Tuesday, November 06th, 2007 - 7:00PM The Home of Lawrence Bender
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Imagine being able to download from the Internet the three-dimensional blueprints for a life-saving machine, then pressing Print - and out comes not a picture, but the device itself. That's the idea behind 3-D printers, a rapid prototyping technology that typically works by 'printing' successive layers on top of the previous ones to build up a three dimensional object. Faster, more affordable, and easier to use than other additive fabrication technologies, it is still in its infancy. But Desktop Factory, an Idealab company, is about to make history bringing the first printer to market targeted at individual consumers. Breaking out of the gate at $5,000, the machine melts a mixture of nylon, aluminum, and glass into durable small objects. Future versions will get increasingly sophisticated, printing larger and larger objects, with a more complex mixture of materials. In the not too distant future, you may be prototyping your own inventions, or enabling the world's poor to print their own Life-Straws, water pumps, engines, and computer chips.