Off Topic / 3D Printers? Are they worth all the hype?

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Duncan Peck
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Posted: 5th May 2015 17:32
3D printers received a lot of media coverage recently hyping them up as the next best thing since sliced bread. What do you think? Which are the best 3D printers on the market? What about multicolour 3D printing? Is 3D printing the way forward in the future? All your thoughts are welcome because I'm seriously considering buying one. Anyone with experience or opinions please share your thoughts.
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tomjscott
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Posted: 5th May 2015 18:14
I attended the CES show earlier this year and we looked at about 20 or more of these printers. We saw everything from super low budget printers to high end systems costing 10s of thousands of dollars. I was impressed with this technology and definitely see it as being useful for many applications. The kinds of things you could do with some of these printers, even lower end ones, was astonishing. I honestly can't remember any of the brands or which I thought were better, but even the low end machines were impressive. And the cost of the rolls of material was a lot less and lasted a lot longer than I would have thought.
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Wolf
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Posted: 6th May 2015 18:19
They are a nice niche for small companies to start selling gimmicks. Great tool for artists and somewhat useful for houselhold appliances...the likelihood that you need it and will use it often is low though.

For me, I think the technology is great and holds a lot of future, but buying one of my own would be a waste of money.



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rolfy
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Posted: 7th May 2015 09:31 Edited at: 7th May 2015 09:36
When I was back in the UK I saw that a local postal store had one you could use alongside the photocopiers, so looks like they may be installed in your local supermarket with a coin slot in the not too distant future, unless you plan to print and sell I wouldn't buy one for the home.

It will all the same cause a crap load of copyright issues when they are freely available like this and it becomes cheaper to rip and print. Not to mention the issues with printing weapons.

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