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The Industrial Revolution overturned thousands of years of cottage industry by mass-producing goods at a lower price. The current advanced manufacturing revolution defies conventional wisdom by delivering smaller production runs at lower cost than larger orders.

The technology at the centre of the revolution is a suite of techniques known collectively as 3-D printing, or additive manufacturing. One such process, selective laser sintering (SLS), employs a laser to “sinter” together molecules of raw material — usually plastic or metal — to create three-dimensional objects.

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“SLS is a micro-welding process in which material cools off quickly to form crystals that have higher strength than you would traditionally create with those materials,” says Tharwat Fouad, president and owner of Anubis 3D in Mississauga, Ont. “Quality control is better as well. If you don’t like the prototype, change the digital model for the next unit. Face-to-face communication between designer and manufacturer makes the process very easy.”