3D printers have long been just a luxury that big corporations, R&D departments and industrial design studios can afford to develop and test mostly functional prototypes.

Mostly because the layered structure and a limited number of materials usually don't work well for designers, while inferior physical properties don't work well for engineers.

Besides poor selection of materials, it required complex training and software, with expensive hardware and its maintenance.

As an industrial designer had access to some of these early in my career was a privilege with huge responsibility, knowing how expensive and difficult they were.

However, few advantages were immediately noticeable. There are only a few limitations to shapes that can be printed but still, structural properties of inferior materials remained.

Over years I've printed parts on many of these machines although most of the parts were designed for other conventional production processes.

About 6-7 years ago when I moved to Shenzhen to design drones many 3D printers were affordable but not really reliable.

Nonetheless, it seemed that after some patents for 3D printers expired, more and more companies stepped in, to make the hardware, software and materials, driving the prices down while increasing the diversity and reliability within the industry.

Since I know for myself I was modifying products to suit my needs and style. For me, product design had always been about continuous improvements and customizability.

In recent years 3D printers became much more reliable, convenient, diverse, all while becoming more and more affordable and sustainable.

From then, I started to think about small improvements in my house and If I could actually design and 3D print some of the products that I really need.

The previous professional experience helped a lot but now my focus was on how many usable and useful products can I design on average consumer 3D printers.

As an industrial designer, I know that even my personal needs can be well adjusted to specific users and applications and that every product has complex demands that not many users think about. I started thinking through the layered structure of printed products and material selection not as a limit but as an advantage.

I noticed that many big influencers in the industry are actually hobbyists and engineers, while ironically, there are not many industrial designers.

Ironically. because industrial designers are here to translate complex technology into user experience and they are usually very proficient in 3D software.

Opportunities for 3D printing are huge but unfortunately, the challenges for designers still remain.

It is easy to download a single file for a few bucks and print it thousand times, without paying a proper commission to the author or give him/her any visibility.

We can design many useful products that can be easily and highly customized, without need to cause any pollution with packaging and for transport of such.

We can design products that are downloadable within a second and printable within few hours, all while being highly sustainable.

We can design custom products and parts for many, but still many believe that it is expensive and unreliable as it was years ago.

The future of 3D printing is amazing, in the following years we can expect 3D print shops to be as common as regular printers were, because they are already that inexpensive and reliable. The opportunities are huge and we believe that there will need to be more design professionals who are designing for 3D printing.

Until then, we will be one of a few and we hope to get support within the industry and from users.

Tride.Design

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