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History of 3D Printing
History of 3D Printing
This was also the decade where 3D printing met the open-source
movement. In 2005, Dr. Adrian Bowyer’s RepRap Project launched
an open-source initiative to create a 3D printer that could basically
build itself—or at least print most of its own parts. Its 2008 release,
Darwin, is a self-replicating printer that’s able to do just that.
Suddenly, people everywhere had the power to create whatever
What’s 30 years old but looks brand new? Believe it or not, it’s 3D stuff they could dream up on their own. (See also: Kickstarter, which
printing. Yep, additive manufacturing technology has been around launched in 2009 and has since crowdfunded countless 3D-printing-
since the Reagan era. Here’s a brief tour through the history of 3D related projects.)
printing.
By the mid-2000s, the democratization of manufacturing had
1981–1999: The Toddlerhood of Additive Manufacturing captured the public’s imagination, as had the idea of mass
customization (which, unlike jumbo shrimp, is not actually an
In 1981, Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research oxymoron). The first SLS machine became commercially viable in
Institute published his account of a functional rapid prototyping 2006, which opened the door to on-demand manufacturing of
system using photopolymers (more on those in a minute). A solid, industrial parts. 3D-printing startup Objet (now merged with
printed model was built up in layers, each of which corresponded Stratasys) built a machine that could print in multiple materials,
to a cross-sectional slice in the model. Sound familiar? which allowed a single part to be fabricated in different versions,
with different material properties.
Three years later, in 1984, Charles Hull broke new ground by
inventing stereolithography. Stereolithography lets designers The intensely creative innovations of the decade were topped off
create 3D models using digital data, which can then be used to with the launch of collaborative co-creation services such as
create a tangible object. Shapeways, a 3D-printing marketplace where designers can get
feedback from consumers and other designers and then affordably
The key to stereolithography is a kind of acrylic-based material
fabricate their products. As the cherry on top, MakerBot hit the
known as photopolymer. Hit a vat of liquid photopolymer with a UV
scene, providing open-source DIY kits for makers to build their own
laser beam, and the light-exposed portion will instantly turn into
3D printers and products. At this point, the barriers to entry for
solid piece of plastic, molded into the shape of your 3D-model
designers and inventors were falling every day.
design. Needless to say, this new technology was big news to
inventors, who could now theoretically prototype and test their 2011–Present Day: 3D Printing in Its Prime
designs without having to make a huge upfront investment in
manufacturing. Today, looking back over just the past few years, it’s hard not to feel
like we’re living in the future. Coming soon: 3D-printed jetpacks!
In 1992, Bill Clinton played sax on The Arsenio Hall Show—and 3D
Systems (Charles Hull’s company) created the world’s first Well, almost. While the price of 3D printers has fallen rapidly and
stereolithographic apparatus (SLA) machine, which made it possible the accuracy of 3D printing has improved, innovators are pushing
to fabricate complex parts, layer by layer, in a fraction of the time the envelope in ways that Charles Hull could only dream of.
it would normally take. That same year, startup DTM produced the Designers are no longer limited to printing with plastic. Case in
world’s first selective laser sintering (SLS) machine—which shoots a point: You can now print the engagement ring of your dreams using
laser at a powder instead of a liquid. gold or silver. Engineers at the University of Southampton have
flown the world’s first 3D-printed unmanned aircraft, and KOR
These technologies were in their infancy and weren’t perfect; there Ecologic prototyped Urbee, a car with a 3D-printed body that’s built
was some warping in the material as it hardened, and the machines to get 200 mpg on the freeway.
were prohibitively expensive for home inventors, but their
potential was undeniable. Decades later, 3D printing history has That takes us up to the present day—although by the time this
shown that this potential is still unfolding. article is published, there will surely have been countless other
additive manufacturing breakthroughs happening somewhere in
the world. It’s almost impossible to keep up. In the future, our kids
will build art projects with their classroom’s 3D printer, and our
1999–2010: 3D Printing’s Adolescent History
dentist will be able to call in a prescription for a custom-printed set
The lead-up to Y2K was thrilling—not just because, in 1999, the of dentures. In the meantime, I’ll be watching the news and waiting
original Beverly Hills 90210 entered its last season on the air, but for my jetpack.
also because the first 3D-printed organ was implanted in humans.
Three Random, Cool, Unexpected Facts About 3D Printing
Scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
printed synthetic scaffolds of a human bladder and then coated NASA is a major proponent of 3D printing—from food to
them with the cells of human patients. The newly generated tissue the first zero-gravity 3D printer in space.
was then implanted into the patients, with little to no chance that
their immune systems would reject them, as they were made of There’s a 3D printer on the market (the Photonic
their own cells. Professional GT) that can create objects no wider than a
human hair.
Louis DeRosa used a 3Doodler—the 3D-printing pen made used. Each slice represents a single layer of the constructed object.
famous by netting $2.3 million on Kickstarter—to create a Different printers use different materials and different binding
working hexacopter-framed drone. processes, but generally a powder of ceramic, nylon, or even metal
is used as the base material and fused together into the pattern for
Source: the layer currently being created. After the completion of a layer,
the machine moves on to the next layer until it is completed.
https://www.autodesk.com/redshift/history-of-3d-printing/
For example, Z Corporation printers lay down a full layer of a
composite powder then use an inkjet printer to print the binding
The Future of 3D Printing agent and any color dyes onto the powder. The powder treated
with binding agent solidifies, the rest of the powder remains loose.
Imagine printing a new valve for a broken water faucet or a new Two to four layers are printed per minute and the excess powder
plate when your five-year-old drops the good dishes. Imagine not just falls off and can be reused in the next print job.
being limited by commercial pipe sizes or designs requiring
individual pieces that can be fit together by current commercial Desktop Factory printers use a slightly different approach. Powder
equipment. Imagine custom creating every gift given to each friend is applied to a roller and a halogen lamp etches the pattern for a
or family member to incorporate favorite song lyrics, literary single layer onto this coating. When the layer is complete, it’s rolled
quotations, inside jokes, or photographs. This world isn’t yet a off into a build area, the roller is cleaned, and the process begins
reality, but it’s getting closer every day thanks to advancements in again for the next layer. Layers are joined in the build area using
the field of rapid prototyping and 3-dimensional printing. heat and pressure.
“This is our consumer strategy,” Lewis explains to me, pointing SOURCE: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-
toward a group of pink, turquoise and lime-green printers. The lies-ahead-for-3-d-printing-37498558/
Cubes are the size of a Mr. Coffee machine, shiny and smooth, and
have an on-off switch, a port for a thumb drive and a price tag of
$1,299. Cubes create objects through a material extrusion process,
in which a print head deposits and stacks thin layers of molten
plastic onto a platform. The process begins when users load their
digital design into the Cube, whose software helps them scale their
model up or down and automatically adds support structures if
they’re needed. (Supports are made of the same plastic as the
machine prints, and they pop off.) Then the Cube “slices” the digital
object into microns-thick horizontal layers, creating a blueprint that
the print head will follow, moving on x and y axes.
The Cube can create objects in 16 different colors, but it can print
only one color at a time (no cartridge switching mid-print). To make
a toy robot or a skull ring in more than one color during a single
printout, you’ll need a CubeX Duo, which costs more than twice as
much but has two print cartridges that automatically turn colors off