How Closed Ecosystems Are Reshaping the 3D Printing Game

Remember when desktop 3D printing felt like the Wild West? A decade ago, anyone with a printer, some filament, and a free weekend could grab models from Thingiverse, tweak a few slicer settings, and let the machine run overnight. The process—and the prints that resulted from it—were chaotic, messy, and often frustrating, but it was also…fun? It felt like the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine, and it was, arguably, glorious.

That free-for-all experimentation era is fading fast,…