20. GUNS
Being pioneered right now by Cody Wilson, who managed to succeed this year, there is a .380 caliber gun called The Liberator.
19. iPHONE CASES
It’s gonna be a dream come true for 14 year olds with no taste, but you can’t argue it won’t be explosive business for the download stores.
18. HOUSES
One can only imagine how long it’ll be before Ikea start selling Janjaap Ruijssenaars and Enrico Dini’s two-story figure-of-eight house printed from sand and inorganic binder.
17. MEDICINE
According to Lee Cronin from Glasgow University, we are on the brink of being able to upload our genome online and have a medicine not only custom designed for us but then printed out straight from the 3D Printer!
16. MEDICAL MODELS
Legend has it that during the filming of Poltergeist, real skeletons were used because medical science replicas were simply “too expensive”. Well now because of the company Objet, surgeons can plan operations to a tee on hyper-realistic models.
15. CLOCKS
For the steampunks among you, all cogs and clockwork is now achievable due to Syvwlch.
14. HOCKEY PUCK
Not revolutionary but I bet they’re easy to design on your home CAD/CAM software.
13. LEGO
Remember lego? Remember how industrious you were expected to get when faced with a gap for which you had no perfect piece? Now you need only print out the exact right unit for your necessity.
12. BIKES
European Aerospace and Defence Group have developed a light but very strong structure called the Airbike, as strong as aluminium but less than half as heavy.
11. SPARE PARTS
Spare parts for everything! Cars, bikes, computers, the list is endless. If your printer is missing ink cartridges then fear not, the folks at Internet Ink have you covered until you land yourself a 3D Printer.
10. CAMERA LENSES
yukiSUZUKI has managed, with a laser cutter and simple acrylic, to get what is ordinarily quite an expensive bit of kit to come out of 3D Printers.
9. BOTTLE OPENER
Nobody’s ever got one that works. But no longer will you have to try elaborate, fingers shredding measures.
8. TINY RACECAR
For some reason, a tiny racecar only a couple hundred nanometers across was printed at Vienna University of Technology…
7. LAMPS
i.materialise offer customers the method whereby they design their own lamps and are sent them in the post!
6. SKIN
James Yoo of the Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University is convinced it won’t be long until we can replace the skin of burns victims with 3D Printed skin.
5. FLUTES
SheilaMunro, some say at legendary Anchorman Ron Burgundy’s behest, has had a 3D Printer fashion for her a metal Shakuhachi flute. The acoustics are apparently a little different not being made from the traditional bamboo.
4. RECORDS
With laserbeams and 500 terabyte microSDs and all that futuristic scary stuff going hand in hand with 3D Printing, it’s nice to remember than 3D Printing would actually make light work of printing things like Vinyl Records. Amanda Ghassaei has actually written a code than can convert any song or sound in your possession into files that can be 3D Printed straight to wax! The future and the past coalesce!
3. CLOTHES
Designers Francis Bitonti and Michael Schmidt created the first articulated 3D printed dress, which Dita Von Teese modelled. It mirrored Fibonacci’s golden ratio of nature.
2. BIKINIS
Question: What’s better than clothing? Answer: Not much clothing. The N12 bikini, designed by Continuum Fashion, is made from tiny springs and circular plates, and is not only waterproof but fits better the longer it’s worn.
1. FOETUSES (FOETI)
I guarantee these will become ubiquitous as 3D Printing gains popularity and availability. If the parents themselves don’t opt for a scan and print of their soon-to-be-baby, I’m sure people will be going to the hospital when they are of age, finding the scans from when they themselves were in utero and getting a model of themselves at the age of minus 1 month. So they can Instagram it. Watch out of Fasotec, the Japanese company responsible for 3D printed foetuses. I’ve seen their CEO, Matsuhiko Asakawa, give talks on the matter and can say from first-hand experience that she is a pioneer in this field. Fascinating stuff!
Did you find this list helpful? Let me know in the comments below!
Thanks for reading!
-TechFemina Team.