ELI5: How do 3D printers work?

Lying in bed the other night, my wife asked me about 3D printing. “How does it work?” she asked. “I’ve been thinking you should get a MakerBot.”

It wasn’t the pillow talk I’d been hoping for. And I wondered if it was another one of those “you need a hobby” discussions, like the time she suggested that my buying a personal computer would be the cure to an early 20s bout of depression. It wasn’t. In fact, I’m still mad about spending thousands of dollars on an IBM PCjr that would be obsolete by year’s end … but that’s a different story.

It turns out that she’s not the only one with questions about 3D printing. I came across a page on Reddit recently that was titled ELI5: How do 3D Printers work?

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about it because I quickly became distracted by “ELI5: What actually happens when soap meets bacteria.” (Something about lipid chains.)

But then I got to wondering, “What the heck is ELI5?” According to the Wiki page, the term appears to have originated eight years ago when Reddit user bossgalaga asked another user to “Explain like I’m five.” It’s since become a pretty big thing. Apple even has a series of ELI5 podcasts.

I would have sent my wife there but for two things: A) she’s not a podcast kind of girl, and B) there’s nothing in Apple’s ELI5 podcasts about 3D printing.

After opening the podcast app, however, I did discover a whole bunch of non-ELI5 podcasts. One, called WTFFF?!, is all about fused-filament-fabrication 3D printing. It features podcasts on everything from making 3D-printed fidget spinners to the best 3D printers under $500. Most of them are geared towards hobbyists, which is precisely where my wife was headed with her MakerBot comment, but it wasn’t going to help me explain the technology to her, even if she did become a podcast girl.

I thought about resurrecting an awesome article I wrote some years ago to explain 3D printing to my wife. In it, I described how Leonardo DiCaprio, having been snubbed yet again for an Academy Award, could 3D-print his own Oscar. (Sadly, the editor didn’t care for the article and did what all editors do: edit.)

My DiCaprio masterpiece was about metal powder bed printing. In it, though, I needed to describe 3D printing as a whole, in simple terms that—you guessed it—even a five-year-old could understand. (No offense to my wife.)

I think she got it. She might have dozed off at the end, but that’s OK. It gave me time to price out a MakerBot. I won’t be printing any metal Oscar statues with it, but I found some gold-colored PLA filament on Amazon, and I’m sure there are some other cool ideas on WTFFF?!

Makers Town, here I come.