While not all TED videos are made equal, some of them are fascinating and I think this one is a great introduction into 3d printing and its potential to change the manufacturing process, the way we tackle medical problems and how it could lower our carbon footprint. If my mind hadn’t already been blown by 3d printing, it would have been now.

Filmed in November 2011, Lisa Hauroni, the co-founder of Digital Forming, explains that while 3d printing (or additive manufacturing) has been around for 30 years, it is only recently that it has become efficient and relatively cheap enough to even sit on your desktop. It works when a 3d printer takes CAD data, slices the design into two-dimensional layers and prints the design layer by layer. This does not just let us make and copy things we have made otherwise but also let’s us produce things once difficult or impossible otherwise.