Overview and Personal Anecdotes

Overview

3D printers are cool! They are a great tool to make both prototypes and low-volume projects. With the development of the open source RepRap came plenty of other incredible innovations in the 3D printing space.

Interesting Ideas

Issues and Possible Solutions

While FDM and SLA printing have recently become basically mainstream processes, I believe there are some issues with the user experience and environmental challenges.

In my own experience, it used to be the case that 3D printers were very finicky things, requiring an inordinate amount of attention to troubleshoot and use. I would say to people in my high school engineering class that it took just as long to finish a print as it did to fix and maintain a printer! Everything from how level and adherent your bed was to the wires that ran the stepper motors inside a printer proved to be a point of failure whenever it came to using a machine. Early 3D printers were at best unfinished products and at worst broken prototypes. I will say, they were very charming...