BUT WE WERE ASSURED IT WOULD ONLY EVER MAKE SHOWER RINGS!

A new innovation by Carbon3D, unveiled Monday at the TED2015 conference, could finally move 3D printing out of the hobby shop and onto every factory floor.

Imagine you're in an emergency room with a blood vessel blockage. To save your life, a surgeon will first insert a tube, and carefully guide it through the clog. Then she might insert a stent, a piece metal or fabric mesh, to keep the vessel open. But that piece of hardware isn't made to fit your body. Carbon3D can make one that does.

"The idea that you could produce a biodegradable stent that takes in your own anatomy and the tributaries of your blood vessels while you're on the catheter table in an emergency room -- that's an amazing new future that is now in reach," said Joseph DeSimone, CEO and co-founder of Carbon3D and a chemistry professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.

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