The Rise of 3D Printing

As the owner and moderator of the largest 3D Printing group on LinkedIn (60,000+ members), I have seen many changes come and go in the 3D printing ecosphere.

In this series, I will document some of the changes I have seen over the past twelve years since starting the group and where I feel the technology is headed in regards to prototyping, production, and supply chain management. I will also document how the technology has started to become mainstream and where I see it growing.

In 2007, I sold my VPN company and wondered what I would do for the rest of my career. I had started my professional life as a Piping Design Engineer…building prototype refinery models in the late 1970’s. Doing a Google search on model building netted me a video of a Z-Corporation 450 3D Printer. That video changed my life. I was an engineer, a CAD designer, a model builder, I knew computers to the bit level and yet, had never seen something as wild as this.  For those old enough to remember…I was looking around for the “Candid Camera” crew to set me up. No way did this technology exist.

I went to LinkedIn…what I consider my professional Wikipedia, and did a search on 3D Printing. I was a member of several manufacturing, computer, and sales groups and figured I’d join a 3D printing group to learn more about this technology. In 2008, I got zero returns. So I figured…what the heck…I’d just start a group.

We had minimal folks joining, maybe one hundred in the first month. And then a few more. I distinctly remember Pamela Waterman and Barbara Arnold-Ferot as early members.

We grew moderately and I gained mass quantities of information from a lot of folks that had been in the industry for many years (Terry Wohlers, Ron Hollis, and Todd Grimm to name a few). I was amazed that the first working 3D printer was designed in the 1980s and the first commercially available machine was available in the early 1990s.

Back then, LinkedIn allowed the owners of groups to get a lot of demographic info about their members and I recorded it all. The largest metropolitan area of members came from New York City first…then San Francisco, followed by Boston, back across the county to Los Angeles as number four…and then usually split for number five between Chicago and Great Britain.

It wasn’t until around 2012 that the group skyrocketed. We were having 25-50 people joining the group a week and then all of a sudden it went from that to about 300-400/week. I truly feel the impetus was the first article written about a 3D printed gun and Cody Wilson.  Without getting into the political reasons, I think every congressman, pro and con gun control, got involved in the issue. Stratasys threatened to retract the leased machine that Cody had, and every newspaper got involved. Prior to this, when acquaintances asked what I did for a living, I usually told them 3D printing. Most replied, “3D what?” The gun issue had skyrocketed the 3D printing technology to mainstream mania.

Heck…even “CSI New York” did a show utilizing the technology utilizing a CT scanner and a 3D printer to analyze a bullet in a horse…to find the culprit of a crime. Although it was bad science…it brought the technology to the forefront. The question…how many manufacturing and design executives that had never even heard of 3D printing were sitting in their easy chair at home getting their first glimpse into the future of a then-unknown for the most part technology. And soon to come…supply chain management.

Which brings me to today’s Covid-19 pandemic. Our membership request to the group had fallen to about 75 people/week at the beginning of 2020. But when people started needing Personal Protection Equipment fast…the ability to rapidly build face shields, masks, protectors, etc., the requests were instantly picked up by the 3D printing community. And the 10:00 Evening News again touted the value of 3D printers.

So the people that were still blind to the technology, got a second chance to get on board. And a lot of them have come to our group to learn more about 3D Printing. Our membership request during the past couple of months has jumped once again to the 250-300 request/week.  And I promise you…some of these new folks will be embedding this technology into their businesses just as they did in 2012.

So next up.  Prototyping, production, and Supply Chain management. Until next week.