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About This Book

Welcome from Benchy

Benchy waves hello

Hi there — I'm Benchy, the anthropomorphic 3DBenchy tugboat who guides you through this textbook! I've been printed badly more times than I'd like to count (it's literally my job), which means I've experienced first-hand every warped base, stringy extruder, and layer-shifted hull that a 3D printer can produce. I'm here to share what all those print failures taught me, and to help you build the real skills that take you from "why isn't my print sticking?" to "I just fabricated a functional prototype." Whether you're picking up a printer for the first time or aiming for college credit in Advanced Manufacturing — let's make something great!

Why This Intelligent Textbook

Additive manufacturing is no longer a niche prototyping technology — it is a core pillar of modern industrial production, medical devices, aerospace, defense, and consumer goods. Yet most high-school students graduate with zero exposure to it, even as employers struggle to fill technician and engineering roles that require hands-on AM skills.

In the United States:

  • The U.S. additive manufacturing workforce gap is widening: America Makes, the national AM institute, has identified skilled technicians and operators as one of the top workforce shortages in the sector, with demand growing faster than community-college programs can supply graduates.1
  • The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of industrial engineers to grow 12% through 2033 — much faster than average — with additive manufacturing skills listed as a valued differentiator in manufacturing job postings.2
  • PLTW (Project Lead The Way) engineering programs, which this course aligns with, now reach more than 12,000 schools and 1.7 million students annually, demonstrating national demand for rigorous hands-on engineering education in K–12.3
  • Only 26% of U.S. high school graduates are estimated to be prepared for STEM coursework at the post-secondary level, creating a pipeline problem that CTE and engineering electives are uniquely positioned to address.4

Worldwide:

  • The global 3D printing market was valued at approximately \(18.3 billion in 2023** and is projected to exceed **\)83 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual rate of roughly 18%.5
  • ISO and ASTM International have jointly published the 52900 additive manufacturing standards series — the international framework this textbook is built around — reflecting global consensus that AM literacy is now a professional baseline, not a specialty skill.6

These numbers represent a generation of students who are about to enter a workforce reshaped by additive manufacturing — and a massive opportunity for teachers who can give them a head start. This textbook exists to make that head start accessible to every high school classroom, not just those with expensive proprietary curricula.

This book takes a fundamentally different approach from a traditional textbook. It is built on a learning graph of 292 interconnected concepts organized into foundational, process, design, materials, and career categories. Concepts are introduced in the order their prerequisites are established, so understanding builds naturally from chapter to chapter. Throughout the book you will find interactive MicroSims — browser-based simulations that let students manipulate slicer parameters, compare material properties, and explore machine kinematics through experimentation rather than memorization. The entire textbook is open source and free — no paywalls, no access codes, no expensive annual editions.

How to Use This Book

This textbook is designed for self-paced study and classroom use alike. Each chapter builds on previous material, so reading in order is strongly recommended. The book includes:

  • 16 Chapters covering additive manufacturing foundations, ISO/ASTM standards, engineering design process, CAD and modeling, file formats, materials science, slicing, FDM and resin printer operation, safety and sustainability, DfAM and metrology, troubleshooting, post-processing, modern hardware, the AM ecosystem, AI and machine learning in AM, and careers and capstone
  • Interactive MicroSims embedded in chapters — browser-based simulations you can manipulate to explore concepts without installing any software
  • Quizzes at the end of each chapter to test understanding across Bloom's Taxonomy levels
  • Annotated References linking to Wikipedia, ASTM standards, America Makes publications, and other authoritative sources
  • Glossary with precise definitions for 292 key concepts
  • FAQ addressing common student questions organized by topic
  • Learning Graph visualizing how all 292 concepts depend on each other
  • Search available from any page using the search bar at the top of the screen

The Learning Graph visualizes how concepts connect across chapters. If you want to explore non-linearly, check prerequisites for a specific topic, or find the fastest path to a career-relevant skill cluster, start there.

About the Author

Dan McCreary headshot

Dan McCreary is a semi-retired AI researcher, solution architect, and educator who has spent more than three decades helping Fortune 100 organizations reason over massive datasets. At Optum he founded the Generative AI Center of Excellence and led the team that built one of the world's largest healthcare knowledge graphs — spanning over 25 billion vertices — to unify member, provider, and patient insights. Dan's deep background in knowledge representation and systems thinking underpins the precise learning graphs and intelligent textbook workflows used throughout this course.

He is the co-author of Making Sense of NoSQL (Manning Publications), the founding chair of the NoSQL Now! conference, and a frequent keynote speaker on semantic search, ontology strategy, and AI hardware. Beyond industry, Dan has mentored students as a STEM volunteer since 2014 and now applies the same rigor to building open educational resources. You can visit the Intelligent Textbooks Case Studies to see over 87 textbooks that Dan has created or co-created with other authors.

Selected Credentials

  • B.A. in Physics and Computer Science from Carleton College
  • M.S.E.E. from the University of Minnesota
  • MBA coursework at the University of St. Thomas
  • Patent holder in semantic search and ontology management techniques
  • Advocate for large-scale Enterprise Knowledge Graph adoption across healthcare and education
  • Long-time promoter of accessible, low-cost AI-powered learning experiences for K–12 and community college students

How to Cite This Book

If you reference this textbook in academic work, curriculum proposals, lesson plans, or grant applications, please use one of the following citation formats.

APA (7th edition)

McCreary, D. (2026). Introduction to 3D Printing. https://dmccreary.github.io/3d-printing-course/

Chicago (17th edition)

McCreary, Dan. 2026. Introduction to 3D Printing. https://dmccreary.github.io/3d-printing-course/.

MLA (9th edition)

McCreary, Dan. Introduction to 3D Printing. 2026, dmccreary.github.io/3d-printing-course/.

BibTeX

@book{mccreary20263dprinting,
  title     = {Introduction to 3D Printing},
  author    = {McCreary, Dan},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://dmccreary.github.io/3d-printing-course/},
  note      = {Interactive intelligent textbook}
}

To cite a specific chapter, append the chapter number and title — for example:

McCreary, D. (2026). Chapter 1: Foundations and History of Additive Manufacturing. In Introduction to 3D Printing. https://dmccreary.github.io/3d-printing-course/chapters/01-foundations-and-history/

License

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). You are free to share and adapt the material for non-commercial purposes as long as you give appropriate credit and share your adaptations under the same license.

References

  1. America Makes. (2023). Additive Manufacturing Workforce Report. https://www.americamakes.us/ ↩

  2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024). Occupational Outlook Handbook: Industrial Engineers. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/industrial-engineers.htm ↩

  3. PLTW. (2024). PLTW Annual Report: Engineering Program Reach. https://www.pltw.org/about-pltw/pltw-impact ↩

  4. ACT. (2023). The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2023. https://www.act.org/content/act/en/research/reports/act-publications/condition-of-college-and-career-readiness-2023.html ↩

  5. Grand View Research. (2024). 3D Printing Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report, 2024–2032. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/3d-printing-industry-analysis ↩

  6. ISO/ASTM International. (2021). ISO/ASTM 52900:2021 — Additive manufacturing — General principles — Fundamentals and vocabulary. https://www.astm.org/isoastm52900-21.html ↩