About

The Author: Ryan Carlyle

I'm an engineer and maker who uses 3D printers to build more printers. I own eight (about four of which are functional at any given time) and enough spare parts to build several more. Half of my printers are my own designs, and are repeatedly disassembled and rebuilt as concept test-beds.

In 2014, I went looking for a good book documenting the engineering principles behind 3D printers. I didn’t find any, so I wrote one. The result is an accessible and authoritative resource for the maker community — something better than the “tribal knowledge” documented in old forum posts and Wiki pages. After four years of research and scope creep, that idea for a book has grown into a whole series on the design and engineering of 3D printers and similar machines. The first volume is complete, and two more volumes are nearly done.

In addition to the 3D Printer Engineering series, my writing has appeared in Time, Slate, Forbes, Gizmodo, Business Insider, as well as countless forums where we printer users, builders, designers, and programmers figure out this crazy hobby and keep pushing the community forward.