ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on basics of 3D printing for those readers who are new to the subject in order to establish a communal vocabulary to talk about the subject. It argues that to incorporate 3D printing into a humanities scholarship a scholar should understand the printed object as a tactile metaphoric argument that can then be further complicated by considering the replication and visualization of that object. 3D printing techniques brings a set of unique characteristics that allow humanities scholars to enact specific research and thinking that go beyond the assertion that “anything can be printed.” The “failures” of 3D printing are part of prototyping and iterative design and are actually one of the technology’s main strengths in that it forces an interdisciplinary collective mingling of scholars, technicians, students, and administrators, in order to create and print an object.
