Everything You Wanted to Know About 3D Printing But Were Too Afraid to Ask
"We can already print semiconductors, and one printer prototype I know can already print batteries — if you have batteries and semiconductors, you have devices.”
How It Works
What Can Be Printed?
To Print or Not To Print?
The Challenges of 3D Printing
The Future of 3D Printing
What’s in store for 3D printing? Weijmarshausen is adamant that it’s not a need-based business, but a want-based one — you don’t need a 3D-printed bikini, but some people like the idea of cocreation and partaking in the design of the things they own. The items have stories behind them and become conversation starters. So for Shapeways, the mission is to spread that gospel. “We keep growing our proposition to make it easier and more accessible for people,” Weijmarshausen explains.
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As for the industry as a whole, it’s very much a wild west. “We just got started, we don’t really know what we can do — it’s like the early Internet years, when we couldn’t imagine web browsing or Facebook or Twitter orSkype,” says Weijmarshausen. “We’ll get more exciting materials, we’ll get a mix-up of materials. We can already print semiconductors, and one printer prototype I know can already print batteries — if you have batteries and semiconductors, you have devices.”
Though there are current limitations, a burgeoning 3D-printing industry can let imaginations run wild in the years to come.
“A lot of things — even things we don’t know and that aren’t yet possible — will be 3D printed.”
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