It’s been the next big thing for a few years now, but is it really ready for the home? What advances have there been? Sarah Dobbs checks back in with the 3D printing ‘revolution’…
According to the Gartner hype cycle, any new technology goes through a series of peaks and troughs until it settles down and becomes commonplace. First, after the technology is developed, there’s a rapid rise in excitement, before it reaches a peak of inflated expectations. Then, interest drops off into a trough of disillusionment as people realise the hot new thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be after all. Then, slowly, things pick up again until a plateau is reached.
It’s the same kind of cycle we’ve seen over and over and over again with new gadgets over the years, and you probably don’t need to see the diagram to recognise the pattern. We’ve seen it with digital cameras, with MP3 players, with touchscreens, and many, many other things before and after. It’s not surprising, then, that 3D printing seems to be going through the same cycle. And right now, we’re in the disillusionment phase.
The Story So Far
Back in 2009, when a key patent for the fused deposition modelling method of 3D printing expired, it looked like 3D printing might be about to change the world. The expired patent meant that all kinds of companies could get to work making consumer grade 3D printers, and a flood of just about affordable printers hit the market. Over the next few years, those printers because more sophisticated and more affordable – plus easier to use. The world went mad for 3D printing, painting it as an amazing technology that could change manufacturing forever. If consumers could invent, modify or fix things at home, the argument went, we’d see less waste and also way more creativity. Every kind of consumer product would be affected. Exciting stuff, basically.
The 3D printing enthusiasts reckoned things were only going to get more exciting too, as more 3D printing patents expired. Last year, a patent relating to laser sintering expired, potentially opening the gates to a new wave of home printers that could create 3D objects by cutting rather than layering materials. We were teetering on the brink of a whole new world.
But, um… it didn’t quite work out like that, did it? 3D printers are more accessible right now than they’ve ever been before. Some wellknown technology retailers even carry them, though usually online rather than in-store. And most of the consumer printers around at the moment can be used by beginners, not just people with engineering degrees. Yet I’m betting that almost no one reading this has a 3D printer at home.
So why didn’t home 3D printing take off? And why aren’t we seeing as many headlines about 3D printing breakthroughs as we were, say, a year ago?
Breakthroughs
Throughout 2012 and 2013, it seemed like there were new and hyperbolic headlines about 3D printing every week or so. Either a new method had been developed or a new service was launching or maybe a new material could now be 3D printed. There was always something. That’s dropped off a bit now, though there have still been a few new developments. Recently, for example, Staples announced that it was partnering with Sculpteo to offer an online 3D printing service where customers can upload their designs and receive their printed objects in the post. Yes, it’s technically already the service Sculpteo already offers, but it’s interesting that a well-known retailer is drawing attention to it and making it more accessible to more people.
And just last week there was a new exciting 3D printing development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as researchers announced they’d found a way to print clear glass. Glass is obviously a tricky substance to work with, but it also has some properties you’d associated with a 3D printable material (mostly, that it’s liquid at hot temperatures but sets solidly), so scientists had been experimenting with ways to print it into programmable 3D shapes for a while. The problem had been creating an product that wasn’t cloudy or opaque, but by developing a printer that works at very high temperatures and has three separate heating elements, the MIT team reckon they’ve cracked it.
The point of highlighting these two stories is that there are still lots of things happening in 3D printing, but maybe they’re not as revolutionary-sounding as previous breakthroughs. And really, there are only so many Kickstarter projects for developing inexpensive printers anyone cares to read about. So maybe the lack of headlines is just because the news isn’t very exciting any more – or maybe people have just got bored reading about it.
New Applications
The potential applications for 3D printing are, in theory, endless. And there are many industries that have already wholeheartedly embraced 3D printing. Good examples are dentistry, where models of patients’ mouths can be printed and so can crowns, and the aeronautics industry, where prototype pieces can be quickly printed, tested and modified, considerably speeding up the development cycle.
Again, though, we haven’t really heard much news about industrial applications for 3D printing lately. It could be that the technology has already reached a saturation point, where everyone who’s likely to want to use 3D printing already is or it could be, again, that it’s just not exciting to hear about new uses of 3D printing any more.
Particularly ambitious uses do still merit a mention in the newspapers. To pull out a couple more recent examples, there was a concept for a 3D printed ‘house’ that could be made and lived in on Mars that got some attention recently, plus a Spanish cancer patient recently survived an operation to install a 3D printed rib cage, both of which make for fascinating stories. But it seems like 3D printing itself has gone from an amazing futuristic concept to, well, a thing that we know can be done now. Unless someone’s making something truly astounding, it’s not enough just to print something.
Home Printers
The bitterest disappointment of the 3D printing revolution that didn’t quite happen isn’t anything to do with astonishing advances in medical science or architecture, though; it’s that most of us still don’t have 3D printers to call our own. To go back to the hype cycle for a moment, according to Gartner’s most recent predictions, consumer 3D printing is still around ten to 15 years away from productivity. That seems a long, long way off compared with the kinds of predictions industry experts were making just a few years ago.
In fairness to consumer 3D printer manufacturers, progress has definitely been made in the kinds of machines that are available, and in how affordable they are. Some of the most popular 3D printers have dropped in price by hundreds of pounds over the last couple of years (see below for details), and the 3D printers you can buy now are easier to use, more reliable and capable of producing more detailed prints than ever before.
But the market doesn’t seem to quite be there yet. Last year, around 108,000 3D printers were sold worldwide. To put that in context, in 2014 approximately 192 million iPhones were sold worldwide. There are undoubtedly many reasons why 3D printers aren’t flying off shelves (lack of availability, high prices, perceived difficulty of use), but mostly it seems to be that people just aren’t convinced they need them.
The Future
What’s next? Well, not to be defeatist or anything, but it seems likely that the utopian world of home 3D printers so many people envisioned in 2009 will never quite come to fruition. Most people don’t have the time, knowhow or even inclination to manufacture their own products at home. That doesn’t have to mean all is lost or that 3D printing is a failure, though. As previously discussed, 3D printing is still widely used in many industries, and it will continue to be useful to designers or in fields where one-off customisable objects are needed.
From a consumer perspective, what seems more likely is that 3D printing services will become more popular. Big name retailers seem to be interested in incorporating those kinds of services into their offerings. We’ve already mentioned Staples, and Asda has been slowly expanding its 3D printing Mini Me service to more stores across the country, after an enthusiastic response from customers when its trial version launched in York in 2013. So watch out for 3D printing ‘photobooths’ popping up in a shopping centre near you, any day now.
Undoubtedly, more advances will continue to be made in 3D printing, in all its guises. Just because we’re not hearing about it as often doesn’t mean it’s gone away. And anyone who does want to spend the time and effort on at-home manufacturing should be rewarded with increasingly more effective, reliable and cheaper materials and machines.
If we had to guess, though, we’d say the thing that will generate a renewed flurry of interest and excitement around 3D printing won’t be a cheaper consumer printer or an easy-to-use software suite; it’ll be a breakthrough in printing electronics. The day someone figures out how to reliably ‘print’ the components of a mobile phone or laptop, you won’t hear about anything else. Until then, well, we’ll probably have to cope with feeling a bit disillusioned about the whole thing.
3D Printing Bargains
Still fancy getting your very own 3D printer? Well, the good news is that consumer grade 3D printers have come down in price quite a lot over the last two or three years. They’re still not exactly cheap, but you no longer need to take out a second mortgage to afford one. Here are some of the best bargains available:
Velleman K8200 3D printer kit
Was: £699.99
Now: £399.99
One of the first printers to be available in UK high-street stores, this kit is available from Maplin. It’s dropped £300 in price since it first went on sale in 2013, and now it’s one of the cheapest options around. You’ll need to have some pretty good assembly skills, though, because you have to build it yourself, which may or may not be a deal-breaker.
Up! Plus 2 3D printer
Was: £1590
Now: £899
The Up! Plus 2 is a pretty impressive printer, despite the awkward name: it’s got automatic platform calibration, and the platform itself is heated, which means you can use more than one kind of plastic with the machine. Plus it’s quiet and produces relatively high-res prints, and compared to its launch price a few years ago, it’s also pretty affordable.
Cube 3D printer
Was: £1,195+
Now: £839+
The models have changed over the last few years, with older versions retired and newer, swankier ones being launched, but where the cheapest Cubify printer used to be well over a grand, you’ll now comfortably get enough change to buy a handful of different coloured filaments. (It comes bundled with white and neon green PLA, though, which is handy.)
Ultimaker 2 3D printer
Was: £1950
Now: £1699
Considerably more expensive than other consumer-grade 3D printers, the Ultimaker 2 has at least come down in price over the last few years. And it’s got a pretty good reason for its price: it’s far bigger than most of the others in its class, which means its capable of printing bigger objects. If you want to make more than just trinkets, this might be the one for you.
3Doodler v 2.0 3D printing pen
Was: N/A
Now: £99.99
The cheapest and easiest way to experiment with 3D printing, the newest version of the handheld 3Doodler 3D printing pen is available for under a hundred quid. The original was revolutionary in its way, but also unwieldy and uncomfortable to use. The new one looks and feels far more like a pen, and while you can’t build massive structures with it, it’s still a great introduction to 3D modelling.