1. Framing elements

3D printing is 40 years old. Since 1984, this technology has been looking to see if there are any boundaries that could limit its scope of involvement, either towards large dimensions or, on the contrary, towards the infinitely small. However, in the latter field, following the invention of near-field microscopes, microelectronics has become a major driver of innovation, because with collective production, where the same part can be made thousands of times in a single operation, industrial markets, including the electronics market, are immense. As early as the 1980s, Motorola, a multinational company, was communicating the strategic use of technology roadmaps, because they are well suited to the "technology push" type of industrial sector, where, as with Moore's Law, product functionalities and potential markets are imagined on the basis of technological advances within a given timeframe....