This article was originally published in Dutch in 2015 and has been translated and updated in October 2026.
- 3D printers are popping up everywhere
- Food from a food printer
- The consequences of 3D printers becoming mainstream
- From global to local, saving billions
- The development of new business models
You have probably seen one before: a little figure or some other object that came out of a 3D printer. By 2015 we were already printing almost anything. A heart, clothing, a bicycle, pasta, Lego bricks and even a steel bridge for Amsterdam (the MX3D bridge, which was eventually installed over one of the city’s canals in 2021). When I wrote this piece in 2015, I expected that IKEA would launch a 3D printer before 2020, allowing you to print your furniture at home on 3D printers costing less than 100 euros, and that we would finally be able to eat healthy meat because we could print ‘artificial meat’. No cow required. And if you needed a new ear after a fall, a bioprinter would solve that problem for you. In the future, smart entrepreneurs will have the whole world as their customer.
3D printers are popping up everywhere
3D printers are springing up left, right and centre, sometimes from unexpected corners. How about a 3D printer that lets you print this season’s summer fashion from Milan or the trendiest dress in New York? At New York Fashion Week in 2015, an ‘adrenaline dress’ was even presented that could measure your stress level and change colour accordingly. There are 3D printers in hospitals that can print a heart, kneecaps or joints, and bioprinters that print living cells. In the near future it will be possible to print complete organs, which would be a godsend for the many people currently on waiting lists for a donor organ. And if you are looking for a new bicycle, you will be able to print it in any colour you like. On top of that, I expected every household to have a home printer costing no more than 100 euros, capable of printing most household items. More complex printers for industrial use would cost at most 800 euros. That could make it possible for a ship fitted with large 3D printers to load raw materials in Brazil and produce goods on its way to the US. As soon as the ship docks in Boston, it can start unloading the finished products.
Food from a 3D printer
Food printers will play an important role in preparing meals. Why go to the supermarket when you can print a ready-made meal, including all the vitamins and minerals you need to live healthily? It is quite conceivable that in the future these printers will communicate with your electronic pill and adjust the composition of your food to the state of your body. After all, everyone is different. Printers like these solve another problem too. Figures quoted at the time, attributed to the WHO (World Health Organization), suggested that by 2030 we would need well over 50% more food. The way we currently produce food will not allow us to reach that goal. We simply do not have enough cows to supply the world with meat in the future. It is also often argued that the meat we eat today is not always particularly healthy. With ‘artificial meat’, also known as cultured or lab-grown meat, we kill two birds with one stone: we can eat healthily and, eventually, have it in abundance.
The consequences of 3D printers becoming mainstream
The consequences of the arrival of 3D printers are extreme. I expected the price of these printers to fall considerably over the following 5-10 years thanks to mass production. At the same time, the quality of the products will rise sharply and the possibilities will expand considerably. The ‘MultiFab’ printer, introduced by MIT researchers in 2015, could already print 10 materials at once.
The end of Sparta?
If we take the earlier example of the bicycle a step further, we will see that a brand like Sparta (a well-known Dutch bicycle maker) no longer needs factories. The bicycle design is stored in the ‘cloud’ and can be printed at any location you like. In 2015, Google’s Project Loon and Facebook’s internet drones were expected to help bring around 2 billion more people online within five years. Both projects were later shelved: Facebook stopped building its own Aquila aircraft in 2018, and Loon came to an end in 2021. Even so, every new person online opens up considerable opportunities for companies like Sparta, which can suddenly see the whole world as their market. A bicycle could be printed for 5% of today’s price, and thanks to ‘the long tail’, demand could grow by thousands of percent. The flip side is that anyone can benefit from this development. A skilled bicycle designer creates, in his spare time, a model for a mountain bike that looks a bit like Sparta’s popular version and makes it available for free; a so-called ‘freeware’ bike. What would that mean for the future of Sparta? Exciting times lie ahead for many companies. What about IKEA? Its products are not unique and can be printed in no time. The printers that can do this already exist.
From global to local, saving billions
Imagine the engine of your car breaks down. A factory abroad has to make a new one, fly it over and then deliver it by lorry to your garage. In 2015, I predicted that by 2025 this engine would be printed at your local dealer or car print shop. Industry, shipping and aviation save billions because they no longer need to stock spare parts. Companies and institutions produce for themselves in their own print shops. They have a database of hundreds of 3D models of products and parts. An iTunes-like model takes care of payment per printed model. This development will cause an extreme shift in the supply chain. Where we now produce in factories, I expected that by 2025 production would far more often take place locally. In the city where you live, or even in your own street. From global to local.
Video credits: BI Tech
New business models
My conclusion is that brands with unique products or materials will hold their own in the world of 3D printers. The challenge, however, is that there are plenty of competitors lying in wait and that intellectual property is not always easy to protect. A unique bicycle made from special materials will be less affected by this development than IKEA’s simple furniture. New business models will emerge. Think of subscriptions or lease arrangements that allow you to print specific models, or ‘pay-per-use’ models that we will receive in a kind of iTunes environment. Suppliers will appear on the market that deliver printers and raw materials to specific niches, such as healthcare or agriculture. As mentioned earlier, the distribution landscape will expand enormously. Bicycles, dresses, cars, engines or meat; we will be able to print them practically anywhere at extremely low cost.
Finally
Freeware 3D models will lead to free production. By then, we will be asking ourselves what the role of money is in an economy where we can get almost everything for next to nothing. And what will China do when its manufacturing industry goes up in smoke and, in a panic, it starts calling in its debts from the Western world?