3d printers haven’t changed that much… they’ve gotten easier to use, sure, but the materials and quality we’re printing is about the same as 10 years ago.
3d printers have changed significantly. They used to be very finicky and hard to get a decent print. Lots of tweaking and it was different for every printer.
They have evolved into true click and forget machines.
I tear apart medical and other machines to recycle parts. I do often see 3d printed parts inside commercial machines, probably because they are making so few of them and it's more economical to just print a couple specialized parts.
Most 3D printed parts have a telltale texture resulting from the layer-by-layer deposit of material. The same goes for many milled/CNCed parts bearing evidence of tool marks. Once you've seen and held enough, it's relatively easy to identify whether a given part was printed, cast, milled, lathed, etc.
I say most because there are finishing methods which can largely obscure these details and make it less obvious as to which method produced a given part.
Maybe it was 20? I just remember they took expense fluids, hard to keep, fragile.
Then month ago I was in a Micro Center, and there were dozens of very fancy printers that could take dozens of types of line feeds.
Feels like 3D printers have changed. A slicer from 10 years ago is not going to generate as good a print as one from today. And it feels like the variety of filaments from 10 years ago has greatly changed.
They have evolved into true click and forget machines.