alt Hacker NewsI was a kid at the time, but adults, magazines, and other children convinced me that 3D printing at home would likely replace a huge number of products. This included extremely optimistic speculation, like printers producing smart phones or houses. Then I dated a boy who used his 3D printer to substitute The Container Store at a higher cost with greater effort and lower quality, and that soured me on the concept.
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I think we'll see this slowly march along. I just made some custom-designed speaker tilt mount things for my desk. Sure, it's a trivially simple example, but a lot of things are. I was able to get the exact angle I wanted, bigger than most and in a design I liked, crafted by AI in 5 minutes, and on my desk by the next morning and for a fraction of the price of a Chinese made Amazon version.
It's no replicator, but give it 5 years and it might be surprising how useful it is.
3d printing matured. My makerspacr's 3d printing room is now more busy than it ever been.
But the real magic happens in CAD while printers are good enough that it gets out of your way.
What we're seeing instead are companies you can send CAD files to, get estimates, and receive the parts back in a few days.
> or houses
They're not common by any means, but they do exist. Walls look pretty ugly though.
Just like with vibecoding complains, have you tried the latest models (of 3d printers)? Specifically, Bambu's latest models make the printer a device to just use rather than the project itself. It's the Apple of 3d printing. Previously, you'd spend hours on calibrating and leveling nonsense. Latest models don't have this problem. Open the app on your phone, (doom)scroll until you find something, and just hit print from your phone. You can make it more complicated as desired, but it's not necessary to get something out of your printer.
Which apes vibecoding. ChatGPT 3.5 was laughably bad compared to codex 5.3, but if you're basing your opinion on 3.5's performance, your opinion's out of date.
I remember hearing “trek replicator” in things like pop mechanics, back in the 90s.
Then it was a lot of “self replicating printers” for quite a while, which never has been a real thing.
Certainly there’s utility in the technology, and much moreso if you’re making aircraft parts. And I love prototyping with my various machines.
But I agree, it has had far more than its fair share of hype at the home printer level.