The State of 3D Printing in 2026 from my end of things

In the past two years I have seen the state of this tech coming so far. I think of when I was in college, as a freshman Industrial Design student, we used an expensive StrataSys and printed a tiny self-designed key fob for a project using proprietary filament (PLA I think). Now I construct printers while casually watching a Sumo tournament, things have progressed in a seemingly logarithmic course. In honesty, I was waiting for Prusa to deliver an update the their open-source solution to desktop 3d printing. I almost pulled the trigger, so to say, on the Voron offering, and just-in-time, Prusa came out with the Mk3S+, an update to the MK3 printer I already had, which was faster, and more accurate and so forth.

Making things has always been in my vocabulary from a young age. The printing is now just an extension to the tool set I use. Now with young children, a whole new world has opened. While performing complex operations, where concentration is required, I can juggle cacophonous and obnoxious behavior without skipping a beat! Child-proof design has entered my realm, and I thank the software and hardware that I utilize, to make things for their safety, from the comfort of my chair/toilet/bed.

3d Printing design has become a fluent tongue I speak almost every day. Prusa now has jumped into the arena with gantries using CoreXY technology, although not the first, still open-source, personally build-able and reliable. I use other brands of 3d printers, but I admit that I use the Prusa machines the most, since there is something un-quantifiable in each machine that I own. They have heart, or soul behind the design and engineering philosophy. They believe that open-source parts, and upgrade-ability are key metrics for a successful product, and I am in agreement.

(Above) The Voron CoreXY gantry, an open-source machine. I was close to making my own, and had all the parts lists of hardware ready to purchase and other materials. But ultimately decided to wait for Prusa to make a CoreXY machine.

I anticipate the tech behind melting plastic to plateau, only the hardware becoming the key anticipatory factor with a new purchase. I still utilize my old Mk3S machine, slow but reliable in the hundreds of hours of print time, to be considered one of the tools I can still rely on for the coming decade. For now, I will delay my purchase of the Prusa XL, with which my deposit still awaits with, for a time in the near future.