A number of barriers stand in the way of mainstream adoption of personal manufacturing technologies that discourage widespread home, school and business use. A chief barrier is the “chicken and egg” paradox, where today’s current consumer and education markets for personal fabrication technologies is too small to attract the attention of companies, discouraging company investment in creating products and services, hence failing to attract more consumers. Other barriers are safety concerns, part standardization and version control challenges, intellectual property issues and a lack of appropriate safety and regulatory controls
