Over the time Hackaday has been in existence, the art of 3D printing has evolved from a relatively crude hit-and-miss affair to something approaching what we all imagined back then. You can’t yet walk up to a Star Trek replicator and ask for a part, but a modern state of the art consumer or prosumer grade printer will deliver consistent high-resolution parts, and in a surprisingly short time. [The Next Layer] asks whether consumer FDM printers have now reached the point at which they’re about as good as they’re going to get, and whether other technologies hold the future.

It’s a fair point to make that the resolution of a consumer FDM printer may be close to its mechanical limit. Techniques such as input shaping and the adoption of better CoreXY mechanisms mean that prints which once might have relied on SLA can be done in FDM. Healthy competition in the marketplace has delivered high quality colour printing, with tool-changing printers being no longer solely the preserve of the professional. He uses the example of a mobile phone to make the point that new machines have less of a wow factor to deliver, as increments have become less grand.

It’s a persuasive argument, and looking at the printers around us we can see it in action. The difference in ability between a 2020-ish and a 2026 FDM printer are far smaller than those between the same time periods in the last decade. Compare a MakerBot Cupcake and an Ultimaker II, or the Ultimaker and a Prusa Mini, and each is light years ahead of the last. But the best the Mini can do is surprisingly not as far behind as you’d expect to that of their latest, or of the equivalent from Bambu Labs.

Does this means that nothing new is coming in 3D printing? Of course not. UV printing is coming through and will deliver incredible results, as will SLS printing. It’s interesting he devotes little time to SLA printing, perhaps because it’s not as easy a process as FDM. He makes the point that we’ve never had it so good, as the high-end FDM features will appear in modestly priced machines, and we have those other technologies to look forward to.

It’s an interesting discussion, and you can see it below the break.