We invited a handful of members of the 3D printing community that we have been featuring for #3DThursday or on our weekly 3D Hangouts live show to share with us their thoughts about the past year, what they each shared, and what they are looking forward to for 2015.

While developing OctoPrint doesn’t leave her much time for actually designing and printing 3D objects, Gina Häußge is still fascinated by what the open source community manages to achieve on a daily basis.

Q: TOP THREE PRINTING MOMENTS FROM 2014?

1. NASA going FDM, and the ISS printer churning out a replacement part for itself as the first official print in space – following a great tradition on earth in the process.
2. Richard “RichRap” Horne sharing his awesome progress on open source hardware pellet extruders.
3. ColorFabb releasing BronzeFill and CopperFill (and soon BrassFill), making artistic metallic looking prints available to the masses.

Q: WHAT’S A 3D PROJECT YOU SHARED THIS YEAR?

I have this problem that since I started coding on OctoPrint back on Christmas 2012 I haven’t really come around to designing 3D objects (or printing them for that matter). So instead of something physical, I’ll just say: OctoPrint versions 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1 and continuous work on the public development branch (aka version 1.2.0-dev) 🙂

Q: WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO FOR 3D PRINTING IN 2015?

More awesome materials, more awesome printer designs (and I’m not talking the hundreds of bound-to-fail Kickstarter “World’s firsts” here but actual viable community work) and better software support (I’m trying to do my part here).

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!