Fascinating Facts about 3D Printing

In May, I had the pleasure of visiting Formlabs in Somerville, MA, to learn more about its new dental printer, the Form 4B, meet some of the staff members and tour the facility. Like many manufacturers in the 3D printing arena, Formlabs serves a variety of industries, including automotive, engineering, aerospace, audio, medical and entertainment.

So I started exploring all the ways in which 3D printing is impacting our lives outside the dental laboratory and discovered some fun facts about the technology and where it’s headed. Here are a few highlights from my research:

• 3D printing pre-dates the internet. The concept of 3D printing was first proposed in 1981 in a research paper by Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute. But Chuck Hull is credited with being the inventor of stereolithography, the first commercial 3D printing technology, for which he received a patent in 1986.


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