September 2014
Intermediate to advanced
244 pages
6h 43m
English
Content preview from Mastering 3D Printing
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Chapter 2
The Desktop 3D Printer
In Chapter 1 we saw that 3D printing has a 30-year history spanning a variety of technologies. The most notable development of late has been the dramatic drop in cost and availability of 3D printers. This has been driven by the technical, legal, and societal shifts in the 3D-printing market since the major patents in the space started to expire over the last decade. Printer manufacturers now range in scale from public companies to crowd-funded (or bootstrapped) entrepreneurs.
This chapter introduces the consumer-level desktop (or perhaps, more accurately, benchtop) 3D printer, the major types of printers, and ...