3D printing has always been a family affair in my house. I might be the one fiddling with the printers to keep them working, but my wife and kids often use the machines to make cool things for work and play. While I’m interested in the ins and outs of how machines work, my wife is interested in the outputs and how they can improve our lives, aesthetically or mechanically.

3DPrintopia is one of the most popular 3D printing events of the year. Businesses from all over the world come to show off their latest devices and 3D printing accessories, and the public comes to see what’s new and show off what they’ve made. There were more women and children at 3DPrintopia this year than ever before, and companies are starting to take notice of the demographic shift. With new machines, accessories, and supplies aimed at a more diverse group, companies are starting to appeal to more than the mechanics of yesteryear.

“Kids are jumping into 3D printing as a tool, among other tools in their arsenal, so to speak,” says Claire DiFazio of cutting-edge manufacturer E3D.

Cookiecad’s Melissa Apter agrees. “We continue to see more women joining the (3D printing) community, and that’s certainly driven by many things, including affordable plug-and-play printers.”

Entry-level 3D printing has seen the biggest growth in recent years, according to Context Analytics 64% per yearIt was largely backed by Bambu Lab, which now has 26% of the global market. Bambu Lab is famous for offering printers that require almost no installation and require very little maintenance. This type of “plug and play” machine shifts the focus from those of us with an engineering mindset to a new group of people who just want the end product. As long as the 3D printer works, that’s how much interaction this new group has with it.

As easy as an all-in-one printer

It’s easy to think of using a 3D printer as a daunting task, but best 3D printerslike A1 Combination from bamboo and Prusa Mk4SIt can be unboxed, set up and ready to print in less than 10 minutes. Modern 3D printers are just as difficult to set up as your average home paper printer or a printer. . A few short mechanical operations (attaching the cables, installing the ink, or adjusting the cutting blade) and a few software operations, such as setting up the Cricut design space, the 3D printer’s app, or the paper printer’s scanning software, and you’re done.

Cricut’s example is just one way 3D printing is becoming more accessible to women. While there are many accessories that will allow your Cricut to do more, it is not a tinkerer’s machine. It is a machine used to make arts and crafts. For most women, the goal is the craft itself, rather than the tool used to do it, and over the years, the tools of the craft have perfected this model.

While it may be felt that these irreparable machines are adding more waste to humanity’s garbage heaps, there is little reason to believe this is true. A quality 3D printer, used frequently but not excessively, can last five years or more before becoming completely obsolete. I had a Prusa Mk3 for about eight years and the only maintenance it needed was some oil on the rods and a new mouthpiece occasionally. This level of maintenance is the same for the average sewing machine, which requires some machine oil and a new needle to keep it running for years.

How is the 3D printing industry responding to this change?

Throughout the congress you can see the impact of having more women and children in society. Even those days are gone now best filament manufacturers offering multiple different blacks and whites and just a few simple colors. There’s been a riot of colored filaments everywhere, from cool pastels to bright greens, and filament manufacturers are clearly churning out new colors and styles every day.

“When we started this business cookiecad “With the 3D printing filament line, we were filling a need for colors that weren’t available, especially pastels,” Apter says when I ask about the type of people buying Cookiecad filament. to our cookie-cutter design software.”

3D printing manufacturers have been slower to react, but even they are taking steps to embrace changing demographics. E3D’s DiFazio says: “I really like color, but it’s not the colors that have sold (historically). I think the multi-colour, multi-material aspect of 3D printing will become much more important in the next 12 months. … printers that can change better, and then you’ll see CMYK and Pantone colors become much more common, maybe even catching up with the black ones.”

E3D is also actively working on ways to make 3D printing more accessible. the latest product High Flow ObXidianIt works with the Bambu Labs P1 series to improve filament flow rates and speeds while maintaining the excellent quality of the P1 class printer. Since the P1 series has a quick and intuitive way to replace the hotend, this no longer feels like an engineering job; It feels as simple as changing the ink in your all-in-one or inserting a new blade into your Cricut.

It’s up to us to make them feel welcome

As more 3D printer manufacturers jump on the plug-and-play bandwagon, we’re more likely to see a new community form around what the tool can produce, rather than the machine itself. It will be up to those of us, deeply embedded in the ecosystem, to ensure that what we love so much is as welcoming as possible to newcomers. Gatekeeping is almost always toxic and should have no place in any hobby or fandom. It’s totally okay that there are people who like to tinker and people who don’t. In fact, it will be very important moving forward because when these plug-and-play machines start to break down, there will always be a need for people who know how to fix them. We will need repair shops, second-hand shops and more people to keep these machines running so people can enjoy them for years to come.

It’s not just the hobby itself where we see change; It happens in our media too. Content creators like it Uncle Jessy And 3D Printing Nerd still dominates the field, but female creators are growing in popularity. TikTokers love: Filament Stories And Cookie Street shows us a new way to think about printing and the materials we use to make it. More than media creations, women make up a large part of the design side of 3D printing. Some of the best artists pushing what a 3D printer can do are women, and this industry is expanding as fast as the hardware side. For example, check out at 3DPrintBunny Thangs. He creates 3D designs that blow my mind.

Everyone I spoke to at 3DPrintopia gave the same general answer to the question of where they think 3D printing will go in the next five years. It will be in the hands of people who are more interested in what a 3D printer can produce than how they can produce it. Historically, this means more women and more children, but it also means an explosion in the number of printers in your neighborhood.

“I think every home will have two printers,” DiFazio says. “There’s not a printer on every street.” Although I think the future is far away, it is now much closer with many more people actively participating.