When I first heard about 3D printing, that scene from the movie The Fifth Element popped into my head – the one where they reconstruct an entire human just from an arm by ‘printing’ her back into existence. At the time I remember saying something deep like ‘Wow’ and thinking how phenomenal it would be to be able to print objects (let alone living tissue). Well, 3D printing is now exploding everywhere on a commercial scale. But not until this year was it feasible that you might actually buy one for your own home – for the kids! We may be a long way off printing entire living people (no bad thing) but we are now able to help our kids print their dream toys into 3D reality thanks to the ThingMaker from Mattel.
The ThingMaker is a well priced 3D printer for the home market. It comes with an accompanying app which is used to design toys from a library of parts. Check out my article on the ThingMaker over at Babyology for more details.
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