2.  3D printers are not your average printer  They bear little resemblance to today's document or photo printers,  They can build objects from scratch—or rather, from a CAD or 3D scanner file— out of a variety of materials.

3.  A typical 3D printer is very much like an inkjet printer operated from a computer  It builds up a 3D model one layer at a time, from the bottom upward, by repeatedly printing over the same area.  The printer creates a model over a period of hours by turning a 3D CAD drawing into lots of two-dimensional, cross-sectional layers  Most 3D printers essentially works by extruding molten thermoplastics (mostly ABS) through a tiny nozzle that it moves around precisely under computer control.  Is not necessarily need to print in 3D with plastic: in theory, you can print objects using any molten material that hardens and sets reasonably quickly  ABS has a whiteish-yellow color in its raw form, but pigments can be added to make it vir tually any color

4.  Product Cost Reduction  Marketing Tools  Product Mockups  Competitive Advantage  Medicine/Science

5.  A new technique has been created that prints out artificial blood cells  Designed by scientists at Germans' Fraunhofer Institute  The technique involves printing artificial biological molecules with a 3-D inkjet printer, and then zapping the those molecules with a laser that forms the material into the shape of blood vessels. Like real blood vessels, the artificial vessels have two layers and can form complex branching structures.

7.  //www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,239472 0,00.asp#fbid=MbX69OW2MGa  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology- 14030720  http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-3d- printers-work.html  http://www.shapeways.com/  http://www.livescience.com/16048- artificial-blood-cells-3d-printing- fraunhofer.html