[hevi_jos]

Everyone does not need a printer. A creative professional like an architect, engineer, electrician, decorator, wood worker, they absolutely need it.

Mass marketed are always cheaper and most of the time better. True.

So why creative professionals need it? Because not everything they need its mass marketted. In fact, one of the best uses is joining two mass marketted things together to create a system.

3d printing is fantastic for joining the gaps that exist between what exist in the market and exactly what you need.

Imagine you are an engineer creating a flight simulator hardware machine, or a driving simulator with VR. You probably will buy the chair, but then you will have to adapt it some way to your structure of soldered beams.

You can spend like 600 euros mechanizing and soldering little metal pieces and wait something like a month for those that make it to make it. Or you could print them and spend like 25 euros and have it ready at the end of the day, look at the problems in the design, iterate.

[hevi_jos]

PS: Another very important thing is that when you talk with an artisan to make your pieces it is craftsmanship.

You need to explain to the artisan what you need done. This person has to understand you. This take time and money.

The effort I make explaining what I need to an artisan is completely lost if I change the artisan.

With a 3D printer, you create a design that is a product in itself. It can be repeated ad infinitum. The work I do today improving the design is work I will not have to do tomorrow.

I routinely send designs to people living 2000 miles away. They print it and can play with it the same day.

[contingencies]

There is an ancient and effective standard interface for artisans. It's called technical drawing. If you spend the time defining your part in those terms you can scale manufacturing and have redundant suppliers. Further, these days to many fabricators you can send 3D models instead of the drawings. For product design exceeding tiny quantities, such an approach offers benefits over non-scalable self-fabrication with unprofessional tooling that will ultimately limit your access to a broader range of fabrication processes and materials. I've banned 3D printers in our office for that reason. We occasionally 3D print outside, but more often these days just get metal CNC'd.