Upstate NY Becomes a Hub for 3D Printing Technology

After years of slow advances, it looks like 3D printing is finally finding a foothold in upstate NY.

Dentist Ranty Raetz has already integrated 3D printing into his Brighton, NY dental practice. Raetz can take a scan from a 3D scanner that only takes a few minutes to complete, tweak it slightly on a computer, then send the data to a desktop mill that drill blocks of porcelain into crowns.

That means that a patient could come in for a crown, get a quick scan, and leave with the new crown only a couple of hours later. The drill allows everything to be done in one quick visit. Dental 3D printers like Raetz’s can be used to make crowns, implants, bridges and even braces.

Meanwhile, up in Ithaca, NY, a company called Incodema 3D is introducing a new metal additive manufacturing facility on Route 366. The Incodema Group is an Ithaca-based collective that works on prototypes for various different industries. The project is mostly financed locally, but also got a boost from Cornell University’s materials-science department and Start Up NY.

The new facility will construct prototype parts for customers using six $700,000 3D printing machines. Unlike the dental drill machine, the Incodema machines sinter alloys onto parts, adding material instead of taking it away and reducing waste in the process. Metal additive manufacturing has proven invaluable to devices with intricate internal workings, because the material is overlaid instead of taken away.

New uses for 3D printing are springing up elsewhere in the world as well. Students at the University of Wisconsin’s Polymer Engineer Center have discovered a way to 3D print music for blind musicians, and Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet from Spain have used a 3D printer to create a functional automatic knitting machine.

An Italian company called Cresco Lab is working on a way to print and build furniture that uses interlocking pieces like Legos to make furniture more reusable and renewable. Modernist furniture design has always been known to embrace technologically innovative materials and manufacturing methods, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that some furniture makers are branching out.

With all the advances occurring in upstate New York and around the world, it may not be long before 3D printing is a common part of our everyday lives.