I would genuinely defend anyones right to take up digital printing as a favourite hobby. As hobbies go digital printing seems to me to have a lot going for it that is good and interesting….it's not for me personally because I'm seriously into making clocks and some other stuff…but, if you can get excited about the technology and the ancilliary skills needed then why not see what you can make it do……
What I personally find dificult to take to is the almost religious fervour of many of the devotees and the automatic assumptions of excellence in the widgets, along with farcical claims of a the domination of 3D printing which is always (for several years now) just about to dawn on an unsuspecting world to wipe away all of this ancient technology that we currently use to machine eningeered components. Some of these claims have been beyond ridiculous…..every house will have a printer and there will be no need to actually buy anything tangible,…you will simply pay for the file to be sent and your new possesion will begin to take shape in the plywood printer installed on your sideboard…….. People in space stations will print any spare part that is needed………. And, the latest idea from the web I see, is that we shall soon be able to 'print' Christmas Dinner along with all the trimmings!
More serious is the recent 'initiative' to provide disabled children around the world with artificial hands that they can just 'print out' as needed…..I think 'Vic' alluded to this in his post above. Highly admirable tho' this is it completely ruined a very sound idea becasue there is indeed a great opportunity for children to gain modern prosthetics mass produced by current technologies that actually work with the interchange of components and ability to 'grow' along with the young users…….but, 3D printing has succeeded in dooming this great idea to be stillborn, so poor are the resulting printed parts……
And Neil,………No, I'm not that impressed by the surface of that widget…and neither should you be! PLEASE take a look at teh work from a good precision mill, let along a top line CNC one. We have a Aciera F1 in the workshop that can knock that into a cocked hat, frankly, and the components are made of brass not some ticky-tacky. At last years 'Ally-Pally' show we met a man representing a company using 3D to print high quality foundry patterns for investment casting of very complex components…the 'new' cleverness was that the printer corrected for the shrinkage of the final aluminium cast……however the printer was a unit costing several hundred K£….this is where the future might lie…..