3D Printing: Not Every Hobby Turns Into the PC Industry
Brook Drum, the founder and CEO of Printrbot, displays and talks about his $299 portable 3D printer during the Hardware Innovation Workshop in San Mateo, Calif. Eric Risberg/AP
Despite the massive increase in hype, 3D printing's growth rate has hardly changed in recent years.
This week, 3D printing company Stratasys purchased another 3D printing company, MakerBot, for at least $403 million worth of Stratasys shares. The move makes the newly combined company the undisputed leader in all things 3D printed, and provides a moment to reflect on how far the technology has come.
On the one hand, 3D printing is remarkably exciting. Unlike traditional manufacturing, you don't need economies of scale. The unit cost of producing one thing is (roughly) the same as the unit cost of producing 10,000 things. On a pure capability level, you can download a design of an object from the Internet and turn it into a real object in your house (or local hackerspace). It's whoa-quotient is high and as Quartz's Christopher Mims put it, "The parallels between the personal computing revolution and the one in 3D printing are irresistible." These machines are finicky, difficult to operate, and expensivenow, but just you wait! The price will come down and someone will create the Apple II of 3D printers, and away we all go into the 3D-printed future.