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How is 3d printing changing our lives?

Effect of 3D printing on human life

By siddhesh thakarePublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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How is 3d printing changing our lives?
Photo by Kadir Celep on Unsplash

Everyone knows printing, right? It is the process of converting a soft copy into a hard copy. The conventional printers that we have at home or at the office are used to print a two-dimensional copy. A 3d printer takes this to another level. It takes a digital file of an object and literally 'prints' that object in it's 3d form. It's just like printing something but adding a third dimension to it. This awesome technology is really useful in practical life. So, let's have a look at how 3d printing is changing our lives.

How it works?

As stated above, a 3d printer prints the actual object from the digital file. But how does it do that? Well, it is in fact a series of multiple 2d prints. How? Look, a 3d printer simply can't print the object without knowing how to print it. So, what it does is it takes the 3d file, which is generated by a 3d software, and slices it into multiple parts. Let's say you are making a cube from a bunch of cards. So, what you do is you arrange the cards on each other and glue them to form the cube. Slicing is exactly the opposite of this process. In slicing, the object is broken down into slices. So, what a 3d printer does is it takes the cube, that we need to print, breaks it into slices, which in the above example, can be compared to cards, and prints the cards one over the another. The material used in 3d printer is usually a polymer, but it can vary based on it's application.

How is 3d printing changing our lives?

3d printing has vast applications in practical life. During this Covid-19 pandemic, companies all around the world are 3d printing masks. On a small scale, 3d printing offers great efficiency as well as good speed. During the start of Covid-19, the demand for masks had increased very much. At that time, 3d printing helped a lot to relieve the pressure on mask-producing companies.

Another great example is the idea of 3d printing habitats on Mars. See, transporting material from Earth to Mars to build habitats can be quite a costly task. So, in the competition held by NASA in 2019, AI Spacefactory bagged the first award by 3d printing a habitat called Marsha, which can be sturdy and comfortable to live on Mars. They used a polymer compound that had a composition similar to the soil on Mars, so there is no need of transporting raw materials from Earth. This is the advantage of 3d printing technology. The flexibility in terms of raw material is one of the prime advantages of this technology. This habitat can also be used on Earth. So, 3d printers may even print our homes in the near future.

Apart from this, 3d printing is widely used to make plastic parts. It is much efficient and quick rather than the conventional method of melting and reshaping. Suppose if you want to produce a tool, let's say tweezers, you can 3d print a wide tweezer and then slice it into smaller sections to produce normal-sized tweezers. 3D printing can also be used to make instruments used for surgery in endoscopy. It can ease the manufacturing process for smaller useful items.

Bottom note

3d printing is a really cool technology with multiple applications, be it printing tools or habitats. It has the potential of changing the way stuff is produced. And with upcoming advances, this technology may become more powerful and helpful.

Thank you for reading my post. Do share if you like it.

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About the Creator

siddhesh thakare

I am Siddhesh, a technology blogger. I am interested in gathering and sharing knowledge about different fields in technology. Check out my blog at: <a href="https://www.techxplained.software">TechXplained</a>

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