THE PRINTER IS NO LONGER RELEGATED TO PRINTING TEXT ON PAPER BUT TODAY AND THE FUTURE THE 3-D PRINTER EXPANDS FROM MAKING PLASTICS MODELS, CREATING LIVE ORGAN TISSUES, FOOD PROCESSING TO MAKING DOUGH, AND TO EVENTUAL CONTRUCTION OF MATERIALS ON THE MOON

The materials were applied layer by layer based on the blueprint.

Living organ to be 'printed'

So also with the first living organ to be soon created using a 3D-bioprinter.

Russian scientists say the printer will create a transplant-ready thyroid first and follow it up with a functional printed kidney scheduled for 2018.

The bioprinter will be using stem cells as an 'ink' to make the thyroid gland.

Stem cells obtained from fat tissues will be transformed into spheroids or an aggregation of cells, which will be layered as per the design onto hydrogel. The gel then dissolves, and the printed organ matures in a special bio reactor.

More dangerously is how 3D printing allows one to make a gun at home. US firm Defense Distributed has developed a milling machine which allows buyers to print and assemble a steel AR-15 rifle right at home. 

The 3D printers are not really new and have been used for some time now to create prototypes in manufacturing and research. It helps save money and time in actual prototyping of the product at the factory.

Companies have also been using 3D printers for short run custom manufacturing.

Nothing new

Largely meant for design visualisation, metal casting, geospatial mapping, palaeontology, forensic pathology, 3D printing has only now begun to catch popular imagination, thanks to cakes and cookies and lawn mowers made by a printer.

Computer-aided tissue engineering has been making organs and body parts using inkjet techniques, mostly for research.

Basically, 3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional objects from a digital file.

The object is created by laying down thin successive layers of material until the entire object is created using inbuilt hardware.

The software slices the final model into hundreds or thousands of horizontal layers. When uploaded in the 3D printer, the printer creates the object layer by layer.

One of the commonly used technology, selective laser sintering (SLS) uses a high power laser to fuse small particles of plastic, metal, ceramic or glass powders into a mass that has the desired three dimensional shape.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-3d-printing-has-advanced-product-prototyping-making-human-organs-1482994