How 3D Printers Will Explode Soon

3 min readJan 7, 2022

3D printers were pegged to be the future of technology, believed to soon be found in every home across the United States. Ushering in an entirely new era of DIY’ers and entrepreneurs that would take us into the design of the future. What we actually got were a select few people making some cool stuff for an even more niche market. Real bummer. Now of course industries are already using 3D printers to make parts rapid prototypes, but it’s clear to see, 3D printers haven’t quite lived up to the hype. Yet. Here’s why 3D printers are on the verge of blowing up over the next few years.

Computing Power

As I’ve mentioned before, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia have really ramped up their R&D departments. Not only are these companies creating ever more powerful hardware, but they’re also finding ways to make it more streamlined, with smaller sizes and improved power efficiencies, it’s clear to see what direction computing power is headed. A lot of power, in a little package, that will work all day long. When I first went to college, high powered laptops were giant, I remember saving up for my gaming laptop that could hardly fit into my backpack at the time, now I can get 100x the power out of a device nearly have the size! This democratization of computing power and portable computing will be a godsend for 3D printers around the world, running CAD based software and designing 3D objects will become ever easier as processing power improves. Another generation or two of processors and we’ll start to see professional level computers trickle down to the masses!

Decentralization

Decentralization is generally brought up in the context of crypto tokens and other cryptographic platforms such as NFTs or even the MetaVerse. But I believe decentralization will play a major role in the development of 3D printers over the next few years. With open platforms already existing to market and sell your 3D design creations I believe with the help of decentralization and the respective blockchains liberating a lot of creativity, 3D printers will gain a lot over a short time period.