>I feel like Injection Molding is far more amazing, interesting, intriguing and challenging process than 3D printing and yet, it gets zero media coverage.
The cheapest desktop injection molding machine [0] I have seen costs $12500 and it's not very capable. Yeah sure it is intriguing and interesting and challenging just like a $200k CNC machine is interesting but how can you be surprised that there is no community of "home gamers" with these machines? The real injection molding machines are huge, bloody expensive and most of them have been moved to China.
There are also lots of quality problems because injection molding is a process where you have to mess around with the settings and do multiple production runs before you figure out how to get optimal results. Your 3D printer is slow but reliable in comparison. You have very high confidence that once you tune the printer itself (not the specific injection molding production run) the vast majority of your prints will succeed on first print without you having to do anything. This means you can easily produce one off parts at low cost. It's easy to see why 3D printing is popular. It's cheap and just works both in terms of reliability and the size of the objects you can make.
Meanwhile with injection molding that $12500 machine is barely capable of anything a hobbyist would want and that's without considering that you need to design your own molds and then machine them yourself because if you are going to outsource the mold you might as well outsource everything and who wants to make an article about "hey you can contact these companies to produce injection molded parts"? Everyone already knows that this is something companies do.
1) Injection Molding is far more amazing, interesting, intriguing and challenging
2) There is wider market for home 3D printing than injection molding
It really comes down to what you are trying to do and what you need your parts for. Also, there absolute is a community of home machinists. I have met a couple people with home CNCs, and many more with very capable machine shops.
The cheapest desktop injection molding machine [0] I have seen costs $12500 and it's not very capable. Yeah sure it is intriguing and interesting and challenging just like a $200k CNC machine is interesting but how can you be surprised that there is no community of "home gamers" with these machines? The real injection molding machines are huge, bloody expensive and most of them have been moved to China.
Just look at the size of the final products: https://youtu.be/n7JWPxk92fY?t=857
There are also lots of quality problems because injection molding is a process where you have to mess around with the settings and do multiple production runs before you figure out how to get optimal results. Your 3D printer is slow but reliable in comparison. You have very high confidence that once you tune the printer itself (not the specific injection molding production run) the vast majority of your prints will succeed on first print without you having to do anything. This means you can easily produce one off parts at low cost. It's easy to see why 3D printing is popular. It's cheap and just works both in terms of reliability and the size of the objects you can make.
Meanwhile with injection molding that $12500 machine is barely capable of anything a hobbyist would want and that's without considering that you need to design your own molds and then machine them yourself because if you are going to outsource the mold you might as well outsource everything and who wants to make an article about "hey you can contact these companies to produce injection molded parts"? Everyone already knows that this is something companies do.
[0] https://www.apsx.com/desktop-injection-molding-machine