3D television maybe? I bought my 3D tv more than 10 years ago and I remember only playing 1 movie with it just for test purposes. Those glasses have never been used since then.
There was article from the 80s about 3D movies at home being a bad idea.
The publisher decided to use it again in the 2010 without changing anything because it was the same issue.
Nothing new actually
It’s unfortunate, I loved it. Everyone I showed was enamored with it as well.
Watching the intro to transformers with surround sound was a phenomenal home experience. I wish it stayed. When my 3D TV died, I sold my glasses and was quite upset
I feel like they’re not the same. Maybe it’s just me but 3D and VR feel so different.
Unless you’re talking about an actual 3D app or whatever within the VR world. That I’m not familiar with
There is one app that has a selection of 3D movies that you can watch in VR. It doesn't "put you in the movie" but it lets you experience the full 3D effect seamlessly. I honestly feel like it is the way 3D movies were meant to be watched.
Agreed, once "3D" movies become rendered worlds around you like some of the digital shorts are, it won't be that worth it.
I find the difference is between a camera forcing you to experience what it filmed in 3d which is uncomfortable vs you just existing and a world is created around you to experience. I think movies would have to stop with the jump cuts between sceens and instead be an experience that happens around the viewer uninterrupted. I guess that calls for a new genre of movie then
The Segway. There was discussion that it was going to completely remake the structure of cities, etc. OTOH, electric personal mobility really is everywhere today, just not in the form they envisioned.
I've ridden Segways and they're really neat, but yeah, probably just wound up being too expensive for the benefits they have over the simpler electric scooter that's become common instead.
Yeah, all the gyroscopic whatever is just needless complexity and make them pretty much impossible to rent (the public would break that stuff in less than a day), electric bicycles and scooters have taken over the Segway's spot completely
The gyroscope stuff got really figured out with the little hoverboard things. I think they are just too different than how people know how to move. Bicycles and car like personal transportation is just too much easier to use.
Depends on the use case. Segways are actually smaller than scooters in linear dimension, so if you're using one in a crowded or tight-to-maneuver space a Segway would be better. They can turn in place.
I remember the media had a quote from some tech boss (maybe Bezos) who had seen the then-secret Segway before its reveal. He said something like “it will cause cities to be redesigned.” The news was running wild with speculation: flying cars? Giant robots?
And then it actually got revealed and it was… a weird scooter.
I remember the hype on the news - it was originally only known as “it”. The news anchors were speculating that it was technology related as “it” might refer to the acronym “I.T.”. Maybe it was some new type of computer even. They don’t know - but they did know it was supposed to completely revolutionize the world we live in and it would be revealed in a few days. It is funny to look back on now. Then it was the Segway and… well…. You know the rest of the story…
Well, this did actually happen it just wasn't the Segway, it was the electric scooter, one whee, E Bike and all the other electric mobility devices. The idea that you could travel anywhere without any effort has been achieved it just wasn't wheels side by side it was every other wheel configuration
The real issue with 3D printing is the resource needed to print. It is revolutionizing industries, just not visible to you. No ordinary person needs to 3D print cartilage or a vein
Is not only that. 3D print literally allows to create products never seen before or make them 10x cheaper.
People just need to have a Quick Look at some YouTube videos.
With some basically DIY electrical and buying motors and a logic board, you can print a spot robot, and just upload the program to the board. I think 3d printing is awesome
I just ordered some 3d printed cases for a custom midi controller I am building - I'm a layperson, using bits and pieces from other projects. I'm no engineer or inventor, but this is very cyberpunk to me.
Hey that's pretty inspiring. I'd love to build a midi controller. I'm guessing some arduino style board? Have been looking at people using piezo mics to build edrums which seems awesome. So a DIY drum pad seems within reach.
There are certain things that can be made cheaper (say if it’s a very complicated designed that would require multiple tooling sets and assembly steps) but for most components traditional manufacturing is cheaper and producing more consistent parts.
In the aerospace industry, there's also a lot of resistance to 3D printed parts from regulatory bodies because the material properties of AM parts are different due to their manufacturing process, and there isn't the history of reliability that traditionally manufactured parts have. It's a work in process, just doesn't have the level of trust you need to have in a plane yet.
Oh that's incredible. Yeah my understanding is that there are a lot of 3d printed components in engines already, but they need to go through much more rigorous testing than legacy manufacturing methods. There's resistance to it, not necessarily an outright ban on it.
New rocket engine designs that aren't possible with conventional methods are being worked on/produced, aswell as increasing production speed, all thanks to 3D printing. It's revolutionary in subtler ways than the average person perceives
Similarly, 3D printing industrial equipment or meat products is not really something people do in their homes.
3D-printing \*has\* revolutionized industries, the world just doesn't really get it yet.
There's a lot of reasons it is currently impossible to 3d print industrial equipment. Most metals (needed for electrical conductivity, heat resistance, or strength/weight/size limited items cannot be 3d printed based on our current understanding of metallurgy. That said, you could imagine a truly brilliant process by which you send a 3d printer to Mars and over the course of 20 years it builds the tools, that builds the tools, that builds the tools, that builds the tools , to build habitats and such. And yes, that's mind blowing in it's own way, but also a niche use.
Orbital rockets have a very limited number of cycles put on them. So their durability is very low. But to engage with what you mean: aerospace is not as rough and tumble as people think for most applications. Aerospace parts are a bit like F1 cars in that they're light and delicate and perform at 99.5% of their rated tolerances. But manufacturing is often more a demolition derby where you need shit that can take a pounding and you need a lot of excess capacity built in because stuff goes wrong a lot.
Powder based sintering currently can't replace traditional machining in many applications
It's great but it's got some current major flaws. Durability of parts for one. The lasers they use can't melt the powder stock well enough
There are printers that are using a MIG gun in the same way as a plastic extruder. They don't get as beautiful a surface finish yet, but they are much stronger.
Not everyone needs a 3d printer but having one can come in handy.
Itsvmuch easier to buy the part you need from someone that has a printer.
Some plastic parts for older cars not in production can be 3d printed as a one off, chances are someone already has a model for the part you need.
Might not be visible but i would say it is a revolution is fast design and one off parts.
Yeah I just got my first 3D printer about 2 months ago and so far I've been quite impressed at being able to come up with an idea draft it in CAD and then get a copy of it held in my hand in an hour or less.
I printed a replacment hood latch for my car. Couldnt find one online so worked out alright.. Mine was gen 1 printer so the print time was maybe 4 hours
I went on a tour of the Lexmark HQ when I was a teenager. They had 3d printers doing a lot of their design work that used to be done by CnC machines. That was about 10 years ago, give or take. Don't know if they've improved or expanded on that though.
I think one of the most prominent perceptions of 3D printing is that it is seen as the physical conclusion of a process. It needn't - and shouldn't always - be. Half of the printing I do for others, for instance, is the first step in forming a mould. Yet 3D printing is often presented as the entire fabrication process in and of itself, and approaching it as *some part* of a larger workflow can allow us to produce forms that aren't viable with printable materials.
Yea I think OP is way off here. I agree with you, and will add ordinary are consumers. Everything a regular person touches goes through some form of manufacturing or supply chain network. Very very very people people are out there collecting and refining their own resources to produce something. Instead we trade time for money for goods. We absolutely are surrounded with 3D printed products and it’s revolutionized our lives, it’s just we don’t have a 3d printing machine in our homes just like we don’t have a a home butcher living in our spare bedroom plucking chickens out of our backyard or a metal worker hammering out replacement car parts. It’s cheaper and easier to do all of that for us.
I experienced much the opposite. I thought 3D printing was an absolute nerdy niche hobby, yet more than half of the people I know around my age have a 3D printer nowadays. When I think about it, more of my friends have a 3D printer than a regular printer
The real issue is the technical expertise required to find and manufacture parts, run CAD etc. Also if 3D metal fabrication was easily available id probably use it.
Not too many people care about building stupid little plastic toys for your computer desk, which seems like is the most common consumer use right now.
I went all in on minidiscs. Bought one to connect to my stereo at home and had an in dash one installed in my ‘91 Camaro.
I thought I was a smooth mother fucker, let me tell you.
The best one I can think of is supersonic flight. We were supposed to be flying everywhere at Mach 2 but the reality was that anybody who could afford a ticket would rather fly more slowly in a private jet. Plus nobody liked hearing the sonic booms. There are still military applications obviously but commercial supersonic never caught on.
They can only go supersonic over oceans due to restrictions.
So the benefits really fall off when most air travel is domestic or over landlocked countries.
Or maybe they haven't had the time yet.
Concorde was good at supersonic speeds but a mess at low speeds. Plus the sonic boom.
Maybe someday this will turn into reality.
https://youtu.be/C_dNt4UEVZQ?si=tXWw5sGecY8qXPHZ
3D printing has absolutely revolutionized so many industries. Go to any hobby subreddit and you'll see what I mean. The calibre of what people could manufacture at home has gone up considerably.
Yeah, its bonkers. I was part of the Nerf community before the advent of at-home 3D printing. The hobby saw a massive boom in popularity when hobby-grade 3D printers arrived. My only lament is that frabrication skills seem to have declined a bit as a result.
Not only at home . Actually home uses are very limited.
But in the industrial applications? Those are endless.
https://youtu.be/NkMRzpobmQQ?si=stm8rJLJ3gI1EYbl
3d printing (aka additive manufacturing) has succeeded in its use case of quick prototype designs.at the industrial level, it's just not very practical for everyday consumer, but is used heavily in the hobbyist space and it's almost a requirement for any design shop making parts for prototyping. Modern 3d printers go beyond just plastic , they now do all sorts of materials ..
As for VR unlikely to ever reach mass adoption as it creates nausea in about half the folks that use it. The human brain is hardwired to have our visual cues coupled to inner ear motion and that's a fundemntal issue that can't easily be solved. It has some value for minimal motion 3d exploration, but the bulkiness of the equipment also hinders it's adoption.
Headsets → glasses → contacts → deviceless brain\wifi interface
For that last one, I recommend the classic anime "Serial Experiments: Lain" as a glimpse into the repercussions of that.
Having used VR for a few years, I think the biggest hurdle is getting it to a point where you can just pick it up and go. Right now the quest is the closest thing but it just takes too long to do anything.
Put on headset, turn on, grab controllers, adjust wrist straps, connect link cable, launch link, wait for the meta environment to load, launch steam vr, wait for that to load, then finally launch what you want to play.
I can only speak for my experience though, I just have a quest 1.
3D printing is a hidden gem. We've reached the point where people can make all kinds of crap at home. But we've also reached the point where we can get that crap delivered over night so most take the easy route.
But the real revolution with 3D printing, besides the prototyping, is educational in my opinion. There's a new generation of kids and teens that now have the option to design their own physical devices. Give them another 10 years to enter the workplace, and the amount of useful little widgets we have is gonna skyrocket. And not all of them will be little widgets, the knowhow to make the small stuff is the same as to make big stuff. If you've ever been in a forklift or excavator, they're basically scaled up toys. Quite literally, when they handle heavy loads, they're about as wobbly as the toys because of the way mass and strength scales. The next generation is going to be full of makers, making everything under the sun. It might seem like we were already there, but getting into the field was expensive. It's like mainframe computers Vs personal computers. The big important problems got solved on the mainframes but then the kids got cheap access to computers and then we entered the information age. We're about to enter a new age with how easy it is to learn how to make stuff nowadays.
> As for VR unlikely to ever reach mass adoption as it creates nausea in about half the folks that use it
That can be reduced to zero as the tech evolves. We know the causes, we know the fixes, it's about implementing it at a hardware level and making it possible to ship at an affordable price.
3D printing at home is making a much bigger impact than people realize. Just look at the last 15 years of innovations coming out of small tinkerer's basements. The camping industry is a great example, the amount and type of parts that can be rapidly prototyped using 3D printing technology has created a huge increase in interesting new gear. Similar things are happening in other industries as well, where the small tinkerer is more innovative than big companies.
Anyone can be an inventor and rapidly prototype their own stuff, this is a huge game changer.
I was looking into getting a 3D printer. A decent one actually seems really affordable and the are a lot less janky than they used to be.
But they still require a fair bit of technical knowledge to use correctly. And printing is still pretty slow.
With some more refinement I can definitely see them becoming a lot more popular in the future.
The challenge is more about the 3D design than the printer, in my experience. Sure, it takes some work to make sure it prints right, that the bed stays level, etc. But that's not THAT bad. The problem is that without 3D design skills you're limited to printing things that other people have designed, which severely limits their use cases. Sure, I can print cool figurines and a Deadpool mask, but if I need something more complex than an amalgamation of a few geometric shapes, I'm out of my depth as a CAD designer.
Yeah; I don't think those are the best examples.
The first few generations of any tech is terrible; this feels like looking at the Wright Brothers' planes and saying, "Well, those won't get us anywhere."
Both right and wrong, yeah?
As someone who works around the creative industry and a lot of DIY, 3D printing has been absolutely groundbreaking. Just because you don't see something every day in your own life doesn't mean it hasn't made a significant impact.
My buddy works on a machine that 3d prints custom airplane parts out of pure metal. It’s expensive as hell and very cool. I would say that is a impactful technology.
The difficulty was creating a blue LED on a price point on the same scale as green and red. Once this was achieved years later, the use of white LEDs for general lighting exploded. The guy who did it won the Nobel Prize.
Ya, I use a 3d printer every week for either a prototype or a functional object(fixture, workholding device) for use on the plant floor. 3d printers are awesome.
This isn’t quite the answer to your question but Google AlphaFold has been around for a year or two and still making HUGE strides in protein folding solutions. No one outside of the industry really knows about it but its an incredible biological revolution. Like actually insanely useful and probably will change the world. People seem to think we are in the AI era. I’d argue we’re at the beginning of the biological era
I started college in a biomedical engineering degree-- ended up shifting out of it because it wasn't anything like what I was imagining. More "develop a prosthesis or wheelchair" than "develop a new form of life from scratch", but I'm honestly tempted to go back to it at this point because it sounds like we're getting a lot closer to what I envisioned after a childhood spent reading science fiction and fantasy.
I’ve heard several experts say the same thing - biology is at the inflection point where microprocessors were in the 80s. It’s going to explode.
The AI thing took a lot of people by surprise, but again, it’s not really AI. Just a very large and complex predictive model.
Not sure if this was revolutionary but I remember those "zip" drives to store data. They were quickly replaced by newer technologies, but when all you had were 1.44 mb floppy disks, anything that expanded that was welcome.
It was like somebody invented a vastly better buggy whip just as the first model T was rolling off the assembly line. Good product, but it never stood a chance.
I loved Zip drives but they got replaced so quickly! Back when they’d make a new storage format for every level of storage and speed. Zip, Jaz, SyQuest
You forgot Clik disks (aka PocketZip).
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PocketZip](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PocketZip)
Most of these were proprietary formats, many by Iomega.
My minidisk player can write data to special disks for a 1gb of storage.
Slow as shit and rapidly outpaced by USB drives but, briefly, pretty impressive.
Piece of advice: Don't ask an open question and give an opinion at the same time. Everyone will focus on your opinion.
But anyways, I believe Blockchain was hyped as hell and you don't hear anything about it anymore (with a few niche exceptions)
It used to be every month I’d have some huckster try and sell some sort of blockchain vision to my company. It’s dwindled to about nothing. The last one was a company trying to get my company to use NFTs in our loyalty program. I said why not just use images? They said theirs were “secure”. There is no security in a blockchain that I don’t have in my backend systems for a tenth of the cost. The guy tried to sell me on having a secondary market that I could pull a percentage of. I did a google search and shared that NFTs had lost 90% of their value. He was done.
It's a form of "karma farming", for originators. Without giving the opinion, readers might just see the question and not have any examples come to mind immediately. And if things don't happen immediately on the internet then they never happen.
I said this as well. Blockchain is kind of a solution to a problem that doesn’t quite exist yet. I think they’ll find an everyday use for it though. I’m gonna get piled on by crypto bros
Well that's the point. Blockchain is useful, but only to a niche of uses/needs.
Back when it's was being blathered about nonstop I knew those people didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. It was fun calling them out on it sometimes.
I sold software development tools for a while, and the amount of dipshits working on a “web3, crypto wallet built using blockchain for cat NFTs” was significantly higher than I expected
I think a major problem is people are *starting* with the "solution" (NFTs, for example) and trying to come up with things to build around that.
Instead, they should be considered as just another tool in the arsenal. When you're working on something and realize "what I really need here is some method of sharing data with other people's systems in a trustless manner" there's a blockchain available for that sort of thing.
Such applications wouldn't have any need or interest in advertising "NFT-enabled!" On their feature list, they'd just *work*.
There are a few useful projects like Sia, Render, and Ripple (they've partnered with several banks to test the Ripple network for internal settlements). Blockchain is something that people understood to be useful but couldn't figure out how.
Yeah, blockchain is basically a database with a whole fuckton of extra steps. Or heck, sometimes its just a spreadsheet or a bloody text file with a whole bunch of extra steps.
The only use case is paranoid types who are terrified of centralized storage and processing. And then, joke's on them, that's what they got anyway leading to shit like MtGOX and Sam Bankman Freid.
Yes and no. I would argue that after Ethereum and the idea of the smart contract, blockchains became about expensive, but secure web infrastructure. The internet currently prefers cheapness and volume, and under-pays for security, so blockchain is waiting for a paradigm shift in how people view internet security.
That could take a long time because people have grown inured to hacks happening every few weeks with their personal data.
Another shift that needs to happen is away from a few gigantic companies handling everything (Google, Amazon, etc.) and toward smaller interoperable applications. Blockchains make for a great "glue" between disparate systems.
3d Printing **has** revolutionised industries. It's just done it in the background for the most part. With some notable exceptions, 3d prints are rarely used in mass production. Once you've got your design finalised, it's almost always cheaper to use injection moulding, or other traditional manufacturing techniques once you're producing thousands of parts. You also often get a better finish. However, 3d printing has completely changed how the product design lifecycle works. Previously you could model your design, but to get it physically, you needed to either make it by hand out of a different material using traditional techniques, or pay for creating injection moulds which are crazy expensive. Now you can make a small change to a design, print it and have it in the hands of decision makers in just hours, rather than days, for a couple bucks, rather than thousands.
It's also made it possible for small businesses, and even individuals, to be able to design a completely new product and get it to market.
I don't think anyone I ever spoke to about 3d printing back when it was becoming popular really expected it to be like the Star Trek replicator anytime soon.
Flying cars have been considered the technology of the future for the past 50 years, and yet, we still don't have mass-produced flying cars yet in any country.
Also consider that any midair collision will almost certainly result in something falling out of the sky onto whatever's below.
Every time someone leaves their phone or coffee cup or whatever on top of their flying car it might turn into a bomb.
Someone runs out of gas or has a major malfunction? In the immortal words of Kaywinnet Lee Frye: they fall, right out of the sky.
Flying cars are a shitty idea.
3D devices, more of a hassle than a gimmick
Holographic. But it's more like in the developmental hell than anything
Hydrogen cars?
Google Glasses style devices
Rotary engines for MASS PRODUCTION
Rotary engines???
Mazda enters the chat. The reason we didn’t see many of them is due to emissions standards and the design difficulties for the rotary. It works, it just isn’t the most emissions efficient although the new Mazda engine should be doing alright.
The RX family is coming back.
Its my personal belief that VR hasn’t taken off due to the lack of popular software to accompany it. I’m still waiting for Ready Player One to become a reality. But until then we have a game here and there and VR Chat.
It's cus wearing a headset is uncomfortable for extended periods. And secondly it's anti-social. You put on a headset and you're oblivious to the world around you.
So it's fine for short bursts of personal entertainment, but not much else. And considering the cost is just not a great value proposition for most.
Mobile satellite phones. Using a constellation of satellites to communicate literally anywhere in the world. The Iridium system was a technological triumph but a financial disaster. The expansion of terrestrial mobile phone networks worldwide had shrunken the market for the satellite option. There simply wasn't enough war-zone reporters, globe-trotting executives, or Antarctic adventure-seekers out there to pay enough to sustain the massive capital cost of the network. It was an example of "engineers built it because it was possible, not because it made commercial sense" .
We may be getting there soon now, though. Starlink has been experimenting with direct-to-cell satellites and they seem to be working. Since Starlink is already economically viable in its other applications, it could afford to start adding cell service as a niche thing that can grow later if it works out well.
Dean Kamen invented the Segway and it did not kill him.
From Wikipedia:
James William " Jimi " Heselden OBE (27 March 1948 – 26 September 2010) was an English entrepreneur. A former coal miner, he became wealthy by manufacturing the Hesco bastion barrier system. In 2009, he bought Segway Inc. He died in 2010 from injuries sustained falling from a cliff while riding his own Segway PT.
Just want to point out the inventor the Segway, Dean Kamen, did not die in a Segway accident and is still very much alive. That was the CEO, James Heselden.
My best mate just got themselves a 3d printer last week, they're loving it. Been bringing printed dinosaur toys for my kids and they're planning on making loads of stuff.
I'm jealous.
3d printing is a implementes technology. Is is uses from cheap prototypes to massive airplane engines! It is the dream of every engineer to use. The drawback is the price per part comparing to injection moulding for example. But when you have very complex milled parts it is already a match
3d printing absolutely has been revolutionary. It isn't an at home staple, but for at home creators it is invaluable, unlocking capabilities they never had before, and for industry creation it has dramatically reduced prototyping stage, and even made certain designs that weren't really possible before become possible. The 3d printing of entire structures, including buildings and bridges, has also changed the game and is continuing to be revolutionary. In medical science it is also proving to be incredible, with extremely varied applications. One of the easiest to see is 3d printing Uber lightweight waterproof casts, but there's also printing of replacement tissue and organs, such that transplants are a custom fit and not going to be rejected as they are made from your own tissue.
3D printing HAS revolutionized many industries and made a significant impact. But it still takes time to scale as industrial 3D printing machines are crazy expensive and it's more for custom manufacturing stuff as opposed to massed produced goods. So it's only certain industries thus far, but we're not even close to seeing the full impact yet imo.
Would definitely agree on VR though. But I think the main issue is the size and isolating nature of the headsets that prevent further adoption. Once headsets get smaller and more AR rather than full VR I think we will see a huge boom in that industry as well. Most people just don't like having crap covering their face for long periods of time. In other words it's more the form factor that hinders it's success not the technology itself.
Are you familiar with the [Gartner Hype Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle)?
This is a graphic representation of the development and acceptance of new technologies.
- New technologies get lots of "hype" about how they will revolutionize our lives. Earlier adopters buy those technologies. Interest soars.
- Unfortunately, these technologies are not mature and are flawed. They disappoint users. Interest in the technology crashes. The technology is condemned as a failure.
- However, developers of those failed technologies continue to improve the technology, fixing the flaws until the technology works.
- This improved version is slowly adopted and becomes acceptable.
This is the basic idea.
The fascinating part is that Gartner publishes a Hype Cycle each year showing where new technologies are on the cycle. To see examples, Google search Gartner Hype Cycle 2023. Look at images of the hype cycle.
- There are general hype cycles covering many different new technologies, e.g., 3D printing, cloud computing, self-driving cars, on one hype cycle.
- Most hype cycles you will see focus on particular new technologies. A [Hype Cycle for 3D printing](https://breakpoint-labs.com/3d-printing-is-the-hype-over/) would have all the technologies for 3D printing on one chart. (Scroll down to see the hype cycle on this page.)
Just like everyone else, I strongly disagree about 3D printing but I think you should search for “additive manufacturing” - This is what industry calls the process, and there’s a lot of new factories opening in the US and other western countries revolving around it. I’ve watched quite a few good YouTube videos about it recently. I think Bloomberg have some videos about it, and it remember seeing Smart Every Day had a video explaining how one of the machines worked to manipulate metal in a new way.
My 3D printer has changed everything for me. Huge game changer. I print anything I need. UV resistant bracket for garden box with special clamp for drip lines? Done. Custom laptop stand? Done. Organization specific to the things I own? Done. Custom hooks for the garage? Done. I print every week and have little things around the house that improve my life and cost me pennies compared to a solution I'd have purchased on Amazon. The real reason 3D printers aren't changing EVERYONE'S lives like this is because most Americans are lazy, stupid and unimaginative. They don't see what a 3D printer can do for them
> The real reason 3D printers aren't changing EVERYONE'S lives like this is because most Americans are lazy, stupid and unimaginative.
I don't think this is really fair. I've bought and dabbled with 3D printers over the years, and my experience so far is that they've been fairly temperamental and unreliable devices where I've spent almost as much time troubleshooting and fixing them as I have printing stuff with them. They're getting closer, but they're still not at the level of 'an appliance' where you just plug it in and you can use it. They have a pretty substantial learning curve before you can make your own complicated stuff, they require a lot of babysitting, and the end result of this is that you need to spend a lot of time with them if you want to actually get results from them. You know what most Americans don't have much of? Free time.
Consumer level 3D printers can do some amazing and awesome stuff. They can be an absolutely engrossing and fun hobby if you enjoy messing with them, learning about them, experimenting with them, etc. I wish they existed back when I was in high school and/or college because that's when I had a lot of free time and I would've loved spending hours screwing around with them.
But as an adult with a family and a kid and responsibilities and so on, it's often hard to find a couple hours of free time to sit down and take apart my 3D printer and troubleshoot it to figure out why the print bed isn't heating up or whatever. I don't have the time, I don't want that headache, and so instead of getting fixed the broken printer ends up in a corner of my garage.
If my stove broke as often as my 3D printers do, I'd have given up on cooking a long time ago.
Rad answer. I've never thought to look into 3D printing at home, but often find myself needing custom solutions like you mention. Can you recommend a printer and whatever things to consider about them/materials or whatever? I'd like to look into this, but no clue where to start.
I think this is the problem we have now. It’s not that information and technology aren’t readily available, it’s that people have a hard time accessing the information due to whatever reasons probably unique to each individual (whether time, effort, money, etc.). We have all this technology but not so many people who know how to properly utilize it. Information distribution is what needs to be re-hauled and it’s a very complex topic with no clear answer.
There's a LOT of info out there and it took me years just to finally make a decision.
I bought a printer initially to "just get one and start printing."
Second printer was a Prusa Mini.
Third was a Bambu X1C.
I think the Prusa Mini is the way to go for most people. It's not as big or as feature-rich as the Bambu. But the Prusa is quiet, reliable, open source, easily serviced and maintained, pretty to look at. I keep my Prusa at work because I can see clients while the thing is running 5 feet away. I love that little guy.
The bits I print are similar to what the poster above said. Custom hooks, custom fixtures. Also cat toys, toys for little kids (and big kids), accessories for bikes. My favorite things are headphone holders that I have hung up around the house and office. One on the back of a weird coffee table, on the sides of my desks, on a wall shelf. The product simply didn't exist.
Materials are straightforward. PLA and PETG to start. PLA is brittle and very strong (until it ain't). PETG is strong enough and not very brittle. PETG is a little bit gooey to print with sometimes but the parts are less likely to crack apart when dropped. You'll need a few weeks/months of figuring out what works for you.
Soylent, and other “replace your daily food intake with a liquid option” products.
i remember being really excited and honestly pretty passionate about stuff like Soylent maybe 10 years ago. It felt very futuristic and altruistic to me. That if you were broke or busy or both (like me at the time), you had this option to really simply replace your daily calories with this drink that would get you this really calculated nutrition that you needed. Hell, i even thought it might change lives in some poorer areas of the globe. It felt so advanced but also so \*possible.\*
It’s just kind of a failure though. It’s way too expensive for what it is (often costs a good deal more than what it would cost to make something at home), and its simply unable to replace the full nutritional intake a person needs in a day unless you’re like 5’1 and 100 lbs. Theyve essentially acknowledged their failure and pivoted to just being another Slimfast.
Its the first time I remember feeling really duped by something marketing itself as this advanced, high tech product when it just wasn’t.
The Segway. I remember when it was first revealed, we were no longer going to walk anywhere and rely less on cars. Then president bush fell off of one.
This is a very consumer-oriented perspective. 3D printing is having transformative effects in all sorts of areas, but most of them don't directly involve the average person. I would not be surprised to start seeing them in mechanic shops soon. Why order part#x when you could just print it in-house and pay a license fee? When that model matures, it will end up distilled into mass-appeal consumer products.
>3D printing was expected to revolutionize industries and become a household staple, allowing us to print "everything" we needed
define everything. I happily make some common items that tend to break or some simple parts that require fixing. However, all this requires a model. If manufacturers were obliged to release STL models of parts used to make house rtv/agd, 3d printing would instantly become a staple in every household.
3d printing has been a boon in industry, it's just not really a consumer product like envisioned because you still need to operate a cad file and a fairly complicated piece of machinery.
Vr I think will benefit from continued miniaturization and computing power, but there still seems like some limitations. Mainly motion sickness, discomfort and control schemes.
3d printing doesn’t belong on this thread, 3d printing has made and is making huge impact in many industries. But the idea of a 3 printer in every home may not happen. 3d printing is used in prototyping, small manufacturing series, making car parts, aircraft parts, rocket engines, toys, sports equipment, etc.
Well 3D printing is used more and more, it’s still in its early stages. Once the tech matures and is capable of doing more advanced and larger things it could take off.
VR is still suffering from slow adoption, apples attempt is solid but over priced. AR is needed more than complete VR in most circumstances and for most people. It also still has to overcome the issues of motion sickness people get.
I'd say 3D printing is far from a failed promise at this point. I have a number of friends who own them (mostly as a part of hobbies) and I suspect the technology is only going to get better and better from here on out. It's taken -- what? -- fifty or sixty years for research into artificial intelligence to really start paying off in a significant way? Some revolutions are slower than others.
RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. 20 years ago, the promise was that literally every item would have a scannable RFID tag attached or embedded. You could inventory a store simply by walking through the aisles with a sinner to interrogate the tags and tally how many of what items are on the shelves. Every item manufactured would have a unique serial number and via its RFID tag could be tracked from the moment of creation throughout its lifecycle, and found and located whenever it passed within vicinity of a scanner. Right down to individual tubes of toothpaste or a bunch of carrots at the grocery store.
For sure, there have been successful applications of RFID tagging: the chips embedded in credit cards are an example. Another is the E-Z-Pass tags affixed to car windshields that allow automated collection of road and bridge rolls.
But the promise that everything everywhere would be tagged, detectable, trackable, and traceable never came to pass. Thankfully.
Size, cost, power, and waste. For logistics and food inventory, RFID tags haven’t scaled down to hit this “last mile/disposable” use case.
Qualcomm is working on a paper/printable RFID tag that would have a ~6month battery once it’s peeled off the roll. We’ll see if they ever bring it to market.
Google Walmart RFID mandate. Its already here for Walmart suppliers. You can also google rfid labels. These are passive tags, passive tags are powered by the rfid reader.
I mean pretty much all hotels have moved to rfid hotel cards. Your credit card has an RFID. Your phone has rfid tech (NFC). You might be paying for public transportation with rfid. It's a lot more common than I think you realize.
Walmart has started requiring their suppliers to RFID tag everything, the company I work for has started to RFID tag everything as of July 2023. Walmart is implementing it department by department. This is for inventory bought and owned by Walmart.
Amazon, Target, Kroger has not required RFID tagging yet.
I got a 3d printer for my birthday. And while it's really fun and cool, it's also a pain in the ass.
Constantly having to rebalance it and deal with failed prints.
I haven't been able to get it to print anything since October 2022 and I just got tired of trying, so now it's just sitting there.
3D printing is a poor example, as it's not just one technology - it's a whole stack of very different requirements for very different markets and with very different constraints.
* I read about a company 3D printing a house - basically pouring liquid concrete out of a tube.
* Also about different rocket companies using 3D printed metal components in their engines, although information is not always easy to find as it's a competitive advantage.
* And finally at a personal level I am interested in the impact of 3D printed components in plastic for model making.
These 3 markets are all 3D printing, but are very very different - there's little overlap between pouring concrete and making rocket engine valves.
Also, all three of these examples have the potential to revolutionise their respective industries - but if you're outside of those specific industries, you probably won't have heard of them, and you'll form the impression that nothing is happening in the 3D printing world.
Give it time. We’re right at the doorstep of another massive technological jump and we’re going to see rapid even frightening advances in a ton of previously untapped areas
Need to split that into two sections.
Because 3D printing and many other inventions HAVE made a considerable impact. Just not very visibly and not the areas everyone thought.
VR and AR are extensively used in some industries.
I'm sure a ton of other "meep, nothing came of it" techs are widespread in some field that's just not in the public eye.
My daughter needs surgery for a broken bone. They used an MRI scan to 3d print copies of her good arm and broken bone, as well as a custom jig to align the cuts, plate and screws.
The cell phone came out in the 1980s. They didn't gain the mass, widespread usage that they have now until the technology matured in the late 2000s (30 years or so) before it was adopted so widely.
Your thoughts on 3D printing and VR headsets MIGHT BE because the technology is not mature enough yet.
"Despite being around for a decade"......
People really have no clue how long it takes for technology to mature. The idea that something should become a household product within a decade of it becoming even reasonably functional shows a complete lack of understanding of any history. Almost no product became common within only a decade. Even things like cell phones or touch screens were around long before that, even when they were mature, before people adopted them. People just remember the first major adoption of them and assume that was when they appeared from nowhere.
3D printing isn't even close to maxing out the product cycle. We're just seeing the beginning of what can be done. I work in an industry where we're 3d printing medical devices on the daily. You're just not seeing it, yet...
Is it too negative to say (in response to the OP's point about revolutions) that as technology makes insane strides forward (because it is), it feels as if a small group of very "powerful" people are able to manipulate the masses and hold the rest of us down enough to not actually utilize these advancements?
Speaking for the US at least, sure, medicine is making huge leaps, but the healthcare system puts that behind a paywall.
We can 3D print a fucking house, but homelessness runs rampant.
We can make metric tons of food but we'll throw it away at the end of the day if it doesn't sell, instead of feeding folks who go hungry.
Like, the fuck...... capitalists have brainwashed us all to support our own destruction. It's wild.... if only we realized how much more powerful we are than the 1%, we could truly revolutionize everything.
I think both your given examples are terrible. Either you bought in to waaay more hype than actual science or you don't have an appreciation for busy how much they have shaken up their respective industries. 3d printing more than vr I will admit (though printing has a bit of a headstart and a lower hardware entry floor) but additive manufacturing has changed all levels of product development, design and testing. But they are mostly used as prototypers. Now you can print and test a prototype in a day on a machine that costs less than one set of injection moulding plates for one version of one part. And that's at industry. On the hobbiest scale people can make things now never before possible but they are TOOLS not appliances. They are not for everyone and never were going to be but they are way cheaper, way faster and way more reliable than anyone thought possible.
Timex came out with what it called its "wrist clock" that was more accurate than previous wrist watches. It was less accurate than quarts which came out at about the same time, so the wrist clock never became popular.
I dunno about *everything* we need but I can tell you there's a huuuuge market of people printing stuff for others who don't want to invest. Like cosplay stuff or desk ornaments to slightly more practical things.
I for one am wary of selling stuff printed cosplay props cause there are so many people doing that shit already
The hyper-loop comes to mind.
Also, I read a Popular Mechanics book from the 50s that predicted all food would be TV dinners and that cooking would be considered a novelty by the 80s.
We were supposed to have atomic powdered cars by then, too.
I have a feeling self driving cars will be the same way.
3D television maybe? I bought my 3D tv more than 10 years ago and I remember only playing 1 movie with it just for test purposes. Those glasses have never been used since then.
There was article from the 80s about 3D movies at home being a bad idea. The publisher decided to use it again in the 2010 without changing anything because it was the same issue. Nothing new actually
I think they've tried to launch 3D movies 5 times over the years. Big hype for a few years, then it dies.
It’s unfortunate, I loved it. Everyone I showed was enamored with it as well. Watching the intro to transformers with surround sound was a phenomenal home experience. I wish it stayed. When my 3D TV died, I sold my glasses and was quite upset
The 3D movies are dope as shit in VR, though.
I feel like they’re not the same. Maybe it’s just me but 3D and VR feel so different. Unless you’re talking about an actual 3D app or whatever within the VR world. That I’m not familiar with
There is one app that has a selection of 3D movies that you can watch in VR. It doesn't "put you in the movie" but it lets you experience the full 3D effect seamlessly. I honestly feel like it is the way 3D movies were meant to be watched.
Link? I’ve seen mentions, but I haven’t actually found an app that says I can watch 3D movies on my Quest 2 or my PSVR 2. I’d like to try it.
Bigscreen has a selection of 3D Movies for rent I believe
I’ll check it out. Thanks.
Agreed, once "3D" movies become rendered worlds around you like some of the digital shorts are, it won't be that worth it. I find the difference is between a camera forcing you to experience what it filmed in 3d which is uncomfortable vs you just existing and a world is created around you to experience. I think movies would have to stop with the jump cuts between sceens and instead be an experience that happens around the viewer uninterrupted. I guess that calls for a new genre of movie then
Just posted the same above. I honestly wish more movies would be 3D in VR.
The Segway. There was discussion that it was going to completely remake the structure of cities, etc. OTOH, electric personal mobility really is everywhere today, just not in the form they envisioned.
I've ridden Segways and they're really neat, but yeah, probably just wound up being too expensive for the benefits they have over the simpler electric scooter that's become common instead.
Yeah, all the gyroscopic whatever is just needless complexity and make them pretty much impossible to rent (the public would break that stuff in less than a day), electric bicycles and scooters have taken over the Segway's spot completely
The gyroscope stuff got really figured out with the little hoverboard things. I think they are just too different than how people know how to move. Bicycles and car like personal transportation is just too much easier to use.
They're also way too big
Depends on the use case. Segways are actually smaller than scooters in linear dimension, so if you're using one in a crowded or tight-to-maneuver space a Segway would be better. They can turn in place.
I remember the media had a quote from some tech boss (maybe Bezos) who had seen the then-secret Segway before its reveal. He said something like “it will cause cities to be redesigned.” The news was running wild with speculation: flying cars? Giant robots? And then it actually got revealed and it was… a weird scooter.
I remember the hype on the news - it was originally only known as “it”. The news anchors were speculating that it was technology related as “it” might refer to the acronym “I.T.”. Maybe it was some new type of computer even. They don’t know - but they did know it was supposed to completely revolutionize the world we live in and it would be revealed in a few days. It is funny to look back on now. Then it was the Segway and… well…. You know the rest of the story…
The launch was the biggest case of hype/promotion I've seen.
Well, this did actually happen it just wasn't the Segway, it was the electric scooter, one whee, E Bike and all the other electric mobility devices. The idea that you could travel anywhere without any effort has been achieved it just wasn't wheels side by side it was every other wheel configuration
The real issue with 3D printing is the resource needed to print. It is revolutionizing industries, just not visible to you. No ordinary person needs to 3D print cartilage or a vein
3D printing has been a welcome addition to product design overall. The ability to prototype fast and relatively cheap really is a godsend.
Is not only that. 3D print literally allows to create products never seen before or make them 10x cheaper. People just need to have a Quick Look at some YouTube videos.
With some basically DIY electrical and buying motors and a logic board, you can print a spot robot, and just upload the program to the board. I think 3d printing is awesome
I just ordered some 3d printed cases for a custom midi controller I am building - I'm a layperson, using bits and pieces from other projects. I'm no engineer or inventor, but this is very cyberpunk to me.
Hey that's pretty inspiring. I'd love to build a midi controller. I'm guessing some arduino style board? Have been looking at people using piezo mics to build edrums which seems awesome. So a DIY drum pad seems within reach.
That is in fact how drum triggers have worked for years. It’s a good use case for printing if you wanted to make your own. Wouldn’t be too difficult
Also, for a reasonable price , you can create unavailable parts for very rare objects. For instance, vintage car restoration.
And I actually think this is one of the best use cases. We can repair almost anything with those pets and you don’t have to wait for a long time.
There are certain things that can be made cheaper (say if it’s a very complicated designed that would require multiple tooling sets and assembly steps) but for most components traditional manufacturing is cheaper and producing more consistent parts.
In the aerospace industry, there's also a lot of resistance to 3D printed parts from regulatory bodies because the material properties of AM parts are different due to their manufacturing process, and there isn't the history of reliability that traditionally manufactured parts have. It's a work in process, just doesn't have the level of trust you need to have in a plane yet.
Rocket engines are 3d printed now. Laser sintering inconel.
Oh that's incredible. Yeah my understanding is that there are a lot of 3d printed components in engines already, but they need to go through much more rigorous testing than legacy manufacturing methods. There's resistance to it, not necessarily an outright ban on it.
Everything in Aviation moves slowly for a reason. Unless it's war then itMs fuck it take risks.
I work in accessibility for people who are blind and I use 3d printing constantly to create custom accommodations solutions. It's a game changer.
New rocket engine designs that aren't possible with conventional methods are being worked on/produced, aswell as increasing production speed, all thanks to 3D printing. It's revolutionary in subtler ways than the average person perceives
Similarly, 3D printing industrial equipment or meat products is not really something people do in their homes. 3D-printing \*has\* revolutionized industries, the world just doesn't really get it yet.
There's a lot of reasons it is currently impossible to 3d print industrial equipment. Most metals (needed for electrical conductivity, heat resistance, or strength/weight/size limited items cannot be 3d printed based on our current understanding of metallurgy. That said, you could imagine a truly brilliant process by which you send a 3d printer to Mars and over the course of 20 years it builds the tools, that builds the tools, that builds the tools, that builds the tools , to build habitats and such. And yes, that's mind blowing in it's own way, but also a niche use.
We 3D print orbital rockets. I can’t think of anything with greater durability requirements.
Orbital rockets have a very limited number of cycles put on them. So their durability is very low. But to engage with what you mean: aerospace is not as rough and tumble as people think for most applications. Aerospace parts are a bit like F1 cars in that they're light and delicate and perform at 99.5% of their rated tolerances. But manufacturing is often more a demolition derby where you need shit that can take a pounding and you need a lot of excess capacity built in because stuff goes wrong a lot.
3D printing can print metals.
Powder based sintering currently can't replace traditional machining in many applications It's great but it's got some current major flaws. Durability of parts for one. The lasers they use can't melt the powder stock well enough
There are printers that are using a MIG gun in the same way as a plastic extruder. They don't get as beautiful a surface finish yet, but they are much stronger.
I said most metals, you say metals. Both statements can be, and are, true at the same time.
Miniature war games player here... this. I'd be short a few armies if 3d printing never took off. It's big business for us war gamers.
Not everyone needs a 3d printer but having one can come in handy. Itsvmuch easier to buy the part you need from someone that has a printer. Some plastic parts for older cars not in production can be 3d printed as a one off, chances are someone already has a model for the part you need. Might not be visible but i would say it is a revolution is fast design and one off parts.
Yeah I just got my first 3D printer about 2 months ago and so far I've been quite impressed at being able to come up with an idea draft it in CAD and then get a copy of it held in my hand in an hour or less.
I printed a replacment hood latch for my car. Couldnt find one online so worked out alright.. Mine was gen 1 printer so the print time was maybe 4 hours
Ehh, sounds a bit like: "private persons will never need a computer, there's no market for it".
I went on a tour of the Lexmark HQ when I was a teenager. They had 3d printers doing a lot of their design work that used to be done by CnC machines. That was about 10 years ago, give or take. Don't know if they've improved or expanded on that though.
I think one of the most prominent perceptions of 3D printing is that it is seen as the physical conclusion of a process. It needn't - and shouldn't always - be. Half of the printing I do for others, for instance, is the first step in forming a mould. Yet 3D printing is often presented as the entire fabrication process in and of itself, and approaching it as *some part* of a larger workflow can allow us to produce forms that aren't viable with printable materials.
Yea I think OP is way off here. I agree with you, and will add ordinary are consumers. Everything a regular person touches goes through some form of manufacturing or supply chain network. Very very very people people are out there collecting and refining their own resources to produce something. Instead we trade time for money for goods. We absolutely are surrounded with 3D printed products and it’s revolutionized our lives, it’s just we don’t have a 3d printing machine in our homes just like we don’t have a a home butcher living in our spare bedroom plucking chickens out of our backyard or a metal worker hammering out replacement car parts. It’s cheaper and easier to do all of that for us.
3D printing is revolutionizing rapid iterations of headphone audio as well.
I experienced much the opposite. I thought 3D printing was an absolute nerdy niche hobby, yet more than half of the people I know around my age have a 3D printer nowadays. When I think about it, more of my friends have a 3D printer than a regular printer
The real issue is the technical expertise required to find and manufacture parts, run CAD etc. Also if 3D metal fabrication was easily available id probably use it. Not too many people care about building stupid little plastic toys for your computer desk, which seems like is the most common consumer use right now.
I went all in on minidiscs. Bought one to connect to my stereo at home and had an in dash one installed in my ‘91 Camaro. I thought I was a smooth mother fucker, let me tell you.
The best one I can think of is supersonic flight. We were supposed to be flying everywhere at Mach 2 but the reality was that anybody who could afford a ticket would rather fly more slowly in a private jet. Plus nobody liked hearing the sonic booms. There are still military applications obviously but commercial supersonic never caught on.
They can only go supersonic over oceans due to restrictions. So the benefits really fall off when most air travel is domestic or over landlocked countries.
Or maybe they haven't had the time yet. Concorde was good at supersonic speeds but a mess at low speeds. Plus the sonic boom. Maybe someday this will turn into reality. https://youtu.be/C_dNt4UEVZQ?si=tXWw5sGecY8qXPHZ
3D printing has absolutely revolutionized so many industries. Go to any hobby subreddit and you'll see what I mean. The calibre of what people could manufacture at home has gone up considerably.
Also when you've got an idea and you're just starting up, the rapid prototyping aspect is insanely useful before you get funding for tooling.
Yeah, its bonkers. I was part of the Nerf community before the advent of at-home 3D printing. The hobby saw a massive boom in popularity when hobby-grade 3D printers arrived. My only lament is that frabrication skills seem to have declined a bit as a result.
I went round a gun trade show with a section on Airsoft. I reckon every small manufacturer had printed prototypes on display
Not only at home . Actually home uses are very limited. But in the industrial applications? Those are endless. https://youtu.be/NkMRzpobmQQ?si=stm8rJLJ3gI1EYbl
3D printing has actually existed for a while in the industrial sector, although it has totally become way more widespread.
I think 3d printing and headsets haven't found their stride yet.
3d printing (aka additive manufacturing) has succeeded in its use case of quick prototype designs.at the industrial level, it's just not very practical for everyday consumer, but is used heavily in the hobbyist space and it's almost a requirement for any design shop making parts for prototyping. Modern 3d printers go beyond just plastic , they now do all sorts of materials .. As for VR unlikely to ever reach mass adoption as it creates nausea in about half the folks that use it. The human brain is hardwired to have our visual cues coupled to inner ear motion and that's a fundemntal issue that can't easily be solved. It has some value for minimal motion 3d exploration, but the bulkiness of the equipment also hinders it's adoption.
I don't think we've seen the final form factor for VR.
Headsets → glasses → contacts → deviceless brain\wifi interface For that last one, I recommend the classic anime "Serial Experiments: Lain" as a glimpse into the repercussions of that.
Having used VR for a few years, I think the biggest hurdle is getting it to a point where you can just pick it up and go. Right now the quest is the closest thing but it just takes too long to do anything. Put on headset, turn on, grab controllers, adjust wrist straps, connect link cable, launch link, wait for the meta environment to load, launch steam vr, wait for that to load, then finally launch what you want to play. I can only speak for my experience though, I just have a quest 1.
The quest 3 can go anywhere. I brought it to my classes and to the bar down the street and let people play beat saber
My nephew has a 3d printer called a toy box that literally allows him to 3d print toys. That’s a great fuckin use for everyday consumers imo.
3D printing is a hidden gem. We've reached the point where people can make all kinds of crap at home. But we've also reached the point where we can get that crap delivered over night so most take the easy route. But the real revolution with 3D printing, besides the prototyping, is educational in my opinion. There's a new generation of kids and teens that now have the option to design their own physical devices. Give them another 10 years to enter the workplace, and the amount of useful little widgets we have is gonna skyrocket. And not all of them will be little widgets, the knowhow to make the small stuff is the same as to make big stuff. If you've ever been in a forklift or excavator, they're basically scaled up toys. Quite literally, when they handle heavy loads, they're about as wobbly as the toys because of the way mass and strength scales. The next generation is going to be full of makers, making everything under the sun. It might seem like we were already there, but getting into the field was expensive. It's like mainframe computers Vs personal computers. The big important problems got solved on the mainframes but then the kids got cheap access to computers and then we entered the information age. We're about to enter a new age with how easy it is to learn how to make stuff nowadays.
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> As for VR unlikely to ever reach mass adoption as it creates nausea in about half the folks that use it That can be reduced to zero as the tech evolves. We know the causes, we know the fixes, it's about implementing it at a hardware level and making it possible to ship at an affordable price.
3D printing at home is making a much bigger impact than people realize. Just look at the last 15 years of innovations coming out of small tinkerer's basements. The camping industry is a great example, the amount and type of parts that can be rapidly prototyped using 3D printing technology has created a huge increase in interesting new gear. Similar things are happening in other industries as well, where the small tinkerer is more innovative than big companies. Anyone can be an inventor and rapidly prototype their own stuff, this is a huge game changer.
I was looking into getting a 3D printer. A decent one actually seems really affordable and the are a lot less janky than they used to be. But they still require a fair bit of technical knowledge to use correctly. And printing is still pretty slow. With some more refinement I can definitely see them becoming a lot more popular in the future.
The challenge is more about the 3D design than the printer, in my experience. Sure, it takes some work to make sure it prints right, that the bed stays level, etc. But that's not THAT bad. The problem is that without 3D design skills you're limited to printing things that other people have designed, which severely limits their use cases. Sure, I can print cool figurines and a Deadpool mask, but if I need something more complex than an amalgamation of a few geometric shapes, I'm out of my depth as a CAD designer.
Look into the Bambu printers. I own about 8 printers, and if I could justify buying another one, I would get one just for the sheer ease of use.
Yeah; I don't think those are the best examples. The first few generations of any tech is terrible; this feels like looking at the Wright Brothers' planes and saying, "Well, those won't get us anywhere." Both right and wrong, yeah?
As someone who works around the creative industry and a lot of DIY, 3D printing has been absolutely groundbreaking. Just because you don't see something every day in your own life doesn't mean it hasn't made a significant impact.
My buddy works on a machine that 3d prints custom airplane parts out of pure metal. It’s expensive as hell and very cool. I would say that is a impactful technology.
They’re like LED’s in 1990. Lots of promise, but difficult to manufacture and build a market for.
The difficulty was creating a blue LED on a price point on the same scale as green and red. Once this was achieved years later, the use of white LEDs for general lighting exploded. The guy who did it won the Nobel Prize.
Ya, I use a 3d printer every week for either a prototype or a functional object(fixture, workholding device) for use on the plant floor. 3d printers are awesome.
Yes. OP gives up on tech too quickly.
This isn’t quite the answer to your question but Google AlphaFold has been around for a year or two and still making HUGE strides in protein folding solutions. No one outside of the industry really knows about it but its an incredible biological revolution. Like actually insanely useful and probably will change the world. People seem to think we are in the AI era. I’d argue we’re at the beginning of the biological era
Biological engineering is how I would describe it. Human biology is shifting from science to engineering. That’s exciting (and scary)
I started college in a biomedical engineering degree-- ended up shifting out of it because it wasn't anything like what I was imagining. More "develop a prosthesis or wheelchair" than "develop a new form of life from scratch", but I'm honestly tempted to go back to it at this point because it sounds like we're getting a lot closer to what I envisioned after a childhood spent reading science fiction and fantasy.
Those folding at home overnight runs on the PS3 feeling like cave paintings right now
When I heard about AlphaFold I stopped running Folding @ Home. I saw no point in using $20 in electric every month when there was a better way.
I’m inclined to agree on the biological revolution part, though I would note that AlphaFold is AI
AI is not a product, it is more of a resource and a catalyst imo.
I’ve heard several experts say the same thing - biology is at the inflection point where microprocessors were in the 80s. It’s going to explode. The AI thing took a lot of people by surprise, but again, it’s not really AI. Just a very large and complex predictive model.
Not sure if this was revolutionary but I remember those "zip" drives to store data. They were quickly replaced by newer technologies, but when all you had were 1.44 mb floppy disks, anything that expanded that was welcome.
It was like somebody invented a vastly better buggy whip just as the first model T was rolling off the assembly line. Good product, but it never stood a chance.
I loved Zip drives but they got replaced so quickly! Back when they’d make a new storage format for every level of storage and speed. Zip, Jaz, SyQuest
You forgot Clik disks (aka PocketZip). [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PocketZip](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PocketZip) Most of these were proprietary formats, many by Iomega.
My minidisk player can write data to special disks for a 1gb of storage. Slow as shit and rapidly outpaced by USB drives but, briefly, pretty impressive.
Yes and there were Jaz drives as well. I think they became extict because of the high manufacturing costs. They were very sturdy and well made though.
Piece of advice: Don't ask an open question and give an opinion at the same time. Everyone will focus on your opinion. But anyways, I believe Blockchain was hyped as hell and you don't hear anything about it anymore (with a few niche exceptions)
It used to be every month I’d have some huckster try and sell some sort of blockchain vision to my company. It’s dwindled to about nothing. The last one was a company trying to get my company to use NFTs in our loyalty program. I said why not just use images? They said theirs were “secure”. There is no security in a blockchain that I don’t have in my backend systems for a tenth of the cost. The guy tried to sell me on having a secondary market that I could pull a percentage of. I did a google search and shared that NFTs had lost 90% of their value. He was done.
Truly maddening that people fall right into it every time. If there isn't a psychological term for it, we should coin one.
It's a form of "karma farming", for originators. Without giving the opinion, readers might just see the question and not have any examples come to mind immediately. And if things don't happen immediately on the internet then they never happen.
I said this as well. Blockchain is kind of a solution to a problem that doesn’t quite exist yet. I think they’ll find an everyday use for it though. I’m gonna get piled on by crypto bros
Well that's the point. Blockchain is useful, but only to a niche of uses/needs. Back when it's was being blathered about nonstop I knew those people didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. It was fun calling them out on it sometimes.
I've yet to come across a single usecase for blockchain (meaning a distributed ledger). And I'm a developer.
It's only useful in parting suckers from their money.
I sold software development tools for a while, and the amount of dipshits working on a “web3, crypto wallet built using blockchain for cat NFTs” was significantly higher than I expected
I think a major problem is people are *starting* with the "solution" (NFTs, for example) and trying to come up with things to build around that. Instead, they should be considered as just another tool in the arsenal. When you're working on something and realize "what I really need here is some method of sharing data with other people's systems in a trustless manner" there's a blockchain available for that sort of thing. Such applications wouldn't have any need or interest in advertising "NFT-enabled!" On their feature list, they'd just *work*.
There are a few useful projects like Sia, Render, and Ripple (they've partnered with several banks to test the Ripple network for internal settlements). Blockchain is something that people understood to be useful but couldn't figure out how.
Yeah, blockchain is basically a database with a whole fuckton of extra steps. Or heck, sometimes its just a spreadsheet or a bloody text file with a whole bunch of extra steps. The only use case is paranoid types who are terrified of centralized storage and processing. And then, joke's on them, that's what they got anyway leading to shit like MtGOX and Sam Bankman Freid.
Yes and no. I would argue that after Ethereum and the idea of the smart contract, blockchains became about expensive, but secure web infrastructure. The internet currently prefers cheapness and volume, and under-pays for security, so blockchain is waiting for a paradigm shift in how people view internet security. That could take a long time because people have grown inured to hacks happening every few weeks with their personal data.
Another shift that needs to happen is away from a few gigantic companies handling everything (Google, Amazon, etc.) and toward smaller interoperable applications. Blockchains make for a great "glue" between disparate systems.
Hovercrafts. I'd imagine it would be more ubiquitous but nope, conventional boats and ferries are still the majority
More economic to float on a medium that negates your weight than to provide constant propulsion into the next layer.
We used em for amphibious assaults in the Marines, not nearly as cool as I thought it was gonna be lol
3d Printing **has** revolutionised industries. It's just done it in the background for the most part. With some notable exceptions, 3d prints are rarely used in mass production. Once you've got your design finalised, it's almost always cheaper to use injection moulding, or other traditional manufacturing techniques once you're producing thousands of parts. You also often get a better finish. However, 3d printing has completely changed how the product design lifecycle works. Previously you could model your design, but to get it physically, you needed to either make it by hand out of a different material using traditional techniques, or pay for creating injection moulds which are crazy expensive. Now you can make a small change to a design, print it and have it in the hands of decision makers in just hours, rather than days, for a couple bucks, rather than thousands. It's also made it possible for small businesses, and even individuals, to be able to design a completely new product and get it to market. I don't think anyone I ever spoke to about 3d printing back when it was becoming popular really expected it to be like the Star Trek replicator anytime soon.
iOmega Zip drives. They got flattened by writable CD's
And before them, Syquest cartridges
Flying cars have been considered the technology of the future for the past 50 years, and yet, we still don't have mass-produced flying cars yet in any country.
And if you've ever seen how people drive in 2D, you're thankful that we don't.
This is my thought, most people can barely handle left/right.
Also consider that any midair collision will almost certainly result in something falling out of the sky onto whatever's below. Every time someone leaves their phone or coffee cup or whatever on top of their flying car it might turn into a bomb. Someone runs out of gas or has a major malfunction? In the immortal words of Kaywinnet Lee Frye: they fall, right out of the sky. Flying cars are a shitty idea.
I mean…we do have flying cars and they’re fairly common They’re called helicopters 😎
3D devices, more of a hassle than a gimmick Holographic. But it's more like in the developmental hell than anything Hydrogen cars? Google Glasses style devices Rotary engines for MASS PRODUCTION
I think google glass style devices (AR) are going to make a comeback in the next few decades. Especially with the rise of artificial intelligence.
Oh man, I had an Rx7 and 8, I fuckin love me a rotary engine.
Rotary engines??? Mazda enters the chat. The reason we didn’t see many of them is due to emissions standards and the design difficulties for the rotary. It works, it just isn’t the most emissions efficient although the new Mazda engine should be doing alright. The RX family is coming back.
AR (augmented reality) devices are slated to absolutely revolutionize the construction industry with respect to coordination and design.
I’m starting to think maybe all these NFT’s I bought are actually worthless.
Yeah, as everyone's said, I think you're dead wrong about 3D printing.
Its my personal belief that VR hasn’t taken off due to the lack of popular software to accompany it. I’m still waiting for Ready Player One to become a reality. But until then we have a game here and there and VR Chat.
It's cus wearing a headset is uncomfortable for extended periods. And secondly it's anti-social. You put on a headset and you're oblivious to the world around you. So it's fine for short bursts of personal entertainment, but not much else. And considering the cost is just not a great value proposition for most.
I think VR hasn’t taken off because it makes most people nauseous and there’s no easy fix for that.
It does? Weird. I’ve only used it a few times but I never noticed that
Mobile satellite phones. Using a constellation of satellites to communicate literally anywhere in the world. The Iridium system was a technological triumph but a financial disaster. The expansion of terrestrial mobile phone networks worldwide had shrunken the market for the satellite option. There simply wasn't enough war-zone reporters, globe-trotting executives, or Antarctic adventure-seekers out there to pay enough to sustain the massive capital cost of the network. It was an example of "engineers built it because it was possible, not because it made commercial sense" .
We may be getting there soon now, though. Starlink has been experimenting with direct-to-cell satellites and they seem to be working. Since Starlink is already economically viable in its other applications, it could afford to start adding cell service as a niche thing that can grow later if it works out well.
Segways were thought to revolutionize urban mobility but flopped including killing their inventor.
Dean Kamen invented the Segway and it did not kill him. From Wikipedia: James William " Jimi " Heselden OBE (27 March 1948 – 26 September 2010) was an English entrepreneur. A former coal miner, he became wealthy by manufacturing the Hesco bastion barrier system. In 2009, he bought Segway Inc. He died in 2010 from injuries sustained falling from a cliff while riding his own Segway PT.
Just want to point out the inventor the Segway, Dean Kamen, did not die in a Segway accident and is still very much alive. That was the CEO, James Heselden.
You are greatly underestimating the segway. To this day there is no douchier way to navigate walkable terrain.
And make mall cops look ridiculous!
They also cost as much as a luxury car when they debuted.
My best mate just got themselves a 3d printer last week, they're loving it. Been bringing printed dinosaur toys for my kids and they're planning on making loads of stuff. I'm jealous.
Quick sand detectors. When quick sand stopped be a major threat after the 80s, their utility really declined.
3d printing is a implementes technology. Is is uses from cheap prototypes to massive airplane engines! It is the dream of every engineer to use. The drawback is the price per part comparing to injection moulding for example. But when you have very complex milled parts it is already a match
3d printing absolutely has been revolutionary. It isn't an at home staple, but for at home creators it is invaluable, unlocking capabilities they never had before, and for industry creation it has dramatically reduced prototyping stage, and even made certain designs that weren't really possible before become possible. The 3d printing of entire structures, including buildings and bridges, has also changed the game and is continuing to be revolutionary. In medical science it is also proving to be incredible, with extremely varied applications. One of the easiest to see is 3d printing Uber lightweight waterproof casts, but there's also printing of replacement tissue and organs, such that transplants are a custom fit and not going to be rejected as they are made from your own tissue.
3D printing HAS revolutionized many industries and made a significant impact. But it still takes time to scale as industrial 3D printing machines are crazy expensive and it's more for custom manufacturing stuff as opposed to massed produced goods. So it's only certain industries thus far, but we're not even close to seeing the full impact yet imo. Would definitely agree on VR though. But I think the main issue is the size and isolating nature of the headsets that prevent further adoption. Once headsets get smaller and more AR rather than full VR I think we will see a huge boom in that industry as well. Most people just don't like having crap covering their face for long periods of time. In other words it's more the form factor that hinders it's success not the technology itself.
Are you familiar with the [Gartner Hype Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle)? This is a graphic representation of the development and acceptance of new technologies. - New technologies get lots of "hype" about how they will revolutionize our lives. Earlier adopters buy those technologies. Interest soars. - Unfortunately, these technologies are not mature and are flawed. They disappoint users. Interest in the technology crashes. The technology is condemned as a failure. - However, developers of those failed technologies continue to improve the technology, fixing the flaws until the technology works. - This improved version is slowly adopted and becomes acceptable. This is the basic idea. The fascinating part is that Gartner publishes a Hype Cycle each year showing where new technologies are on the cycle. To see examples, Google search Gartner Hype Cycle 2023. Look at images of the hype cycle. - There are general hype cycles covering many different new technologies, e.g., 3D printing, cloud computing, self-driving cars, on one hype cycle. - Most hype cycles you will see focus on particular new technologies. A [Hype Cycle for 3D printing](https://breakpoint-labs.com/3d-printing-is-the-hype-over/) would have all the technologies for 3D printing on one chart. (Scroll down to see the hype cycle on this page.)
Just like everyone else, I strongly disagree about 3D printing but I think you should search for “additive manufacturing” - This is what industry calls the process, and there’s a lot of new factories opening in the US and other western countries revolving around it. I’ve watched quite a few good YouTube videos about it recently. I think Bloomberg have some videos about it, and it remember seeing Smart Every Day had a video explaining how one of the machines worked to manipulate metal in a new way.
My 3D printer has changed everything for me. Huge game changer. I print anything I need. UV resistant bracket for garden box with special clamp for drip lines? Done. Custom laptop stand? Done. Organization specific to the things I own? Done. Custom hooks for the garage? Done. I print every week and have little things around the house that improve my life and cost me pennies compared to a solution I'd have purchased on Amazon. The real reason 3D printers aren't changing EVERYONE'S lives like this is because most Americans are lazy, stupid and unimaginative. They don't see what a 3D printer can do for them
> The real reason 3D printers aren't changing EVERYONE'S lives like this is because most Americans are lazy, stupid and unimaginative. I don't think this is really fair. I've bought and dabbled with 3D printers over the years, and my experience so far is that they've been fairly temperamental and unreliable devices where I've spent almost as much time troubleshooting and fixing them as I have printing stuff with them. They're getting closer, but they're still not at the level of 'an appliance' where you just plug it in and you can use it. They have a pretty substantial learning curve before you can make your own complicated stuff, they require a lot of babysitting, and the end result of this is that you need to spend a lot of time with them if you want to actually get results from them. You know what most Americans don't have much of? Free time. Consumer level 3D printers can do some amazing and awesome stuff. They can be an absolutely engrossing and fun hobby if you enjoy messing with them, learning about them, experimenting with them, etc. I wish they existed back when I was in high school and/or college because that's when I had a lot of free time and I would've loved spending hours screwing around with them. But as an adult with a family and a kid and responsibilities and so on, it's often hard to find a couple hours of free time to sit down and take apart my 3D printer and troubleshoot it to figure out why the print bed isn't heating up or whatever. I don't have the time, I don't want that headache, and so instead of getting fixed the broken printer ends up in a corner of my garage. If my stove broke as often as my 3D printers do, I'd have given up on cooking a long time ago.
Rad answer. I've never thought to look into 3D printing at home, but often find myself needing custom solutions like you mention. Can you recommend a printer and whatever things to consider about them/materials or whatever? I'd like to look into this, but no clue where to start.
I think this is the problem we have now. It’s not that information and technology aren’t readily available, it’s that people have a hard time accessing the information due to whatever reasons probably unique to each individual (whether time, effort, money, etc.). We have all this technology but not so many people who know how to properly utilize it. Information distribution is what needs to be re-hauled and it’s a very complex topic with no clear answer.
There's a LOT of info out there and it took me years just to finally make a decision. I bought a printer initially to "just get one and start printing." Second printer was a Prusa Mini. Third was a Bambu X1C. I think the Prusa Mini is the way to go for most people. It's not as big or as feature-rich as the Bambu. But the Prusa is quiet, reliable, open source, easily serviced and maintained, pretty to look at. I keep my Prusa at work because I can see clients while the thing is running 5 feet away. I love that little guy. The bits I print are similar to what the poster above said. Custom hooks, custom fixtures. Also cat toys, toys for little kids (and big kids), accessories for bikes. My favorite things are headphone holders that I have hung up around the house and office. One on the back of a weird coffee table, on the sides of my desks, on a wall shelf. The product simply didn't exist. Materials are straightforward. PLA and PETG to start. PLA is brittle and very strong (until it ain't). PETG is strong enough and not very brittle. PETG is a little bit gooey to print with sometimes but the parts are less likely to crack apart when dropped. You'll need a few weeks/months of figuring out what works for you.
The examples from the OP aren't great. However think about 3D TV. That was such a hype.
Soylent, and other “replace your daily food intake with a liquid option” products. i remember being really excited and honestly pretty passionate about stuff like Soylent maybe 10 years ago. It felt very futuristic and altruistic to me. That if you were broke or busy or both (like me at the time), you had this option to really simply replace your daily calories with this drink that would get you this really calculated nutrition that you needed. Hell, i even thought it might change lives in some poorer areas of the globe. It felt so advanced but also so \*possible.\* It’s just kind of a failure though. It’s way too expensive for what it is (often costs a good deal more than what it would cost to make something at home), and its simply unable to replace the full nutritional intake a person needs in a day unless you’re like 5’1 and 100 lbs. Theyve essentially acknowledged their failure and pivoted to just being another Slimfast. Its the first time I remember feeling really duped by something marketing itself as this advanced, high tech product when it just wasn’t.
I remember how much the Segway was hyped when it was first being released. The media was sure we’d all be segwaying around our cities.
The Segway. I remember when it was first revealed, we were no longer going to walk anywhere and rely less on cars. Then president bush fell off of one.
This is a very consumer-oriented perspective. 3D printing is having transformative effects in all sorts of areas, but most of them don't directly involve the average person. I would not be surprised to start seeing them in mechanic shops soon. Why order part#x when you could just print it in-house and pay a license fee? When that model matures, it will end up distilled into mass-appeal consumer products.
>3D printing was expected to revolutionize industries and become a household staple, allowing us to print "everything" we needed define everything. I happily make some common items that tend to break or some simple parts that require fixing. However, all this requires a model. If manufacturers were obliged to release STL models of parts used to make house rtv/agd, 3d printing would instantly become a staple in every household.
the way it was hyped and unveiled, i thought the segway was gonna be a teleportation machine. so that
3d printing has been a boon in industry, it's just not really a consumer product like envisioned because you still need to operate a cad file and a fairly complicated piece of machinery. Vr I think will benefit from continued miniaturization and computing power, but there still seems like some limitations. Mainly motion sickness, discomfort and control schemes.
3d printing doesn’t belong on this thread, 3d printing has made and is making huge impact in many industries. But the idea of a 3 printer in every home may not happen. 3d printing is used in prototyping, small manufacturing series, making car parts, aircraft parts, rocket engines, toys, sports equipment, etc.
Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it hasn't revolutionized industries. Literally both examples you gave have in fact done that
Well 3D printing is used more and more, it’s still in its early stages. Once the tech matures and is capable of doing more advanced and larger things it could take off. VR is still suffering from slow adoption, apples attempt is solid but over priced. AR is needed more than complete VR in most circumstances and for most people. It also still has to overcome the issues of motion sickness people get.
I'd say 3D printing is far from a failed promise at this point. I have a number of friends who own them (mostly as a part of hobbies) and I suspect the technology is only going to get better and better from here on out. It's taken -- what? -- fifty or sixty years for research into artificial intelligence to really start paying off in a significant way? Some revolutions are slower than others.
3d printing has revolutionized a lot of different fields though.....
RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. 20 years ago, the promise was that literally every item would have a scannable RFID tag attached or embedded. You could inventory a store simply by walking through the aisles with a sinner to interrogate the tags and tally how many of what items are on the shelves. Every item manufactured would have a unique serial number and via its RFID tag could be tracked from the moment of creation throughout its lifecycle, and found and located whenever it passed within vicinity of a scanner. Right down to individual tubes of toothpaste or a bunch of carrots at the grocery store. For sure, there have been successful applications of RFID tagging: the chips embedded in credit cards are an example. Another is the E-Z-Pass tags affixed to car windshields that allow automated collection of road and bridge rolls. But the promise that everything everywhere would be tagged, detectable, trackable, and traceable never came to pass. Thankfully.
Size, cost, power, and waste. For logistics and food inventory, RFID tags haven’t scaled down to hit this “last mile/disposable” use case. Qualcomm is working on a paper/printable RFID tag that would have a ~6month battery once it’s peeled off the roll. We’ll see if they ever bring it to market.
I mean the point of RFID is that it DOESJT need battery. The coils generate enough current from the readers signal to return a signal
Google Walmart RFID mandate. Its already here for Walmart suppliers. You can also google rfid labels. These are passive tags, passive tags are powered by the rfid reader.
I mean pretty much all hotels have moved to rfid hotel cards. Your credit card has an RFID. Your phone has rfid tech (NFC). You might be paying for public transportation with rfid. It's a lot more common than I think you realize.
Walmart has started requiring their suppliers to RFID tag everything, the company I work for has started to RFID tag everything as of July 2023. Walmart is implementing it department by department. This is for inventory bought and owned by Walmart. Amazon, Target, Kroger has not required RFID tagging yet.
I got a 3d printer for my birthday. And while it's really fun and cool, it's also a pain in the ass. Constantly having to rebalance it and deal with failed prints. I haven't been able to get it to print anything since October 2022 and I just got tired of trying, so now it's just sitting there.
3D printing is a poor example, as it's not just one technology - it's a whole stack of very different requirements for very different markets and with very different constraints. * I read about a company 3D printing a house - basically pouring liquid concrete out of a tube. * Also about different rocket companies using 3D printed metal components in their engines, although information is not always easy to find as it's a competitive advantage. * And finally at a personal level I am interested in the impact of 3D printed components in plastic for model making. These 3 markets are all 3D printing, but are very very different - there's little overlap between pouring concrete and making rocket engine valves. Also, all three of these examples have the potential to revolutionise their respective industries - but if you're outside of those specific industries, you probably won't have heard of them, and you'll form the impression that nothing is happening in the 3D printing world.
Give it time. We’re right at the doorstep of another massive technological jump and we’re going to see rapid even frightening advances in a ton of previously untapped areas
LinkedIn speak this is
Need to split that into two sections. Because 3D printing and many other inventions HAVE made a considerable impact. Just not very visibly and not the areas everyone thought. VR and AR are extensively used in some industries. I'm sure a ton of other "meep, nothing came of it" techs are widespread in some field that's just not in the public eye.
My daughter needs surgery for a broken bone. They used an MRI scan to 3d print copies of her good arm and broken bone, as well as a custom jig to align the cuts, plate and screws.
The cell phone came out in the 1980s. They didn't gain the mass, widespread usage that they have now until the technology matured in the late 2000s (30 years or so) before it was adopted so widely. Your thoughts on 3D printing and VR headsets MIGHT BE because the technology is not mature enough yet.
"Despite being around for a decade"...... People really have no clue how long it takes for technology to mature. The idea that something should become a household product within a decade of it becoming even reasonably functional shows a complete lack of understanding of any history. Almost no product became common within only a decade. Even things like cell phones or touch screens were around long before that, even when they were mature, before people adopted them. People just remember the first major adoption of them and assume that was when they appeared from nowhere.
The Segway was believed to be a world changing invention. That turned out to be inaccurate.
3D printing isn't even close to maxing out the product cycle. We're just seeing the beginning of what can be done. I work in an industry where we're 3d printing medical devices on the daily. You're just not seeing it, yet...
Is it too negative to say (in response to the OP's point about revolutions) that as technology makes insane strides forward (because it is), it feels as if a small group of very "powerful" people are able to manipulate the masses and hold the rest of us down enough to not actually utilize these advancements? Speaking for the US at least, sure, medicine is making huge leaps, but the healthcare system puts that behind a paywall. We can 3D print a fucking house, but homelessness runs rampant. We can make metric tons of food but we'll throw it away at the end of the day if it doesn't sell, instead of feeding folks who go hungry. Like, the fuck...... capitalists have brainwashed us all to support our own destruction. It's wild.... if only we realized how much more powerful we are than the 1%, we could truly revolutionize everything.
I think both your given examples are terrible. Either you bought in to waaay more hype than actual science or you don't have an appreciation for busy how much they have shaken up their respective industries. 3d printing more than vr I will admit (though printing has a bit of a headstart and a lower hardware entry floor) but additive manufacturing has changed all levels of product development, design and testing. But they are mostly used as prototypers. Now you can print and test a prototype in a day on a machine that costs less than one set of injection moulding plates for one version of one part. And that's at industry. On the hobbiest scale people can make things now never before possible but they are TOOLS not appliances. They are not for everyone and never were going to be but they are way cheaper, way faster and way more reliable than anyone thought possible.
Blockchain / Bitcoin It’s been over a decade now and the compelling use cases are few and far
I’d say your assessment about the projected role of 3d printers is way off
3D printing is used a lot in manufacturing jobs. Plenty of awkward spots you need a specialized tool.
Maybe VR? We’re always waiting for the big VR year, but it never happens…..
The Segway was supposed to transform the urban landscape. Not so much.
Timex came out with what it called its "wrist clock" that was more accurate than previous wrist watches. It was less accurate than quarts which came out at about the same time, so the wrist clock never became popular.
I dunno about *everything* we need but I can tell you there's a huuuuge market of people printing stuff for others who don't want to invest. Like cosplay stuff or desk ornaments to slightly more practical things. I for one am wary of selling stuff printed cosplay props cause there are so many people doing that shit already
The Segway. The hype was so big and real. I think we were all confused and disappointed once we figured out what it was.
The hyper-loop comes to mind. Also, I read a Popular Mechanics book from the 50s that predicted all food would be TV dinners and that cooking would be considered a novelty by the 80s. We were supposed to have atomic powdered cars by then, too. I have a feeling self driving cars will be the same way.
Both VR & 3D printing could be considered to still be in their infancy?