Apple is 3D-printing Apple-like objects (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/mapping-the-future-wi...), so one can hope this will trickle-down to hobbyist price points some time in the future.
Apple is 3D-printing Apple-like objects (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/mapping-the-future-wi...), so one can hope this will trickle-down to hobbyist price points some time in the future.
There was a kickstarter for a $3000 SLS printer a while ago. Formlabs (who have over 50% of the SLS market) promptly bought the company and shut down the kickstarter - and gave backers a $1000 coupon towards their $30000 SLS printers...
That pissed me off so much.
I was one of the backers and I was sooooo looking forward to an affordable home SLS printer. They'd done some incredible engineering, too, in service of getting the price point down to where it was.
Scaling up was going to be a massive challenge for them, but damn, I wish they'd tried instead of phoning it in early.
(Mind you, I'm sure Formlabs paid them handsomely. Would I make the same decision under the same circumstances? I honestly don't know. So far be it from me to judge them, but man do I wish someone would do something about Formlabs' ridiculous prices and monopoly over that space.)
> I wish they'd tried
I'm sure they've tried. From what I recall they've had serious reliability issues on the preview units. So I'd be skeptical if it would have even turned into a successfully delivered Kickstarter. They would have to deliver on that first before even concerning themselves with how to scale up.
So maybe they didn't even get handsomely paid in the acquisition, but were given an option to save face.
Each method has its limitations. The technique they use (melting powder with lasers) is completely different to what people typically do at home (using either photosensitive resin or filaments).
Working within the limitations of a medium is a skill as old as time. Often work arounds for the limitations become design features that people come to expect. 3d prints typically use more chamfers than fillets for exactly this reason.
Most of the hobby grade printers are FDM, it's unlikely we'll evolve beyond the limitations of layer lines being a few tenths of a mm. UV resin printers however aren't ridiculously expensive and they have small enough layers that it's completely doable.
And you still get something pretty apple-like if you use large fillets for anything that follows the layer lines and small chamfers for any corner that doesn't. Maybe not Macbook-like, but certainly Mac-Mini-like. And if that's not good enough there's always the option of spending time with filler and sandpaper. There are few fabrication methods that get perfect looking results without some dedication to post-processing. With UV resin printers you just trade the sanding for washing and curing (a really good trade if you need tiny details, but still)
Well, you can certainly FDM print layers below one tenth of a millimetre tall even with a 0.2mm nozzle, and stagger horizontal edges the same. The problem is the time cost of doing so with a large object. Even variable layer height burns through a lot of time. There is some work being done with variable layer heights on outer perimeters only so we may get some significant improvements in the future.
I just wish people would, as you are saying, work with and accept the inherent qualities of the medium rather than doing insane, foolish stuff like using carbon-fibre-filled filaments for surface finish.