3D Printers: A new challenge for mathematical modeling

This short communication aims at creating a bridge between 3D printing and advanced mathematical methods. We review some features of 3D printing in order to show how 3D printers' software can benefit from mathematical methods. To prove the feasibility of one possible PDE-based approach, we use a classical model for the Shape-from-Shading problem to create a 3D object starting from a single 2D photograph, and we 3D-print it!