3D printing has taken an increasingly important role in business, as both a manufacturing and production tool and as an aide for design efforts. It has become so valuable in part due to the advancements made in the technology, which has made it become increasingly cheap and increasingly versatile over time.

There are a wide range of 3D printing commercial uses currently available. They can be used by individuals looking for a unique model that won’t be mass produced, like a model of themselves as an example. They are also used by businesses to print out a tangible model of a product that they’re in the middle of designing. They can also be used in the medical field to aide doctors in complicated surgeries, or even to print out scaled copies of body parts that can then be used as replacements, such as heart valves.

While the commercial uses are extensive, you can’t overlook the private usage of 3D printers. Many people have paid out their own money to purchase a printer of their own, so that they can produce a variety of their own tools and products. We can even see a sub-culture of 3D printers; people who produce and share designs which can then be used by printers to create a variety of products. Quite famously, a 3D printer design was designed and used by somebody to print out a simple type of hand-gun, who then made that design freely available. Although this is worrying, it just goes to show the extensive uses the technology has, and how people have taken advantage of it.