Similar technology, in the service of Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen's sintering hallucinatory cuirasses of solidified computer math, yields splendid contemporary examples of that Schlemmerian impulse, as do the animatronic garments of designer Hussein Chalayan, mediated wearable installations that they are.

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EOS, a German supplier of laser-sintering 3D printers, says they are already being used to make plastic and metal production parts by carmakers, aerospace firms and consumer-products companies.

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Additive manufacturing can also be achieved by a number of other methods, such as selective laser sintering (SLS).

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Cookson believes the sintering process, "puts the power in terms of the computer-aided design rather than the bench skills".

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Ott immediately thought of an additive manufacturing process called direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) that she had encountered in her work at a major aerospace company.

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Jumping up a bit bigger than one or two machines, Morris Technologies (Cincinnati, Ohio), for example, owns and operates 20 direct metal laser sintering machines, in addition to other rapid prototyping technologies, to manufacture and prototype products for a range of industries including aerospace and medical.

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