Apple Patent Application Reveals 3-D Printer Plans

An Apple patent application for a color 3-D printer surfaced in December, hinting that the consumer tech giant is looking to develop a commercial 3-D printer.

According to The Motley Fool, Apple submitted the application, titled "Method and Apparatus for Three Dimensional Printing of Colored Objects," in May 2014. The proposed printer would use fused deposition modeling (FDM), which involves a thermoplastic filament heated to its melting point and pushed out layer by layer to create the 3-D object.