One night in the 1980s, Charles Hull invented the world’s first 3D Printer using the method of Stereolithography (SLA). Hull was, however, aware that it would take around 30 years before such a technology is widely adopted. Well, he was absolutely right! Despite being patented in 1986, 3D printing was only popularised in the 2010s.
3D Printing is a computerised process of creating a three-dimensional object by forming successive layers of materials. Numerous manuals on operating 3D printers are circulating on the internet, and the process is being simplified over time as Microsoft and Google have started enabling 3D scanning through their hardware. Smartphone companies are also developing technologies to integrate 3D scanners in future versions of their products. As of now, the process generally consists of feeding the sliced version of a 3D model (divided into thousands of layers using software) into a 3D Printer via a USB flash drive or Wifi. The printer then analyses every slice as a 2D image before replicating the 3D object.
