Everyone wants to be a designer. That’s the value proposition of JuJups.com, a new online service claiming it will allow consumers to design their own personalized and customized 3D content. 3D printing, as the underlying technology is called, is a form of rapid prototyping that builds up three-dimensional objects by “printing” successive layers of materials (polymer, cells, sugar, etc.) on top of each other.
As a recent Wired story points out, 3D-printing technology has been around for a while, mostly used by professional design firms and design-intensive businesses such as automakers, handset makers, and aerospace companies. Recent advancements have enabled the technology to “print out” fully functional finished products, leading to a remarkable boom in equipment sales: according to market research firm Wohlers Associates, 8,000 machines, or 36 percent of the industry’s two-decade worldwide sales total of 22,000, have been sold in the past two years alone.
Multi-material 3D printers, capable of producing 3D parts and assemblies made from different materials in a single build, are hitting the market, and companies like Freedom of Creation (FOC) are paving the way for making rapid manufacturing technologies accessible for consumers.
Source: news.cnet.com