The two current biggest issues with thermoplastic 3D printers are:
- electricity usage: heating a baseplate, feed head and mechanical effort of moving a massive apparatus bazillion^3 times.
- speed (or lack thereof) of moving one or two heads those bz^3 times to get anything made
We're still in the "horse-and-buggy"-days of distributed manufacturing, so one approach or another will eventually find something scalable, Edison-style. More inventions and approaches are definitely a good-thing.
- electricity usage: heating a baseplate, feed head and mechanical effort of moving a massive apparatus bazillion^3 times.
- speed (or lack thereof) of moving one or two heads those bz^3 times to get anything made
We're still in the "horse-and-buggy"-days of distributed manufacturing, so one approach or another will eventually find something scalable, Edison-style. More inventions and approaches are definitely a good-thing.