I believe the application is that you can make exactly one mug for only $2 and 7h. Then you can make exactly one tumbler. Then you can make exactly one plate. Then you can make exactly one coat hook. Then you can make exactly one collar clip that secures the armrest onto the driver's seat in your car. Then you can make a chess piece to replace the one the dog chewed up. And then you can make a bowling trophy.
Any specialized machine can absolutely annihilate the volume printer on the basis of cost, and for many things also on the basis of quality, but you have to produce thousands of units to pay for the machine.
You don't even need it to be a prototype. You just need to be making something that no one else needs--or not enough other people to warrant building a specialized machine to make that thing.
But then, if you do need that specialized machine, maybe there only needs to be one of those, and you have just the right sort of machine to make unique items....
Sure. But making mugs is wrong. You can't compare the output of a machine like this to an industrial process designed to make tens of thousands of something.
Nothing beats a cheap ceramic mug for mug-ness.
And that goes for pretty much any one-off produced with a 3D printer that attempts to re-create a mass produced item. It'll be more expensive, more fragile, less pretty and in general less functional and strong.
That's correct. Making mugs is wrong. Making mug might be correct. If you are making a second one of anything, you are probably better off using the volume-printed item as a physical model, to make a mold, which would then be used to create two whatevers by a different process.
For mugs, that means constructing a plaster mold, then using liquid clay (slip) to fill the mold. The clay is dried, glazed, and fired. If your mug design is not already unique, someone else already does this faster and more cheaply than you can. But if you want 20 mugs shaped like your own head, you're still only going to volume-print one copy.
Or maybe you're making mugs out of food-grade silicone elastomer instead of ceramic. You still only need one printed copy.
This capability is useless if you're making mugs but it is priceless when you're prototyping.
Making mugs is entirely the wrong application.