3D printers are exactly what they sound like ; printers that can produce 3 dimensional objects. I heard about these and thought the idea sounded cool. So I did some research and found out about how they work. It starts with a design for what you want to build. It is designed in a computer program that is hooked up to the printer. Then the computer sends a picture of the object design to the printer. The printer works a lot like an Inkjet* printer, going left and right very fast while drawing every thing that is on that line on the paper. However, the 3D printers go left and right while adding layers to the object. These projects take hours to do, which is a huge upgrade from the old machines that companies used to use to build prototypes. The old ones took days, even weeks! The layers on the item are about 0.1 millimeters thick, so that's why it doesn't get done faster. The most common material that the printers use are probably pretty familiar to most people. They use ABS plastic. What's that? It's the same material that LEGO* bricks are made of. But they can also use other materials such as metal and glass.The machines can vary in size from printers meant for small toys to printers meant for printing whole rooms! These things are pretty expensive, as you could probably imagine. The smaller ones could get to be $1,000 on the low end, but the bigger ones can get up to $600,000!
3D printers are a great invention an d I know that they will make a big impact on the inventing and art world.
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