3D printing technology did not appear out of thin air, and its development history is also a history of technology commercialization. Next, let's take a look at the history and history of 3D printing.
Chuck Hull invented the Stereolithography Equipment (SLA) based on the idea of accelerating prototyping to accelerate industrial product development, which was patented in 1984 and ushered in 3D printing technology. Subsequently, 3D printing technology went through many periods such as basic accumulation, commercialization, and civilian use before reaching its current maturity period.
1981 - Hideo Kodama of Japan receives the first patent for a device that uses UV curing photopolymers. He designed this device for "rapid prototyping" because it was used to make models and prototypes.
1984 - French inventors Alain Le Mehaute, Olivier de Witte and Jean Claude André file a patent that, like Hideo's, uses UV-cured photopolymers. General Electric abandoned the patent on the grounds of lack of significant commercial potential.
1984 - Only a few weeks after Le Mehaute's invention, American Charles 'Chuck' Hull filed his own patent for a "device for producing three-dimensional objects with stereolithography", thus also coining the term "stereolithography" (SLA).
1987 - Hull invents STL documentation and in the same year founds 3D Systems.
1987 - American Carl Deckard patents selective laser sintering (SLS), and in the same year he co-founded the Desktop Manufacturing (DTM) company (acquired by 3D Systems in 2001).
1987 - 3D Systems released the first commercial SLA printer "SLA-1".
1989 - American Scott Krum (S. Scott Crump filed a patent for fused deposition modeling (FDM) and co-founded Stratasys with his wife in the same year.
1992 - Stratasys finally obtained the FDM patent, and thus launched the first FDM printer "3D Modeler".
1992 - DTM launched the "Sinterstation 2000", a commercial SLS printer.
1994 - Electro Optical Systems (EOS), a German company founded in 1989, released the first commercial metal 3D printer "EOSINT M160".
2005 - The open-source RepRap project (short for "Replicated Rapid Prototyper") is launched to create self-replicating 3D printers capable of printing its own parts, which generates great interest in the technology.
2009 - The key FDM patent enters the public domain, and MakerBot launches the desktop 3D printer "Cupcake CNC". It costs only a few hundred dollars, not thousands, and all components are available for download from the Thingiverse website, which is dedicated to sharing user-created digital design files.
2012 – Formlabs releases the *** economical SLA printer "Form 1" through a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, raising $2.95 million. They were sued by 3D Systems for patent infringement, but Formlabs won.
2013 - Hubs launches a peer-to-peer 3D printing service that allows people who buy prints and those who own machines to trade at scale. It quickly grew into the world's leading 3D printing platform with over 50,000 printing "centers" before turning to focus on helping its corporate customers, making all forms of custom manufacturing more accessible.
2014 – Key patents for SLS enter the public domain, leading to a large number of companies starting to build smaller, more affordable SLS printers.
Since 2018, the mass media hype around 3D printing technology has largely disappeared, but interest in its commercial applications has never been higher for businesses of all sizes. Today, there are thousands of companies that produce printers and offer a variety of services using 3D printing technology.