# 3D Printing > General 3D Printing Discussion >  3D Printing Future Timeline

## RedSox2013

I do a lot of research about market conditions and consider myself a futurist.  I have put together a somewhat detailed timeline of where the 3D Industry is likely headed over the next 30 years.  This is all an educated guess.  Some of the predictions later on may seem a bit crazy, but I truly believe they will come to fruitation within +/- 5 year's time:


*2014:* The 3D Printing Market will continue to expand.  Consumer printers sold will increase by 55% over the previous year
*2014:* Expiration of Key 3D Printer Patents will open up the industry to competition, decreasing prices dramatically, especially for top end machines.

*2015:* Organova has changed the way drug discovery and testing is done.  Sales of 3d printed human cells for testing are skyrocketing.

*2016:* 3D Printers enter the mainstream.  90% of the population will know what a 3D Printer is, and Sales of consumer oriented printers will have increase 8-10 times since 2013

*2017:* The first fully functioning 3D Printed Mouse liver will have been produced.  
*2017:* Gartner has estimated that the 3D Printing market will have grown close to 2000% by now.  

*2018:* The manufacturing landscape of the United States, Europe, and most of Asia has changed dramatically.  Robots and 3D Printers are taking over repetitive manufacturing jobs.  Nearly every fortune 500 manufacturing company is using a 3D Printer in one way or another.
*2018:* Filaments, especially the plastics have dropped in price close to 75% as competition heats up.

*2019:* The First 3D Printed Human Liver has been produced. It is not perfect.  It will be 3-4 more years before these are able to be transplanted into humans, changing the landscape of organ transplantation forever.
*2019:* Nearly Every High School in America has a 3D Printer or multiples in it, with classes based on the technology

*2020:* Metal extruding 3D Printers are becoming cheaper and much more common in households.  Printers that cost $15,000-$40,000 today will be affordable for most of the public, while also producing stronger, products faster.
*2020:* The US Government passes sweeping patent reforms to account for the sharing of 3D Models which are used to print out objects.  If you thought music and video pirating was a major hurtle, wait until you have 3D model pirating.  Eventually new markets will be put into place, and just like we have come up with solutions for filesharing, via itunes, and Netflix, we will have a solution for model sharing.  There will be some pretty bumping years ahead though for patent holders. 

*2022:* Multi-material printers are becoming all the rage.  Printers which can print using metal, wood, plastics, resin, rubbers, sugar, and ceramics are very common within manufacturing facilities, and are becoming much more common with DIY'ers.  

*2023:* A construction company has formed which only builds via 3D Printers.  Using cement extruding printers the size of a baseball diamond, they are able to print out the entire frame of a house within a mater of 36 hours.  The printer than changes it's material and prints out the entire inside of the home within two weeks.  New Home prices begin to drop, as the number of man hours required, and material costs drop significantly.

*2024:* Although scientists have been able to 3D Print food such as Steaks since 2012, it has finally been perfected to a degree so that food is nearly indistinguishable from the 3D Printed versions.  Because of this, over the last couple years the concept has caught on, leading major grocery chains to put this 3D Printed food on their shelves.  Millions of animals are saved from death each months.

*2025:* A moon base is 3D Printed.  

*2026:* 3D Printing is Just about everywhere.  The market has expanded rapidly, going from a value of $250 million in 2012 to one of $900 Billion now.  

*2027:*  Companies are now able to quickly print out all types of Human organs for transplants.  Kidneys, hearts, livers, stomachs, skin, etc

*2043:*  With the help of extremely fast quantum computing, machines are now able to become nanofactories, rearranging molecules to print out nearly anything.  This has changed the world as be know it, and the economy in seismic ways. The exponential  progress in technological advancement has led to a world most people would not recognize today.  

After this point, human like AI could be upon us, making it nearly impossible for us to predict just where things will head. 3D Printing, as well as extremely fast computational abilities have led to what some call the singularity.

Would love to hear your feedback and own predictions!

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## Larry

I think this is a very solid list of predictions.  Good job!

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## aWsomeABE

Nice timeline.  I've seen some that I think are way off.  This one I pretty much agree with, but it's very difficult to predict the future.

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## Larry

I think anything after 2020, is up in the air.  The Increase in computer power over the next 7 years should play a significant role in just about all technology, meaning that the effects could be unimaginable.  Things are progressing in tech much much faster than they have been up until now.  Exponential growth!

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## RedSox2013

Thanks For The Feedback guys.  I would love to revisit this in 3-4 years and see where we stand  :Smile:

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## botfeeder

Good job on the predictions.

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## Larry

Here is an interesting article which shows that 3D Printer sales will have grown by a factor of 10 within just 4 years.  This is remarkable growth, growth that we have not seen in any industry for quite a long time.  I think things are about to get real interesting real fast in the 3D printing Industry.  http://www.3ders.org//articles/20131...-adoption.html

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## RedSox2013

Lets look at the next 3 years according to this post:




> *2014:* The 3D Printing Market will continue to expand. Consumer printers sold will increase by 55% over the previous year
> *2014:* Expiration of Key 3D Printer Patents will open up the industry to competition, decreasing prices dramatically, especially for top end machines.
> 
> *2015:*Organova has changed the way drug discovery and testing is done. Sales of 3d printed human cells for testing are skyrocketing.
> 
> *2016:* 3D Printers enter the mainstream. 90% of the population will know what a 3D Printer is, and Sales of consumer oriented printers will have increase 8-10 times since 2013
> 
> *2017:* The first fully functioning 3D Printed Mouse liver will have been produced. 
> *2017:* Gartner has estimated that the 3D Printing market will have grown close to 2000% by now.


In my opinion all these will be fact.  We have already seen some nice price drops this year, and all indications are that the market will grow more than expected.

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## Tuukka

Interesting predictions. I may not agree with all of them, but good job anyways. I don't believe in singularity because it's just not economically feasible, and printing internal organs sounds unusual to me at this point in time. Maybe I'll know better at some point in the future. I sure hope to live to see that even if having one printed would probably cost a million.

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## JamesTuthill

> *2018:* Filaments, especially the plastics have dropped in price close to 75% as competition heats up.


My hope is that by this point in time, we will be making our own recycled plastic filament for free. 
Plastic water bottles, plastic laundry detergent bottles, etc.

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## 3LawsSafe

"If, by some miracle, a prophet could describe the future exactly as it would happen, his predictions would sound so absurd, so far-fetched, that everyone would laugh him to scorn." -Arthur C. Clarke.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  -Arthur C. Clarke

Both of these quotes describe 3D printing almost exactly, specifically the second.  I look forward to a printer printing a printer.  If I have enough solar panels (which are printable), and enough material, 1 printer can become 2, 2 can become 4, 4 can become 8, and in 30 doublings, you'd have over 1 billion printers, enough for nearly every home in the world.  The standard of living worldwide will skyrocket, the costs of living will plummet, and a golden age may well begin.

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## 3LawsSafe

I like to look at the past to predict the future.  Case in point:  some key patents to FDM printing ('glue gun' type) expired in 2009.  Prior to that, the average cost of this type of printer was about 14,000USD.  Now the average cost is 300USD, or just 2% of the costs only 5 years ago.  The importance of this can not be overstated.  Now, in 2014, key patents for selective laser sintering expired, and you can bet the same will happen to costs.  The only question I have is can I pull enough energy to operate a laser in my home?  To say nothing of the ignorant majority's fear of everyone printing a gun.

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## Larry

Yes but there is a huge profit margin on filament.  The plastic pellets to make a 750kg spool costs about $4 but the spools sell for $20 to $40.

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## Bradley

I am a late adopter of technology. I have no plans to purchase a 3D printer within the next 5 years. Nevertheless, additive manufacturing will be wildly disruptive despite my absence in the market. Additive manufacturing may have been around since the 1990's, but it is just now being introduced to the general public. What is interesting about this time in history is that everyone knows what Google, YouTube and Facebook are as well as how to use them to learn new things quickly. Another interesting thing about this time in history is that we are on the cusp of virtual/augmented reality and accurate real time speech-to-speech translation (Google Glass, Oculus Rift, etc.). Therefore, we will witness an unprecedented international collaborative effort focused on improving 3D printing (additive manufacturing).

3D printing is currently a hot subject at the academic level. However, the interest isn't limited to something as obvious as the materials sciences. On the country, every academic subject is interested -- no scratch that -- every academic subject is *fascinated* with 3D printing. And all that academic work is broadcast to nitwits like myself via easily consumable information sources such as YouTube, which causes my mind to dance through tangerine trees under marmalade skies. The internet is incubating a massive international "hive-mind" who(?) is highly motivated to innovate around the central idea of additive manufacturing. 

For those who think 3D printing is slow I would point out that additive manufacturing permits complexity at negligible additional cost. People will wrap their heads around that concept and start to innovate unexpected product markets (i.e. precisely built ceramic engines with hydrophobic surfaces that overcome sudden temperature changes). One day ceramic engines are a pipe dream, the next they are available for free download and 10,000 Chinese have printed them and tested them before the end of the day. In addition, additive manufacturing is currently capable of batch processing micro machines via optical fabrication. Also, the concept of swarm robots is interesting to consider when thinking of 3D printing scalability.

Western innovations will be hampered by patent restrictions in the short term, however, developing nations probably won't worry too much about spending resources to enforce 1st world patents. In the short term, western universities and corporations will invent amazing 3D printing technologies. But soon those technologies will be 'borrowed' and billions of Chinese and Indians will leap right past western countries and open source almost everything. Then they will innovate on top of 1st world patents so quickly due to their massive collaborative ability that western multinationals won't be able to keep up. Eventually, westerners will wonder why we are protecting patent ideologies (it's an ideology, right?) when mass collaboration proves to be a much more efficient vehicle of market innovation. 

In the short term, 3-5 years, I think the mainstream press will be very disappointed with personal 3D printing. We may see a boom and bust in the personal 3D printer market. But during that time the hobbyist/maker community will slowly develop a critical mass of useful open source products (as well as a critical mass of intellectual property right infringements). 

In the mid term, 5-10 years, we will see corporations lobbying to fight for strict IP protections. Meanwhile, individuals will be breaking patents on a regular basis.

In the longer term, 10-20 years, intellectual property will be largely irrelevant for anything that can be made at home. Companies with natural barriers to entry (Boeing) will retain their IP, but only because their products are too big to replicate and too necessary to bypass with alternate designs. Automobile manufacturers, however, will be on the ropes because autonomous vehicle systems will have made it possible to build cars lighter and cheaper without all the expensive safety equipment and heavy steel frames. 

In 20-40 years, who knows. There will be too many confluences of technological advancements to know which direction 3D printing will go. We might have virtual reality that is so realistic that physical objects provide a limited source of wealth. There might even be movements to have robots tear down buildings and return the land to nature while people live in hybrid reality, protected from the elements by small living spaces and fed by metabolized solar energy. 

Even though I believe in the disruptive abilities of 3D printing, I wonder how converging technologies will change our ways of thinking about physical objects.

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## ajperez

Great timeline, as well as the replies. 
Regarding food 3D printing, the first point is that its widespread adoption would render supermarkets (if not restaurants) obsolete, not just give them a new source of food products. 
Also, food would not be printed out of thin air, we would need alternative protein sources to stop relying on slaughtering animals (Beyond Meat approach). Or, edible flesh could be produced via cell culture/3D printing (Modern Meadow's approach). 
Thanks for enticing the discussion. 

I follow food 3D printing at @foodfabbing

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## Teran

Cool story bro :P Would love for it to be like this

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## Axebaneblade

Now THIS is a good topic. The predictions you've come up with could end up being shockingly close, or way off the mark, but I do believe that the world will change quite a bit due to 3D printing, and also Artificial Intelligence. This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately too, so this was a great read!! I've actually been designing my own 3D printed miniatures game that takes place in the future, and the backstory for the game will itself include 3D printing! Right now there are 3D printing technologies that can make much stronger titanium than the current SLS method, because the process actually raises the metal powder above the melting point, instead of below it as with SLS. Also, the cost of the powder is apparently going to be able to drop because of recent methods for making titanium powder that is closer to the ore itself, meaning much cheaper to produce because less modification is needed.

I'm thinking that possibly by the year 2080, 3D printing and AI technologies could be to the point that an army of AI ULV (Unmanned Land Vehicles) could be created in a matter of days/hours instead of months/years to produce and train conventional military forces. Perhaps we could even have remote-controlled vehicles on other planets/moons/asteroids also, where it is too dangerous to have humans living, but instead we could control unmanned vehicles from orbit in a space station or other ship. This gets around the delay issues of controlling a mars probe from earth for instance. If you instead control it from orbit around mars, it would be a similar delay as a satellite above earth, right? So much closer to live control. Perhaps this could be a viable way to mine asteroids and moons/planets?

3D printing technology is already getting faster too, so given decades of progress, there could likely be exponential increases in the speed of the process. At that point, it IS practical and justified to pay more in material/energy/maintenance to 3D print for mass production, IF you can afford the extra costs. If it were only 5 times faster it could be worth it, and by 2080 it could be even more.

Oh, and one more idea, in response to the idea that "3D printing filament price will always be directly tied to oil costs" is not necessarily true, is it? PLA is becoming pretty widely used, and it is a resin made from corn, right? Plus, it doesn't emit the awful fumes that melted ABS plastic does. Also, there is the possibility of recycling plastic containers to make filament, cutting costs. So the filament price doesn't necessarily have be directly tied to oil prices.

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## hpearson

Can people please do this survey for our class and share the survey as well. We are trying to get at least 100 response. One link is for people who have a 3D printer and the other is for people who don't have a 3D printer. 
 Have Printer https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LN3GZ8D
 Don't have printer https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LYB69B6
 make sure to click on the correct link.

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## morgue427

A working mouse liver within 2 years is a stretch I think and human ones within 4 and full scale 4years after is all but impossible tale longer than that for the govt to decide it is safe and minutes after it does someone will be making fakes with knock off cells

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## maxwell

2016 is coming, it may come true.

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## amberperez476

3D Printing market is in the progressive phase of its life cycle. It was valued at $2,811.8 million in 2014, and is anticipated to reach $8,683.7 million by 2020. 3D Printing market is growing at a CAGR of 21% during 2015 -2020.

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## amberperez476

I think, the factor s that are driving the 3D printing market are efficient use of raw materials and ability to build customized product. And the result is, market is anticipated to reach reach $8,683.7 million by 2020. Get more information @ https://goo.gl/6sKL7G

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