What we think of as 3D printing, says Joseph DeSimone, is really just 2D printing over and over ... slowly. Onstage at TED2015, he unveils a bold new technique -- inspired, yes, by Terminator 2 -- that's 25 to 100 times faster, and creates smooth, strong parts. Could it finally help to fulfill the tremendous promise of 3D printing?

2012 may be the year of 3D printing, when this three-decade-old technology finally becomes accessible and even commonplace. Lisa Harouni gives a useful introduction to this fascinating way of making things -- including intricate objects once impossible to create.

Just like his beloved grandfather, Avi Reichental is a maker of things. The difference is, now he can use 3D printers to make almost anything, out of almost any material. Reichental tours us through the possibilities of 3D printing, for everything from printed candy to highly custom sneakers.

3D printing has grown in sophistication since the late 1970s; TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits is shaping the next development, which he calls 4D printing, where the fourth dimension is time. This emerging technology will allow us to print objects that then reshape themselves or self-assemble over time. Think: a printed cube that folds before your eyes...

Dr. Peter Weinstock is an Intensive Care Unit physician and Director of the Pediatric Simulator Program at Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Peter and his team fuse medicine with state of the art special effects, puppeteering and 3D printing technologies to create lifelike simulations of complex surgeries.

Downloadable, printable clothing may be coming to a closet near you. What started as designer Danit Peleg's fashion school project turned into a collection of 3D-printed designs that have the strength and flexibility for everyday wear. "Fashion is a very physical thing," she says. "I wonder what our world will look like when our clothes will be ...

According to technologist Dan Walker, the future is going to be printed. Well, not exactly, but many things that we today patch together or assemble, will actually come to us as complex printed objects. By loading the standard printers we use today with special inks that conduct electricity, we can print electronic circuits onto the objects, mak...

There are currently hundreds of thousands of people on transplant lists, waiting for critical organs like kidneys, hearts and livers that could save their lives. Unfortunately, there aren't enough donor organs available to fill that demand. What if, instead of waiting, we could create new, customized organs from scratch? Taneka Jones explores bi...

Critical care doctor Peter Weinstock shows how surgical teams are using a blend of Hollywood special effects and 3D printing to create amazingly lifelike reproductions of real patients -- so they can practice risky surgeries ahead of time. Think: "Operate twice, cut once." Glimpse the future of surgery in this forward-thinking talk.

Lisa Harouni is the co-founder of Digital Forming, working in "additive manufacturing" -- or 3D printing.

Designer Philippe Starck handpicked this list of talks about science and design -- ideas that spur imagination and inspire creativity.

Nerd out with these talks that prove you can use all-time classics like Harry Potter and Star Wars to help explain the real world.

At XponentialWorks, Avi Reichental is helping to imagine a future where 3D scanning-and-printing is an everyday act -- where food, clothing and objects are routinely output at home.

These onstage demos offer a mind-blowing peek at where technology is taking us. Flying robots, levitating superconductors, brainwave-reading headsets and more …

Chemist Lee Cronin is working on a 3D printer that, instead of objects, is able to print molecules. An exciting potential long-term application: printing your own medicine using chemical inks.

Enjoy these simply wow talks, which will have you thinking about the possibilities for hours.

We need to change how we prescribe drugs, says physician Daniel Kraft: too often, medications are dosed incorrectly, cause toxic side effects or just don't work. In a talk and concept demo, Kraft shares his vision for a future of personalized medication, unveiling a prototype 3D printer that could design pills that adapt to our individual needs.

From ordering movie tickets to booking a dentist appointment, mobile and web apps have made the tasks of daily life easier. But there are some things that an app can’t do. Standing in line at the pharmacy is one of them. In today’s talk, Lee Cronin asks: “Could we make a really cool universal chemistry set? In essence, could we app chemistry?” ...

We're in the dawn of a new space revolution, says engineer Peter Beck: the revolution of the small. In a talk packed with insights into the state of the space industry, Beck shares his work building rockets capable of delivering small payloads to space rapidly and reliably -- helping us search for extraterrestrial life, learn more about the sola...

Danit Peleg created the first 3D-printed fashion collection printed entirely using home printers.

The CEO of Carbon3D, Joseph DeSimone has made breakthrough contributions to the field of 3D printing.

That crazy, sci-fi future we all imagine? It’s here.

3D printing pioneer Avi Reichental is nostalgic for a time he never quite experienced -- a time of hyper-local, made-to-order, personalized craftsmanship. While the industrial revolution did a lot to advance humanity, says Reichental, it eradicated local manufacturing that people like his grandfather, a cobbler, excelled in. It atrophied socie...

Even the most advanced prosthetic isn't useful if it's hard to wear. This observation guides TED Fellow David Sengeh's work at the Biomechatronics group in the MIT Media Lab.

UPS's Julio Gil thinks that technology is flipping the equation on future cities, and that rural may soon become the new urban.

A persistent sight in David Sengeh's childhood, growing up in Sierra Leone: amputees. Losing a limb was an all-too-common fact in the civil-war-torn region. But the aftermath was almost worse, Sengeh saw, as he watched family members and friends struggle with ill-fitting, uncomfortable prosthetics that hurt too much to wear. Here, the 201...

Inspired by biological design and self-organizing systems, artist Heather Barnett co-creates with physarum polycephalum, a eukaryotic microorganism that lives in cool, moist areas. What can people learn from the semi-intelligent slime mold? Watch this talk to find out.

In his quest to understand the largest dinosaurs to have walked the Earth, Lacovara blends exploration with the latest imaging and modeling techniques from engineering to medicine.

Jay Walker, curator of the Library of Human Imagination, conducts a surprising show-and-tell session highlighting a few of the intriguing artifacts that backdropped the 2008 TED stage.

Economic growth has been slowing for the past 50 years, but relief might come from an unexpected place -- a new form of manufacturing that is neither what you thought it was nor where you thought it was. Industrial systems thinker Olivier Scalabre details how a fourth manufacturing revolution will produce a macroeconomic shift and boost employme...