3D printing in the Dominican Republic: what's already happening and how to get started

When I bought my first 3D printer in 2017, getting filament in the country was an adventure: you had to bring it in from abroad, wait for weeks and hope it arrived dry. Today the story is different. On Cosmos Tech I’ve talked with Dominicans who make a living from 3D printing, who use it to make teeth, or who have machines printing while they sleep. This is what I’ve learned from them and from my own workshop (the episodes linked below are in Spanish).

1. It’s no longer a hobby: it’s an industry

Materials in the country. For years the big problem was filament: expensive, scarce and always imported. 3D Printers RD was born in 2019 precisely because of that, when Jean Carlos Gómez and Andrés Cedano got tired of not finding material and decided to import it themselves. Today they have a physical store and sell printers and filaments from well-known brands. Their story, from a warehouse in their homes to formalizing the company, is one of the episodes people ask me about the most.

Printing as a service, 24/7. With Diógenes Hernández and WonderFab Cloud we saw the next step: a printer farm that works day and night. You upload your file, choose the material and the part prints on its own. I really liked how he explained the price of a print: it isn’t “what the plastic costs”, it’s the sum of electricity, machine time and material.

Health. In dentistry, 3D printing is already part of everyday work. Néstor Cortorreal told us how intraoral scanners are replacing the uncomfortable molds of the past, and how lab work that used to take a week is now done in hours.

Telecommunications. At Cosmos we use it to solve real problems in the field: we design and print mounts and brackets for satellite internet antennas, including one for vehicles. I talked about it at the “The future is printed today” conference at ITESA: when a part doesn’t exist on the market, you design it and have it the same day.

2. What you can print in the DR today

Prototypes to validate an idea before manufacturing it at scale.
Spare parts and car parts that are no longer available or take weeks to arrive.
Mounts, bases and enclosures for equipment, like the ones we use at Cosmos.
Dental parts and medical models, in clinics and labs with the right equipment.
Figures, decor and pieces for events, a market that has grown a lot.
Educational material: gears, models and robots to learn hands-on.

3. How to start without overspending

If you don’t want to buy yet, order your prints. A printing service lets you test your idea without investing in a machine.
If you’re buying, start with a simple FDM printer, with automatic bed leveling and a big community behind it. In how to choose your first 3D printer I explain what to look for.
Start with PLA and move to PETG when you need parts that can handle sun and impacts.
Learn to design, not just to download. Tinkercad is free and runs in the browser; when it falls short, move on to Fusion or FreeCAD. Ready-made models from Printables, Thingiverse or MakerWorld are good for practice, but the value is in solving your own problem.
Print in a ventilated space, away from where you eat or sleep.

4. What’s still missing

The bottleneck is no longer the machine: it’s design. We have printers, materials and services, but we need more people who know how to turn a problem into a part. That’s why I insist on it so much in my talks with students: whoever learns to design and print doesn’t depend on someone else to make what they need.

We also need more connection between universities, workshops and companies, so that students’ projects end up as real products and not in a drawer.

Keep going

If you want to see how these entrepreneurs work, the episodes are on the podcast page. If your school, university or company wants a talk about 3D printing, write to me. And if you want to see what I’ve printed over the years, stop by the gallery.