21 Facts About 3-D printing

One of the key advantages of 3D 3-D printing is the ability to produce very complex shapes or geometries that would be otherwise impossible to construct by hand, including hollow parts or parts with internal truss structures to reduce weight.

The term 3D 3-D printing still referred only to the polymer technologies in most minds, and the term AM was more likely to be used in metalworking and end-use part production contexts than among polymer, inkjet, or stereolithography enthusiasts.

Until recently, the term 3D 3-D printing has been associated with machines low in price or in capability.

However, satisfactory 3-D printing according to the invention has been achieved with the conductive metal alloy as ink.

Term 3D 3-D printing originally referred to a powder bed process employing standard and custom inkjet print heads, developed at MIT by Emanuel Sachs in 1993 and commercialized by Soligen Technologies, Extrude Hone Corporation, and Z Corporation.

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Term "3D 3-D printing" originally referred to a process that deposits a binder material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads layer by layer.

Most-commonly used 3D 3-D printing process is a material extrusion technique called fused deposition modeling, or FDM.

Some 3-D printing techniques require internal supports to be built for overhanging features during construction.

Drawback of many existing 3D 3-D printing technologies is that they only allow one material to be printed at a time, limiting many potential applications which require the integration of different materials in the same object.

Multi-material 3D 3-D printing solves this problem by allowing objects of complex and heterogeneous arrangements of materials to be manufactured using a single printer.

The challenges of 4D 3-D printing include the fact that the microstructures of these printed smart materials must be close to or better than the parts obtained through traditional machining processes.

Technique called programmable tooling uses 3D 3-D printing to create a temporary mold, which is then filled via a conventional injection molding process and then immediately dissolved.

Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic at The New York Times, says 3D 3-D printing will have a significant value for fashion companies down the road, especially if it transforms into a print-it-yourself tool for shoppers.

In 3D 3-D printing, computer-simulated microstructures are commonly used to fabricate objects with spatially varying properties.

Web sites associated with home 3D 3-D printing tended to include backscratchers, coat hooks, door knobs, etc.

Future applications for 3D 3-D printing might include creating open-source scientific equipment.

The benefits of 3D 3-D printing would be that the final outline is defined from the beginning, no imaging, punching or lamination is required and electrical connections are made with the silver polymer which eliminates drilling and plating.

Therefore, if a type of wheel is patented, 3-D printing, using, or selling such a wheel could be an infringement of the patent.

Research on the health and safety concerns of 3D 3-D printing is new and in development due to the recent proliferation of 3D 3-D printing devices.

In recent years, 3D 3-D printing is creating significant impact in the humanitarian and development sector.

RepRap is a wiki based website that was created to hold all information on 3d 3-D printing, and has developed into a community that aims to bring 3D 3-D printing to everyone.