In this stunning video, Theoretical Physicist David Kaplan, of John Hopkins University, travels to Z Corporation to see for his own eyes the fantastical claims of the company to be able to “copy” fully functioning, three dimensional objects.

At Z Corp he meets with Vice President of Product Management Jeff Titlow, who begins the meeting by giving Dr. Kaplan a quick tour of some of the output from the incredible, commercial 3D printers they make. These machines “print” objects in three dimensions; the final product does not need to be a static object, but can be a complex structure with moving parts. And it comes out of the 3D printer in one piece, fully assembled. And get a load of the colors.

Dr. Kaplan brings along something he’s like to see replicated — a large adjustable wrench. We won’t give the process away; just watch the video, it will blow your mind.

Update on 9/17/2011:

I was searching the web for something on 3D Printing today and noticed a search result entry for “3D Wrench” on Snopes.com. The reason that there is a Snopes page on this is not only because the concept is too incredulous for some, but some people noticed some discrepancies between the scanned wrench and the printed wrench.

In this video, David Kaplan from the original video, explains the issues, primarily caused by the poor editing of National Geographic: