3D printing, digital fabrication, additive manufacturing and all that buzz

The basics

3D Printing is an additive manufacturing process in which a physical object is created from a digital design.  There are many different 3D printing technologies and materials, but all follow the same basic idea: a digital model is turned into a solid three-dimensional physical object by adding material layer by layer.

via GIPHY

So how does it work?

In order to 3D print something, we need a digital 3D design file, a model object to transform to a physical object. This design is then ‘sliced’ into thin layers horizontally and is sent to a 3D printer.

The actual printing process depends on the technology and printing material used. For now we will pretend building and food 3D printing does not exist and will focus on desktop 3D printers, which melt a plastic material and lay it down onto a surface layer by layer. Printing often takes a lot of time, even multiple hours, and the final result may need post-processing such as sanding, painting etc.

3D Printing from Alex Berkowitz on Vimeo.

Quick history of 3D printing

Timeline from makery.info

In a nutshell, 3D printing is a 30-year-old technology that started as a patent-based game in the professional market and during the last decade, just like computers in the 1980s, it became personal. The reason this took so long was a US patent registered by industry leader Stratasys, which described the basics of Fuse Deposit Modelling (FDM). The technology was already commercialised in the 1990s, yet Stratasys was only active in the professional market, making it impossible to acquire an affordable 3D printer for personal use.
Central to the development of 3D printing was a project launched in 2005 by a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Bath, Andrian Bowyer. The project was called RepRap; the first general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine (replicating rapid prototyper). RepRap was designed to be a desktop-size machine that could produce most of its components, excluding parts such as electronics, motors, screws etc. Essentially, having these few, relatively inexpensive things, RepRap users could print other RepRaps.

RepRap from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

RepRap is a non-commercial project, so the Stratasys’ patent was not an issue. In a couple of years after the launch of RepRap, small companies started selling RepRap parts and kits; this was actually an infringement on the patent but Stratasys did not stop it. In 2009 though, the famous Stratasys’ patent expired after 20 years. A revolution was in the making, as now-industry leaders in desktop 3D printers manufacturing MakerBot and Ultimaker were launched, gradually dropping the prices of home-use 3D printers. 3D printer sales have been growing ever since, and, as more patents expire, more breakthroughs are upcoming.