In this paper, the design, fabrication and testing of a 3D printed dry electrode is proposed. 3D printing represents an authentic breakthrough for the development and mass production of dry medical electrodes. In fact, it allows a fast and low cost production of high precision tridimensional shapes. This technique is reliable and efficient, and facilitates controllability over the whole process. Initially, 3D capable design software is used to draw the electrode model. The resulting file is simply loaded in a 3D printer whose resolution is 42 mu m on x- and y-axes, and 16 mu m on z-axis. The electrode is made by an insulating acrylic-based photopolymer. It consists of 180 conical needles (distance = 250 mu m) on a truncated conical base. The metallization process undergoes two steps: sputtering of titanium as adhesion promotion layer and evaporation of gold to lower the impedance and prevent oxidation of the electrode. After electrode characterization, experimental results are presented and compared with planar wet Ag/AgCl electrodes for recording ECG-EEG. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.