Modern designers often work with three-dimensional shapes, but all these forms remain on that side of the screen. The Japanese company Roland DG released a relatively affordable «3D-printer. However, in contrast to the modern systems it does not make object out of liquid plastic, but rather grind it out from a solid bar of plastic or wood.

The machine is connected to a PC via a USB port and displays the “Print” complex models from CAD-files, the device is packaged with programs designed to create and output three-dimensional models. To get the mock-up, the user puts a bar on a special platform, the printer gets calibrated and starts the job. The printing process is time consuming. The model is created on one side only — only half of the figure. To obtain a full three-dimensional object you need to print the two halves and glue them together. Afterwards, you’d most probably need to paint it to your liking. Yes, lots of efforts, but the cost of the printer is only about a thousand dollars.

The video below gives you an idea how all this looks like:

Almost everybody knows that 3D-printers can print anything you want. Some people want a snack, and they prefer chocolate. This is not something impossible anymore. Most modern 3D-printers as the main material used plastics because it melts at relatively low temperatures and is easily deformed.

Chocolate print

Scientists at the University of Exeter (England) have noticed that chocolate has similar properties. These considerations led them to build a computer-controlled 3D-printer that prints with chocolate. Of course, not everything went smooth, working with chocolate was a bit more complicated. It is not as flexible, so pouring it through a standard feeder was difficult, and maintaining a stable form of the printed prototype was not easy, too. To fix these issues, the authors developed intelligent systems of heating and cooling, rather complicated and expensive to maintain. This makes the idea of 3D-printers chocolate machines going into mass production unrealistic in the nearest future. However, the service of printing chocolate figurines, whether it’s household items or jewelry, might well arise. Girls will definitely appreciate a chocolate necklace for Valentine’s Day!

Open3DP team at Washington University have been some pretty impressive results: it successfully printed the artificial bone with the help of 3D-printer. The hardest challenge in this case was the choice of material for bone.

The experiments for 5 weeks with various mixtures of bone meal with other substances, the research team stopped at one of them, which allows you to create a strong “details”. After that, we need only to fill the mixture into the printer and print the desired bone.

Not reported, are there plans to use similar technology in medicine, but the prospects of the method could be very interesting for the creation of artificial prostheses, for example, in dentistry.

From the very moment it came to life, Kinect has become more than just an innovative game controller (like it was not enough!). There has been many unconventional ways make use of this Microsoft device, but it has never been used to create physical objects.

Using Kinect camera to capture images of conference attendees at TEI 2011, a team of engineers has applied the data to print the figures on the three-dimensional printers. The Fabricate Yourself Initiative is part of the Interactive Fabrication founded by a researcher Karl D.D. Willis).

The system demonstrated at the conference, consists of a Mac and a connected Kinect controller. The camera gets three-dimensional images of people standing in front of it, and then sends them to a computer as STL-files. Before the image is printed with Dimension uPrint, a 3D-model obtains connecting faces (like a puzzle piece) using which printed figures can be combined into a large “wall”.

They’ve made it very interesting. Imagine that in the next few years the streets become full of instant photo booths, where you can instantly get a 3D-figurine of you. Unfortunately, so far the printing speed of 3D-printers leaves a lot to be desired, as well as the cost of such a hardware, but progress does not stand still.