We all use Printers in our daily life for some reason or the other. Be it for printing photographs, resume, receipts, tickets, study material, or any other piece of documentation.
All these printing applications are 2D in nature. They print an image with length and breadth. What if the printed matter had a 3rd dimension? Thats what leads us to the 3D Printer. Something that can print or reproduce the original object in 3 dimensions.
A 3D printer is synonymous with the word “Rapid Prototyping”. This is due to the fact that you can quickly reproduce what you had designed. Now, quickly is a relative term. If you are used to getting something printed in seconds, this is slow. It could take minutes or hours for a 3D printer to print a prototype. However, we must understand that this printing/prototyping is much much faster than the traditional approach of getting something built on the production line.
Here are a couple of Youtube videos that really impressed me. A low end commercial 3D printer is even available for some $19K. With time, this technology will only get better. Who knows, one day, we might just start manufacturing everything we need with this printer, right in our homes. All we would need to pay for is the blue print of the object!
Tags: 3D, Printer, Printing, Prototyping