While the technology is over 25 years old, over just the past 5-10 years or so, 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has advanced to become one of the most justifiably oh-my-god/can’t-believe-it’s-real/gee-whiz technologies in the human arsenal – there isn’t a week that goes by without news of some paradigm-matically disruptive feat of rapid prototyping, or a new recipe for an open-source 3D printable robot, or 3D printable 3D printers, or very recently, the printing of biological matter from edible meat to implantable/attachable body parts – even near-functional mammalian organs. Star Trek replicators they aren’t, but “Computer, make me an apple pie and a new shirt and an extra finger” doesn’t seem quite as far away as it did just a few short years ago.
The rest of the story at akihabaranews.com.