3d Printing History

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In the past ten years technology has had a massive boom, from the ability to access the internet from virtually any location, to things like having a PC in your pocket. One form of technology that has been getting very large in the past few years is 3D printing. 3D printing is essentially the use of a 3D printer to create tangible objects. The history of 3D printing goes farther back than you think, the process to print everything is very similar, and there are many uses. With 3D printing, one can print almost anything they can think of. People have printed many things like a piece of chocolate or even live organs. 3D printers have been linked all the way back to 1952 as an adaption of Computer Numeric Controlled machines which were early computers wired to milling machines (Martin Bowden, & Merrill, 2014, 31). The milling machines would start with one big solid piece of material and then use lasers and water-jet cutting to shave off material until the desired result was achieved (Martin et al., 2014, 31). This is quite the difference from 3D printers nowadays because the more modern printers print out material instead of shaving off material. These machines were used because the reliability and accuracy of a …show more content…

Art is one area where 3D printers can really make things happen. The ability to design anything you want and then be able to print it means there can be a whole lot of different 3D printed art, this type of art goes as far as your imagination can go. There are uses in the home as well. You can print a working clock, gears for some type of machine, door knobs, and more. This technology has use for educational purposes also. For example, you can print a skeleton model for your classroom to teach anatomy. You can print 3D models for classwork with different things such as an atom or even a human organ. You can also print prototypes for projects that students may be working on

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