3d Printing

3-D Printing

Damian Urasinski

DeVry University

Professor Robert Clark

I. Historical development and context

a. The birth of 3-D printing

b. Building Parts: Layer by Layer

c. New advances to medicine thru the use of engineered organs

d. Open-source collaboration with 3-D printing

e. Mass customization in manufacturing thru the use of selective laser sintering (SLS) machines

f. First self-replicating printer

g. Do-it-yourself co-creation service launches

h. Major breakthrough for prosthetics

i. Do-it-yourself kits for 3-D printers enter the marketplace

j. From cells to blood vessels

k. World first’s in 3-D printing

When the 3-D printing was first introduced it remained relatively unknown to the greater public. It wasn’t until the second decade of the 21st century that the 3-D technology became well known. The popularity of 3-D printing was mainly due to the mixture of U.S. government funding and a handful of commercial businesses who first made it popular. This combination created a new wave of extraordinary popularity around the idea of 3-D printing ever since. Nowadays, 3-D printing is extremely widespread and it’s used in various fields such as aviation, automotive, medical, and manufacturing.

The 3-D technology can be defined as the printing of physical 3-D objects from a digital data. The first 3-D commercial printer was invented by Charles Hull in 1984. However, it wasn’t until 1986 that the first 3-D machine, called stereolithography apparatus and a technique called a stereolithography was patented and used. This technique relied on a laser to harden an ultraviolet-sensitive polymer material wherever the ultraviolet laser touched it (The Tower Price Connections). As with all new items on the market, the first 3-D machine was imperfect at first, however it also proved that vastly complex parts can be manufactured overnight. In the next twenty years, the use of 3-D printing boomed.

Throughout the years,...