3D PRINTING AWARENESS

Additive manufacturing (or 3D printing) technology has been around for over 20 years, and scores of manufacturers and designers have adopted the technology or plan to.

According to Hewlett-Packard’s Santiago Morera, VP and general manager of the company’s Large Format Printing Business, there are millions of 3D CAD designers using 2D printers that are ready to bring their designs to life in 3D.

I concur. And yet I still often encounter people in the manufacturing world unfamiliar with the technology.

And regarding the people outside our industry, the vast majority have never heard of 3D printing. Some think it’s a paper printer that prints drawings of three-dimensional objects. Most are surprised when they learn there’s a device that can print out solid plastic objects that can be touched and examined.

Although most don’t have any idea what a 3D printer is, as of last week, that all begins to change. With HP’s offering of a (Stratasys-manufactured) 3D printer, awareness is about to be kicked up more than a notch. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.

HP is a big gun.