3D printing has been getting a lot of attention these days. Maybe too much.
The chart below shows the number of Google hits for 3D printing for each of the last 4 years. The hits are in millions and for 12 month September to September time periods.
It's pretty clear from this data interest in 3D printing has taken off over the last year. To be fair, there has been a lot of interesting 3D printing news.
Maker Bot opening a retail store in New York City is an example (click here to see a video of the store). They also released a new version of their Star Trek inspired Replicator 3D printer.
There's also been a lot of announcements around new things that can manufactured using 3D printing. My favorite is Airbus announcing it hopes to make planes using 3D printers. Before you get too excited, they hope to do this by 2050.
We're big fans of 3D printing and have been covering it for years. We consider it one of the key technologies helping to bring back small manufacturing.
But the hype does seem to be getting ahead of the reality, or at least that's what one expert thinks. Gartner also thinks 3D printing is overhyped and at least 5 years away from broad use.
We agree. 3D printing is and will continue to an excellent niche tool for making things as well as wonderful device for product designers. But broad, mainstream use of 3D printing is still at least 3-5 years away.
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