Brian McLean

So I'd read the instruction manual at night and teach the students how to use it during the day.

I realized then that creativity isn't just about making things, it's also about reinventing how we make them.

So a 3D printer isn't as unusual as it was 20 years ago, but the potential impacts are enormous.

Humans love to work with our hands.

For thousands of years, everything we made was handcrafted and unique.

More recently, we've drifted towards making lots and lots of things.

Now, as we mass produce these objects, each object needed to be the same by design.

Innovation has built assembly lines and tools that can pump out thousands of widgets a day, precise, but all the same.

With a 3D printer, it takes a three-dimensional object and slices it into hundreds, if not thousands, of two-dimensional images, kind of like a CAT scan.

And then those images are built up layer by layer.

A PolyJet printer sprays down liquid resin, and a bright UV light goes and cures that resin.

It's a lot like your inkjet printer at your house.

Imagine printing the letter A on a piece of paper and jetting down the A in the exact same spot.

And between each pass of the printer head, imagine dropping the paper slightly.

Eventually, you're going to end up with an extruded A. Now, just like your inkjet printer at your house, it doesn't take any longer to print a paragraph of Shakespeare or a rudimentary sentence.

The detail of what you're printing doesn't necessarily add more time.

We're so used to the equation.

The more detail, the more complexity to something, the longer it takes to make.

But with a 3D printer, you can utilize the speed of a mass-produced object, but each object can be unique, have their own bespoke design and personality.

and they were about to have a fundamental impact on the way that stop-motion movies are made.