Going 3-D on Mulberry Street

In recent years, 3-D printing has changed professional designing: Prototypes can be “printed” in plastic or other materials before going into mass production. Now, 3-D printing could be headed for the home.

MakerBot operates a storefront on Mulberry Street, where it sells 3-D printers designed for the professional and personal markets.

The company’s efforts follow the work of Hid Lipson, a robotics researcher at Cornell University, who has experimented with 3-D printers in 1999. He’s already “printed” such diverse items as batteries and cookies. His goal: to print a robot.