3D printing's not just a game for the young, as 83-year-old inventor Hugh Lyman recently proved. Lyman won a novelty check worth $40,000 from the Maker Education Initiative, Inventables, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, all big proponents of entrepreneurship and 3D printing, for his latest invention. That invention takes little plastic pellets, which are incredibly cheap, and melts them down into long strands of plastic filament, which are not so cheap. The resulting filament can be used in 3D printers like the Makerbot to create objects, and the Lyman Filament Extruder makes those materials cheaper than ever.
Lyman didn't just invent his extruder spontaneously. In May 2012, Inventables CEO Zach Kaplan and the Kauffman Foundation started up a contest to overcome the high cost of plastic filament spools, which can be up to 10 times more expensive than pellets. Their challenge set a high bar: Inventors had to create an open source machine to convert pellets to filament spools, and the parts could cost no more than $250.
Read the full story here: http://www.tested.com/tech/3d-printing/453924-83-year-old-inventor-wins-open-source-competition-make-3d-printing-cheaper/