Mastering 3D Printing

Introduction

3D printers have been around for about 30 years, but you would never know that from the current explosion in both 3D printers and the uses for them. Although some of the more extreme hype in the field will go away in due course, 3D printing really does enable some new ways of thinking about creating products, particularly custom ones. What is new is the availability of low-cost 3D printers (costing from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars). These lower-cost machines have the promise of making the front of the product-development process much more efficient and enabling distributed manufacturing. This book focuses on these consumer-level printers and their applications. In particular, the emphasis is on open source 3D printers—machines ...