5 Of The Coolest 3D Printing Prototypes In 2014

Three-dimensional printers have come a long way in the past few years, providing inventors and entrepreneurs with an endless stream of possibilities. From

and

to

and

, 3D printers can do almost anything. To celebrate the future of this promising industry, Benzinga has compiled a list of some of the coolest 3D printing concepts and prototypes that have been built in 2014.

has an interesting idea: it wants to print customizable phones for the vision impaired. The company's

can have as many as four custom-printed Braille buttons, each of which will correspond to a different number. This will make it easy for the user to quickly dial numbers that they call frequently.

Compact discs are great, but some people

vinyl. They happily pay more (and obtain a working record player) to keep the old format alive. Singer/songwriter Bobbie Gordon is one such fan. But she's not merely a supporter of the format -- she may prove to be its biggest innovator.

Gordon teamed up with

to release an original song on a 3D printed LP album. The results are

, but this could be an interesting step forward for the future of music.

Cadavers might be useful to med school students who want to learn more about the human body, but they are not easy to retain and store. Researchers at Monash University's Centre for Human Anatomy Education think they have come up with a cool alternative: 3D printed anatomy kits. The school claims that its kits can be printed

. Best of all, they don't smell like real cadavers and they won't deteriorate.

Stop-motion movies are gorgeous, but they take years to produce. No one knows this better than

, the king of short, stop-motion film production. Laika, the studio behind

and

, is quickly becoming the king of full-length stop-motion features. Its next film,

, used 3D printers to build

of individual molds (including multiple expressions of a character's face). The results are so good that viewers won't even be able to tell the difference between a handmade character and one that was enhanced with 3D printer parts.

is far from your average 3D printing company. The new startup uses 3D printers to build custom earphone parts that accurately fit the shape of the buyer's ear.

Disclosure: