What You Can Print Now Your choices about what you can print using 3-D printing technology is limited only to your imagination, the depth of your pockets, and to some degree the material the final object will be. While large manufacturers are printing prototypes of everything from faucets to airline parts, jewelry seems to be one of the most popular design-and-print-yourself items for consumers and artists.

It's fairly simple even for beginners to do, and if you're not handy with CAD software, you can even scrawl your design for earrings on a napkin and let Shapeways do the rest. It's not expensive, either; a pair of customized stainless cuff links cost only $40 – in silver $80.
Shapeways doesn’t limit its users to a single medium because it uses a number of additive-manufacturing technologies. One set of machinery can print in metal; others in glass, or enamel, or plastic. “We have a platform for people to use if they want access to high-end 3-D printers. We’re trying to enable personalized manufacturing so you can make whatever you want,” in whatever material you like, with choices ranging from plastic to stainless steel.

At the higher end, 3-D printing is becoming attractive to many professionals. For example, dentists—and, to be more precise, dental patients—will really find value in 3-D printing. Anyone who’s ever spent a miserable and uncomfortable hour in a dentist chair with a mouth full of slowly hardening silicone will appreciate that the dentist will be able to simply scan the patient’s teeth and then send the file to a lab to be printed.

Want to print larger items, such as prototypes or exact 3-D images of someone's lungs, based on the 3-D images in layers created by CAT scans? You'll need one of the larger printers, such as the ones that Objet Geometries makes; these can run anywhere from $20,000 to $250,000. As expensive as it might be, companies are clearly seeing the value to using these printers. Objet's Bradshaw says that about 80 percent of the relevant Fortune 500 companies (that is, not the financial services or other companies that don't have any physical products) are Objet customers. Objet printers can print with dozens of types of materials. (Shapeways makes use of Objet’s largest machine, the Connex 500, so consumers and hobbyists don’t have to take out another mortgage to buy some time on it).

Industries are using 3-D printing to create rapid prototypes; that is, rather than go through a costly and time-consuming process of having the prototype of a new product created, then working out the glitches and starting again, prototypes printed on a 3-D printer can be finished quickly and for a low price. Some are even functional so that, for example, a manufacturer creating a new faucet can run water through it to see if there is anything hindering the water flow. And EADS, the company that makes Airbus planes, is working on printing the entire wing of an airplane.

The Future of Personalized Manufacturing What's the future likely to be for 3-D printing? Depends on who you ask. Smaller 3-D printers are already in the hands of hobbyists, with open-source projects such as RepRap, MakerBot, and Fab@Home--some of which can print replacement parts for themselves, so in essence they’re printing new 3-D printers.

Bradshaw says he doesn't expect to see a 3-D printer in everyone's household any time in the near future, though he says the low price of entry for hobbyist units means that more and more people will be able to play with the technology—and that will make a big difference as young people who grow up with a 3-D printer get to university. He does see a future not all that far off in which you will be able to take advantage of 3-D printing without having to buy a machine. "More than likely there will be a [service bureaus such as a] local Kinkos that has 3-D printer," he says. Lost a knob from your car radio? No problem. You'll just download the relevant file from the manufacturer’s Web site, take the file to your local print shop, and get the replacement.

Weijmarshausen says that 3-D printing needs to be more accessible, meaning even those who don’t know how to use 3-D design software can use it. “The goal would be you describe what you want with words, the system would ask if this is what you meant, and then make it,” he says. In fact, it's fairly simple even for beginners to do, and if you don’t have or don’t know how to use the appropriate software, you can even scrawl your design for earrings on a napkin and let Shapeways do the rest. If you don't want to design but still want a customized 3-D object, no problem; sites like Shapeways have galleries by resident artists and designers who can customize whatever you need (there are already more than 150,000 objects for sale by artists on the Shapeways site).

Weijmarshausen says that as 3D printer production companies like Objet Geometries, Z-Corp or EOS add new materials or make their machines faster and more affordable, consumers will have a lot of choices to print larger items such as tables and chairs, and in as little as a few days (compared to the roughly 10 days it takes Shapeways to make an item now). “The end result is you will be able to get whatever you want,” he says.