Printing in 3D promises a revolution in the way people get products. Do you need a new gear for an old food-mixer or a replacement lid for your favourite sugar bowl? Just print them out. Or at least so goes the hype. Will it be that easy in the real world?
What's undeniable is that more companies are offering 3D printers for home use, some for less than 1,000 euros (1,122 dollars). But how useful are they really? Can the average person print out anything they need, or are some items so complicated they'll need to be handled professionally?
Philipp Troester of Druck (Print), a German research society, says 3D printing is probably a bit more complicated than the industry is leading people to believe it is. "Anyone can do a lot of things with free software," he notes, then adds: "But coming home from work and printing out a gearwheel quickly if I've never had any 3D printing experience would be difficult."
Dirk Lorenz of Stiftung Warentest, a German consumer products tester, agrees, noting that the average person probably won't be able to go from zero to printing out a new back cover for a broken remote control. Most people would probably run into problems just trying to scan the required shape from the broken part, he says. But that doesn't mean there's not a lot of reason to get excited about the printers.
The technology of printing items layer by layer has been around for 30 years. What has changed is the availability of cloud services and the enhanced processing power of modern machines, says Wolfgang Dorst of German technology industry association Bitkom. "You can use your smartphone to scan an image of the item, load it up online, let a cloud service do the computing and have it printed out by a service provider," he says.
Dorst says he's done it himself: replacing worn-out plastic parts in a collapsible boat with printed parts. Peter Koenig of industry magazine Make says he has printed out parts for an electric lamp in his home. "I used free software, but you do need to be able to think in 3D yourself and a lot of experience with the techniques to succeed. This would be a big hurdle for beginners," says Koenig. Part of the problem is the equipment needed. For example, the kind of 3D scanners available on the market might be good for something simple like a bust, but they lack the capacity to accurately scan the fine points of a screw-top lid.
Such work requires an industrial scanner, which the average household is unlikely to be able to afford. As for the printers, decent 3D models can be had starting at 700 euros. Cheaper models do without heated platens, displays and SD card slots. Doing without the last two means the printer only works if it's connected to a computer by a cord. Whether you need a heated platen depends upon the kind of material you're going to use," says Koenig. One option is PLA, which is fine on a cold base. But there's another, called ABS, which loses its form as it cools.
"You can't use it without a heated platen," says Koenig. Home printers say the variety of materials they can use is growing as 3D printers grow more popular. "Earlier, I just had a choice of colours, and that was it," says Koenig. Now you can also get materials based upon nylon, or with added wood or glow-in-the dark substances. About 750 grams of plastic wire costs about 25 euros "and it lasts a really long time," he notes. But if printing at home seems like too much fuss, there are always services that will do it for you. Of course, this means additional labour costs, since others will be doing the scanning and preparing the print for you.
That means if you're looking for a tiny replacement part for a food-mixer - and it would only cost 30 euros to buy a new one from the manufacturer - you have to ask yourself if printing is worth the fuss. "But if I could get my old record player back into working order for so little, I'd gladly pay," notes Troester. Model-railway enthusiasts have also discovered 3D printing with gusto, designing and printing locomotives not carried by any established model maker. A lot of services have also sprung up, offering to do the work for customers at modest prices.
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