Comment Re:Material costs - material generally (Score 3, Interesting) 199
The prices of Photopolymers used in SLA type 3D printers has dropped to below the cost of PLA and ABS used in FDM printers and continues to drop. Photopolymers are dropping to under $10/kg in high volumes, so the costs of the materials are becoming less of an issue.
It's true that there are several open hardware printer projects for FDM type printers that focus mainly on printing with one material at a time such as
RepRap or Open Source Photopolymer DLP 3D Printers such as LemonCurry
3D printers are also printing with more than one material and are already printing multilayer printed circuit boards with only fluids. Much of the development work in 3D printers recently has been from open hardwave projects vs the industry since many of the old patents have now expired.