At Normal, consumers can use a mobile app to photograph their ear, transmit the shots to the New York startup’s 3D printing facility and then receive customized earphones within 48 hours.
The process marries on Sunday’s click-and-go speed with a made-to-order ethos that recalls the days of visiting the tailor or the cobbler.
The company’s motto: ‘Normal: one size fits none.’
After three decades in relative obscurity, 3D printing, which employs lasers to ‘print’ objects from metals or plastics according to a digital design, has suddenly become one of the hottest areas of technology.
Computer giant Hewlett-Packard is plunging into the business, recently announcing it would put its own ultra-fast 3D printer on the market by 2016, ‘empowering people to create, interact and inspire like never before’.
General Electric chief executive Jeff Immelt has said 3D printing can help make manufacturing ‘sexy again’, and President Barack Obama has praised it for having ‘the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything’.
‘It’s a little bit confusing and the excitement is very big,’ said David Reis, chief executive at Israeli-US 3D printer manufacturer Stratasys.‘There’s a lot of venture capital money coming into the market.’But while enthusiasm for the technology is widespread, some companies see it as more of a long-term prospect than a current game changer.
Boeing does not expect to make major metal parts with 3D printing for at least 20 years, though company officials say that time frame could be accelerated.
3D printing ‘is definitely on the radar screen,’ said Dave Dietrich, technical leader for additive metals at the aerospace giant.
‘The systems need to become larger, more repeatable, that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘We want to make sure we have an appropriate amount of testing and confidence in that process’.
3D printing has its roots in the 1980s when inventor Chuck Hull began experimenting with liquid
plastics that would harden when they were exposed to ultraviolet light.Hull ultimately discovered that thousands of these plastic sheets could be layered, or ‘printed,’ on top of each other and shaped into a three-dimensional object.