https://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/11/3d_printers
Link: 3-D Printers Redefine Industrial Design .
(...) "The technology behind 3-D printers isn't new. Rapid prototyping machines have existed in myriad forms since the early 1980s, but the pace at which new capabilities and printing materials are being added to the machines is astonishing, says Scott Summit, the co-founder of San Francisco-based industrial design firm Summit ID. These printers typically work by spewing out successive layers of a given material to build a three-dimensional object, slice by horizontal slice.
"These end results aren't just prototypes or proof-of-concepts any more. As the technology has evolved, 3-D printers are now capable of printing out fully functional finished products. For example, according to Summit, battleships and aircraft carriers now make extensive use of selective laser sintering (SLS) printers, which can "print out" materials like titanium, cobalt chromium and polyamide, to fabricate spare parts on the spot instead of carrying huge warehouses full of replacements. And some manufacturers of 3-D printers even use their own products to create parts for the next generation of printers. "It's like the Terminator self-replicator machine or something," Summit says. "Machines are making the next-generation machines."(...)
