I&#x27;ve been 3d printing for over 5 years now and launching a 3d printing education site <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;start-to-print.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;start-to-print.com</a>. Here are some of the pain points we hear a lot.<p>3d printing is expensive<p>- You can have something 3d printed the size of a tennis ball for 5-10 euro&#x27;s at 3dhubs.com. You save 10 euro on shipment compared to shapeways and you&#x27;ll have your object in 2 days rather tan 2 weeks.<p>It&#x27;s complicated<p>- Well the first thing I 3d printed wasn&#x27;t something I designed myself but was something I found online. Chances are that somebody already created the thing you were looking for.
- Even after 200 models I still curse when I try a new (supposed super easy) modelling tool.  But hey they are free now and you can find lots of video tutorials. Like me you&#x27;re probably a fast learner. It&#x27;s more taking the first step to spend an evening on it.<p>Desktop 3d printers suck<p>- Until 2 weeks even I had that impression, but since I bought my 3rd: a 2,000 dollar Zortrax M200 I changed my mind. I&#x27;m all into open-source but this thing is really plug and play and take away a lot of the hazzle I had before. Even my wife can start a print now. So far it&#x27;s been printing for 50 hours and 25 model with zero print failures. I&#x27;t no longer kickstarterish.<p>There are better alternatives<p>- Yes. But 3d printing it&#x27;s just a good fit for me. I&#x27;m a software engineer, I just like to work digital and I&#x27;m very lazy. Often I can just download it and print.<p>The 3d printing hype is over<p>- Yes, but 500k-1M free 3d models on thingiverse.com is REAL.  My 2000 Zortrax printer really works well and is what I was hoping 3d printing would be like.