3d printing is to manufacturing what desktop printing was to printing. Yeah, you don't need to go to Kinko's any more. But if you want to print out 100 pages of a thesis, it's still cheaper to go visit Kinko's.

The reason "everyone" is making such a big deal about it is that with 3D printing, you don't need to understand the first fucking thing about manufacturing - you just need to be able to run Sketchup. Just like you don't need to understand CMYK printing to print out a photo of your daughter.

The difference being, desktop printing is marginally more expensive than workshop printing with incrementally fewer materials choices... while 3d printing is orders of magnitude more expensive than traditional manufacturing with radically fewer materials choices.

Hubski has a hard-on for 3D printing because there's a willful insistence on not understanding it. Which makes sense - the only people who had to learn materials science were mechanical engineers, so only mechanical engineers really understand how hard 3D printing sucks for anything but prototyping.

"Prototyping" isn't a well-understood word anyway.