For a technology that is more than 30 years old, 3D printing is getting a lot of buzz lately and is now finally becoming truly transformative across a broad spectrum of industries. Perhaps the most revolutionary evolution of 3D printing is that it's becoming even more exciting for the consumer market, and it's easy to see why many people predict that a 3D printer will soon be as common as regular printers.
In case you're not familiar with 3D printing technology, the easiest way to explain it is that 3D printers "print" layer-by-layer to create 3D parts. They function almost exactly like a printer — with nozzles dispersing heated material that quickly sets — except they deposit the next layer on top of the previous layer to build a 3D part. Although most 3D printers use plastics, parts can now be made from metal and other materials. Certain types of machines can even layer soft rubber-like materials on the outside (or inside) of printed parts.
We're fortunate to have pioneers in two arenas of 3D printing in Mississippi with the Mississippi Polymer Institute at the University of Southern Mississippi having been in the forefront of applying this technology to help companies for many years and with Meridian's Algix as a emerging leader in 3D filament design and sales.
So what has taken so long for 3D printing to become such a big deal? The problem hasn't been 3D printers so much as it has been a lack of interesting parts to print. Since every part begins as a 3D computer model before making the part, and few people have libraries of 3D models, it hasn't been until the proliferation of less expensive 3D scanners and easier-to-create 3D models that the entire world has been opened to help create parts that people want to print. Now, 3D scanners are even built into 3D printers so a part can be placed in the scanner and then an identical part printed and saved.
Now that the models can be created and edited easily, there are communities of parts created by people all over the world and available for download at sites like Thingiverse, GrabCad and others. If you want something as obscure as an iPhone holder that fits in the CD slot of a Mini-Cooper or a T-Rex shower head, you can download and print them now and the number designs available are growing exponentially. Even if you don't have a 3D printer, you can send the design to a 3D Hub and have it make it and then mail it to you. The proliferation of designs that people want and that inspire them to create even more products is part of what has fueled the growth.
As the father of two pre-school boys, I'm personally excited about 3D printer prices coming down because I often encounter a small broken part that is unique to that toy and critical to the toy's function. With a small 3D scanner and printer, I can have a new part within a few hours simply by sticking the broken part back together, 3D scanning it, and 3D printing a new one. I can even improve a part by cutting or adding to it with glue and then print a hard plastic part with my new design.
I know of people who have done the same thing for an impossible to find antique car part, for making unique Christmas ornaments or jewelry, or even making figurines for the top of a wedding cake that were actually exact replicas of the actual bride and groom. Kids can make their own toys — including toys with their faces if they want — and they are limited only by their imagination and aided by the many libraries of parts already designed. Museums are also able to display 3D replicas of pieces while the originals are being restored.
In addition to libraries of parts, 3D printers are getting much cheaper and are even available online starting at around $200. Of course, like regular printers, where ink replacements are quite expensive, the filaments can be expensive as well. The insider secret from experts that consumers should take note of, though, is that there are a lot of cheap — and bad — filaments found on the Internet. That's why Mississippi's Algix, headquartered in Meridian, is so well positioned. Its Algix3D filaments are mostly made from algae-derived plastics and are more biodegradable than traditional filaments, but its attractiveness in the market seems to be mostly because it has made very consistent, very low variation filaments across all of its product lines. This is critical in 3D printing because typical print times are in hours, not minutes, so a nozzle jam 13 hours into a 22-hour print job is a huge problem.
I've only explored the consumer side of 3D printing here, but there are many more industrial, medical and specialty applications for 3D printing. I'll have to cover those in a future article, but hopefully this article will inspire you to explore the world of 3D printing and see for yourself what can be done using the technology.
Tony Jeff is the president and CEO of Innovate Mississippi. He can be reached at tjeff@innovate.ms.
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