3D Printing

Madeline Gannon is a researcher and teacher at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture and a PhD candidate in Computational Design. But that's not all. She is on a mission to open up the infinite design possibilities of 3D printing to the world. "Currently, you have to have a lot of technical background in order to participate in creating things for 3D printers," Gannon says. "There is still a huge knowledge barrier for how we create digital models." As the technology has advanced, prices have plummeted, and now anyone can buy a 3D printer for a few hundred dollars," Gannon notes. However, not just anyone can create original designs for 3D-printed artefacts. To put true creative power into the hands of any ordinary 3D printer owner, Gannon has developed an innovative new system called "Tactum." Tactum is a new type of software that lets users create their own unique designs for 3D printers by simply touching a projected image. Using their innate hand gestures, someone using Tactum can poke, rub, and otherwise manipulate the projected image that will become their 3D-printed object, and see it instantly change shape in response.