The Complete Guide to 3D Printing

Chapter 1: What Is 3D Printing and Why People Love It

Imagine you've just had a thought at two in the afternoon: "I could really use a small hook to hang my keys by the door, but the one at the store is either too big, too ugly, or somehow costs twelve dollars." Now imagine being able to design that exact hook — with the curve and size you want — and having a machine on your desk physically build it for you overnight while you sleep. That's the core of 3D printing, and it's a lot more accessible than you might think.

Let's strip away the mystery first. A 3D printer is a machine that takes a digital 3D model — basically a blueprint saved as a computer file — and builds it in real life, layer by layer, out of melted plastic. The most common technology, called FDM (fused deposition modeling), works like a very precise hot glue gun mounted on a robotic arm. The printer feeds a thin plastic filament through a heated nozzle, which moves around carefully, drawing the bottom layer of your object. Then the nozzle moves up a tiny fraction of a millimeter and draws the next layer on top of the previous one. Over the course of an hour, or five hours, or sometimes twenty hours, your object slowly rises from the print bed like it's growing out of the machine. When it's done, you simply peel it off and you have a