3D printing captured the world’s attention in the 2000s as the first consumer models arrived on desktops, but its history goes back much further. Born as a concept at the close of World War II, rudimentary progress was made until it caught on in manufacturing in the late 1980s.
For a few decades, additive manufacturing and 3D printing were strictly heavy industry technologies—printers were large devices costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. But open-source software frameworks and the rise of 3D digital design in the late 1990s and early 2000s prompted a wave of innovation, with additive manufacturing shrinking down to the scale of desktop inkjet printing.
Since the early 2010s, 3D printing has found its groove and is now a fixture in both large and small factory floor processes and environments. As materials science has improved, 3D printing technology has advanced in lockstep.
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