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a 3D printer today? My own guess is under a 100K personal 3D printers have been sold. If that estimate doubles each year, it takes five years to get to a million. If it triples each year we get to a million in two and a half years. What will motivate a million people to buy a 3D printer? Will the utility of it persuade buyers to consider it as another household appliance? Will it be seen as common household tool, like a Dremel? Or will it be considered a form of entertainment, like a game console or media player? Will it be considered a specialized piece of equipment for recreational hobbyists, like rocketry or boats?

Scientists have built a 3-D printer that creates material resembling human tissues. The novel substance, a deceptively simple network of water droplets coated in lipids, could one day be used to deliver drugs to the body -- or perhaps even to replace damaged tissue in living organs.

Buyers hit the brakes on purchasing hobbyist 3-D printers in the past year, even as industrial-grade printers are playing a larger role in manufacturing finished parts rather than prototypes. 

The shape of things to come: A consumer's guide to 3D printers

a desktop extruding system, capable of grinding various types of plastics, to make spools of plastic filament for 3D printers. Not only is it user friendly, but it is also environmentally friendly. The Filabot can process things such as: milk jugs, soda bottles, various other types of plastics, and bad prints, to make new filament for a future print. Filabot will bring the real power of sustainability to 3D printing, allowing for a on

FARO technologies, one of the major manufacturer of portable 3D measuring instruments, has recently announced SCENECT 5.2, the new version of the free 3D scan app that FARO is now introducing to the market.

Rapid prototyping is still the domain of nerds, but it’s just a matter of time before 3D printers become mass consumer products. With its Kiosk project, Antwerp-based design studio Unfold explores a future scenario in which digital fabricators are so ubiquitous that we see them appear on street corners, just like fast food is sold on the streets [...]