"...3D printers really can't do anything close to what people talk about 3D printers doing..."

Like what? The first 3D printed spacecraft launched last year, Terran 1. The first private spacecraft to land on the moon just got there a fortnight ago, and it had a 3D printed rocket motor. 3D printers can do everything everyone says they can.

But you need good ones, not entry level models. The 3D printers used to make Terran 1 cost ~$1M, and were made specifically for that job, using exotic aluminum alloys. You don't need one of those, and you won't get one for the price of a nice lunch out with your family, like you can an entry level model. But that price is an order of magnitude lower than legacy manufacturing methods to make spacecraft. And entry level 3D printers now can print with up to 16 different materials into one item and have lidar to precisely locate the print head. Printers like that just a couple years ago cost ~$100k, and now cost ~$1300. Really cheap beginners models can cost as little as $50 - but you're not going to be making flying cars with them.

A plasma cutter, a laser cutter, a hobbyist CNC, a mid-level 3D printer, a metal brake, a wire feed welder, and some odds and ends and hand tools, and you can make just about anything, including a refrigerator. It'll probably cost you about ~$10k - $15k for all that today. But a factory to manufacture refrigerators that will fail in 5 years will cost orders of magnitude more than that, and you can make flying cars in your garage with that setup too, which the refrigerator factory can't. Prices for better and better 3D printers are dropping like stones in a pond, and quality and features keep improving what they can do.

The real problem with making your own refrigerators and flying cars today isn't the availability of equipment to make them with, it's knowing how to use them to make the things we need. That's where AI comes in. AI have been trained to make art, and trained to write blurbs. No one's trained one to make refrigerators and flying cars in your garage, but someone will do so, sooner than later, and then all bets are off.

Thanks!