How Did you Discover 3D printing?

3D printing is one of those technologies that make you say, "WOW!" I remember the first time I heard about the amazing technology. I was browsing Youtube.com, probably watching something related to Ray Kurzweil, and his ideas of the Singularity which is coming via technological progress. When the video ended, I saw on the side bar one a video for 3D Printing. This was the video actually:

http://youtu.be/8aghzpO_UZE

After that I became enthralled in the idea, and quickly saw how the industry could pretty much explode with innovation. A couple years later and we have made tremendous strides for sure, but the best is yet to come.

So, when and how did you first hear about 3D printing?

I remember seeing it on somelate night TV show. They were talking about how 3D Printing was the future of manufacturing. At the time no one really new about it. This was probably only a little more than a year and a half ago. Boy has it grown since then!

A ad in our local paper advertising a meeting for interested Makers, at that meeting met couple of people that were just starting to offer a 3d printer kit, keep going to the meetings and saw the potential and have been hooked since. kinda spoiled to have seemecnc.com developers in our makers group, currently printing with a Orion from them, have used their H-1 and also rostock max delta.

I was actually reading an article on Techcrunch about 3D Printing, and I was like, "Wow, wouldn't that be cool to own one of those?"

So I googled it and found I could actually own a 3D Printer for under $2,000.

That's what got me started, and I've been hooked ever since :)

It have to be during the late -90's. With the price of the machines at the time I finally bought a Roland Modela 3D milling machine in 1998...

My son read about them and ordered an early Cupcake and had to have it shipped to my house because he was never home to sign for deliveries. I emailed him and asked if I should open the bob "to check for damages" ? 14 hours later, It was fired up and printing.

After 3 or 4 more Cupcake builds (ours, friends, etc) and many RepRap derivatives, we have become pretty proficient in assembling these things. Our first CNC Router should be arriving soon (as usual, there were "supply issues" and they are delayed).

About 3 weeks ago I was making wooden patterns for the foundry to have some model locomotive parts cast in iron. I had been posting progress reports on a British model forum and one of the members said if I had the drawings in CAD he would turn them into 3D drawings and have them 3D printed for me. The next day he sent me .jpg images of the 3D renderings and I started researching 3D printing and within a week was able to turn out my own 3D drawings so the next step was to acquire my own 3D printer. I bought a RepRap kit which arrived Monday, was assembled by Tuesday, and aligned and printed my first 3D test piece yesterday. By tomorrow I hope to be printing my first foundry pattern. Sure beats working from drawings and making sawdust!

I work for a high tech security camera company talk about 3d printing like 3-4yrs ago and decided to start my own late last yr. =)

I don't really know anymore. Probably through my interests I somehow found shapeways when they just had started.

I'm in college and our engineering lab kind of bought 3 makerbots on a whim? I'm a visual art student but obviously engineering is where the money at!!! I've been laser cutting and 3d printing as a monitor in the lab for almost a year now and its just too great. My first prints were off of thingiverse but now I'm using Rhino to model my own prints.