What can you print in 3D? Spoiler: almost everything
In the past, a founder who wanted to develop a first prototype for a patent they had in mind had to spend a great deal of money, which unfortunately stopped many founders from going forward and cost us more than a few worthwhile inventions. Printing physical objects on a desktop machine was once treated as science fiction; today everyone knows it is a concrete reality that cannot be ignored. You can now print almost anything on a domestic 3D printer. Behind every physical product on the market stood a person with an idea who decided to take it a step further and turn it into a real object, a decision that demanded a great investment of time and money. From there began a gruelling production process: from sketching a template to building a first prototype, and on to refining that prototype until it could be reproduced at scale, a very expensive process. Inevitably good ideas were missed, and the complexity of the process drove a fair number of successful patents out of the market before anyone could benefit from them. Since then the picture has changed. A 3D printer now makes it possible to print real physical products at the press of a button and to reach a first prototype easily, simply by printing a file. The stage before printing is 3D modelling. “All of this makes 3D printing technology a pioneer in modelling and prototyping, thanks to the speed with which a product can be taken from zero to a live, working prototype, and thanks to the ease of changing and reshaping the model in software.” To print a product you have to tell the printer what you want it to print, and this is where modelling comes in. At this stage the product is built in software that lets you examine every angle of it and, of course, add or remove material as you wish. Once the computer model is ready, all that remains is to choose the material suited to the task and send the model to print. If the printed sample does not meet expectations, you simply change the computer model, make the corrections needed and send it to print again. That simple, that easy. In principle, required corrections can be spotted at the modelling stage already, since the model is built and standing, only in a computerised form.