How An MIT Group Invented 3D Printing

From the areospace industry to elementary school classrooms, 3-D printing is everywhere. Greater Boston is fast becoming the hub for the newest iterations of the technology.

It's fitting that the area is at the bleeding edge because it also began here. As Dr. Emanuel Sachs, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT says, "I think our MIT effort was the first effort in Boston. Now there are a bunch of other technologies within an hour's drive so this is a real hotbed for digitally driven manufacturing, and that's not widely appreciated."

Dr. Sachs would know — he invented the concept of 3-D printing and coined the term in the late 1980s.

Dr. Emanuel Sachs, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and co-inventor of 3-D printing.