3-D Printers Are Saving Lives and Serving Pizzas
The emerging technology prints an implant and could keep astronauts well fed.
Biomedical engineers at the University of Michigan have revealed how they used 3-D printing technology to fashion a tiny, custom-made implant that helped save the life of a newborn baby boy.
And the Texas-based engineering firm Systems and Materials Research Corporation has just received a $125,000 grant from NASA to develop a printer that can fabricate pizzas for astronauts to eat in space—not unlike the food "replicator" in Star Trek.
Six-week-old Kaiba Gionfriddo was born with a condition that caused the airways in one of his lungs to collapse regularly; the infant had to be resuscitated on a daily basis. Working with his doctors, researchers used a CT scan of his airways to design a sort of tracheal "splint" that would
