Being a maker isn’t about creating “things of value” or being “useful”.

That same mindset is ruining many a good hobby. Astrophotography is going down a shameful route where the only thing your peers want to see is the misery of all the debt you have to out fancy someone else.

as for 3d printers.. they have come a long way and have become a core part of creativity and engineering for programs like First Robotics.. hardware is improving, safety is improving, reliability is improving - so much so that if you give up on the creative aspect you can just print away and get started with little effort.

I think this would be helped a lot if the maker community immersed itself more in industrial engineering.

Like you mentioned, its hard to go from "hah, I can make a cool thing" to "Let me make this super useful mechatronic contraption" but this is the bread and butter of industry.

You see production lines and they're just a long string of such contraptions working in unison.

Makers nowadays have amazing resources that were previously reserved only for industry so heck yeah, maybe go make a fish fillet machine or something just for kicks but also maybe a brand new small business

Huh? I don't follow. 3D Printing and robot are moving far faster than ever before. Sure, you aren't going from "no 3d printing" to "3d printing", but that's like complaining about food today because it isn't like when you were a kid and got McDonalds once a month and how awesome that was!

Part of it has, but then there are those guys working on 3d printing houses.