You're right of course, it's hard to imagine it as a household item, although having said that, I know a lot of people who invested a lot of money into 2d printers and ink even though it cost way more than having better quality prints produced commercially. Maybe the appeal will outweigh the impracticality, if you had a uniquely shaped hand and regular mugs and utensils just didn't work, I imagine you'd be looking to get one in the next 12 months :)
Consumer (and office) 2D printing is all about having the document on paper within 30 seconds of hitting "print" though. If it took 7 hours, most people would happily use the print shop.
Yes, but if you can have something in 7 hours instead of 7 weeks, then the 3d printing thing starts to make a lot of sense.
Granted, there are many online services now which will 3d print parts for you with very high quality and about 1 week turn around, so owning your own 3d printer is not always a good financial move for a business, depending on the desired uses.
Not to mention that many printed docs are expected to have a relatively short life span. Handouts for a meeting, shopping lists, address labels, etc.
For the person printing things on the average "cheap" printer, they're not typically concerned with the longevity aspect. Most 3D-printed things seem to be the opposite for mainstream applications. People keep using examples of printing "stuff you can't get at Walmart" and implying the printed parts are expected to be used for many years in an environment that will have some moderate amount of wear and tear.
3D printing not only needs to get faster by an order of magnitude, the quality of the output component needs to increase substantially as well. You need to be able to print in colors and wind up with a finished product that looks close to the quality of an injected molded piece.
