A live demo of 3-D printer at work shows how material is extruded like a glue gun with the product built layer upon layer similar to way roads are paved.

July 9, 2013

1 Min Read
3-D Printing Works Layer by Layer Kind of Like the Way Roads are Paved (video)

3-D printing holds great promise for the medical field, not only in terms of bringing new technology to solve unmet clinical needs for patients, but also in speeding up the R&D and prototyping processes for device firms.

At the MD&M Conference & Exposition in Philadelphia in mid June, various vendors were showcasing the capabilities of 3-D printing. An engineer from one Minnesota company - Stratasys, which has several different 3-D printers on the market - talked about how doctors are using it as a communication tool and to do dry runs of actual procedures.

Another company - Cimquest, a reseller of Stratasys' printers - was doing a continuous demo of a small 3D printer that is able to make a pill bottle in roughly 25 min. The booth drew quite a bit of attention and so I decided to stop by and talk with Cimquest's president and CEO Rob Hassold. Hassold explained the way the printer works, noting that Stratasys printers range from $10,000 to roughly a "couple of hundred thousand dollars."

-- By Arundhati Parmar, Senior Editor, MD+DI

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