> Does anybody really use 3D printers much? I mean, I can imagine there
> are products for which this might be really useful, but if you're just
> making (for example) plastic sandwich boxes, do you really need to
> prototype that?

So you'd be confident enough that the sandwich box hinge and latching 
mechanism was going to work properly and not snap off, and that it would 
feel right, and the MD is not going to complain the box feels too 
flimsy, just by looking at CAD data on your screen and perhaps some 
simulations that tell you the stiffness is X N/mm at certain points and 
you need X N of force to open the latch? Confident enough to sign off 
$100000 for the tooling to be made? For the sake of $500 to get a few 
prototypes made up it's not worth it. FWIW I've *never* seen tooling get 
made exactly right first time, there is *always* something that needs to 
be fixed or changed, using prototypes just reduces the risk of any big 
(=expensive) errors.

> Also: I was given to believe that 3D printed objects have approximately
> the structural rigidity of jellybaby.

Did you miss the story a while back of the guy who made a functional 
*gun* from 3D printed parts? The whole point of professional 3D printed 
parts is that they match the performance of the real moulded plastic. 
FWIW here we put butanone at 6 bar into 3D printed parts without issue.

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