Print A Plane

From NewScientistTech.com, comes an article about Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks project: a plane made from printed parts. While making an entire plane using this technology is new, the technology itself is not.

I was lucky enough to see a demonstration of this kind of tech way back in 2000 at the Specialty Equipment Manufacturer Association's (SEMA) show in Las Vegas with a company called Zcorp who had a printer there. They were there printing out parts using one of these printers, which is essentially an inkjet printer that instead of dispensing ink, dispenses a layer of material onto a platform that then lowers microscopically to allow the next layer to be built up until eventually you would get something like:



(A model of a Ford engine block with colored material used to illustrate stress or heat points)

At the time these models would then be made permanent with a resin bath. I am assuming that the Skunk Work one is using more advanced technology.