3-D printers?

[MeDownYou]

How much does a 3-D printer cost, and how cheaply can you print things? In a sense is it economical to produce items 3D printed locally vs shipping them mold designed?

[Zeke]

I think you can find (a decent, more or less ready to print out of the box)* one starting at $800 and there's no upper boundary. Consumer-grade 3D printers are good for sketching and semi-quick prototyping.

 

In a sense is it economical to produce items 3D printed locally vs shipping them mold designed?

There's quite a lot of variables here (required quality, the amount of things, the cost of printer you're using if you're printing them yourself, etc.) but mostly, right now it really isn't. Give the technology a couple more years to advance.

 

*there are a lot of DIY 3D printers out there, but they require lots of tinkering with them to achieve a decent print quality.

[nerdyrcdriver]

You can get a printerbot kit for around $400. But that takes calibration and tinkering to get decent prints. 

I am personally waiting for the NewMatter Mod-T to be released. They are saying it will be less than $400 for sure and the prototypes have print quality up there with the $2000 Makerbots. I have a makerbot replicator 2x at work and it was way overpriced and locked down to their software. 

 

There are printers that use lasers to cure a liquid resin. The resin is expensive, and the printer is around that of a high end consumer 3d printer, but the prints are amazing. 

 

Right now consumer printers are decent for prototyping (prints aren't super strong), not worth using for making products unless they are keychains or something. 

 

I have been in labs with industrial printers that are over 10 years old and they do even better than the laser consumer printer does. The key is letting someone figure out how to make the technology that printer uses suitable for consumer use. That printer used a very expensive powder as printing material. Prints were all brick shaped and then excess powder is shaken/washed off.