3D Printers

What is a 3D printer? 3D printers are not your average

printer They bear little resemblance to today's

document or photo printers, They can build objects from scratch—or

rather, from a CAD or 3D scanner file—out of a variety of materials.

How does it Work? A typical 3D printer is very much like an inkjet printer operated

from a computer It builds up a 3D model one layer at a time, from the bottom

upward, by repeatedly printing over the same area. The printer creates a model over a period of hours by turning a

3D CAD drawing into lots of two-dimensional, cross-sectional layers

Most 3D printers essentially works by extruding molten thermoplastics (mostly ABS) through a tiny nozzle that it moves around precisely under computer control.

Is not necessarily need to print in 3D with plastic: in theory, you can print objects using any molten material that hardens and sets reasonably quickly

ABS has a whiteish-yellow color in its raw form, but pigments can be added to make it virtually any color

Product Cost Reduction

Marketing Tools

Product Mockups

Competitive Advantage

Medicine/Science

Uses of a 3D Printer

A new technique has been created that prints out artificial blood cells

Designed by scientists at Germans' Fraunhofer Institute

The technique involves printing artificial biological molecules with a 3-D inkjet printer, and then zapping the those molecules with a laser that forms the material into the shape of blood vessels. Like real blood vessels, the artificial vessels have two layers and can form complex branching structures.

Uses of a 3D Printer - Medicine

Questions

//www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394720,00.asp#fbid=MbX69OW2MGa

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14030720

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-3d-printers-work.html

http://www.shapeways.com/ http://www.livescience.com/16048-artificial-

blood-cells-3d-printing-fraunhofer.html

References