3D printing is set to play a growing role in our daily lives for providing medical care and making our meals and clothes. Let’s look at how 3D printers will bring fresh innovations.

Printers have different applications:

• Stereolithography produces objects with high resolution, smooth surfaces, and good durability.

• Selective Laser Sintering creates rough-surface objects and is often used in PolyJet prototyping models with a wide range of features, printing objects in multiple colors with a variety of substrates.

• Digital Light Processing can print one layer of an object at one time, cutting production time.

• Multi Jet Fusion is based on Selective Laser Sintering but provides better uniformity to the printed object.

• Fused Deposition Modeling produces a rough surface with low flexibility.

Metal-type printers include:

• Direct Metal Laser Sintering, applied in manufacturing in extraction, cutting, and metal forming processes.

• Electron Beam Melting, which uses an electromagnetic coil to help melt metal powder to form a mold.

3D printers are moving beyond the creation of prototypes into true production, with customized colors, shapes, speed, and printing methods, serving brands like Adidas. The technology has been used since 2017 to produce millions of pairs of running heels, speeding up production, facilitating product design, reducing production waste, and contributing to a leaner process. 3D printing has lots of hidden potential. With appropriate research and development, 3D printers may bring new innovations in society for many decades to come.

Implications for the future:

- Future development of 3D printers focused on lean production can expand their industrial applications.

- Success in using materials other than plastics and metals as substrates will extend the use of 3D printing into other industries.

Credit: https://www.protolabs.com/reso.../blog/types-of-3d-printing/ and https://www.fastcompany.com/.../how-adidas-cracked-the...

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