Mastering 3D Printing: A Guide to Modeling, Printing, and Prototyping, Second Edition

Get the most out of your printer, including how to design models, choose materials, work with different printers, and integrate 3D printing with traditional prototyping to make techniques like sand casting more efficient. This book is for new 3D printer owners, makers of all kinds, entrepreneurs, technology educators, and anyone curious about what you can do with a 3D printer.

In this revised and expanded new edition of Mastering 3D Printing, which has been a trusted resource through five years of evolution in the 3D printing industry, you’ll gain a comprehensive understanding of 3D printing. This book presumes no foreknowledge and describes what you need to know about how printers work, how to decide which type of printer (filament, resin, or powder) makes the most sense for you, and then how to go forward in the case of filament and resin printers.

This new edition now includes material about consumer resin printing, the evolution of lower-cost metal printing, and the plethora of both materials and applications.

What You’ll Learn

• Choose among the different 3D printing technologies
• Create or find 3D models to print
• Make both easy and challenging prints come out as you imagined
• Assess whether your business, factory, home or classroom will benefit from 3D printing
• Work with applications that are good candidates for first projects in home and industrial applications

Who This Book Is For

People who are encountering 3D printing for the first time, or for those who want to level up their skills. It is designed for the nontechnical adult and minimizes jargon. However more sophisticated users will still find tips and insights of value.

About the Authors

As an engineer and management consultant, Joan Horvath has coordinated first-of-a-kind interdisciplinary technical and business projects, helping people with no common vocabulary (startups, universities, small towns, etc). work together. Her experience as a systems engineer has spanned software development, spacecraft flight operations, risk management, and spacecraft/ground system test and contingency planning.As an educator, Joan’s passion is bringing science and technology to the non-specialist in a comprehensible and entertaining way that will stay with the learner for a lifetime. As an educator, Joan’s passion is bringing science and technology to the non-specialist in a comprehensible and entertaining way that will stay with the learner for a lifetime.

Rich Cameron is a cofounder of Pasadena-based Nonscriptum LLC. Nonscriptum consults for educational and scientific users in the areas of 3D printing and maker technologies. Rich (known online as "Whosawhatsis") is an experienced open source developer who has been a key member of the RepRap 3D-printer development community for many years. His designs include the original spring/lever extruder mechanism used on many 3D printers, the RepRap Wallace, and the Deezmaker Bukito portable 3D printer. By building and modifying several of the early open source 3D printers to wrestle unprecedented performance out of them, he has become an expert at maximizing the print quality of filament-based printers. When he's not busy making every aspect of his own 3D printers better, from slicing software to firmware and hardware, he likes to share that knowledge and experience online so that he can help make everyone else’s printers better too.