3D Printing
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50 free 3D Printing trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
3D printing went from a factory curiosity of the 1980s to a hobby that fits on a desk. The idea is simple: build an object one thin layer at a time, adding only what is needed. Industry calls it additive manufacturing, and it now turns out everything from toys to jet engine parts. This quiz covers the basics first: what the main printing processes are, which plastics go into the machines, and what the software does before a print begins, including a few questions for Cura users. It then moves on to the inventors, the open hardware projects and the companies that brought printers into homes, and to the surprising things people have printed. The questions suit beginners setting up a first printer, students in a design or engineering class, and makers who want to test what they know. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up something new even when you guess.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 013DBenchy, the torture-test model believed to be the world's most 3D-printed object, depicts what?
A tugboat
A tugboat packs awkward geometry into a tiny model: its curved sides, arched doorways and bridged cabin roof show up a printer's flaws at a glance.
Q 02ABS, a tough plastic sold as 3D printer filament, replaced cellulose acetate as the material of which famous toy?
Lego bricks
Lego bricks have been moulded from ABS since 1963, with the plastic brought to about 232 °C until it reaches a dough-like consistency.
Q 03Stratasys co-founder Scott Crump conceived filament 3D printing while making his daughter a toy frog with which tool?
A glue gun
A glue gun loaded with polyethylene and candle wax let Crump build the frog up in layers, an idea he automated and patented the following year.
Q 04Which tool did the International Space Station's 3D printer make in four hours from a design file sent up from Earth?
A ratchet wrench
A ratchet wrench was the only one of the first 20 objects printed in orbit whose design arrived after the printer did. It was built from 104 layers of plastic.
Q 05PLA, the most widely used home 3D printing filament, is a bioplastic usually made by fermenting starch from which crop?
Corn
Corn is the usual feedstock, though cassava, sugarcane and sugar beet also work, and PLA's low melting point makes it the easiest plastic to print at home.
Q 06PVA filament is used to print temporary supports on dual-nozzle 3D printers because it dissolves in which liquid?
Water
Water washes PVA supports out of cavities that no tool could reach, and the same polymer is used in laundry detergent pods.
Q 07The replicator, a fictional machine that makes meals and objects on demand like a 3D printer, is from which franchise?
Star Trek
Star Trek did not use the word replicator until The Next Generation, and NASA later funded a real 3D food printer for long spaceflights.
Q 08e-NABLE, an open-source network of volunteers with 3D printers, designs and makes which devices mainly for children?
Prosthetic hands
Prosthetic hands from e-NABLE have reached thousands of children, including in 2014 the first child in the UK to be fitted with a 3D-printed one.
Q 09What kind of vehicle was Terran 1, the largely 3D-printed machine that a California startup flew once in 2023?
A rocket
A rocket was the boldest test yet of metal 3D printing: Terran 1 failed to reach orbit, but its printed structure held up under the loads of flight.
Q 10Construction-scale 3D printers, used to build houses and a military barracks hut, mainly extrude which material?
Concrete
Concrete printing is older than it looks: William Urschel of Valparaiso, Indiana, filed a patent in 1941 for a machine that laid walls down one layer at a time.
Q 11Milling and drilling, which carve a part out of a solid block, belong to which family of manufacturing methods?
Subtractive
Subtractive manufacturing is a retronym: nobody needed a single word for cutting material away until additive methods arrived and required a contrast.
Q 12Which name for filament 3D printing is trademarked by Stratasys, which led open-source makers to adopt a different term?
Fused deposition modeling
Fused deposition modeling and its initials FDM belong to Stratasys, so hobbyists coined fused filament fabrication, or FFF, as a name anyone could use freely.
Q 13Resin 3D printers build objects by hardening a vat of liquid photopolymer with which kind of radiation?
Ultraviolet
Q 21ABS prints can be given a smooth, glossy surface by exposing them to the vapour of which common solvent?
Acetone
Acetone, the main ingredient of many nail polish removers, softens the outer skin of ABS so that the ridges between layers flow together.
Q 22PETG filament is a modified form of PET, the clear plastic best known as the material of which everyday product?
Soda bottles
Soda bottles made of PET were invented in 1973 by Nathaniel Wyeth, and PETG swaps in a second glycol to make the plastic easier to form.
Q 23TPU filament, which prints best on direct-drive 3D printers, is chosen for parts needing which property?
Flexibility
Flexibility is also TPU's weakness: the soft filament buckles and jams when pushed through a long feed tube, so a motor right above the nozzle suits it.
Ultraviolet curing of layered models was first shown by the Japanese researcher Hideo Kodama in the early 1980s, before any 3D printer had been sold.
Q 14Which American inventor coined the word stereolithography and co-founded 3D Systems, the first 3D printing company?
Chuck Hull
Chuck Hull had the idea in 1983 while hardening tabletop coatings with lamps at work, and he entered the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
Q 15Which 3D model file format, released by 3D Systems in 1987, describes only an object's surface as a mesh of triangles?
STL
STL stores no colour, texture or even scale, so the same file can come out in millimetres or inches unless the user says which.
Q 16A 3D printer's movement instructions are written in which language, first standardised in the 1960s for CNC machines?
G-code
G-code is short for geometric code, and a print file also carries commands beyond movement, such as the temperatures the machine must hold.
Q 17What name is given to programs such as Cura that turn a 3D model into flat layers and printer commands?
Slicer
A slicer first segments the model into a stack of flat layers, then plans the path the print head must trace across each one.
Q 18Which print setting, given as a percentage, controls how much structure is printed inside an otherwise hollow part?
Infill
Infill lets a part be mostly air: solid prints waste filament and time, so the software hollows them out and adds internal walls for strength.
Q 19Which powder-fusing 3D printing process, developed at the University of Texas in the 1980s, needs no support structures?
Selective laser sintering
Selective laser sintering needs no scaffolding because the part stays buried in loose powder as it grows, and its early development was sponsored by DARPA.
Q 20In the 1980s, the technology now called 3D printing generally went by which name?
Rapid prototyping
Rapid prototyping cut the time and cost of testing a new design, which had previously meant machining every trial part in a toolroom.
Q 24Which plastic, first sold as toothbrush bristles, is the usual powder in industrial powder-based 3D printers?
Nylon
Nylon became a sensation when stockings made from it went on sale in 1940, with 64 million pairs sold in the first year.
Q 25Standard filament 3D printer nozzles are made of which alloy, which abrasive carbon-fibre filaments quickly wear away?
Brass
Brass is fine for soft plastics like PLA, but filaments filled with wood or carbon fibre need a hardened steel nozzle to survive.
Q 26Which kind of electric motor, also found in scanners and slot machines, moves the print head on most 3D printers?
Stepper
A stepper motor turns in small, discrete angular steps, so the controller can count pulses and know the position without any sensor.
Q 27Which printer feature keeps a part warm during printing so that ABS shrinks evenly instead of lifting at the corners?
Heated bed
A heated bed stops the bottom of a part cooling faster than the rest, the uneven shrinkage that makes corners curl up off the build platform.
Q 28On a typical filament 3D printer, the head or platform takes one step in which direction each time a layer is finished?
Z axis
The Z axis is the slow one: the head races around in X and Y to draw each layer, then makes one small climb before starting the next.
Q 29Which style of 3D printer, used by the Rostock and Kossel designs, moves its print head with three arms?
Delta
Delta printers borrow their linkage from the fast pick-and-place factory robots invented in Switzerland in the early 1980s.
Q 30Which print defect, nicknamed hairy prints, leaves thin wisps of plastic on a model and is cured by tuning retraction?
Stringing
Stringing happens when molten plastic oozes out as the nozzle travels across a gap, so retraction pulls the filament back before each move.