The process turns digital models on computer screens into three-dimensional solid objects using plastics and other materials.
They have been embedded in materials like plastics to increase their toughness and provide electrical conductivity for components that are electrostatically painted.
Is all the hype realistic, especially since the ability to print objects made of plastics and various other materials has been around for about a decade?
The materials to make plastics have been particularly high in recent months due to a general rise in the cost of commodities.
Keynesians always overestimated the Soviet Union's GDP because their tools couldn't distinguish the value of overly costly steel from cheaper, lighter materials such as plastics--Soviet-made refrigerators weighed almost twice as much as their U.S. counterparts.
Plastics and composites are already the materials of choice for interior panels.
And we've removed plastics wherever possible, in favor of materials that are more highly recyclable, more durable, more efficient and longer lasting.
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But its biggest and most controversial application is as a hardener for making polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins the materials of choice for manufacturing clear, shatter-proof bottles, spectacles, medical devices and CDs as well as dental coatings and linings for food cans.
The bottom line is that the researchers can produce high-precision materials using the same methods that plastics are produced.
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He also sees a bright future for composite plastics made from a mixture of feathers and other materials.
Shapeways prints more than 10, 000 unique products every month from materials that range from stainless steel to glass, plastics and sandstone.
Clorox, which uses plastics for bleach containers and its Glad trash bags, plans to offset higher materials costs by hiking prices in January on 40% of products.
In 1989 Dow's materials-engineering center beat out GE for the chance to build, using plastics, a riding lawn mower for John Deere.
There are a lot of materials in our environment, especially things - chemicals, that leach out of plastics - that we now know, become part of our food, and many of them have hormone effects.
In 1989 Dow's materials-engineering center beat out General Electric for the chance to build, using plastics, a riding lawn mower for John Deere.
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