Ask any 3D printing enthusiast and they'll tell you that 3D printing is a dream come true: fast, customizable, and through online 3D printing community hubs like Shapeways and free design software, easy to access.
But what are those dreams made of?
But no matter how many materials Shapeways adds to its offerings, the service—and commercial 3D printing in general—still has one big limitation: each object can only be printed out of one of those materials.
"How many products in your life are made out of one material?" Carmy pointed out.
"Because you can't do mixed materials yet we do need to do some post-production [on the prints]," said Carmy, "but probably in the next year we'll see products that are fully assembled and in in mixed materials coming out of the printers."
"In the future we're going to start to see mixed materials, electronics 3D printing, and conductive materials as well," she told Tom's Guide.
Designers need to consider the materials they'll be printing in as they create their digital designs, Carmy said, because the consistency, weight, and desired detail will have an effect on how the physical model looks.
"One of the biggest hurdles that we have today is that when you're designing products you actually have to think about the materials you're going to end up using because materials have different properties.
"The software needs to get smarter to give us that real-time feedback," said Carmy. "What are you designing for? What are the physical properties you need?"
Once software can help designers answer those questions and printers can create complex designs in multiple materials, people will be able to print almost anything — as long as they can dream it first.
