Printing has long been recognized as one of the most important invention of all time, especially the laser printing and digital printing. And now, a new printing technologies which is claimed to be triggering the beginning of the third industrial revolution after the steam engine (James Watt) and electric light (Thomas Edison) have been carried out and already released to market.
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| You can use the 3D printer to print out exactly the object you want under the computer control |
What is 3D Printing?
The solid imaging process known as 3D Printing was invented by Chuck Hull (Charles W. Hull). This technology allows us to print out a three-dimensional object with any shapes, colors or geometry. It creates an object by producing layers of material are formed under computer control.
As first, we can only use plastic to be the material of the 3D printer because there is few materials which are plasticity and cheap enough to become widely used. But the materials available for 3D printing are becoming more expanding beyond border time by time. The most often discussed 3D printing materials are molecules for medicine and human cells.
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| Plastic is commonly used in 3D printing |
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| Stem cells(left) and metal(right) are also used in 3D printing |
It Is A Game Changer For Everyone
Now, since you have gained some understanding of this technology, you may start to wonder “so what’s the differences between the 3D printing technology and others’ new technologies?” “Ya it sounds cool, but is it good enough to be compared with steam engine and electric light?” In that case, I’m going to introduce the possible applications of this technology to make you reach a deeper understanding of it.
1.Fashion industry
As long as you have the design diagrams, 3D printer is able to produce flexible filaments which can be used to replace cotton material.
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| 3D printed dress with complex pattern |
Compared with manual, the biggest strength of the 3D printing technology is that it can produce product with nearly 100 percent accuracy and significantly reduce the error rate.
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| The Gaudi's Sagrada Familia model made by 3D printing |
Watch how it "printed" a house in 24 hours:
3. Healthcare Industry
Madhumitha Rangesa, TechVision Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan said that 3D-printed tissues for drug testing will help save eliminate costly animal testing and use of synthetic tissues.
I have to say it is a little creepy to find out this technology can also print a human body parts...
I will not show the pictures but you can't find for it in the internet by searching "3D printed body parts".
3D printed human organs:
To sum up, 3D printing technology is useful for saving a lot of time and its high accuracy. Everything you may have think is impossible to achieve seem to be a piece of cake for the 3D printer. Since there are still about 10 more 3D printing applications of different fields, you can find more details and information here.
Thanks for reading!
I really love this technology! I think 3D print can make your imagination come true. You just need to illustrate what you want to print, and the printer will print the product out. It is really a fantastic process in our modern society, and can help people in various kinds of aspects and jobs!
回覆刪除In my opinion, this cutting-edge is really beneficial to human beings. I have read some news about applying 3D print in medical use. I have also heard people can use 3D print on Mars to produce something which could help them explore. On the other hand, 3D print may pose a threat to those who making hand-made artwork. This is a problem we have to think how to deal with.
回覆刪除I think 3D printing is a awesome technology which can be widely applied. Though the invention has appeared for years, Taiwan seems not to focus on this topic a lot(or maybe I've not followed it). As far as I know, only some high schools in Taipei have courses about 3D printing, which is really a pity that other students can't obtain this technology. Maybe Taiwan should catch up on the latest innovation.
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