Objective
Imagine you could design and make prosthetic arms, specialized cars and even live-in castles with a single device. Do not think it is possible? The reality of today is that with the ever approaching wave of technological advancement, these outcomes and much more are breaking into the world to provide potentially final solutions to the ever present, biggest problems, such as world hunger, poverty, disease and lack of industrial and agricultural resources. Enter the 3-D printer, a device, whose closest relative is the ink printer, but instead of feeding it ink to print out text paper documents, it is fed plastic, metal wire materials to produce any physical object in one’s imagination. This paper will discuss the technology of 3-D printing at depth, with an overview of its past, present and future, as well as the positive and negative implications it could have on society. Just as with all technology, if it is used wisely, it has the potential to make a better world than before.