Getting Started with 3D Printing, 2nd Edition

That’s what we wrote back in 2016 on the first page of the first edition. That year seemed like a pie-in-the-

sky utopia of skyrocketing 3D printing stocks, new 3D business companies popping up overnight, an endless

wave of 3D printing crowdfunding campaigns, and the promise of a 3D printer in every home.

Those things may still come to pass, but the media’s interest in consumer 3D printing has waned while the

usefulness of the technology in education and business has soared.

It is an adage that many new technologies follow a cycle of rapid interest (“hype”) followed by the realiza-

tion of what the technology can actually do (the “reality”). ...