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If you think life changed after the Internet emerged, wait until you see what’s coming next. Tech people say three-dimensional printing will create the next wave of joys and frustrations, job creation and job loss. In five to 10 years, 3-D printers will be all around us, they predict. The printers will make food, including customized wedding cakes. They will make shoes, clothes, aircraft parts, dresses, steaks, replacement bones and eventually even replacement kidneys. If you find that bit about the kidney hard to believe, Google a company called Organovo. The printers might make outsourcing jobs to China, India and...

Not only is manufacturing goods using a 3D printer far cheaper than purchasing items, new research appearing in a recent edition of the Journal of Cleaner Production reveals that it can actually help preserve the environment. The 3D printing process was very expensive when Charles W. Hull of 3D Systems Corp created the first working model in 1984, and while the costs have dropped dramatically over the past 30 years, the cost of purchasing plastic filament still needs to be factored in. The new study, however, shows how old milk jugs can reduce those expenses. In their study, Michigan Technological...

Imagine going online and, with a single click, printing out any physical object. With a miniature production plant in every home, there would be no need for retail stores, factories, shipping or the pollution associated with those activities. Large-scale automation of a huge segment of the workforce, combined with free worldwide-Internet, 3D printing and renewable off-grid energy will free humanity to achieve anything without worrying about basic material needs. FREE WIFI FOR ALL In the next few years, everyone on the planet with a wireless device will likely have access to high speed, uncensored Internet. A futuristic project spearheaded by...

Using a 3D printer, scientists have made an elastic membrane that closely mimics the outer layer of the heart's wall. The new membrane, which was described Tuesday (Feb. 25) in the journal Nature Communications, contains tiny sensors that can track the heart's temperature, pH and level of strain. The device could one day be used to treat patients with rhythm disorders in the lower chambers of the heart, as well as the rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation, the researchers said. Heart rhythm irregularities are a common problem, with one of the most well-known forms, atrial fibrillation, affecting 3 million to 5...

The 3D printers are coming. And fast. The only debate is over how fast. Velocity matters for stock pickers following the small world of pure-play public 3D printing companies. It is also relevant for business analysts and, perhaps surprisingly, for energy forecasters. 3D printers will — as many have observed sometimes a tad too breathlessly — disrupt a lot of businesses. They will enable and make more profitable many others, while also creating entirely new classes of businesses. The 3D printing ecosystem will as well accelerate the new trend of rising foreign direct investment into the United States. And 3D...

Back when 3D printing was just kicking off, there was much talk of a future where people could download new furniture designs, print them, and furnish their living rooms with new pieces whenever they pleased. But despite the fact that 3D printing your own furniture is totally possible now, it hasn’t really caught on for one simple reason – nobody wants to fill their house with a bunch of snap-together plastic furniture. But the dream of printing your own furnishings isn’t dead yet. A fledgling company by the name of 4 AXYZ has developed a process that allows you...

Louisville Kentucky cardiothoracic surgeon Erle Austin has performed successful heart repair surgery on a 14 month old infant named Roland Lian Cung Bawi — heart surgery on such a young patient is not unheard of, of course, what's new is that Austin was able to map out his surgical approach using a nearly exact model of the patients heart—it had been printed on a 3D printer. Young Roland had been born with four congenital heart defects—doctors had known since before he was born that his heart had problems. Fixing them all would prove to be a challenge. When it came...

Harvard scientists have developed a new bioprinting method that can create intricately patterned 3-D tissue constructs with multiple types of cells and tiny blood vessels. The work is a major step toward creating human tissue constructs realistic enough to test drug safety and effectiveness, researchers said. The method will also help bring closer the building of fully functional replacements for injured or diseased tissue that can be designed from CAT scan data using computer-aided design (CAD), printed in 3D at the push of a button. "This is the foundational step toward creating 3D living tissue," said Jennifer Lewis, senior author...

Technology to bring 3D printing closer to the mass market is accelerating, though most 3D printed items tend to be rather small in size. To help demonstrate the effectiveness of printing larger items, BigRep, a company founded in 2014, opens the door to printing items such as furniture. The device is launching worldwide at large trade shows, and begins shipping in two months, with a $39,000 MSRP.The BigRep One can print full-scale objects in sizes up to 45x39x47 inches, and has the ability to print plastics, nylons, Laywood (wood fibers mixed with polymers), and Laybrick (something similar to sandstone-type of...

Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity paired with a machine that can print almost anything. It’s been over 30 years since Chuck Hull invented the first 3D printer in 1983. Ever since then, the idea of machine-printing objects from scratch has gone from fiction to reality, opening up new opportunities for every field from science to art. 3D printing may not be quite there yet, but in three decades the technology has progressed leaps and bounds in terms of the scope and utility of 3D-printed objects. Surprise, surprise: It's not just gimmicks and toys. It’s easy to be skeptical...

Ford has teamed up with 3D System to create tiny, chocolate versions of the new 2015 Mustang. The small, sugar-filled Mustangs are the first 3-D-printed cars that can be eaten, the companies claim. 3D Systems and Ford created the chocolaty confections as part of Valentine's Day-themed marketing for the 2015 Mustang, which was announced in December and will go on sale in late 2014. http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-ford-3d-systems-chocolate-3dprinted-mustang-20140213,0,679923.story#ixzz2tGpBnMsO

Using precision lasers, a Nanoscribe 3D printer can print models of the Empire State building in a space the width of a human hair. Watching the machine build through the “lens” of an electron microscope is otherworldly—but the printer’s potential runs beyond microscale model making. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, led by Jens Bauer, believe such 3D printers may help craft a new generation of materials lighter than water and strong as steel. Today, the sturdiest materials tend to be the densest (like metals), and the least dense materials tend to be the weakest (like foams). Ideally, materials...

Bioprinting, or the process of creating human tissues through 3D printers, is a highly contested area of technological innovation. Theoretically it could save the economy billions on a global scale, whilst boosting weak or war-torn countries' access to more affordable health care and provision, whether producing prosthetic limbs or highly customised fully-working human organs. From a technological perspective, the rise and development of 3D printing and its capabilities will play an undeniable part in our future lives. But how does the process work? UK-based company PrinterInks has teamed up with US startup Organovo, a company specialised in designing and printing...

Having lunch with the 14th Most Dangerous Person in the World is less scary than you might think. Unless you happen to have a morbid fear of hipster beards, Cody Wilson, a good-looking 26-year-old who blends with the crowd in the east London cafe where I meet him, doesn't immediately strike fear into the heart. He chats away with the waitress, discussing the possibilities before ordering east London's hippest sandwich – the pulled pork burger – and has an easygoing, amiable manner. He is, frankly, about as threatening as a barista. A barista who has happened on a spectacular method...

If you think 3D printing plastic is advancing quickly, take a look at bioprinting, a technology that uses inkjet-style printers to create living tissue. Organovo already plans to commercialize its 3D-printed liver tissue this year, and the National Institute of Health recently took an interest in 3D-printed eye tissue. But squeezing living cells through an inkjet printer kills many of them. Houston Methodist Research Institute researchers say they have developed a better way: a technology called Block-Cell-Printing (BloC-Printing) that leaves nearly 100 percent of the cells alive, instead of 50 to 80 percent. They published their work Monday in Proceedings...

Nanoparticle inks can turn your existing 2D printer into a circuit board production line – and the possibilities for 3D printers are mind-boggling. Printing foldable mobile phones on a sheet of paper from a normal 2D printer is just a decade away, according to Jürgen Steimle, head of the Embodied Interaction Group at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany. Steimle and his colleagues took a step towards this in 2013, when they used a standard printer loaded with nanoparticle ink to print a paper circuit that works even after the sheet is torn. In the past couple...

Researcher Darryl D'Lima of Scripps Clinic with his "bioprinter" adapted from an HP inkjet printer that can produce cartilage. California’s stem cell agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, awarded him $3.1 million to research the use of embryonic stem cells and artificial embryonic stem cells to generate replacement cartilage. Stem cell researcher Jeanne Loring has collaborated with D’Lima on growing cartilage from stem cells. She described him as “unique” in the ability to incorporate many disciples of science and medicine. “He’s the only orthopedic surgeon I know who has the bandwidth to start thinking way outside the box,” said...

China is investing heavily in 3D printing, just like those in the U.S. and Europe. In June, China announced a gigantic 3D printer, which they claimed was the world’s largest at the time, with a 1.8 meter build diameter. Basically the thing could print out a nice sized bathroom vanity if you wanted it to. Southern Fan Co. (As Translated from Chinese), is completing a printer this month which will be able to print out metal objects approximately 6 meters, or 18 feet in diameter and 10 meters long (33 feet). The metal parts can weigh up to 300 tons....

A low, mechanical thrum creates an ever-present soundtrack at Type A Machines, a 3D-printing company on the third floor of San Francisco's TechShop, in SOMA. Big and drafty and sunlit with exposed pipes on the ceiling, it's a modern iteration of an old textile mill. On the ground floor, flannel-shirted workers sit hunched over welding equipment, sweat bubbling over their plastic goggles. Upstairs, their colleagues peck at laptops, designing blueprints for new objects with all the exacting detail of a draftsman using pen and paper. In a far corner, Type A's line of Series 1 2013 printers sits arranged in...

Credit: University of Wollongong Scientists at the University of Wollongong (that's a real place) in Australia have developed a device that replaces traditional surgery with something more akin to an art project. The BioPen is a handheld 3D printer that can actually print bone directly onto patients during surgery. Soon, surgeons will simply be able to doodle their patients back to health.The BioPen uses a stem cell ink which can be coaxed into differentiating into muscle, bone, or nerve cells. A seaweed-based growth culture encourages the cells to thrive in their new environment while a second polymer, cured by the...