“I can only imagine how incredibly sci-fi it must feel to hold a teacup you just casually printed at home with your 3D printer. A perfectly circular, perfectly manufactured teacup whose only prerequisite for existing is your ability to press a couple of buttons. Up until the era of 3D printing, to make a teacup I’d have to go to pottery class and struggle through batches of wonky creations and bouts of anger management before giving up and going to Selfridges.
Now, replace the teacup and pottery class in your mind with just about any object and manufacturing process, and you’ve got yourself an idea of the phenomenally disruptive effects of potentially one of the most important technologies of the 21st Century. Did you imagine an intricately knit dress? A pair of fierce high heels? Or maybe a rounded shoulder bomber? You probably should have, because after houses, children’s toys, cars and prosthetic limbs, 3D printing’s potential has mainly entered the realm of fashion.”