Mark Ganter is a professor of mechanical engineering at UW. He loves 3D printing. He has machine #25 from ZCorp and has been doing this longer than these students have been alive. He is the co-director of the open3dp (Open 3D Printing) organization. And he thinks that 3D printing will cross academic boundaries, as we recently reported.

In the video below, Professor Ganter talks about a home brew printing medium for 3D printing.

3D Printing is mostly known as a method for additive manufacturing of plastic polymer, used for prototyping, creating small tools, and designing works of art. Consumer-ready printers, like MakerBot, enable anyone to be their own mini manufacturing plant – of plastic goods. This is about to change.

Innovative as well as strange raw materials are starting to emerge in the 3D printing landscape.

Chocolate. The ChocoEdge printer lets you “melt some chocolate, fill a syringe that is stored in the printer, and get creative printing your chocolate.” Available at retail for $3940.

Sandstone. D-Shape has a 3D stereolithic printer that can create large-scale structures out of sandstone. ”It prints the structures using artificial sandstone which is sand or mineral dust glued together by an inorganic binder.” More at Fast Company.

Iced Tea and Bone? Two entries from Open3DP that make the strange category are iced tea and bone. Both examples have only been shown in the lab and are not commercial yet.

Candy. CandyFab4000 from Evil Mad Scientist. “Our three dimensional fabricator is now fully operational and we have used it to print several large, low-resolution, objects out of pure sugar.”

Organs. Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is experimenting with 3D printed organs. While strange, this has huge commercial potential.

Via SolidSmack.