3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer control, with the material being added together, typically layer by layer.
MakerBot Industries, LLC was an American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company headquartered in New York City. It was founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach "Hoeken" Smith to build on the early progress of the RepRap Project. It was acquired by Stratasys in June 2013. As of April 2016, MakerBot had sold over 100,000 desktop 3D printers worldwide. Between 2009 and 2019, the company released 7 generations of 3D printers, ending with the METHOD and METHOD X. It was at one point the leader of the desktop market with an important presence in the media, but its market share declined over the late 2010s. MakerBot also founded and operated Thingiverse, the largest online 3D printing community and file repository. In August 2022, the company completed a merger with its long-time competitor Ultimaker. The combined company is known as UltiMaker, but retains the MakerBot name for its Sketch line of education-focused 3D printers.
Shapeways, Inc. was a global, 3D printing marketplace and service, publicly traded company. Users design and upload 3D printable files, and Shapeways prints the objects for them or others. 3D printing resources are available for university students, faculty, and educators with an .EDU email
Ultimaker is a 3D printer-manufacturing company based in the Netherlands, with offices and assembly lines in the US. They make fused filament fabrication 3D printers, develop 3D printing software, and sell branded 3D printing materials. Their product line includes the Ultimaker S5 and S3, Ultimaker 3 series, Ultimaker 2+ series and Ultimaker Original+. These products are used by industries such as automotive, architecture, healthcare, education, and small scale manufacturing.
M3D, LLC is an American manufacturer of 3D printers in Fulton, Maryland. The company's flagship product is the "Micro 3D" or "Micro".
Airwolf 3D is a 3D printer designer headquartered in Costa Mesa, California. It was founded in 2012 by Erick and Eva Wolf.
Formlabs is a 3D printing technology developer and manufacturer. The Somerville, Massachusetts-based company was founded in September 2011 by three MIT Media Lab students. The company develops and manufactures 3D printers and related software and consumables. It raised nearly $3 million in a Kickstarter campaign and created the Form 1, Form 1+, Form 2, Form Cell, Form 3, Form 3L, Fuse 1, Fuse 1+ and Form Auto stereolithography and selective laser sintering 3D printers and accessories.
Zortrax is a Polish manufacturer of 3D printers and filaments for SMB market and rapid prototyping for industries, including robotics and automation, architecture, industrial design, engineering, aviation, industrial automation. Zortrax machines work with dedicated software, firmware and filaments.
Fused filament fabrication (FFF), also known as fused deposition modeling, or filament freeform fabrication, is a 3D printing process that uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material. Filament is fed from a large spool through a moving, heated printer extruder head, and is deposited on the growing work. The print head is moved under computer control to define the printed shape. Usually the head moves in two dimensions to deposit one horizontal plane, or layer, at a time; the work or the print head is then moved vertically by a small amount to begin a new layer. The speed of the extruder head may also be controlled to stop and start deposition and form an interrupted plane without stringing or dribbling between sections. "Fused filament fabrication" was coined by the members of the RepRap project to give an acronym (FFF) that would be legally unconstrained in its use.
Made In Space, Inc., is an American company specializing in the engineering and manufacturing of three-dimensional printers for use in microgravity. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, Made In Space's 3D printer was the first manufacturing device used in space.
Aleph Objects, Inc. was a small manufacturing company based in Loveland, Colorado. Their business model focused around the development of Open-source hardware for 3D printing with full support for Free and open-source software.
AstroPrint is a cloud platform and application marketplace designed for consumer 3D printing by 3DaGoGo Inc., a private San Diego-based technology company.
Fusion3 is a Greensboro, North Carolina company which manufactures 3D printers for commercial and education use. Fusion3 3D Printers use fused deposition modeling to create three-dimensional solid or hollow objects from a digital model, which can be designed or produced from a scan.
The Prusa i3 is a family of fused deposition modeling 3D printers, manufactured by Czech company Prusa Research under the trademarked name Original Prusa i3. Part of the RepRap project, Prusa i3 printers were called the most used 3D printer in the world in 2016. The first Prusa i3 was designed by Josef Průša in 2012, and was released as a commercial kit product in 2015. The latest model is available in both kit and factory assembled versions. The Prusa i3's comparable low cost and ease of construction and modification made it popular in education and with hobbyists and professionals, with the Prusa i3 model MK2 printer receiving several awards in 2016.
ZYYX is a Swedish desktop 3D printer, designed primarily for office and educational applications. Originally launched in 2014 by Magicfirm Europe AB, based at Chalmers Innovation in Gothenburg, the ZYYX 3D Printer is based on FFF technology and features include an automated levelling function, smell-free operation and an extruder head which is less prone to jamming.
Cura is an open source slicing application for 3D printers. It was created by David Braam who was later employed by Ultimaker, a 3D printer manufacturing company, to maintain the software. Cura is available under LGPLv3 license. Cura was initially released under the open source Affero General Public License version 3, but on 28 September 2017 the license was changed to LGPLv3. This change allowed for more integration with third-party CAD applications. Development is hosted on GitHub. Ultimaker Cura is used by over one million users worldwide and handles 1.4 million print jobs per week. It is the preferred 3D printing software for Ultimaker 3D printers, but it can be used with other printers as well.
3D printing filament is the thermoplastic feedstock for fused deposition modeling 3D printers. There are many types of filament available with different properties.
Markforged is an American public additive manufacturing company that designs, develops, and manufactures The Digital Forge — an industrial platform of 3D printers, software and materials that enables manufacturers to print parts at the point-of-need. The company is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, in the Greater Boston Area. Markforged was founded by Gregory Mark and the chief technology officer (CTO) David Benhaim in 2013. It produced the first 3D printers capable of printing continuous carbon fiber reinforcement and utilizes a cloud architecture.
