3D Printing

The book I read to research this post was 3D Printing An Introduction by Michael Wiechert which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is only intended as a brief introduction to what is quite a complex subject. This is a very new technology and 3D Printers start from $500 but are coming down in price all the time. The smallest ones are the size of a microwave oven but I have seen a handheld one. They normally only work with one material but are revolutionizing the field of design and building a prototype of something which can be done at a fraction of the price where previously machines had to be specially built to manufacture each part. We are a long way off seeing the replicators that can manufacture and copy anything like in Star Trek. There are very expensive ones though that work with things like living tissue and titanium. If possible you are better off buying something from a shop than 3D printing it as it is much cheaper and requires a lot of work to design it. Some people who design things in this way use programs like AutoCAD & Photoshop depending on what they are printing but there are many ready done designs you can use as well as 3D Scanners which simplify the process but are also expensive. If you use software to do 3D printing there is a lot to learn which puts many off. There are also software plug ins required like 123D. This is a very interesting book and this is probably something that will become more and more mainstream as time goes on. I did really enjoy this book.