[mrebus]

How big is their actual market. In Print The Legend they realize a major sector is the small engineering/tech shops that can't afford/don't need an industrial prototyper but could use a $3000 one. After that they have the "Hobbyist". These sectors seem small and possibly shrinking.

[togusa]

An anecdote: I know someone who works for a small engineering company. They bought a ~$3000 one and used it perhaps a couple of times. 3d printing is still at the "early inkjet" phase of hassle. It's sometimes easier for a guy with a lathe and a mill to knock something up by hand from a pencil drawing for a one off if he's got 20 years of experience than have to knock the thing up in some CAD software and frig around with a 3d printer for an hour then wait for it to print and then have to clean it up.

I suspect the market is saturated with such purchases.

[msandford]

Yeah, 3d printing is still a solution in search of a mass market problem. Quality isn't good enough to make "consumer" parts yet and still too fiddly, and not 10% of the country needs to prototype, much less the whole country.

Eventually someone's going to figure out exactly what they're perfect for and things will really go bananas. Until then they're fun but only useful to a pretty limited set of people.