Z Corporation
Open-knowledge reference entry
Z Corporation (commonly abbreviated Z Corp.) is a company that makes 3D printing and scanning technologies. It was founded in December 1994 by Marina Hatsopoulos, Walter Bornhorst, James Bredt and Tim Anderson, based on a technology developed at MIT under the direction of Professor Ely Sachs. The Company was sold to Contex Holding in August 2005, and was ultimately acquired by 3D Systems on January 3, 2012.
History and background
In 1993, ZPrinting was developed in Building 20 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a new 3D printing technology. ZPrinting relates to the z axis, and adds depth to the other 2 axes x and y, as does 3D printing. In many other rapid prototyping processes, the part to be printed is built up from many thin cross sections of the 3D model. In ZPrinters, a printing head which is similar to inkjet moves across a bed of powder, selectively depositing a liquid binding material in the shape of the section. The operator is required to spread a fresh layer of powder across the top of the model, and repeat the process. When the model is complete, unbound powder is automatically removed. Parts can be built on a ZPrinter at a rate of approximately 1 vertical inch per hour.
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This entry incorporates text from “Z Corporation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.