CALLLICOON, NY – Nine tweens stand crowded around a gadget that looks like something out of a 1950s sci-fi movie. Smaller than a breadbox and quiet as a mouse, the three-dimensional (3D) printer is constructing a tiny plastic dragon, perfect for this July 21 Teen Tech Time class at the Delaware Free Branch of the Western Sullivan Public Library.

“Could we build our own Lego kit?” asked one of the kids.

“Yes, you could,” said instructor Bill Bodell, Columbia University architecture student and 3D printing expert.

In fact, the type of products 3D printing can create is virtually limitless, a fully-articulated prosthetic hand being one well-publicized recent example. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

When Bodell said 3D printing is already being used in construction, fashion, medicine and dentistry, one parent among the handful of adults in attendance showed everyone the 3D-printed tooth in his mouth. Only a dentist would know that it wasn’t Mother Nature’s own doing.

Mother Nature probably should have patented her products, because 3D bioprinting is about to reproduce most of them. Using bio-ink, made up of human cells and materials compatible with the human body, bioprinting has already been used to create fully functioning blood vessels (https://www.llnl.gov/news/researchers-3d-print-living-blood-vessels). Working human organs are next (www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/soon-doctor-print-human-organ-on-demand-180954951/?no-ist). After that, brains?

Bodell’s youngest students are peppering him with questions asked in techno-jargon and informing him in similar language of up-to-the-minute advances in the art and science of 3D printing. The adults are listening in open-mouthed awe as Bodell explains, in terms simple enough for them to understand, how 3D printing works.

It works much like conventional computer printing, except that it puts down successive layers of ink until it has produced a three-dimensional object. Accomplishing this requires sophisticated printing hardware and multiple software programs (most available free of charge) used in conjunction with each other. Bodell outlines the process, explaining that 3D technology is based on computer-assisted design (CAD), which has been around since the dawn of the computer age in the 1950s and 1960s.

Anyone who has used basic drawing functions in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint has nodding familiarity with CAD operations. Linking geometric shapes together is step one in the design process. Then, it may be necessary to make the object’s interior hollow. For instance, any building would need to be hollow, so a hole is placed inside the object. It’s really less complicated than it sounds. In fact, before the two-hour class ended, everyone had designed custom cell-phone covers with name inscriptions.

In today’s technology, printing takes longer than designing, and cost is determined by length of time required to print. The charge for use of this particular printer is $1 per hour; it took between two and three hours to print the tiny plastic dragon. However, the software tells users how long a print job will take, so cost can be accurately gauged in advance of printing.

With almost no aspect of human life untouched by this technology that produces no waste in the manufacture of natural, synthetic and biological products, one thing is clear: this is the dawn of a new era.