A coalition of academics and tinkerers are working on cheap three-dimensional printers or desktop manufacturing plants. Their long-term goal is to create a machine that is able to fix itself and, ultimately, to replicate.

Future astronauts might end up living in a moon base created largely from lunar dust and regolith, if a giant 3-D printing device can work on the lunar surface.

Neil Gershenfeld of MIT says a revolution is on the horizon for manufacturing -- that existing technologies and tools can bring capabilities once only held by huge factories down to the personal level.

A revolutionary machine that can copy itself and manufacture everyday objects quickly and cheaply could transform industry in the developing world, according to its creator.

A robot for "printing" houses has been developed that takes instructions directly from an architect's computerized drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs. The precision automaton could revolutionize building sites.

A University of Southern California inventor has created a machine that can produce 3-dimensional "printouts" in plastic and even metal more quickly and cheaply than widely-used existing systems.

Engineers at the University of California in Berkeley are developing a new ink-jet printing technology that will allow fully assembled electric and electronic gadgets, like light bulbs and radios, to be printed in one go.