Bevil Wood­ing

Ever sketched a de­sign idea on pa­per and won­dered what it might look like if it could be brought to life? An ear­ring de­sign, a pen­dant, per­haps? A sculp­ture, or spe­cial wid­get? Or even a house plan?

One of the great­est chal­lenges faced by ar­ti­sans, en­tre­pre­neurs and small busi­ness op­er­a­tors is turn­ing an idea in­to a tan­gi­ble prod­uct. Of­ten, the task of mov­ing from con­cept to a func­tion­al pro­to­type can be so dif­fi­cult, many great ideas sim­ply re­main just that � ideas.

The ad­vent of af­ford­able, con­sumer-friend­ly, 3D print­ing tech­nol­o­gy presents an an­swer to this uni­ver­sal chal­lenge and of­fers big op­por­tu­ni­ties for small busi­ness­es. It is an in­trigu­ing in­ter­sec­tion of de­sign, man­u­fac­tur­ing, sports, en­gi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy with im­pli­ca­tions for sec­tors as di­verse as health, ed­u­ca­tion, home im­prove­ment and space ex­plo­ration.

A Print­ing Rev­o­lu­tion

3D print­ing is not re­al­ly that new, it's just new­ly af­ford­able. It pop­u­lar­i­ty was con­fined to the world of en­gi­neer­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing un­til the last few years. That all changed with the in­tro­duc­tion of rel­a­tive­ly low-cost 3D-pir­in­ters, and the wider avail­abil­i­ty of 3D-print­ing soft­ware, on­line how-to guides and thou­sands of prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tions. This con­ver­gence has sparked a 3D print­ing rev­o­lu­tion, fu­elled by main­stream me­dia in­ter­est and grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty with con­sumers and small busi­ness­es. To­day, 3D print­ing is one of the most hyped ad­vance­ments in the tech­nol­o­gy are­na.