3D printers, even though they have been around for a long time, are still not the most common pieces of technology. Once looked upon as expensive, bulky machines only reserved for factories and industries, they’ve now become affordable and viable tools for engineers, hobbyists, schools, etc.

Questions to Ask

There are a variety of options in today’s market if one is looking for a 3D printer. Some questions to ask yourself before you look for a printer that fits your needs are –

What do you want to print? What size are the objects that need to be printed? What are your objects made of? How high a resolution would you need? Do you want to print in multiple colors? What surface will you print on? What software would you need for your printer?

Once these questions have been answered, there is a clear picture of what kind of 3D printer will fulfill your needs. Take a peak at these top printers from 2022 and decide for yourself.

Original Prusa i3 MK3S Plus

This printer is an incremental upgrade from its award winning predecessor. With consistently high quality prints, no misprints while testing, easy-to-use among its various other pros, this is one of the top candidates of printers to choose from, especially for hobbyists and classrooms.

Dremel Digilab 3D45 3D Printer

The best printer for product designers, engineers, and classrooms, this 3D printer is feature-packed and comes loaded with user-friendly yet powerful software. It also prints via USB, ethernet, wifi and is a relatively quiet design as opposed to its competitors.

Original Prusa Mini

Two from the same company on the list! The original Prusa Mini is the budget printer, perfect for newbies. It contains user-friendly software, has great support resources, and is a machine of the best quality. This printer is sold as a kit, but is fairly easy to assemble. One of the best low-cost printers around.

A team of researchers has made a stunning discovery in underground waters in southern India. They found living members of a family of eel-like fish, which is named dragon snakeheads. These primitive fish are considered a “living fossil” because they are believed to have diverged from their relatives some hundred million years ago.

The Dragon Snakehead Joins a New Family of Fish

In taxonomy, the family is the category placed above genus and species, and discovering a new one is not very common. Usually, taxonomic families are large and diverse, but the new fish family includes only two species. The first one is named the Gollum snakehead, after the famous Lord of the Rings character, and the dragon snakehead is now the second member of this family.

The study leader Ralf Britz shared that he believes this might be the most exciting discovery in the fish world for the last decade. These long-bodied fish usually dwell in aquifers of porous rock, which explains why they are rarely seen. They would only come to the surface after heavy-rain floods.

The fish live in the Western Ghats of southern India, which is known as a biodiversity hot spot. In the aquifers there, scientists have discovered ten new species of subterranean fish. However, the water there is used for around six million wells, and this lowers the water table, putting some of the obscure species that call it home in peril.

Enigmatic Fish Species

Back in 2018, researcher and study co-author Rajeev Raghavan saw a photo of an odd fish that was retrieved from a backyard well. He and Britz had no idea what the species, genus, and family of the fish were and described it as a new species and genus – Aenigmachanna Gollum or the Gollum snakehead. During a similar and more recent discovery, Britz and his colleagues thought they found the same fish in another well. After performing further research on their genetics and anatomy, they found they belong in a whole new family.

The new dragon snakeheads exhibit a series of primitive characteristics, and these unique traits include fewer vertebrae with ribs, a shortened swim bladder, and a lack of a suprabranchial organ. These features show that the dragon snakeheads are not as specialized as regular snakeheads and can really be called “living fossils.” Genetic analysis showed that dragon snakeheads diverged from their nearest relatives over 120 million years ago when Africa and India were still the same landmass.