3D Printing Museum

Many items to do with 3D Printing, in the news today, are about processes, materials and applications that are produced on new machines now, yet 3 decades ago some of the lucky few were quietly making history in many and varied application areas that some companies kept quiet to gain competitive advantage. We wish to pay tribute to those pioneers in the 3D Printing museum. Several corporations are helping to display their applications that were ground breaking at that time and even now all those years later can teach others what is possible.
Other applications that show recent developments of materials and machines are also included as well as developments in 3D CAD and Digital Manufacturing that includes Formative, Additive and Subtractive Technologies (FAST) these are all part of the global Time Compression Technology movement.

By 1999 other companies than those mentioned in above menu selection were known to own an SLA but did not publicly offer bureau services. They were:
BAe (Lostock & Warton) DRA Malvern, Ford Brentwood, Lever, Rolls Royce, Williams, Jordan, Kinnear Duffort, MCP, Cardiff Uni, Roush, Ogle, Portsmouth Uni.

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William Latham was a pioneer of 3D artistry and whilst with IBM presented his 3D creations around the world in public exhibitions. It was in Computer Images magazine (January/February 1988) that he is reported to be looking into having some of his designs produced in holograms, animations of metamorphosing shapes or even having 'hard copy' pyhsical objects using NC milling or the StereoLithography process.
It was in February 1990 that Lasercad contacted William Latham and offered to produce a scaled down version of a model but it was not until 1991 that Formation Engineering Services Ltd actually produced the world first 3D sculptured SLA artwork for William Latham and later (1992) built 'The Thing' character that he was working on but was called 'The Beasty' in the STL file name .

3D computer graphics using polygons were soon popularized by YU Suzuki's Sega AM2 games Virtua Racing (1992) and Virtua Fighter (1993), both running on the Sega Model 1.

Early home computers on show are ZX Spectrum, Commadore Amiga 1500, Amiga CD32, Atari 2600 & 7800

More details of 3D CAD on these machine soon.

3D CAD software company Matra Datavision handed out to each participant of the World Euclid User Group, Paris conference. (1993 or 4 - TBC) a 3D puzzle game.

Any one had a go with this 3D game based learning CD back in 1999 from Think3?

Please get in touch with the museum Curator.