Last week, Polish engineers announced the VentilAid project to design inexpensive open-source ventilators using 3-D printing technology: Engineers and designers from Poland-based Urbicum have banded together to launch the VentilAid project, an effort to design an open-source ventilator which can be reproduced using a 3D printer and an assembly of basic, easily accessible parts. The open-source ventilator... 

The selfie mania has reached a whole new level, with a German company, offering people to buy real 3D models of themselves. Fifty-four cameras take a body scan, with the image being sent to a 3D printer. The result: A real life statue of yourself! The 3D-printing craze has already seen designers create real life houses and even guns. So it was probably only a matter of time before we would see a technique... 

A step towards making 3D printing affordable has been made at Michigan Technological University, which presented an open-source 3D metal printer for only $1,500. Detailed plans and software are all open-source and freely available, too. So far affordable 3D printing has been more about using polymers. Yet we all know that the ‘real thing’ must be made of metal. But the price of 3D metal printers...