3D Printing

An In-Depth View of What People do With 3D Printers, by Yeggi

Data, data, data: when a new social phenomenon begins to take hold, data on its users’ habits is extremely valuable as it can help companies who are in — or plan on entering — the market to plan their strategy, even though there are no historical trends to rely on. For new companies that offer free services it can be an opportunity to both stand out as well as, perhaps, a source of income. For example, yeggi: the 3D model search engine has been growing quickly since it launched last April and today includes over 87,000 downloadable models.

It is also starting to capture the attention of loyal visitors and, after publishing an interesting yet fairly straight-forward infographic on the most searched for terms on its website it has now dug a little deeper and asked its visitors to fill out a 3D Printing Online Survey. Three-hundred-and-thirty-eight of them (not an enormous number but still useful, considering the highly specific nature of the target) did so. Below you can find the entire document but here are some aspects that clearly stand out.

One is that three quarters of FDM/FFF 3D printer owners (which, by the way, are two thirds of the website’s visitors) use biodegradable PLA rather than ABS. Roughly the same percentage (75%) prefer a heated print bed and also the same percentage uses an open source printer: if there were any doubts, this means that current 3D printer owners tend to care about the environment and do not like to pay for branding.

Of the 33% who do not own a 3D printer, almost all (85%) are definitely planning on buying one and the majority of them intend to spend up to $1,400 (€1.000). Only 18% are going for the Replicator price-range ($1,400-$2,700) while much smaller percentages are shooting for above $2,700. Even less (3%) are going higher, which pretty much excludes consumer stereolithography from yeggi’s users habits.

The survey also revealed that about the same number of users (a quarter of the total) had models printed through a 3D printing service such as Shapeways, Sculpteo and iMaterialise (26%) and social 3D printing services such as 3DHubs, Makexyz, Fabbeo or Fabgate (24%). What is also impressive is the amount of models that users have actually printed: a whopping 47% had more than 25 objects “physicalized”, while 21% printed out more than 100.

Another interesting piece of information is that what people are new really looking for is… more information: 76% of the participants (who, by the way, are not necessarily regular yeggi users) say they plan on visiting a 3D print lab or show, while only about 33% said they have already visited a FabLab. It will be interesting to compare this data with the data collected and released by the likes of 3D Hubs and Thingiverse as their reports continue to record the evolution of 3D printing trends.

yeggi 3d printing survey