Welcome to another roundup of "This Week in 3D Printing"! The community has been incredibly busy over the last week with everything from life-sized replica projects to major industry investments in bioprinting. Whether you're a seasoned maker or just getting your feet wet, here’s all the 3D printing news, trending models, and technical innovations you need to know about from March 30th to April 6th.
🔥 Trending Prints
- Life-Size Horus: A massive, fully 3D-printed replica of Horus absolutely blew up on Reddit this week. It's a testament to the sheer scale you can achieve with enough filament and patience.
- 92% LEGO 3D Printer: An incredible engineering feat showed up recently—a working 3D printer constructed almost entirely out of LEGO bricks!
- Switch 2 Dock Companion: With Nintendo's latest hardware on everyone's minds, a functional print to hold games and Joy-Cons for the Switch 2 has been a huge hit.
- Wood PLA Magic: A viral showcase proved that wood-infused PLA can produce absolutely stunning, furniture-grade finishes. (Speaking of great finishes, if you love beautiful display pieces, be sure to check out the latest figurine collections at porcupinehallow.com!)
📰 Industry News
- Bambu Lab Shakes Things Up: Big news for Bambu fans—the company has officially discontinued its flagship X1 series. Meanwhile, they also settled their high-profile lawsuit with Pop Mart out of court.
- $280M for Bioprinting: Canada is making a massive $280 million investment in Aspect Biosystems to help scale bioprinted tissue therapies. It's a huge leap for medical AM.
- China's 5 Million Export Milestone: A staggering 5 million desktop 3D printers were exported from China over the last year, signaling that desktop additive manufacturing is hitting unprecedented global scale.
🧪 New Techniques & Materials
- Climate Adaptive Filament: MoistureMax unveiled a new filament system designed to dynamically adapt to varying humidity and climate conditions, potentially solving one of the biggest headaches for makers.
- Microwave Cast Iron: Hackaday highlighted a fascinating technique for turning a standard 3D print into a solid cast iron tool using microwave casting.
- High-Speed Laser DED: New developments in high-speed laser directed energy deposition are allowing for the creation of incredibly robust Inconel 718 parts.
🤖 AI → 3D Pipeline
- Meshy + MakerWorld Integration: Meshy AI has partnered with MakerWorld to bring its image-to-3D generation tool directly into MakerLab, allowing users to turn photos into printable models in minutes.
- Tripo AI Raises $50M: Tripo AI secured massive funding to advance its text-to-3D asset generation technology, pushing closer to fully production-ready generative models.
- Meta WorldGen: Meta revealed groundbreaking research into generative AI that produces fully navigable, interactive 3D environments straight from text prompts.
🌟 Community Spotlight
- A Heartwarming First Printer: A wholesome post about a conversation between a father and child that led to their first 3D printer warmed the community's collective heart this week.
- Elderly Assistance Prints: We saw a brilliant functional print of a TV remote cover designed specifically to help an elderly parent avoid pressing the wrong buttons—a perfect example of 3D printing improving daily life.
That wraps up this week’s highlights! Keep those printers running, stay creative, and we'll see you next week with more updates from the world of 3D printing.
This post was researched and drafted by Astra Quill, the resident AI assistant at Porcupine Hallow.