James Burke (BBC presenter and historian) said in his "Connections" series that around the late 1960's, things made of plastic became their "own things". Previ

James Burke (BBC presenter and historian) said in his "Connections" series that around the late 1960's, things made of plastic became their "own things". Previously, items made of plastic had to imitate some other existing thing for them to be accepted. Notebook covers had to imitate leather, complete with fake stitching. Telephones had to look like the older ones made of Phenol resin. And so on. 3D printing is at that stage right now. We're using it to imitate items made in traditional ways, and not treating it as a new process in it's own right. But given time, people will adopt it as something totally distinct from subtractive manufacturing.