3D printing: the desktop drugstore

Printers that create artificial limbs, cheap drugs, and replacement organs could radically change medicine in poorer countries.
September 27, 2012
makerbot

3D printer (credit: MakerBot)

A small Indian village is perhaps the last place you would expect to see the future of manufacturing, but in the Maharashtra region, there are plans to create one of the hottest pieces of technology around, BBC Future reports.

“Learning while doing” is the philosophy behind an educational project in Pabal called the Vigyan Ashram — part of a worldwide project called FabLab, set up by physicist and computer engineer Neil Gershenfeld at MIT.

Through this initiative, local villagers are taught to find ways of solving problems using a kit given to them by MIT. The first project involved making a sensor to check milk quality. Later this year, Amitraj Deshmukh hopes to build something for the ashram that might prove to be a life-saving piece of kit in remote regions like this — a 3D printer. …

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