Consumer 3D Printing
Final users of 3D printing technologies were the last category to emerge. This category includes primarily adopters of consumer 3D printing technologies. These may be enthusiasts and hobbyists who have purchased a 3D printer as a garage tool to further explore the production of drones, miniature models, RC cars or accessories.
This category of adopters was created when the RepRap movement made many of the technologies and processes necessary to build 3D printers available to everyone through open source sharing of information. Focusing primarily on filament extrusion and – in minor part – on DLP stereolithographic technologies, this movement led to a further, drastic reduction in the price of some 3D printers, taking it from the $5,000 professional and prosumer cost level to below $1,000 (with some systems running as low as $200).
Early RepRap adopters and developers often evolved their expertise thus creating a new business segment for affordable desktop 3D printers. This trend was – and continues to be – driven by the Maker movement, which is largely made up of amateur engineers and artists who have embraced digital manufacturing technologies and make things for the sake of making.
While in many cases this passion for making leads to failures or products that prove to be useless on unattainable, there is no doubt that the maker movement and amateur 3D printing adoption has been instrumental in raising global awareness around the use of these technologies, proving much more effective – to this day – than initiative promoted by governments and large corporations.
Latest consumer 3D printing news:
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Food waste is a growing issue, with estimates suggesting that nearly one-third of all food produced is scrapped. In the UK, for instance, which has a population of about 66 million, eight million tonnes of food are wasted a year. Like most environmental problems, a significant part of the food…
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The fourth edition of the 3D Pioneers Challenge came to a close this past June, after the contest’s expert jury selected the winning submissions from a pool of 36 finalists. Winners from each of the challenge’s eight main categories were presented with their prizes (worth over € 40,000) at Rapid.Tech…
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Each year, Good Design Australia presents prizes to the most innovative designs in various disciplines. This year, the 61st annual Australian Good Design Awards presented the highest award—the Good Design Award of the Year—to medtech company Inventia for its Rastrum 3D bioprinter, which is designed for advancing cancer treatments. The prestigious…
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Though you may know him best as the founder of NY-based 3D design firm Studio Bitonti, Francis Bitonti has a much wider professional repertoire, including a research position at the Digital Arts and Humanities Research Center at Pratt Institute and a teaching job at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School of…
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If you’ve ever been lucky enough to walk the many halls of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, you’ll likely have come across the famous “The Night Watch” painting (1642) by Dutch artist Rembrandt. Actually, perhaps “come across” is the wrong term, as most people bee-line to see the canvas—not only impressive…
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Chinese sportswear brand PEAK Sports Products introduced a new model of fully 3D printed sneakers – upper, midsole and outsole – in the domestic Chinese market. As leading Chinese 3D printing media Nanjixiong reports, the first 600 pairs of the new FUTURE FUSION PEAK3D sneakers were briefly available on the…
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Australian startup Hearables 3D—a spin out of a research initiative at Swinburne University—has developed a process for 3D printing custom fitted ear devices, such as earphones and hearing aids, in less than an hour. The technique relies on smartphone 3D scanning and ultra-fast stereolithography 3D printing. Prior to 3D printing,…
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Ai Build announced a new version of AiMaker with AiCell Medium, the latest addition to its fleet of autonomous large scale 3D printers. This new solution is being demonstrated to the public with a live furniture 3D printing show at Future Lab, during the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2019. The…
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Arnav Wagh, a multi-disciplinary designer with a broad interest in product development, is aiming to make soft robotics more accessible through his latest project, FLXO. The project consists of 3D printed origami-like structures which are used as modular soft actuators and can be integrated with robotic kits already on the…
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Remember when we told you that life-size 3D printing was a thing? Apparently, it’s already a lot more than that. Or at least it’s a lot more than life-size. In an epic-size project, physicist Sterling Backus has been working on a life-size, functional and mostly 3D printed Lamborghini Aventador in…
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