The first recorded 3D print was made by Dr. Hideo Kodama in 1981. He successfully developed a method for creating three-dimensional objects by layering photosensitive resins. However, the patent for 3D printing belongs to Chuck Hull, who pioneered the technology we call 3D printing today.
How does 3D printing work, exactly? The solid physical structures form when UV light cures the photosensitive resin layers. The first 3D-printed objects were made from thermoplastic materials, but the advancement of Selective Laser Sintering allowed people to 3D print using metals, plastics, and even ceramics.
#4 I Made These Spikes To Stop "Helpful" People From Grabbing Me Without Consent
Many of the objects featured on this list are things and knick-knacks that people have made for their own homes. But today, 3D printing is used for some ambitious and huge projects, even to build houses! The largest 3D-printed neighborhood is in Texas, called Wolf Ranch. It features some 100 homes built by Vulcan printers that are 45 feet (13.7 m) wide and weigh 4.75 tons.
The authors of the project say that 3D-printed homes are cheaper, less wasteful, and faster to build. “It brings a lot of efficiency to the trade market," ICON senior project manager Conner Jenkins told Reuters. "So, where there were maybe five different crews coming in to build a wall system, we now have one crew and one robot.”
How is it even possible to print a house? You have to feed concrete powder, water, sand, and other additives to the printer, and it pushes out the mixture with a tool akin to a brush. Similar to the first-ever 3D printers, the Vulcan then “paints” the house layer by layer, creating walls with a “corduroy effect.” A single-story house with three to four bedrooms takes about three weeks to print, and the roof is installed the old-fashioned way — manually by construction workers.
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Even NASA is using 3D printers to make rockets. In 2023, scientists launched the Relativity Space Terran 1 test rocket that was 100 feet tall and 7.5 feet wide. Its engines were made out of copper alloy, and usually such rockets have about 100,00 parts. The 3D-printed version, however, required only 1,000.
The 3D printing technology is a literal lifesaver in the healthcare sector. 3D prosthetics are widely used today for amputees, and even some body parts, like ears, are reconstructed using 3D printing. Such was the case of Colleen Murray, who lost her ear in a car accident and had a 3D-printed silicone ear attached with tiny titanium rods implanted in her skull.
Dr Mazher Mohammed, a research fellow at Deakin University who was part of Colleen’s medical team, says that the future of using 3D printing in medicine is moving forward at an unprecedented pace. Scientists are working on creating 3D-printed body parts from the patients’ own biological tissue, and in the future, we’ll be able to 3D-print organs such as blood vessels and kidneys.
