3-D printing drops manufacturing costs precipitously, as it makes possible an entirely new prototyping process. Previously, invention was a linear game: create something in your head, build it in the real world, see what works, see what fails, start over on the next iteration. This was time consuming, creatively restricting, and prohibitively expensive. 3-D printing changes all of that, enabling “rapid prototyping,” so that inventors can literally print dozens of variations on a design with little additional cost and in a fraction of the time previously required for physical prototyping.
