| I actually think what you suggest _would_ be brilliant if there was a printer that printed as nice and detailed parts as Lego does from ABS. The digital ecosystem for that would be crazy. But. Modern consumer printers are way better than decade ago but they still sort of suck if you want any fine details. "It shouldn't be hard to print pieces that can snap together." It's actually quite hard to print pieces that are functional and look nice. Modern consumer 3D printers sort of suck for small details still. If all you print are Lego Dublo sized parts. And print them from ABS. You might succeed _sometimes_. PLA the cheapest default plastic for filaments for extruders loses fit quite fast (I've tried). So ball joints etc will get loose pretty soon. "Would there be any downside to this approach?" Well, the adventure currently is the printing part and it's mostly not fun but one of those activities masochistic engineers (like myself) take up as a hobby. The consumer 3D printers are improving! Maybe one day. But the material physics are not that comforting there. |