Like an office printer that puts 2D digital files on a piece of paper, a 3D printer creates components by depositing thin layers of material one after another using a digital blueprint until the exact component required has been created.
Whether fighting for territory in the printer or digital camera markets, it was always perilously behind well established players.
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Over the years, increasing digital communication (e.g. emails, PDFs, and digital forms) has slowed printer demand.
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Meanwhile, printing the digital images with an ink-jet printer at home brings back fond memories of darkrooms under the stairs with trays of developer, acetic acid and hypo.
Designed for portability, the Z340 combines a 14.0 megapixel digital camera with a ZINK-enabled printer using the ink-free Zero Ink Printing Technology from ZINK Imaging to deliver a 3x4'' print - the same size as the classic Polaroid photos that captured millions of special memories over the past 63 years.
By the early 2000s, digital camera picture quality was getting very good, broadband Internet was coming on strong, and inexpensive photo quality printer meant there was now a high quality end-to-end system for digital photography.
Pentax previewed a Bluetooth version of its mobile printer and Logitech showed a Bluetooth version of its io digital pen.
The Photosmart 8450 Photo Printer uses no fewer than eight different inks for making prints of digital photos and has an Ethernet port for hooking it up to a home network.
The company sells a 3-D printer called the Thing-O-Matic, which carves plastic models from digital, user-created blueprints.
We also discovered some new names, like Nigerian-born portraitist Toyin Odutola, 27, painter and sculptor Lucien Smith, 23, and Artie Vierkant, 26, a digital artist who makes abstract pieces suffused with light and bright colors, using Photoshop, a large-scale printer and pieces of layered plastic.
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