The Almighty 3D Printing

As we all know, 3D printing was supposed to change everything. Well, has it really?

Probably not as much as the most optimistic futurists predicted. Yes, the machines have become cheaper and accessible for regular yobbos like you and me. And yes, unlike the early machines, the output is nowadays a fraction more identifiable to your render as well. The material selection has also grown exponentially. So, what’s the problem then?

When I was introduced to early 3D printing a very, very long time ago, I was staggered by the enthusiasm of the users. They expressed overwhelming joy, when an item they had on screen actually materialised into the printer’s bed. After that, I was again staggered by how rubbish quality the final item was, with massive printing lines visible and the blob hardly recognizable as the item on the screen.

Sadly, in many ways even today’s FDM printing comes with the same drawbacks. The print will still have visible lines in it. In more expensive machines less visible perhaps, but still visible. And your print will need hours of post processing (sanding, painting) to make it look like the item you probably envisioned. Sure, with a resin printer the finish will be much better, but those machines and the media come with their own problems.

Then there’s the file creation. After the initial ardour, people realised they can’t do 3D renders, and learning to create the printed item out of zeros and ones first requires hours of practise and elbow grease. Sure, there’s Thingiverse, and you can also buy print ready STL files via Etsy, but what if you wanted to sell that printed item? Most of the files you can download off the Interwebs don’t cover commercial use. As an entrepreneur, I am interested in exchanging my time and investments into some pocket money, so obviously I want to sell my prints too. Hence, I’ve forced myself to learn some 3D modelling, so I can use files I have created 100% myself. But if a casual user needed something more complicated than a soap box, it might be a bit of a challenge for them to start learning Fusion360 with no prior experience in any kind of computer work.

This leads me to productivity, because a 3D printer is not a production tool. The print quality is directly related to printing speed, so a dawn will morph into dusk easily during the cycle your FDM printer works on a relatively small piece. The cheapest printers come with fairly small capacity too. Just over the past recent couple of years, 3D printer manufacturers have indeed been paying attention to the print speeds, and many of the mid-range consumer machines are promising whopping 600mm/s print speeds, but you need to remember this kind of speed will require extra tinkering, right materials and sacrifices in quality or structural integrity.

And 3D printing as a process is more sensitive than a Tesla driver or vegan. There are dozens of parameters affecting the output, for example heat, flow rates, extraction speeds, print speeds, structure, etc. Get one wrong and your print will be doomed. A slight drizzle outside your workshop maybe, and your print will be doomed. The bathroom towels hanging in different hooks than day before, and your print will be doomed. In many ways, 3D printing suits people who probably were better in maths than you and I in middle school, and now they’re making fancy Youtube videos about 3D printing. They usually have longer beards, funnier hats and more embarrassing tattoos than I, but quite often they also get their kicks out of the 3D printing process, rather than the final product. That’s a luxury I can’t afford, since I’m going to need the final item, so I can sell it to my customer.

After all this ranting, it may look weird that nowadays the vast majority of my items on Etsy are actually 3D printed! In early 2022, I finally caved in and reluctantly acquired a 3D printer. The single most common question I got from my customers was “Do you have a chassis for this and that hilt?”. So I wanted to address that. This idea turned into a bust, because I had not worked with FX saber electronics for years and didn’t know what modern FX saber needed. For instance, I hate in-hilt recharge with sabers, so I had no experience with recharge ports.

But soon after that disappointment, I realised 3D printing was a way for me to make my designs into some kind of reality, with greater autonomy than machining them out of metals. Once I had the file ready, I just needed to set the printer into printing it, and the machine worked on it in the background. I was able to pop by in the ‘shop for 10 minutes to remove the finished print and send another job to the bed, then return back to entertain a sick kid, clean the house, mow the lawn, lose my nerves while trying to give advice to digitally challenged relatives, or whatnot.

And since 3D printing has become so popular, online support is also superb. If you run into a problem with your printer, the same thing has happened with 99.9% certainty to someone else too, and the solutions have been well documented. 5 minutes with Google and a tweak in the adjustments will most likely solve your issue.

3D printing does not suit everyone. And you can’t print just anything you’d like. An aluminium saber hilt is still a better choice if you need to cram electronics inside it and whack it against another FX saber. But for someone wanting a nice display piece for just 40€, a 3D print would do just great. For me, it has become a mean to produce more ideas and designs at faster rates and lower cost. And I can’t see why that was a bad thing.