<story><title>Dremel Releases a Mass-Market 3D Printer</title><url>http://makezine.com/2014/09/17/dremel-3d-printer-idea-builder/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jglauche</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m under the impression that a LOT of companies are currently thinking that they miss their market right now if they don&amp;#x27;t bring out a 3d printer. Actually, the market is not that big and over-saturated with printers right now. The vendors (this goes especially to the big ones) are missing one critical point: They haven&amp;#x27;t made it easy enough for Joe User to create printable 3d designs. The &amp;quot;mass&amp;quot; will not buy a product like that if they don&amp;#x27;t understand why they need it for and also not if they don&amp;#x27;t have access to easy and powerful tools to make actually good use of it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gizmo686</author><text>My sense is that alot of companies are trying to get ahead of the curve on 3d printers. The major advance that will make 3d printers mass market items is probably going to be in the moddeling software, and the &amp;quot;model store&amp;quot; ecosystem. This makes the printers themselves largely commodities  from the start, so if a company already has a couple of prototypes done to the point where they have a solid printer, they are ready to ride the wave of mass 3d printing.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is assuming that someone solves the hardware problem, otherwise it is likely just a failed investment; but that just makes it a risky investment.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dremel Releases a Mass-Market 3D Printer</title><url>http://makezine.com/2014/09/17/dremel-3d-printer-idea-builder/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jglauche</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m under the impression that a LOT of companies are currently thinking that they miss their market right now if they don&amp;#x27;t bring out a 3d printer. Actually, the market is not that big and over-saturated with printers right now. The vendors (this goes especially to the big ones) are missing one critical point: They haven&amp;#x27;t made it easy enough for Joe User to create printable 3d designs. The &amp;quot;mass&amp;quot; will not buy a product like that if they don&amp;#x27;t understand why they need it for and also not if they don&amp;#x27;t have access to easy and powerful tools to make actually good use of it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Ccecil</author><text>Over-saturated is an understatement..it is getting pretty bad.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.3ders.org/pricecompare/3dprinters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.3ders.org&amp;#x2F;pricecompare&amp;#x2F;3dprinters&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that is not nearly all of them :)&lt;p&gt;The design is always an issue when printing too.  Customers rarely design their models to be printed because they don&amp;#x27;t fully understand the process.  If you design correctly you can get away with very little support material and still get very detailed models..if not then you end up with either a poorly printed object or significant detail loss on the surfaces from support material removal.&lt;p&gt;Maybe some plugins for popular CAD programs might be helpful...at least some sort of &amp;quot;ray&amp;quot; plugin that would show where your trouble overhangs&amp;#x2F;support material generation will be located.  At least for training purposes.</text></comment>