For many of us, 3D printing feels pretty cutting-edge. My daughter’s school has a 3D printer, which slowly, laboriously builds up layer by layer whatever design it’s fed. People are using it to produce prosthetic limbs, military equipmnent, works of art, My daughter’s class use it to create mini Minions.
But as mind-boggling as it is, the existing technology is already being overtaken: MIT has developed a Rapid Liquid Printing technique that allows objects to be created by injecting material into a gel suspension. The gel supports the object as it hardens so there’s no need to build it up one painstaking layer at a time. It’s oddly beautiful.
See more: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/rapid-liquid-printing-mit-steelcase
Image: Self-Assembly Lab, MIT / Christophe Guberan / Steelcase