3D Printing: The Future Has Arrived

This may be the single most amazing thing I have ever seen...

3D printer made Crescent wrench

(SACRAMENTO, CA) - My son Christian who is 13, was shown a video in school today, that seemingly redefines the future. It is called 3-d printing. Machines now have the ability to literally "print" a replica of any item that can be scanned. Confused yet? It is perfectly OK, this is something that most of us could not have predicted.

Christian King

It isn't exactly brand new. As you will note by the date on the YouTube video, this technology has been around in its usable form for a couple of years. In the video, Mike Massimino, a PhD Mechanical Engineer and Astronaut, calls it, "A science fiction replicator."

My son agrees, and yet for his generation, this may not be so shocking, after all they have grown up using computers and watching technology soar.

"I think that if we could get one of those then we wouldn't need to get anything else because we would have everything we need. I had heard of it before - I heard people talking about it, so it wasn't that much of a surprise, but then our teacher showed us this video and it really is amazing," Christian said.

Star Treck is what it brings to my mind, this is seemingly impossible, yet it is so real that you can take in the whole process with highlights in a four-minute video. This technically would allow a person stranded needing a car part, to receive one by simply printing it out. The ZCorp Printer manufacturers items that are durable and have strength, varying degrees of resins are applied inside the printer when an item needs to be super strong. Complexity, multiple colors, this is all possible with the new 3-d printer.

For people like my son Christian, this will be a part of life. Those of us raised before computers dominated our world, it is absolutely unbelievable. And yes, perhaps sadly, the machine can easily replicate a gun. There seems no going back though, look up ZCorp to learn more.

Tim King: Salem-News.com Editor and Writer

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With almost 25 years of experience on the west coast and worldwide as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor, Tim King is Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. His background includes covering the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, and reporting from the Iraq war in 2008. Tim is a former U.S. Marine who follows stories of Marines and Marine Veterans; he's covered British Royal Marines and in Iraq, Tim embedded with the same unit he served with in the 1980's.

Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing from traditional mainstream news agencies like The Associated Press and Electronic Media Association; he also holds awards from the National Coalition of Motorcyclists, the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs; and was presented with a 'Good Neighbor Award' for his reporting, by the The Red Cross.

Tim King reporting from the war in Iraq

Tim's years as a Human Rights reporter have taken on many dimensions; he has rallied for a long list of cultures and populations and continues to every day, with a strong and direct concentration on the 2009 Genocide of Tamil Hindus and Christians in Sri Lanka. As a result of his long list of reports exposing war crimes against Tamil people, Tim was invited to be the keynote speaker at the FeTNA (Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America) Conference in Baltimore, in July 2012. This is the largest annual gathering of North American Tamils; Tim addressed more than 3000 people and was presented with a traditional Sri Lanka ‘blessed garland’ and a shawl as per the tradition and custom of Tamil Nadu

In a personal capacity, Tim has written 2,026 articles as of March 2012 for Salem-News.com since the new format designed by Matt Lintz was launched in December, 2005. Serving readers with news from all over the globe, Tim's life is literally encircled by the endless news flow published by Salem-News.com, where more than 100 writers contribute stories from 23+ countries and regions.

Tim specializes in writing about political and military developments worldwide; and maintains that the label 'terrorist' is ill placed in many cases; specifically with the LTTE Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, where it was used as an excuse to slaughter people by the tens of thousands; and in Gaza, where a trapped population lives at the mercy of Israel's destructive military war crime grinder. At the center of all of this, Tim pays extremely close attention to the safety and welfare of journalists worldwide.