Water Music: Titanium parts are printed directly using the powder method. Powdered titanium is 'squeegeed' across a platform in a thin layer and a laser scans the bottom-most layer, melting and fusing the titanium. The platform lowers a tiny amount and the process starts over, each layer building on top of the last. Eventually, when finished, the part is dug out of the powder and finished with baking and sandblasting. Although other materials can be used in this process as well, Titanium is used due to its low heat conductivity; while this makes it harder to melt it means the 'pixels' of molten material can be small, hence fine detail is possible.
cooldude234: This argument has been used many times in the past whenever a new 'consumer level' process becomes available that challenges the commercial or industrial systems. For example, when user-burnable CDs and later DVDs became available the music and movie industries were not happy due to the possibility of high-quality pirating. This has in fact come to pass, these industries are indeed suffering as predicted.
<rant> 3D printing will be no different, it will be just as illegal to replicate somebody else's registered product as it always has been. It's just that the relative ease with which it can be done will make it much more difficult to police. The recent furore over the printable gun designs on the web was just dumb, it has ALWAYS been illegal to make your own gun (at least here in Australia) no matter how it was done, and frankly it ain't that hard to machine up a simple, single shot .22 weapon with access to a fairly basic lathe and a bit of engineering knowledge. The fact that the 3D printable version is readily available on the web for printing at home doesn't reduce the illegality... print one at your own peril!!
Intellectual product will ALWAYS be protected by law, just because you can replicate a Lego block doesn't make it legal. However, there is a big difference between 3D printing that one missing piece needed to complete your awesome model, and mass producing them for sale and profit. The former, although technically illegal just like recording a song off the radio or ripping a CD, will be largely ignored as it hurts nobody. The latter will, quite rightly, get you in a load of trouble. </rant>
