When you think about printing you used to just think about printing a piece of paper right? Well not anymore, 3D printing has taken printing to a whole new level. What is a 3D printer you may ask, well it is the act of creating an object by laying down successive layers of material until the entire object is created. In the news and media people seem to only bring on up the negative side to 3D printing, like creating guns or different types of weapons, but there is also a huge part to 3D printing that is just amazing. Before the average Joe was able to go out and buy their own 3D printer the only people who had access to them were people involved in the government and in the military. With everyday people having access to such a phenomenal pieces of technology there is so much that can be done with them. People are looking at the way things are made and are starting to apply them to different manufacturing companies to lower to cost of creating a product and the amount of time it takes to finish a product. For example at the “Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee” (Palca) they are starting to manufacture cars that would normally take months to create but with technology of a 3D printing it only takes a week or so. “Engineers used a printer to build nearly an entire car from scratch in less than a week” (Palca). There is also a case where 3D printing helped a little boy who was born with a defective windpipe. While reading the article you felt for the family and felt awful that their son was going through such a terrible thing. There is hope for Gerrett because “doctors at the University of Michigan who were using 3-D printers to custom-make tiny devices they call "splints" to prop open defective windpipes for babies like Garrett” (Stein). The fact that there is technology out there to help a child or anyone like this is astonishing. So why are we going to let the people who are using these 3D printers for the wrong reason take away from the people who are using them to help people and to help companies produces items more efficiently?
Work Cited:
Works Cited Palca, Joe. 3-D Printers Are Changing The Way People Think About Manufacturing. 21 April 2015. <http://www.npr.org/2015/04/21/401167175/3d-printers-are-changing-the-way-people-think-about-manufacturing>.
Stein, Rob. Baby Thrives Once 3-D-Printed Windpipe Helps Him Breathe. 23 December 2014. <http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/12/23/370381866/baby-thrives-once-3d-printed-windpipe-helps-him-breathe>.
Work Cited:
Works Cited Palca, Joe. 3-D Printers Are Changing The Way People Think About Manufacturing. 21 April 2015. <http://www.npr.org/2015/04/21/401167175/3d-printers-are-changing-the-way-people-think-about-manufacturing>.
Stein, Rob. Baby Thrives Once 3-D-Printed Windpipe Helps Him Breathe. 23 December 2014. <http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/12/23/370381866/baby-thrives-once-3d-printed-windpipe-helps-him-breathe>.