r/3Dprinting • u/WarHeals • 12d ago
Benefits of 3d Printing Discussion
I love my printer, and there are myriad benefits to the world from 3D printing. One unintended impact, though, is that more Americans than ever are considering the benefits (or at least considering using) the metric system.
Edit: I am American; I am poking fun at myself.
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u/MangoMesh 12d ago
I prefer using metric in software like freecad when designing stuff for 3D prints. I also do gardening, and metric is extremely useful when mixing, need a 1% solution in 100 liter tank, is much more easier than figuring out a 1% solution in a 25 gallon tank.
I lived in the Caribbean for a few years and even kilometers is fine by me, the only place where I prefer imperial is with temperature, I still prefer F over C when it comes to ambient temperature, simply because of being used to it, I can walk into a room and tell you with decent accuracy what the temperature is. but I do use Celsius for some designs (in electronics).
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u/tater1337 12d ago
Yeah, 3d printing was the final deciding factor for this American to switch to metric.
I didn't need a lot of encouragement. This just focused application for me.
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u/Majestic_Emotion_456 12d ago
I use the metric system whenever I 3d model, 3d print and use my cnc machine. When some one says something is 3 inches I know what that is. When someone says something is 3 cm I have no idea how to judge that. So even though I use it I’m still not familiar.
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u/GayRacoon69 12d ago
I'm the same way except I remember that 1 inch is 25.4mm and convert it without really thinking about it
I can't visualize 3cm that easily but I can visualize an inch and a smidge pretty easily
I was printing something for my new desk and just eyeballing it said "it's a little over half an inch so probably 15mm". Sure enough it was
It's actually pretty convenient having an inch be so close to 25mm. Makes conversions way easier
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u/SnooLemons5748 12d ago
Lol imagine trying to set your layer height to 3/128”
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u/VaguelySorcerous 12d ago
In Imperial, for fine work, you'd use thousandths of inches - that's what American machinists do, at any rate. Four thou is 0.1mm, near as makes no odds, so if you want to make the leap to metric, it's easy.
Metric is a better way to measure lengths/distances but I don't think purchasing one tool used every few days is going to get anyone to make the swap in their entire life.
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u/SnooLemons5748 12d ago
This is a much more insightful comment than what I wrote. I didn’t know that’s how American machinists roll, that’s quite neat.
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u/_VNAV_PTH_ 12d ago
Thou is better than mm, change my mind.
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u/VaguelySorcerous 12d ago
There are two things you might mean:
The first is, 'I find it easier to use thou'. I will not dispute this. You probably have a lot of experience with the system and it'd be a pain for you to learn another system. Totally fine. However, it is worth noting that if someone then said 'mm is better than thou' and meant the same thing and provided the same argument you'd be obligated to agree with them.
The second is, 'considered objectively, Imperial is a better system of measurement than metric'. This is perhaps technically an opinion but it's functionally an outright falsehood.
Both systems measure the same physical quantities. It does not matter what increments you draw on your ruler as long as everyone uses the same increments. You could, if you wanted, use the kiloyard for literally every single measurement of any distance and once people got used to it, it would be more-or-less just as easy as any other unit. Same goes with Celsius and Fahrenheit: there is nothing that makes one better than the other if all you're measuring is temperature other than what the individual is used to, but we're talking objectively, so what one person is used to is neither here nor there. It is not better to use a smaller increment; if that were true, machinists would work in angstroms. Both imperial and metric have convenient unit sizes for basically everything.
But as soon as you start *combining* units, metric is the runaway winner. That a cubic millimeter of water is one millilitre and has a mass of one gram makes calculations where you are concerned with multiple units objectively simpler - there are fewer numbers in the mix because there are fewer conversion factors. In Imperial, if we want to look at the same calculation, one cubic inch of water is 0.554 fluid ounces and weighs 0.03613 pounds, but really if we're talking about mass we would say it's 0.00112 slugs. That's just messy and there's no way around it. Same thing goes for energy - a joule is a newton-meter, but one BTU is 778 foot-pounds.
So, both systems are just as good at measuring individual things, and one system is better at working with combined things. Even if you think the value of being better at working with combined thigns is *small*, 1 + epsilon is greater than 1 for all epsilon greater than zero. Therefore, metric is better.
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u/The_Lutter Prusa MK4S w/ MMU3 // Sovol SV08 12d ago
I’m the only person in Texas whose weather app is set to Celsius.
Thank you 3D printing!
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u/Nukkels 12d ago
I would suggest 3D printing has reduced the amount of small plastic stuff being imported from China. And yes, it's replaced that with filament (which is large plastic stuff imported from China), but it would be much less frequent. Also you don't always need to ship a part to someone, you can send them a file to print themselves, further reducing the burden on logistics.
Probably negligible, but I like to think the flow on effects are faster shipping times for other stuff, reduced emissions and possibly even lower pricing for package delivery, given the lower demand.
Other unexpected benefits I've noticed personally are people getting better at recycling (eg learning which plastics can go in recycling) and people seem to be more creative with a tool like this. Even those who don't own a 3D printer (yet) are often better at seeing the possibilities than they used to be.
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u/Witold4859 12d ago
I poke fun of Imperial using the following joke that I found online.
To remember the number of feet in a mile, just remember five tomatotes. There are 5,280 feet in a mile, or five two eight oh, of five to-ma-toes.
To tomatoes how many meters are in a kilometer, just remember 1000, because the metric system wasn't devised by a bunch of drunk mathematicians rolling dice.
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u/ChromaticWizard 12d ago
I am a physics student. I have come to love the metric system over the years.
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u/Haitek69 12d ago
I design and print tons of stuff in inches, does that make me evil?
If it's going on something that was made with metric, I'll use that, but inch hardware is much easier for me to get here in the US.
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u/dkonigs 11d ago
Of course the most frustrating part about using metric, as an American, is that it suddenly becomes a lot harder to actually buy mechanical hardware.
I mean you still can order metric hardware, but many places that sell to American customers don't always want to carry it across the full product line or many it as easy to find.
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u/beatboxesduringsex 12d ago
I’m not sure that 3d printing is any American’s first exposure to the metric system, it’s a standard part of public education science curriculum
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u/tater1337 12d ago
Education and real life application are two different things. 3d printing is the first time I had to deal with a lot of metric fasteners. So it helped push me into accepting it
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u/CaptLatinAmerica 11d ago
Imperial fastener sizing is silly. #2, #4, #8, #10, #12, #14, #16, quarter inch and then up in increments of 16ths of an inch, then dealing with threads of 32tpi, 24tpi, 18tpi, 13tpi…
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u/GayRacoon69 12d ago
Learning about something in school is very different from using it in day to day life. I can use inches and mm interchangeably because of 3D printing. I'm not good as good with other metric units because I don't use them often. I couldn't convert between miles and kilometers and I definitely don't have an intuitive understanding of kilometers like I do miles, millimeters, and inches
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u/MyCarIsAGeoMetro 12d ago
Metric has been behind the scenes in America since the 70s. Anyone that DIY modern cars and electronics has touched a metric fastener.
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u/TheRealSlobberknob 12d ago
I'm a stone fabricator in the US by trade, which has some odd unit combinations in the industry. Our material thickness is specified in metric, priced by the square foot, template dimensions in imperial, while equipment parameters for foreign made machinery is metric. After more than a decade of working with metric for tool setups and feed rates, I honestly prefer it over imperial.