3D printing is the closest thing we have to magic: it can recreate everything from toys to clothes to human cells. Now the companies behind it just have to survive long enough to change the world.

MakerBot, an early leader in the consumer 3D printing market and crown jewel of the Brooklyn technology scene, laid off 20% of its staff on Thursday for the second time this year as the business adapts to slower-than-expected growth in demand for the printers.

"The market is growing, it's just not growing as fast as a lot of people thought," Johan Broer, a spokesperson for MakerBot, told Mashable. "Especially last year, the expectations were very high about where the consumer market would be this year."

Many manufacturers are also pushing hard to sell 3D printers for less than $1,000 to reach the mass market, an effort that could be damaging to some.

"I often say it's a race to the bottom," says Pete Basiliere, an analyst with Gartner. "They're all trying to get to a low price, apparently without heeding some basic business practices."

After launching in 2009, MakerBot helped bring the allure of 3D printers from just design firms to more homes and small businesses. At the height of the buzz over the emerging industry, MakerBot was acquired by Stratasys, a publicly traded 3D printing company, and went on to expand its operations at home and abroad to reach the mainstream market. But that market wasn't there.

"Everyone in the industry realizes that to really take 3D printing to the mainstream, that will take a couple more years at least," Broer says. He described this week's layoffs as a matter of "absolute last resort" after missing the company's goals.

The consumer 3D printing industry is now in what might best be described as its awkward adolescent phase. It had a sudden growth spurt, but hasn't quite matured yet. Some inside the industry compare it to the history of computers, which were too bulky and expensive at first to reach a mass audience outside of universities and businesses.

Stratasys and 3D Systems, two of the larger publicly traded 3D printing businesses, have seen their stocks fall over the last year as they contend with flagging demand.

As Davis Reis, the CEO of Stratasys, explained on a recent earnings call, "We believe that our industry is now transforming through a period of slower growth as users digest the recent investment in 3D printing and expand capacity utilization."

Translation: 3D printing grew faster than its customers.

3D printing can make toys and clothes, but consumers aren't buying into it the way they used to.

"Clearly the industry is suffering from a decline in demand. It's really not MakerBot-specific," says Brian Drab, an analyst with William Blair & Company. "You had such a strong wave of demand from 2011 through 2014 for these 3D printers and I think the momentum just wore off a little bit."

SSYS data by YCharts

The two key factors driving that slowdown, according to Drab: saturation of early adopters and a wait-and-see approach among customers as more big name companies enter the market, including Hewlett Packard, a juggernaut of the printing industry.

Basiliere remains optimistic about the overall potential for the industry. He and Gartner projected last month that global 3D printer sales will grow from just under $1 billion currently to nearly $15 billion by 2019 as the devices catch on with consumers, schools and businesses.

MakerBot, in particular, has worked in recent months to reorganize its operations while focusing on getting its printers into schools rather than simply going after consumers wholesale. "We think that the education market will help us get to consumers," says Broer, the MakerBot rep. "That's very similar to what happened with computers."