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Worthless: 3D printing is nothing but a nerd fad that won't leave hobbyist workshops.

6 (3%)

Unimportant: 3D printing will become common but won't be useful for much other than tiny full plastic objects.

8 (4%)

Minor Importance: 3D printing will function as a light industry that will coexist with existing manufacturing methodologies.

43 (21.4%)

Moderate Importance: 3D printing will challenge and slowly replace a large number of existing manufacturing businesses.

104 (51.7%)

Major Importance: 3D printing will completely flip the table on conventional manufacturing and quickly destroy existing business for anything you can make with them.

20 (10%)

Critical: 3D printing will disrupt conventional ideals of work and money so much that they collapse and are replaced in a paradigm shift.

20 (10%)

Total Members Voted: 199

[Telgin]

Darn it, I wish I'd shelled out the cash for one of the cheaper 3D printers now.  I want to do some printing, even if I know the limits of the technology wouldn't let me print out the stuff I really want to be able to print.  That, and you get what you pay for...

Not fully true. The quality you get from these printers doesn't vary /that/ much between the cheap ones and the expensive, but the user-friendliness does, as does the speed.

Perhaps, but that is something I'd be worried about.  As a programmer, I fight with computers enough as it is.  I don't want to fight with them any more than I have to in order to print out a recognizable toy. 

I can handle slow, but if I have to tweak 1,000 settings in an open source tool with either no or a questionable user interface in order to waste a few hours before I realize the print has gone wrong...

Yeah, my life is short enough as it is.

[Rose]

Hehehe, yeah, I get ya.

That said, stay away from ultimaker. Thing's a POS.

[Grek]

Eh, I dunno. If I could print my own plastic dinnerware as needed that would be pretty awesome. Especially if the plastic was recyclable so I could essentially print disposable plates/cups as needed and then toss them in a recycling bin when done with them rather than buying 100 non-recyclable plastic cups for a gathering/party and generating a lot of unrecoverable trash.

You'd still have to wash your dishes. recycling bits of food into the feedstock is a bad idea. In fact, I'm pretty sure that going from "Wash dishes, dry dishes, put dishes in cabinet, use cleaned dishes." to "wash dishes, dry dishes, grind dishes into powder, put powder in printer, print new dishes, use new dishes." is not a net time saver.

[forsaken1111]

Eh, I dunno. If I could print my own plastic dinnerware as needed that would be pretty awesome. Especially if the plastic was recyclable so I could essentially print disposable plates/cups as needed and then toss them in a recycling bin when done with them rather than buying 100 non-recyclable plastic cups for a gathering/party and generating a lot of unrecoverable trash.

You'd still have to wash your dishes. recycling bits of food into the feedstock is a bad idea. In fact, I'm pretty sure that going from "Wash dishes, dry dishes, put dishes in cabinet, use cleaned dishes." to "wash dishes, dry dishes, grind dishes into powder, put powder in printer, print new dishes, use new dishes." is not a net time saver.

I meant recycle as in toss in the community recycling bin, not recycle back into feedstock without washing.

Right now, if I have lots of guests coming I will buy disposable cups/plates/forks/etc and just toss them all rather than do 8 loads of dishwashing after. With this I could print those items and then toss them in the city recycling bin rather than generate unrecoverable plastic trash.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Staples will be selling a 3D printer by June.

[Xantalos]

Staples will be selling a 3D printer by June.

YES

[codyorr]

Well, no one's posted about the Liberator. The first ever FULLY 3-D Printed firearm. The Defense Department ordered it taken off of Defense Distributed's website and it has since disappeared from there. Look up the video on YouTube if you want to see history changed forever. I'm so glad there are people smarter than me out there.

[Scelly9]

The first ever FULLY 3-D Printed firearm. The Defense Department ordered it taken off of Defense Distributed's website and it has since disappeared from there.

Oh, shit. And here it comes. Although, its all up on TPB so that's not really an issue. If it becomes illegal to even have the file I am going to be royally pissed.

[forsaken1111]

Call me crazy but I wouldn't trust a file I downloaded from a pirate site to make a firearm. Too easy for someone to alter the CAD file and redistribute it.

[Scelly9]

Well, I got the original from Defcad before it got taken down. If there's any modifications, they did an incredibly good job of covering it up. Both files are exactly the same size, and there's no visible differences in the models.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Well, no one's posted about the Liberator. The first ever FULLY 3-D Printed firearm. The Defense Department ordered it taken off of Defense Distributed's website and it has since disappeared from there. Look up the video on YouTube if you want to see history changed forever. I'm so glad there are people smarter than me out there.

It isn't fully printed, a firing pin is still required.

[Doomblade187]

Well, no one's posted about the Liberator. The first ever FULLY 3-D Printed firearm. The Defense Department ordered it taken off of Defense Distributed's website and it has since disappeared from there. Look up the video on YouTube if you want to see history changed forever. I'm so glad there are people smarter than me out there.

It isn't fully printed, a firing pin is still required.

They mentioned using a regular nail for a firing pin, so it's pretty close.

[alway]

Er, one problem.... We've seen similar guns self destruct in the past. For theirs, it worked fine and test fired well; certainly a better design which takes into account the difference between a metal and plastic gun. However, I would question whether the 3D printers themselves are trustworthy enough to consistently put one together. Each model and variation does things somewhat differently, and I wonder if their design would stand up not just to the test model they printed, but also to those created with different 3D printer models, which themselves may have a wide variation of specs ranging from how well the plastic bonds to what resolution they print at. Sure, a couple years from now there will be better consistency, but with today's hobbyist assemblies? I dunno.

All that said, I'm surprised it took this long. I mean, if I had a 3D printer, the first thing I would do is create overly elaborate clockwork devices using my now-infinite supply of gears. A gun is just a few springs and making it thick enough to not explode.

Hrm... Looking into it further, I came across this: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/155490-3d-printed-guns-have-lawmakers-scrambling-but-cooler-heads-are-needed

Beyond that, what should lawmakers do? Probably nothing, for two reasons.

First, there’s the practical side of the situation. The current Liberator — named after a cheap, barely-deployed pistol in World War II — has more in common with its namesake than a democratizing ideal. Forbes test fired the thing and reported that higher calibers blew the gun apart on the second firing. Another video shows the gun surviving 10 shots, but dying on the 11th. Misfires are common and the weapon currently requires an $8000 3D printer.

So that seems to confirm my suspicions about the required printer quality.

[Eagleon]

Er, one problem.... We've seen similar guns self destruct in the past. For theirs, it worked fine and test fired well; certainly a better design which takes into account the difference between a metal and plastic gun. However, I would question whether the 3D printers themselves are trustworthy enough to consistently put one together. Each model and variation does things somewhat differently, and I wonder if their design would stand up not just to the test model they printed, but also to those created with different 3D printer models, which themselves may have a wide variation of specs ranging from how well the plastic bonds to what resolution they print at. Sure, a couple years from now there will be better consistency, but with today's hobbyist assemblies? I dunno.

All that said, I'm surprised it took this long. I mean, if I had a 3D printer, the first thing I would do is create overly elaborate clockwork devices using my now-infinite supply of gears. A gun is just a few springs and making it thick enough to not explode.

Hrm... Looking into it further, I came across this: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/155490-3d-printed-guns-have-lawmakers-scrambling-but-cooler-heads-are-needed

Beyond that, what should lawmakers do? Probably nothing, for two reasons.

First, there’s the practical side of the situation. The current Liberator — named after a cheap, barely-deployed pistol in World War II — has more in common with its namesake than a democratizing ideal. Forbes test fired the thing and reported that higher calibers blew the gun apart on the second firing. Another video shows the gun surviving 10 shots, but dying on the 11th. Misfires are common and the weapon currently requires an $8000 3D printer.

So that seems to confirm my suspicions about the required printer quality.

I'm suspicious about where he heard that it required that particular brand of printer.

And the problem this type of weapon presents isn't mitigated by being unreliable over multiple shots. Killing someone only requires one. Police forensics rely tremendously on being able to prove that a bullet was fired by a suspect's gun. When you can grind the weapon to dust in a matter of seconds in a tough blender, or hell, burn it, that's a bit of a problem. This, plus the cost of the materials concerns me. The writer seems to forget that you don't need to spend $8000 on each gun, probably closer to $10, if that. Not to mention that this is the first printed gun, ever, and it would be strange if there weren't improvements to be made.

You're both still thinking of this in terms of home invasion - what you should be worried about is an escalation to civil war. It has happened, it can happen again, no matter how much we think we value peace, people can easily be driven to desperation by violence. The government needs to think very carefully about how it responds to this kind of thing, in particular with what they're willing to do to its citizens to suppress it when the damned things do start getting use.

[sneakey pete]

There's nothing stopping you from buying a metal tube and making a single shot gun as it is though.