Printing | featured news

In his State of the Union address last week, along with the standard calls for education reform and energy independence, President Obama gave a shout-out to a growing technology. In a lab in Youngstown, Ohio, the president said, “Workers are mastering the 3-D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost anything.”

The technology behind 3D printing has allowed users to craft musical instruments and prosthetic limbs, and now European scientists are taking a serious look at printing their own moon base.

The promise of home 3-D printing is that you can construct anything you want from the comfort and convenience of your own living room. For a group whose mission is to 3-D print a working pistol from scratch, however, that promise has been revoked.

New technology is giving rise to never-before-possible businesses that are selling products like iPhone cases, doorknobs, perfume bottles and architectural models.

The developers behind Google Chrome OS, the forthcoming cloud-enabled operating system from the internet giant, have explained how they are dealing with a key need for any computer - how well it plays with the printer.