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/01_history-of-3d-printing.en.txt
[MUSIC] Hi, in this video my goal is to | |
provide an overview of 3D printing. In particular, we'll examine how 3D | |
printing began, how printers work, the things they make, | |
where these things come from, and the type of materials | |
that they're made from. We"ll also discuss how you can get | |
access to a 3D printer for yourself. You may be surprised to learn that 3D | |
printers have existed for about 30 years. The first 3D printer was created by | |
a fellow named Chuck Hall back in 1986. Chuck came up with the idea for 3D | |
printing while using a ultraviolet light to harden paint that he was | |
putting on a coffee table. Using this experience as inspiration, | |
Chuck went on to invent a process for making 3D printed objects using | |
a focused beam of ultraviolet light to harden thin levels of a resin | |
in a successive manner. He called this process stereo lithography, | |
and it's still a main 3D | |
printing technology today. Chuck also invented a number of other | |
important aspects of the 3D printing process, including the STL file, | |
which is the dominant file format for nearly all 3D printed designs. We'll talk more about STLs | |
a bit later in this course. He also founded one of the world's | |
leading 3D printing companies, a company called 3D Systems. And since the mid-1980s, a number of | |
other 3D printing technologies have been developed and a variety of new | |
firms have entered the marketplace. The basic technology is not new. However, until recently, 3D printers | |
were very large and quite expensive. These printers were typically the size of | |
a refrigerator and cost $100,000 or more. Thus, these machines were mainly used | |
by large firms for creating prototypes. Then something happened a few years ago. The patents for several types of 3D | |
printing technologies began to expire. As a result, a number of new firms, mostly small startups, | |
began to enter the 3D printing market. The most notable new entrant was a company | |
called MakerBot, which was founded in Brooklyn in 2009 and was the first firm | |
to sell an affordable desktop printer. In fact, | |
I have one right here in front of me. This is MakerBot's first machine, called | |
the Cupcake, this was their first model. My son and I built this machine back | |
in 2010, and it still works and really formed the foundation for | |
the democratization of 3D printing. Since 2009, a number of new firms | |
have entered the desktop 3D printer market including Formlabs, | |
Printrbot, and Ultimaker. And you'll be learning a lot more about | |
Ultimaker during the course of this specialization. As a result of these new entrance, the size of a 3D printer has shrunk | |
from a refrigerator to a microwave. And the price has fallen from | |
$100,000 to $2,000 or even less. As a result, the number of 3D | |
printers is quickly expanding, and this tool is rapidly | |
becoming democratized. [MUSIC] [SOUND] |