The Pros And Cons Of 3D Printing

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3D Printing: The weapon to save or kill? People nowadays might get the impression that the 3D printing technology is a relatively new concept in our daily life. However, 3D printing technology is invented and utilized in many fields such as creating human organs in healthcare, building architectural models in engineering, even forming components that can be used in aeronautic fields long ago. Since Charles W. Hull has invented the 3D printing technology in the 1980s, scientists, engineers, and even normal people were and still are trying to discover more possibility of the usages and changes on this technology. Same as every invention of the new technology, with its undeniable beneficial effects, 3D printing also faces lots of limitations
In order to analyze its pros and cons, we need to know the technology first. As one of the advertisement states, “3D Printing: Make anything you want” . Of course, with the current maturity of this technology, this line exaggerates its effects, yet it certainly has a point. 3D printing is “a mechanical process whereby solid objects are created by ‘printing’ successive layers of material to replicate a shape modeled in a computer. ” To put it more vividly, the printing process of a 3D printer is like to make a melaleuca cake with various materials. And “the materials”, as the inventor of this technology Charles W. Hull once wrote, “include polymers, metals, ceramics, composites, food, probably other things, too” . So, imagine these materials can be melted like cream and stretched as thin as the hairline. The printer uses these lines to draw the outline of the object based on the inputted or scanned blueprint firstly and then overlaps the lines upon the previous frame just like decorating the cake with
These requirements might seem obvious at first, yet it is exactly the demand and supply on each one of them causes the limitation and control of this technology. The 3D printer is no longer an equipment which only can be found in a scientific lab, but people can buy it on Amazon with the price from 600 to 2000 dollars. Moreover, there are numerous companies which start to invest new functions upon the 3D printer such as the three types of 3D printers that have been advertised in the “Top 3 Best 3D Printers You Must Have” video: “the Tiko, the Palette, and the Moonray” . For instance, the Tiko printer is a new type of “uni-body” 3D printer which prevents the unstable printing problem caused by the traditional “separate three-piece rails frame” . Also, its 1 kg rolls large “internal filler” and the “close-build chamber” also promises the project to be more “reliable and accurate” . What the most considerate for the consumer should be its “wireless connectivity” . This way, any consumer can print anything at anywhere they want as long as they have a downloaded Tiko app on their cellphones or laptops. As for the Palette 3D printer, it wedded to developing the “controllable multi-color functionality” because most of the previous settings of the 3D printers only allow the consumer to print with one color at a time . Therefore, the

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