12/23/2023 0 Comments Dmesh torrent![]() ![]() This month, doctors at a Michigan hospital scanned a baby boy's windpipe and used a 3-D printer to build an emergency airway tube from biodegradable polyester, which they then implanted surgically, saving the infant's life.įor now, the commercial use of 3-D printing is perhaps best-suited to "sophisticated, small-run products," says Evan Hardie, a research manager at IDC Canada. On the other, the medical applications of 3-D printing, such as the ability to print stem cells and even body parts, have unleashed a torrent of possibilities. At one end, 3-D printers could allow consumers to replace everyday items such as shower curtain rings and keyboard keys. Some of the most promising applications of 3-D printing appear to lie on opposite ends of the complexity spectrum. In another case, a father approached Matterform because he wanted to scan and archive physical models of the plasticine sculptures his children made. Cox says his company has been approached by a paleontologist who wanted to scan and print models of bones and a dentist who sought to use the technology to scan molds of patients' teeth. The range of 3-D printing applications is vast. And whereas regular printers operate in two dimensions on a page, 3-D printers construct physical objects in space by adding layer upon layer of material. "Then we started getting dentists, scientists, archeologists, artists – it kind of blew up."ģ-D printing is analogous to regular printing, except that the cartridge spits out solid material such as plastic or metal, instead of ink. "Who else would like this? We didn't really know. "We made this for ourselves, originally," Mr. By the time their crowd-funding campaign ended, they had raised $481,000. The co-founders had hoped to raise $81,000. For example, a user can scan a small bottle, make design changes to the resulting blueprint, and print out the redesigned bottle. The scanner helps consumers to create the blueprints for a 3-D printer. Cox and his business partner Adam Brandejs decided to use crowd-funding to raise money for the Matterform 3-D scanner. The meteoric popularity of 3-D printing technology is clearly evident in Matterform's own startup story. "Right now it doesn't seem like a replacement for mass manufacturing, but you can now produce one versus having to produce tens of thousands to make it worthwhile." "There's definitely a parallel between the Internet and home manufacturing," says Drew Cox, co-founder of a Toronto-based startup called Matterform Inc., which builds scanners that can produce 3-D mesh models of physical objects. Just as the Internet allowed a swarm of startups to provide innovative products and services at a greatly reduced cost, 3-D printing is creating a new breed of manufacturing startup. But where the technology appears to be having the greatest impact is one step above the consumer level. The cost of the technology has dropped to the point where an entry-level 3-D printer can be had for about $2,500. In the past four years, 3-D printing has morphed from futuristic theory to consumer reality. But 3-D scanning and printing, he says, "creates niche products, a new class of entrepreneurs." "Before, you used to have manufacturing at a tiny artisanal level or at mass production – there was no place for manufacturing 10,000 things," says Mr.
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