Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

3D printing is graduating from a curiosity to a must-have technology at incredible speed. The market is rated by Canalys at $2.5 billion, but is predicted to hit $10.5 in the next four years.

The more I read about 3D this technology, the more it makes me think about a sad failure in fairly recent Pittsburgh Corning history, involving a much hyped machine developed in Germany. A specimen was imported and set up at the local plant, where some of best engineering smarts the company could command, or even borrow, or call back from retirement were tasked with getting it to extrude glass blocks on demand, in small quantities or large. Last I heard the mighty marvel sits unused, except as a home for spiders.

When an insider was describing the marvelous glass block machine, I commented that his description made me think of the Play Doh Fun machine. He said his kids have had two of those, and there was a noticeable difference: the Fun Machine actually worked.

And 3D printing actually works—and may be put to practical uses to the limit of our imaginings, and beyond. I certainly hope our Career and Technical Center is getting into it—and maybe the high school tech lab too.

MadeSolid, based near Oakland, California, expects to see 3D printing change from a specialty product to something consumers and businesses see as an essential tool, like color printing.

Lance Pickens, CEO of MadeSolid, got the idea back when he wrote some software that would use crystallographic data from the protein databank at the University of Southern California, and produce files that could be 3D printed. Molecular models, in that case.

Pickens got some orders for this service after demonstrating the process at Maker Faire in 2012. But then he found that when more complex molecules were involved, service bureaus couldn’t produce the desired results.

He stopped operations so as to figure out how to make things work as they should. The software worked. The idea was sound. What was wrong? In a word, materials.

Pickens gathered a team through a “hackerspace,” Once they decided what chemicals they would need to accomplish what was theoretically possible, they had great difficulty obtaining some of them. They used eBay and ceramics supply stores.

David Rorex and Pickens became acquainted and partnered in MadeSolid. They decided to produce their own printer for Pickens’ software to drive. Soon they were a service bureau printing what their customers wanted printed. Still they were limited by the quality of the materials available. Brian Martinez joined as another cofounder. He shared the vision of coming up with better materials for 3D printing.

Martinez believes that 3D printer makers are improving the devices in modest ways, relating to speed, size and thermal limits. But MadeSolid and its team of researchers are developing new and better printing materials.

Working with existing resins, they learned to apply chemical “patches,” much as software engineers apply patches to their code.

For those who have been following the development of 3D printing, the method of printing they are familiar with is fused deposition modeling (FDM). One material used is polylactic acid (PLA), which is a compostable material from which plastic utensils are made.

Another plastic used in FDM printing is acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)—think Legos.

MadeSolid’s FDM uses PET+ (polyethelene terephthalate). It also uses stereolithography apparatus (SLA), utilizing a proprietary material called MS Resin, and another called FireCast Resin.

PET+ is fairly flexible, shrink resistant and recyclable. But MadeSolid is putting more of its efforts into developing resins. MS Resin is UV curable, a photopolymer that works well for SLA printing.

FireCast Resin can be used for “investment casting,” or printing molds for metal—think machine parts, jewelry.

MadeSolid sells directly to about 400 customers, nearly a third of them in other countries. A major destination for the specialty resins is China. Pickens sees the Chinese adopting 3D printing and innovating in that area so rapidly, it could overtake the U.S.

Some observers believe 3D printing can have a major impact on the global economy. Business start-ups can become far less expensive if prototypes can be printed. Far less tooling or “fab” is needed to print the initial run of a new product.

Customization of items ordinarily mass produced would be feasible. Think of the many things we use, where fit is critical: glasses frames, joint replacements, orthotics, braces, casts, dentures, prosthetics, lenses   Imagine the market for dolls and bobbleheads that are accurate 3D likenesses of real people!

Obstacles to rapid adoption of 3D printers by the masses include our love-hate relationships with printers, the limited availability of the requisite CAD software at reasonable cost and in user-friendly forms, and scarcity ofvendors of affordable, easily used materials.

Our 2D printers give us fits, at times. They jam, they beep threateningly and display cryptic error messages and run out of toner or ink at inopportune times.

Also, it’s hard for us to believe that working parts could be produced in a relatively small machine.

There have been some 3D printers marketed with inflated specs. Their users have become disillusioned when over-hyped printers didn’t live up to claims. And sometimes inferior consumables have been marketed, causing more disappointment.

New techniques for printing, involving directing lasers into bowls of resin, using hand-held devices similar to styli, sound exciting.

It’s hard to think of anything that has gone through development generations more quickly than 3D printing. Android versions, maybe? It’s an exciting technology, fun to watch. If you buy or use a 3D printer, let me know.