As 2015 draws to a close, tech experts are looking to the future – and high on the list of talking points are Gartner’s Top 10 Tech Trends for 2016. But what are these innovations all about? How will they impact us and are they as important as they’re cracked up to be?

We’ll be looking at each of these much-trumpeted tech trends in turn to figure out just what kind of impact they’re likely to have over the coming year. In our last post, we analyzed Ambient User Experience. Today, we look at the third trend on the list: 3D Printing Materials.

What’s the Deal with 3D Printing Materials?

3D printing has been one of the most exciting, promising and fast-evolving trends in technology for a while now. No wonder: it gives individual innovators, companies and design agencies a way to turn product designs, concepts and inventions into physical objects at high-speed and at low-cost. It’s a playground for experimentation that puts control firmly in the hands of designers and inventors, with minimal financial risk.

Trouble is, those experimenting with printing their own products and prototypes are largely limited to using plastics like ABS and PLA. But this is changing – fast. Advances in the field are making it possible to print objects in carbon fiber, glass, wood and other biological materials, nickel alloys, electronics, conductive ink and even pharmaceutical blends.The barriers are falling away. Soon, designers will be able to print objects in just about any materials they choose.

The barriers are falling away. Soon, designers will be able to print objects in just about any materials they choose.

What Does this Mean in Practice?        

The implications are huge. From the medical industry to the military, aerospace to energy, fashion to disaster relief, the ability to print custom-made products, parts and supplies wherever you are, in whatever form you need it, is a total game-changer… especially when the capacity to use locally-sourced materials is thrown into a mix. Already, doctors have been able to 3D print a tiny, tailor-designed splint for a baby’s lung in a life-saving operation. NASA is exploring ways to use 3D printing to create essential resources on-the-spot at the International Space Station – and, further down the line, on Mars, using the planet’s abundant local resources. Gartner expects sales of 3D printers to grow by 64% per year until 2019. This is no fad: this is the future.

What Gartner Says:

3D printing will see a steady expansion over the next 20 years of the materials that can be printed, improvement in the speed with which items can be printed and emergence of new models to print and assemble composite parts.”

What We Say:

3D Printing is certainly no longer new. It is, quite possibly, the single most important innovation to have cropped up in the manufacturing sector in decades. Revolutionary” is a term that gets bandied about in the technology world way more than it deserves – few things are genuinely revolutionary – but 3D printing might just be the exception.

Until now the only real limitation for designers and creators was the set of materials they were able to print with. As the trend for experimenting with a wider and wider range of materials gains traction – which it absolutely will, before long, the only limitation will be their imaginations.