Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
> The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects.
> The ability to make things at home is disappearing
I do not know what you are talking about.
3D printing at home is more popular than ever. Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them.
> People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines
I think this is an appeal to 3D printing purity that drove me away from many of the communities. In the early days we all swapped tips and shared reviews of parts (like the Smoothieboard I still have) with other people who liked to build machines because that was the only way to do 3D printing at hobby level prices. When asked what we used the 3D printers for, the joke was that they were used to print parts for our 3D printer. It wasn’t really a joke, though. We spent more time keeping the printers working and trying to tune them than we did printing other things we needed.
That has flipped. Now it’s easy to get a cheap 3D printer and start getting parts out of it without thinking about the printer much. This is great if you’re a person who wants to use the output of the printer. This is boring if you think the value is the process of building and changing the printer hardware all the time.
I’m tired of hearing takes about how this is wrong or bad. Most “makers” want to make other things, not spend their precious free time trying to debug failing prints. There are more opportunities and knowledge available now for people who do want to build their own machines and it’s very cheap. People who want to do that can, but don’t look down upon the people who don’t want to do that.
What are you talking about? Show me one survey that shows DIY crafts as a whole becoming more popular in the past several decades. It's just not a thing. People increasingly don't have room for it, computers and cell phones have won as a way to spend the bulk of our free time, and even if you want to create, the primary outlet is the digital world.
> 3D printing at home is more popular than ever
Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently. I can also say that Tesla Cybertruck is more popular than ever, but that doesn't mean much, right.
> Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them.
A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them.
> What are you talking about? Show me one survey that shows DIY crafts as a whole becoming more popular in the past several decades.
Entry level 3D printer sales (the kind you buy from Prusa or Bambu Labs) have been surging for years.
You could Google this and find a thousand articles about it. The entry-level segment has grown massively and continues to expand <a href="https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/context-industrial-growth-and-entry-level-boom-reshape-am-market-253208/" rel="nofollow">https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/context-industrial-growt...
> Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently.
I built my first 3D printer over 10 years ago. The latest printer I bought is much more refined, but it's still stepper motors, belts, a gear driven extruder, and a nozzle like my original printer. The technology has been around for a long time. The popularity explosion is recent.
> A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them.
We're talking about hobbies and that's how hobbies work, yes.
The hobby is growing significantly, though. Arguing that most households don't have a 3D printer is just a strawman.
"Most households", no, but a statistically significant number? Yes.
Two of my co-workers have one each, and another is planning on buying one for her kids for Christmas --- DJI revenge-investing in Elegoo to spite the folks who left their company to start Bambu Labs pretty much knocked the bottom out of the market and halved (again) the price with the Centauri Carbon, resulting in a glut of ~$300 CoreXY printers, many of which are enclosed and hence have a higher perceived value.
Most estimates are that 2024 had ~4.5 million shipped, and 2025 looked to be even more, and no signs of the upward trajectory decreasing for 2026. For one small snapshot see the recent Snapmaker campaign for the U1, >$20M raised from >20K backers. With most sales to the U.S., for ~135M households, while not at 10%, it is almost certainly past 5%, so approximately 1-in-20 households.
Ccecil · · focus · HN ↗
Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
Maybe it's by design? I don't know.
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
> The ability to make things at home is disappearing
I do not know what you are talking about.
3D printing at home is more popular than ever. Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them.
> People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines
I think this is an appeal to 3D printing purity that drove me away from many of the communities. In the early days we all swapped tips and shared reviews of parts (like the Smoothieboard I still have) with other people who liked to build machines because that was the only way to do 3D printing at hobby level prices. When asked what we used the 3D printers for, the joke was that they were used to print parts for our 3D printer. It wasn’t really a joke, though. We spent more time keeping the printers working and trying to tune them than we did printing other things we needed.
That has flipped. Now it’s easy to get a cheap 3D printer and start getting parts out of it without thinking about the printer much. This is great if you’re a person who wants to use the output of the printer. This is boring if you think the value is the process of building and changing the printer hardware all the time.
I’m tired of hearing takes about how this is wrong or bad. Most “makers” want to make other things, not spend their precious free time trying to debug failing prints. There are more opportunities and knowledge available now for people who do want to build their own machines and it’s very cheap. People who want to do that can, but don’t look down upon the people who don’t want to do that.
in_absentia · · focus · HN ↗
What are you talking about? Show me one survey that shows DIY crafts as a whole becoming more popular in the past several decades. It's just not a thing. People increasingly don't have room for it, computers and cell phones have won as a way to spend the bulk of our free time, and even if you want to create, the primary outlet is the digital world.
> 3D printing at home is more popular than ever
Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently. I can also say that Tesla Cybertruck is more popular than ever, but that doesn't mean much, right.
> Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them.
A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them.
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
Entry level 3D printer sales (the kind you buy from Prusa or Bambu Labs) have been surging for years.
You could Google this and find a thousand articles about it. The entry-level segment has grown massively and continues to expand <a href="https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/context-industrial-growth-and-entry-level-boom-reshape-am-market-253208/" rel="nofollow">https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/context-industrial-growt...
> Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently.
I built my first 3D printer over 10 years ago. The latest printer I bought is much more refined, but it's still stepper motors, belts, a gear driven extruder, and a nozzle like my original printer. The technology has been around for a long time. The popularity explosion is recent.
> A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them.
We're talking about hobbies and that's how hobbies work, yes.
The hobby is growing significantly, though. Arguing that most households don't have a 3D printer is just a strawman.
apercu · · focus · HN ↗
WillAdams · · focus · HN ↗
Two of my co-workers have one each, and another is planning on buying one for her kids for Christmas --- DJI revenge-investing in Elegoo to spite the folks who left their company to start Bambu Labs pretty much knocked the bottom out of the market and halved (again) the price with the Centauri Carbon, resulting in a glut of ~$300 CoreXY printers, many of which are enclosed and hence have a higher perceived value.
Most estimates are that 2024 had ~4.5 million shipped, and 2025 looked to be even more, and no signs of the upward trajectory decreasing for 2026. For one small snapshot see the recent Snapmaker campaign for the U1, >$20M raised from >20K backers. With most sales to the U.S., for ~135M households, while not at 10%, it is almost certainly past 5%, so approximately 1-in-20 households.