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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

[10ebbor10]

That you need at least several printers for projects of different scales. After all, you're not going to use your nanoscale printer to print a new table, or larger things.

[SalmonGod]

That you need at least several printers for projects of different scales. After all, you're not going to use your nanoscale printer to print a new table, or larger things.

Currently, yes... sort of.  In general.

But the biggest hurdle for the technology to overcome in the near future is that versatility, to make one machine capable of handling multiple materials and various scales.

As it is now with purely plastic items, it's pretty easy to make a large object by printing out smaller pieces and combining them.  Something the size of a dining room table may be getting kind of ridiculous with your average hobbyist printer, with layer thickness measured in microns, but there's no reason you couldn't do it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Liberator pistol suffers catastrophic failure under testing.

The original plans for the gun were downloaded more than 100,000 times before the company pulled them from its site under pressure from the US State Department.

Police believe that despite this, the files are still circulating.

Really?

[10ebbor10]

On a side note, they did use a cheaper printer. 1700 dollars

[Sheb]

But is the printer's quality that important, compared to say, the feedstock used?

[SalmonGod]

But is the printer's quality that important, compared to say, the feedstock used?

I think ABS plastic is the standard material used with hobby-level 3d printers, and at a glance looks to be what all the tested Liberators have been made out of.  I doubt you're going to see much variation in the quality of the material.

I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm guessing quality of 3d printer could effect the uniformity of the grain, the resolution of the print, and maybe the bond strength between layers.  This is just my educated guessing based on knowing generally how the printing works, and having seen the quality of a friend's prints improve as he both upgrades his printer and gets better at using it.  I do know for certain that there is a decent amount of variability in print resolution between various printer models.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Still, even the creators said that their copy of the gun rapidly degraded after the first few shots.

Plus, with 3D printers, people inadvertently or even intentionally using sub-standard printers with sub-standard material is a realistic issue.

[Sheb]

Which, if we're talking about criminals, I don't see as a problem.

[SalmonGod]

Still, even the creators said that their copy of the gun rapidly degraded after the first few shots.

Plus, with 3D printers, people inadvertently or even intentionally using sub-standard printers with sub-standard material is a realistic issue.

Not to mention any number of ways they could simply screw up the process.  I haven't seen first-hand what using one of these printers is like, so I don't know how complicated it really is, but my friend with the 3d printer is the tech savviest guy I know and it's complicated enough that practice alone has drastically improved the quality of his prints.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Which, if we're talking about criminals, I don't see as a problem.

If a criminal tries to shoot someone with a gun that suddenly is a grenade, that could be problematic for more people than the criminal.

[Sheb]

The explosive power of a round is pretty limited. Sure, the criminal is going to get hurt because he's holding the damn thing, but you won't have a huge area effect.

[Leafsnail]

So the correct way to regulate 3D printed guns is to arrest everyone who comes into hospital with no fingers.  Problem solved.

[sneakey pete]

Plus, with 3D printers, people inadvertently or even intentionally using sub-standard printers with sub-standard material is a realistic issue.

Tis also an issue for any kind of 3D printing... Not just for a horribly named gun

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Plus, with 3D printers, people inadvertently or even intentionally using sub-standard printers with sub-standard material is a realistic issue.

Tis also an issue for any kind of 3D printing... Not just for a horribly named gun

I wouldn't call it horribly named, it is quite similar to the WWII Liberator, even down to occasionally exploding.

[Leafsnail]

And never being used for its intended purpose