling, its hard to justify not owning a 3d printer

killer! tnx!

Makerbots will always be a meme

I'll get one when I can print complex organic molecules for cheap.

My dad works at a phone company and he said they use them often to prototype their products. Those large 3d printers

The printer will have to be large enough to do the full size engine. There aren't many with the travel to do that. Then you'll have to have accurate enough data to build so the things you'll be fabricating will be useful. This type of data can only be acquired via a 3d scanner, which is another costly piece of equipment. It's much easier to use the real thing.

>printing an engine block
You wouldn't download a car.

Useless except for dumb toy models.

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Get back to me when they have resolution that doesn't suck at a hobbyist price point. I just want to print detailed models for a game I'm developing. And made up a custom salamanders dreadnought body that I hope to print some day.

use this shit in dentistry everyday boi

How is that wrong? True he skipped a couple of steps, but the basics of what he is saying are true.

Printers in general are a meme.

3D printers are like any other tool:
They're a meme only if you don't know what to do with them and buy them because of marketing and pictures of people being productive.

Just like rpi, pictures of people being artists with mackbooks or surfaces and other expensive tools.

Remember that average slav does write his games in assembler on q6600 while American indie-devs can't make 8-bit indie platformers in java on a budget exceeding 10 years of wages in Russia. Tools are here to help you not to replace skill.

>plastic engine
good luck with that