By Alex Salkever (@AlexSalkever), Telefonica Digital 

One of the benefits of being on the ground in San Francisco is that we are truly at ground zero for new technology. Among the hottest technology trends is the rapid rise of 3D Printing. This is just what it sounds like.

You can load a three-dimensional design into a printer which will then create an a physical object matching that design. Sounds expensive? Until recently, it was very expensive. Now very capable 3D Printers from the likes of Type-A Machines (pictured above) are on offer for less than $2,000, a price point accessible to many consumer.

For the masses, 3D printing is launching a revolution around what you and I can make in our houses. If I want do design a beautiful ring for my wife, I can use an affordable online 3D design tool like TinkerCad and download a reference design from Thingiverse. For now, most 3D printing is done with PLA bioplastics that are malleable and not suitable for long-term or high-impact uses.

However, 3D printing does democratize the design and prototyping process, making it easy and affordable for anyone to quickly learn how to design beautiful objects and to print out quick iterations to see what they look like in three dimensions. Chains of workshops are now sprouting up that allow people to use 3D printers on demand for single jobs.

Tech Shop CEO Mark Hatch, who spoke at the event I attended last night where I got to witness some of these machines in action, believes that in the future, we will use 3D printers in our homes to fabricate rapid replacement parts with harder plastics for things that have broken. Those parts can serve as an interim fix for everything from broken faucets handles to broken housings

Hatch does not believe we will see 3D printers in our homes that can print everything due to the limitations of storing so many types of materials in our homes. But beyond allowing us all to prototype, 3D printers have already fundamentally altered the way smart people think about design and process.

High-end printers that can synthesize metal objects cost over $30,000 and are used by aircraft manufacturer Boeing to build some of its parts exclusively with 3D printers because it can achieve higher precision at a lower cost than with older injection molding techniques. Hatch has a Tech Shop customer who is a Stanford neurosurgeon. He uses the printers to build lifesize models of the craniums he will be operating upon and also to fabricate customized stainless steel probes for use in actual surgeries.

Equally important, 3D printing is now moving all computing around 3D design into the cloud and empowering growing marketplaces for digital designs that can easily be customized. As for me, I am already planning to fabricate a 3D teapot for my wife in plastic and, after she approves, send it away to Shapeways to get a ceramic version.