3D PRINTING comes of age

Whatever happened to the 3D-printing revolution? Nik Rawlinson takes a fresh look at the much-maligned technology and finds that the hardware has come a long way

- Nik Rawlinson

3D printing used to be the next big thing-but then it seemed that the bubble had burst. Early adopters struggled with unreliable hardware and clanky software tools. A 2013 feature in the UK newspaper The Independent asked, "How hard can 3D printing really be?" before concluding it could be "Quite hard". Even trying out the technology for yourself was expensive and fiddly the printer tested for that article cost $1,700, and required self-assembly.

But things are rapidly improving. "Even five years ago, the market was very hobbyish," says Craig Monk of UK-based 3D Print Monkey (3dprintmonkey.co.uk). "The machines would be built from parts you'd sourced yourself, as opposed to buying a machine with injection-molded parts, a decent user interface, and those sorts of things. Where we are now, we were dreaming about ten years ago. It's a lot more user-friendly, for the beginner and professional alike." Prices have tumbled, too. Today you can pick up a lightweight 3D printer, such as the Easythreed Nano Plus for a little over $100, or the larger Etina Tina 2 for around $80 more. The actual printing material itself can be bought for around $20 per kilogram, so you can print a phone case for about a dollar, so long as it's not too complex.

Buying materials

Most consumer printers use a process called fused deposition modeling (FDM). A plastic filament is fed into the heated print head, where it's melted and squirted onto the print bed to set in a particular pattern. Then, the print bed moves down a tiny distance (or the print head moves up), and the next layer of the item is laid down, and so forth.