How Did you Discover 3D printing?

[Tuukka]

I read an article on some online journal. Last summer, they had this event in town and one 3D printing lab put up a workshop to showcase a few different printers. I was fascinated to see not only plastic but also metal being printed. They had a prosthetic jaw up for display and some surprisingly big vases being printed slowly but surely. Some visitors were modelling smaller prints. Anyways, I asked a few questions and left the shop impressed. I tried to find more information and invested in a Peachy Printer Kickstarter to have at least something to play with myself.

[squadus]

Let's see for one of my engineering classes I took 2 years ago (Manufacturing Processes) my professor spent a day talking about additive manufacturing and he went on and on about 3D printing. He also gave extra credit if we went to WESTEC, so I did and ever since I have fallen in love with 3D printing.

[My Thing in 3D]

I was in college for mechanical design and ran into an old friend I was telling about it when he told me about his homemade 3d printer. I started researching 3d printers and then found out my school had a dimension. I later got my own, a Form 1 and I'm hooked for life!

[i04p]

News article. Only thing of any worth I ever learned from newspaper reporter.

[johnstevenjacob]

I heard it first from a friend who is an employee in a filament supplier company, 3d2print. He asked me if I knew anything about 3D printing, and I answered him with a puzzled look. So he discussed it to me, and I easily got interested to try it. My first masterpiece is a Lego brick.

[MysteryAlabaster]

My school got a Replicator 2 early last year. Now we have that and a 2X and I bought a Rep2 for myself.

[SteveJWilson]

My normal "day job", is as a project manager for an engineering firm. We do precision thermoforming with ABS and HDPE plastics (along with a few others).

At several points in the past we have outsourced a few small 3D printed/rapid prototyped jobs to other local firms that do 3D printing.

I started building my Reprap after realizing how much money rapid prototyping can cost. I was/am hoping to turn it into a side business of my own.

My machine is now done and works great.

[ralphzoontjens]

In 1997, Alan Grant in Jurassic Park 2 3d printed a velociraptor vocal chamber so he could reproduce their language. That was when I first learned about 3d printing although it didn't interest me much since I was too enthralled by the dinosaurs since I was into that as a kid. In 2002, I started an education in Industrial Design and was introduced to a large amount of different 3d printers they had available in a company near our university. This also included an impressive looking LOM machine that could create large pieces out of cardboard layers, giving the final product a wood-like character. It was then that my interest was sparked, but it was mostly used in the design field to create conceptual and pre-production prototypes. The teacher there predicted that in 10 years (2012), 3d printers would be commonly sold as home appliances, so he was a little off but not far! A few years afterwards I started using the local 3d printer of the university (an extremely expensive Projet MJM machine) to create prototypes for my design work. Then I started using Shapeways soon after they launched in 2007. In 2012 someone I knew bought a Cubify printer for at home, and then my interest was sparked to get one myself as well. Which I have done this week.