Centrum Druku 3D (The 3D Printing Center) is already 10 years old. When we started our adventure in January 2013, the 3D printing industry was nothing like what it is today, and the Polish 3D printing industry basically did not exist at all… At the beginning of 2013, there were only a dozen or so companies in Poland that relied its business on 3D printing technologies, and only a few of them relied on desktop or amateur devices. It all really started in 2013 – and we as a portal had a key share in it…
The foundation of the initial success of the 3D Printing Center were two things that we were the first to do in Poland. The first was a realistic and often quite critical look at 3D printing technology at a time when all the media in the world were claiming that 3D printers would soon be in every home and that everyone would use them to produce everyday items. Unlike others – we checked it out and immediately realized that it would never happen… The quality of the 3D printers of the time was poor, their handling was very demanding, and the 3D prints were mediocre at best. At the same time, we saw the enormous potential of 3D printing – only that not in the home space, but in the production – industrial space. Today it seems to be something obvious, but 10 years ago we were in the absolute vanguard.
The second fundamental difference in relation to other media was that we were the first – and for many years the only ones – to be interested in Polish companies and their products. In autumn 2013, we created the first 3D PRINTERS DATABASE in Poland, which presented only Polish products or products of foreign companies, offered by Polish distribution companies. In February 2014, we created the first in Poland – and one of the first in the world, DATABASE OF COMPANIES creating the 3D printing market. Thanks to our editorial activities and DATABASE OF COMPANIES, all the most important companies in the country have debuted on the portal – 3DGence, 3D-TAL, Aemca, Fiberlogy, get3D, Sinterit, Spectrum Filaments, Sygnis, Technology Applied and many others. We also had a significant share in the promotion of 3D Lab, Bibus Menos, Materialise, Omni3D, Solveere, Zortrax and Zmorph.
The 3D Printing Center also helped most international manufacturers of 3D printers and consumables to enter the Polish market: Stratasys, 3D Systems, Canon, HP, Materialize, MakerBot, Ultimaker, Formlabs, Roboze, BCN3D.
In 2014-2019 3D Printing Center organized the world’s first industry plebiscite (Polish 3D Printing Industry Awards), evaluating and rewarding companies present on the Polish market of additive technologies. In 2019, the 3D Printing Center organized the first ever Polish Championship in 3D Printing. The culmination of each event was the official Industry Awards Gala, each time attended by a hundred representatives of the industry from Poland and abroad. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the plebiscite has been suspended.
For the first years, Centrum Druku 3D also closely cooperated with Days of 3D Printing – the largest Polish trade fair event dedicated to additive technologies. Together with their organizers – Janusz Wójcik and Paweł Rokita, we created the de facto foundations of the entire domestic 3D printing industry – at the 3D Printing Center you could read about all Polish companies and their products – at the 3D Printing Days you could meet and see them in person. In the years 2013-2019, the 3D Printing Center was present at every edition of the fair – starting from the Student Club Wspak and ending with Targi Kielce.
Over the last 10 years, we have carried out incomparably more projects and initiatives, which we were the authors of or which we significantly supported. We have conducted well over a thousand trainings and lectures on 3D printing:
we have organized or co-organized a number of events and conferences:
we supported many nationwide social campaigns related to 3D printing – including 3D printing of protective visors and other medical accessories for the Polish health service during the C19 pandemic.
However, we would not have achieved all this without the support of you – our readers and all the most important companies – some of them no longer exist (e.g. 3NOVATICA, 3DKreator, 3dl.tech, Materialination, Printify/Printelize or ABC Data belonging to ALSO Group), with We still have an excellent relationship to this day. Thank you for all the years we spent together. Let’s hope that in the next 10 years we will have the pleasure of writing another article of this type…
Finally, we would like to thank the people who have significantly helped us to create and develop the portal over the last few years.
First of all, we would like to thank Krzysztof Wojewodzic, who was the first to notice the potential of the 3D Printing Center and helped to develop it to a place where it has been unrivaled for years.
| Mariusz Babula (Zortrax) | Tomasz Cichowicz (ex-Printify / Printelize) | Łukasz Długosz (3D w praktyce, ex-redaktor CD3D) |
| Maciej Dobrowolski (KOMBI3D) | Maciej Dukat (CadXpert) | Krzysztof Dymianiuk (ex-3NOVATICA) |
| Tomasz Filipek (KOMBI3D) | Hubert Gleba (ex-Materialise) | Krzysztof Grandys (e-Nable Polska) |
| Piotr Gurga (CadXpert) | Patrycja Gwiazda (ex-redaktor CD3D, GREENFILL3D) | Radosław Jankowski (ex-ABC Data) |
| Robert Jaskółka (ex-ABC Data) | Patryk Kadlec (ex-3DGence) | Bogusław Krawczyk (ex-CD3D) |
| Karol Krawczyński (ex-redaktor CD3D) | Jacek Korzeniewski (Canon) | Michał Kosiński (Solveere) |
| Szymon Kostrzewa | Jarosław Kozak (Technology Applied) | Adam Kozubowicz (get3D) |
| Łukasz Łukasik (ex-Fiberlogy) | Łukasz Mikłowski (F3D Filaments) | Michael Molitch-Hou (ex-3D Printing Industry) |
| Marcin Niedzielski (ex-Zortrax) | Rafał Osiekowicz (Canon) | Maciej Patrzałek (Solveere) |
| Magdalena Przychodniak (ex-redaktor CD3D) | Robert Rałowicz (3D Lab) | Patrick Roeffen (Ultimaker) |
| Paweł Rokita (Dni Druku 3D) | Jakub Rozpendowski (3D Lab) | Alicja Sakowicz-Soldatke (ROSA3D) |
| Davide Sher (3D Printing Media Network) | Mateusz Sidorowicz (3DGence) | Paweł Spychała (3D-TAL) |
| Adam Suchenek (ex-ABC Data) | Joanna Sulowska (IT Club) | Łukasz Szczepan (Fiberlogy) |
| Rafał Tomasiak (Zortrax) | Paweł Twardo (Monkeyfab) | Piotr Twardo (Monkeyfab) |
| Jakub Trzyna (ex-Datacomp, DC3D) | Adela Walczak (ex-redaktor CD3D) | Eryk Wąsek (Integart, ex-Materialise) |
| Janusz Wójcik (Dni Druku 3D) | Tomasz Zwolan (ex-Infinum 3D) | Michał Żołądek (Spectrum Filaments) |
