How a Deadly Explosive, When 3D Printed, Could Be Life-Saving
People who are digging up unexploded ordinances sometimes don't know how to handle them. Could these replicas change that?
Things made with 3D-printers tend to fall into two broad categories: one is silly bordering on useless -- incredibly detailed chess pieces, a mug that looks surprised, a mask that looks like Tom Hanks, what have you.
The other is live-saving bordering on from the future, like the idea that we might soon have 3D-printed organs.
Here's one for the second category: 3D-printed replicas of landmines, which British design engineer Chris Natt hopes can help train landmine clearers to better unearth and disable the explosives.
Natt has made four precise plastic models of the most common types of munitions that kill and maim an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people a yearacross more than 80 different countries. (A 3D printer can create replicas of solid objects by squeezing molten material -- usually plastic -- in layers through a tip, kind of like cupcake frosting.)'