When trying to commercialize a new material, technology, or application, a lot of people seek out these advantages laser-like to serve as a foundation upon which to build their business cases. A lot of these business cases later fail because people were a little too optimistic or our technology was a tad too limited at the time. How do we increase the success rate of new 3D printing applications? How do we take an old way of thinking and redo it with additive manufacturing? How do we let 3D printing work inside of a business? How can we incubate something and then take it out into the real world? Top-down 3D printing implementations almost never work. Rather than try to wiggle your way into an ongoing development of a new product, perhaps make a part to repair an old one. 3D printing is finicky, annoying, and we have low repeatability, reliability, and accuracy compared to a lot of other technologies. For some weird reason, some people avoid discussing the costs of parts or having a machine.

Read the full article at 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing