The future of 3D printing

We were talking about the future of 3D printing the other day and I was curious to know what the state of modeling tools for the novice is. I downloaded Sketchup and had a quick look around my desk. I found a processor cap and set about trying to recreate it in 3D. That’s the result of a rather quick run at it up above (click it to see the whole thing). It was surprisingly simple. A few peeks at the manual and a couple Google searches and I had a reasonable accurate representation.

Granted, not a lot of home users have a pressing need for processor caps, but it does illustrate that the software exists for the average user to make their own parts. Add in the continually expanding collections of downloadable models that are ready to be printed and you can see that this could be a very big deal. It will be exciting to watch what happens in the 3D space in the next few years as prices come down and the quality of the software continues to improve.