Can do at home: 3D printers

3D printers are now being used to create products ranging from custom-fitted prosthetics to stylish guitar

After the world was taken by storm with the successful firing of a gun made with a 3D printer, the glare was on a technology that has been around in industry for some time but is only now being harnessed for domestic, or desktop, use. The gun, called the Liberator and made by a company called Defence Distributed on an industrial 3D printer, was able to fire a .380 bullet.

Not everything that is made at home with 3D printers will alarm the US Department of Defense as the Liberator did. A 3D printer has tiny syringes that inject and build up molten plastic layer by layer into objects. Most products of these machines will be harmless toys and knick-knacks that will keep hobbyists occupied for hours. Among many things, you can make jewellery, handbags, shoes, architectural models, replicas of iconic sculptures, chocolate figurines, in fact anything that catches your fancy.

Of course, serious work is being carried out with these printers too. Medicine uses 3D printing to create custom-fitted prosthetics - and human tissue. For the latter, the University of Pennsylvania uses a commonly available 3D printer to create layers of cells and gels on a superstructure of sugar compounds. Now, a research foundation is sponsoring the development of edible meat using a similar process. And yes, a company has tried out a monstrous 3D printer to build a house too.

What you need to be a self-serving fabricator is a desktop 3D printer, of which many are now available in US stores and websites. These normally use molten ABS or PLA plastic. The first can be remolten and used repeatedly, while the latter is biodegradable. Like normal printers, 3D printers too specify resolution - in their case it is the fineness of the syringe that creates the plastic layers. A bigger syringe creates a low-resolution, tackier product. A superthin, or hi-res, syringe naturally is preferred for fine work.

Colour too is a possibility now. Earlier printers offered single colours, but now 3D printers can mix colours from cartridges to produce a range of hues. Most domestic printers create objects around 5 inches wide, 5 inches tall and 5 inches deep. But small parts can be put together to result in something bigger, like the normal pistol-sized Liberator gun. Printing an object the size of a normal cigarette packet takes about two hours.

You also need 3D blueprints for the printer to create the layers. The US Defense Department was alarmed when blueprints of the Liberator were downloaded over 100,000 times and asked Defence Distributed to pull them off the Net. Printers usually come with bundled software for 3D projects, but you can also buy software that transforms camera and smartphone photographs into 3D reference files for the printer. This enables you to, say, take a picture of the Gateway of India and change it into a 3D file from which a plastic replica can be built.

Companies like 3D Systems, MakerBot, Buildatron, Cubify.com, Wobbleworks, Botmill, Botobjects and Fab@home offer desktop 3D printers for prices ranging from $1,200 (Rs 65,000) to $5,000 (Rs 274,000).