Do you think the cheaper hardware/proprietary consumables business model (like that of 2D printing industry) will ever work in 3D printing?
It already does. There are a number of printers with proprietary cartridges with DRM.
Working on a mass scale? Do you not think that limiting material choices may also be limiting the very thing 3D printing stands for? Freedom of design?
Lots of people don’t care, they just want cheap and working. Also the printers I’ve seen that do this are limited to PLA and possibly ABS anyway.
@Daniel_Bull
where did you see a cheap 3d printer with cartridge to print ???
@Daniel_O_Connor
if freedom of design was first in the list 3d printers should print from pellet/mixture
There is a significant difference in the way the reprap people (I’m generalising for everyone that builds hacks maintains their own printers) and the turnkey users think. Some people perceive more expensive printers as better quality and feel they are paying for a better products and hence made peace with expensive consumables. The rest of us may not be that susceptible to that. So yes it will work but not for me.
The printer companies that do have drm actually cost more than the non drm printers. And people have been working around the drm since day 1.
will it ever work? no. not as well as the reprap devices. Will it be here? Yes. Snake oil will always sell to the unintelligent, just as the gullible will buy proprietary when they don’t know better.
Free market will make it affordable
If it works better than the non-proprietary then probably. Unless. Of course, a non-proprietary solution works better than a proprietary offering. All this messing around with a 3D printer is good for ones own education, but for most people out there, they just want the the 3D printer to work like a reliable appliance. Most people expect electronics, and by extension 3D printers, to require very little effort outside of maybe filling it with stock and cleaning it once in a while. Really, most people I know do not have the desire to learn basic 3D CAD apps, that’s not even on their radar. So, just making a digital part is asking a lot.
Maybe there is already a 3D modeling tool out there that has basic parametric and Boolean capabilities in a stock library? If so that might be a good start to getting more people interested and using 3D printers. But, really, there aren’t many people who are going to get into this 3D printing thing unless we have a better public education system. My take is that Art (visual communication) is discounted and dropped way too early in the process. It’s easier to draw a house than to write a novel trying to describe it.
@Temujin_Kuechle
openscad could turn to the soft you described but not enough good lib contribution
Allready happened…
we plan to tear down the $25K Stratasys and put rambo and e3d into it… because printing on it is sooo expensive…
@christophe_malvasio I guess it depends on your definition of cheap but there are a few companies using proprietary cartridges.
@christophe_malvasio have you seen this? 
https://youtu.be/fufINNzqIp4
I’m not a fan of my XYZ da vinci, though i did buy it as an "intro’ device full knowing it was "plug-n-play’ and not opensource. The filament is not the best and the software is pure crap. luckily there are ways to “fix” my davinci that, so far, have been VERY good. Amazing how much print quality can change with just different slicer software.
@Zviad_Sulaberidze the amount of work the filament manufacturers put into making good quality printable filaments shouldn’t be underestimated. That video is missleading as it implies you can basically stick pellets of anything in and it will print, that’s simply not true. In fact all that printer seems to do is shift the raw material from being the standardized filaments we currently use which are available from many manufacturers in many forms to their companies selections of pellets. Its probably just as bad as using cartridges 
@Zviad_Sulaberidze I always wondered how it works, carry on…
@Aria_C_Bramanta it uses a special extruding screw, pretty much like that is used in big extruders/plastic injection molding machines, and controlled by a stepper motor, heated with band heater