3D Printer

Hello. I’m a 3D Printer, and I have a magical job. My job is to build things that people dream up in their minds. How do I do it. I take a special kind of string, almost like spaghetti, and I build things layer by tiny layer. It’s like I’m stacking invisible pancakes one on top of the other until a toy car or a little castle appears right before your eyes. Before I came along, making new things was very hard and took a long, long time. If someone wanted to make just one small part for a machine, they had to use big, noisy tools and it could take days. It was hard to turn a drawing into something you could actually hold. I knew I could make that much faster and a lot more fun.

My story began with a very clever man named Chuck Hull. He was my inventor. He was working in his lab with a special kind of liquid that had a secret power. Whenever a special ultraviolet light shone on it, the liquid would turn hard as a rock. One day, he had a wonderful, bright idea. He thought, “What if I could use the light to draw a shape on top of the liquid to make it hard. Then, I could add another thin layer of liquid on top and draw another shape with the light.”. He realized he could keep doing that, layer by layer, to build something real from the bottom up. He was so excited about his idea that on August 8th, 1984, he wrote it all down. Then he built me, his very first printer. And guess what the first thing I ever made was. It was a tiny, perfect black teacup. I was so proud. It was small, but it was the start of something big.

Now, I get to help people do all sorts of amazing things. I help doctors by building models of human hearts so they can practice for big operations and help people get better. I help engineers build special parts for rockets that fly all the way into space and for cars that drive super fast. But my favorite thing to do is help kids just like you. You can draw something on a computer, and I can bring it to life. We can make your very own toys, a cool keychain for your backpack, or a special gift for your family. I help turn your imagination into something real that you can hold in your hands. I started by making just one tiny teacup, and now I help build a whole new world of ideas. I can't wait to see what amazing things you will dream up for me to build next.