It’s the same thing that’s happening to VR and lots of other things that are getting hyped before the hard problems are solved.
There’s been a serious epidemic in the last decade or so of mistaking solving the low hanging fruit for being “almost there.”
3D printing works ok for prototyping in certain scenarios, but it got hyped up for things it was nowhere near doing. Similarly everyone jumped all over VR assuming solving the hard problems that have always plagued it were just around the corner. Willfully ignorant over-optimism has been way too prevelant and I hope it is replaced with measured, informed pragmatism with lofty goals instead.
I agree that VR got a bit hyped. AM, however, is alive and well. The biggest issues are cost and time - AM takes a long time and requires an expensive machine. Thus you can print super-intricate structural parts of an airplane, but not brake pedals for common cars.
There’s been a serious epidemic in the last decade or so of mistaking solving the low hanging fruit for being “almost there.”
3D printing works ok for prototyping in certain scenarios, but it got hyped up for things it was nowhere near doing. Similarly everyone jumped all over VR assuming solving the hard problems that have always plagued it were just around the corner. Willfully ignorant over-optimism has been way too prevelant and I hope it is replaced with measured, informed pragmatism with lofty goals instead.