Dave Brancazio worked on the world’s first 3D printer! That statement is both true and misleading. He joined Professor Emanuel Sachs’ team right around the time Sachs coined the phrase “Three Dimensional Printing” to describe the new process he’d invented, in which arbitrarily-shaped objects could be constructed, layer-by-layer, by selectively binding powder particles together using ink-jet printing. It wasn’t the only “Solid Freeform Fabrication” technology at the time- but it was the most versatile, and the only process capable of making ceramic and metal parts. Brancazio led the design and development of machines that ‘printed’ most of the parts shown here. Over time, the term “3-D Printing” was adopted by others as a catch-all phrase for computerized layer-based manufacturing processes (including MIT’s, and those of our competitors at the time!).