3D Printing Reaching Its Limit?

We are scratching the surface. no question.

Good points! And don't forget the custom applications that are possible, with the 3D bioprinters for tissues and (eventually) organs to match your own DNA and other immune factors. This is not about speed or mass production, but about the capacity to produce very customized and ideal solutions to medical needs.

Get a portable one made big enough and you could print a house, complete with wiring - using different materials instead of/as well as different colours. Eventually it could be easier than an old container??

The sky is the limit in my opinion. I was with 3D Systems when they formed their sales force and began widespread sales of rapid prototyping Stereolithography.

Today I'm building my own open source Reprap Mendel literally in my bedroom. The kit I bought cost me US $800. I could've sourced it out for a couple hundred dollars cheaper but I just didn't want to take the time.

The system is somewhat currently limited to PLA or ABS materials and has a max volume of about 1 cubic foot but with the broad user base, I forsee, with the opensource community involved, great things over time.

Hooker

Long as we're seeming to have an intelligent discussion for now I'd like to bring up one more aspect of this 3d printing market.

A lot of the early optimism over stereolithography came from the ability to produce physical prototypes that would aid in aspects of product development, particularly where it involved non-engineering people and outright internal corporate PR efforts to gain political support for a project.

Solid modeling has become so much of the mainstream of engineering product development in the last 10 years that it is a cultural norm. That means that any serious participant will be reluctant to admit that he/she cannot completely understand the model's presentation on a flat screen or printed image and requires a 3 dimensional faux object. The resources of project time and material cost that must be taken to produce such models for internal use become questionable in the face of tight time and money budgets and will likely be preserved for presentations to high ranking non technical corporate staff and customer executives.

In addition the closely related technology of CNC machining and the software that controls it has reached a level of mainstream sophistication as to be able to produce prototypes in materials that not only deliver the form of the design but also the engineering performance and physical properties the design requires. This is often achievable with the same or better project lead time and material cost than the comparable 3D printing process provides.

Conclusion here seems to be that 3D printing will tend to be a fabrication technology best suited for niches where the common fabrication technologies are unsuitable. That doesn't mean, however, that we will never see an application in the world of home building. Matter of fact I can see some interesting applications for custom interior trim pieces for locations that could first be accurately measured by a 3D scanning device. Especially in remodeling where the structure is no longer perfectly "square".

Ed Weldon