@onlyonepinman the commercial demand argument doesn’t stack up though, the problem with 3d printing conversations is that you have them with people who have seen light, and are either on the upwards slope of the learning curve or at the level where you have more success than fail so it all gets a bit echo chambery and objectivly inspite of nigh on 20 years of effort in bringing this to home markets there has been very little improvements over the basic reprap extruder design nor meaningful sustained growth in user base (hence my comparison to Linux on the desktop) , with the biggest change being lower cost photo resin solutions entering the market. The biggest changes have been the rise of modules and Chinese clones rather than scouring the rs catalog(s) for parts and broken printers.

As I said I would love the dream to come true, but I don’t think we will see it as expected, much more likely is that we will see local fabs popping up on highstreets like vape shops did, offering local manufacturing on kit beyond what is reasonable to call prosumer

And for mass adoption something would have to give, much the same way that record companies didn’t offer print at home artwork and labels to stick on a cdr, companies will never give there ip away like that, without whole sale international changes to copyright and patent law it’s unworkable and even then the business model would be more akin to paetrons virtual busking jar than a profit loss based business eg doesn’t scale past a handful of people. Fine for cottage industry, wouldn’t want to rely on that if I had employees.

Great hobby though I just don’t buy into the hype