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3D Printing

3D printing: saviour or piracy tool?

The advent of 3D printing is enabling consumers and businesses to create everything from intricate metal jewellery to customised plastic iPod cases, but the ease with which designs can be turned into objects holds open a door to a new wave of digital piracy. Ref. Source 1

Printing D

This is just one of those instances that you hope the printer doesn't jam! Still we have come such a long way from my dad's old dot matrix printer that he still keeps!

3D Printing Gaming Video & Issues Computer

'On-the-fly' 3-D print system prints what you design, as you design it


An interactive prototyping system has been developed that prints what you are designing as you design it; the designer can pause anywhere in the process to test, measure and, if necessary, make changes that will be added to the physical model still in the printer. Ref. Source 9a.

Printing D

Researchers open hairy new chapter in 3-D printing

Researchers have found a way to bypass a major design step in 3-D printing, to quickly and efficiently model and print thousands of hair-like structures. Instead of using conventional computer-aided design (CAD) software to draw thousands of individual hairs on a computer the team built a new software platform, called 'Cilllia,' that lets users define the angle, thickness, density, and height of thousands of hairs, in just a few minutes. Ref. Source 8w.

Printing D

I was looking online at the price of 3d printers and you can get some from around $300 all the way to $3000. What's the difference between the two really?

3D Printing

Researchers report cybersecurity risks in 3-D printing

Researchers examined two aspects of additive manufacturing (AM), or 3-D printing, that could have cybersecurity implications and harmful economic impact: printing orientation and insertion of fine defects. They found that because CAD files do not give instructions for printer head orientation, malefactors could deliberately alter the process without detection. Also, sub-millimeter defects that can appear between printed layers with exposure to fatigue and the elements were found to be undetectable by common industrial monitoring techniques. Ref. Source 6k.

3D Printing

New 3-D printing method creates shape-shifting objects

A new 3-D printing method has been developed to create objects that can permanently transform into a range of different shapes in response to heat. Ref. Source 9r.

3D Printing Computer Issues & Video Gaming

To answer the year-old post above, the difference between a $300 3D printer and a $3000 one will be the detail they can create into a small object. 3D printers work by layering minuscule pinpoints of plastic on top of each other according to a pattern.

Not all 3D printers can create very small, detailed objects, and often the cheaper ones will have sharper ridges and the objects created will look somewhat pixelated; whereas more expensive printers will be able to create round, smooth corners and pack more detail into a cm.

I used to create 3D objects in a CAD program and print them. The printer wasn't very good, and at the time it was a $3000 one. I often had to use sandpaper to smooth out the angles if my objects were small. Due to their increasing popularity, the price has decreased a bit, but at the time the $3k printer was a cheap model.