In Part I (Chapters 1–3) we introduce you to 3D printing and discuss why you may want to use a 3D printer instead of other digital manufacturing tools, like laser cutters or computer numerically controlled (CNC) milling machines. We cover the basics of printer technologies. These days, which materials you want to use and what types of things you want to build will drive your choice of printer, and we detail the issues in Chapter 2. Finally, in Chapter 3 we introduce you to the overall workflow of 3D printing and discuss the details of using “slicing” programs to create 3D-printable files.