As potentially game-changing as the steam engine or telegraph were in their day, 3-D printing could herald a new industrial revolution, experts say. For the uninitiated, the prospect of printers turning out any object you want at the click of a button may seem like the stuff of science fiction.
But 3-D printing is already here, is developing fast, and looks set to leap from the labs and niche industries onto the wider market."There are still limits imposed by the technology available today," said Olivier Olmo, operational director of Switzerland's EPFL research institution.
"But I'm certain that within 10 or 20 years, we'll have a kind of revolution in terms of the technology being available to everyone," he said. The concept's roots lie in fields ranging from standard two-dimensional printing to machine-tooling.
For more, read "3-D Printing Could Herald New Industrial Revolution"