(Note: I haven't posted on this site in a while, but thought some might find a round-up of recent breakthroughs in 3D printing useful. Not only are we in the midst of a sea change in design and fabrication, but the technology brilliantly blends bits and atoms. - originally posted on the Dot to Dot tumblr)
The hardest thing about 3D printing turns out to be keeping up with all the breakthroughs. Stories from just the past couple of weeks range from...
• the breathtaking (civilizations out of moondust!)
• to the commercial (3D at Staples)
• to the violent (build-a-gun)
• to the medical (printing cartilage)
• to the racy (sex toys)
• to the sparky (conductive printable feedstock)
• to the modular (build-a-chair)
We are at the dawn of the Age of Fabrication: the Fab Age.
Ours is a synthetic era where the stars of Ages past—stone, wood, iron and steel—can be sinterized and tweaked into a printable materials.
Just as important as what you see on the surface is what you don't see underneath. 3D printing opens up a new structural dimension to biomimicry, the use of nature as an inspirational cheat sheet for better design. Printed objects may look solid through and through, but most are not. Rather, they are supported by an interior latticework engineered to to deliver the most strength and/or flexibility for the least weight, just like bones.
Neri Oxman, director of MIT's Mediated Matter Lab, applies biomimicry to production as well.
"Look at spiders," Oxman says. "They use about eight different properties of silk for different functions. The spider is like a multimaterial 3D printer."
Spiders turn out to be a theme of the lab: the Spiderbot project takes it cues from a spider's web. It's a 3D-printing gantry you can strap to your back and carry: four cables, each with a motor, attach to trees and can lift four tonnes between them, meaning the system can print over 3,370-metres cubed, even in challenging terrains. Oxman calls it the "largest 3D printer in the world". If combined with the bone-inspired building project, it could print out architectural structures anywhere, on demand. Another project, CNSilk, investigates silk as a building material. "My ambition is to print a tent-sized silk cocoon within a year."
This is a real game changer, making it possilble to build things that simply weren't structurally possible before. Form and function literally merge when function can be designed—and printed—right into form. The possibilities are deliciously endless.
This morning, for example, as I look at my indoor garden and contemplate travel, I have been imagining a self irrigating flower pot. You would pour water into a slot in the rif of the pot and a network of channels would deliver the right amount to keep soil evenly moist. No more saucer puddles. Who knows whether this would actually work, but it is genuinely exciting to think in such a new way. Next up: a cup that keeps coffee the perfect degree of warm longer. (You can see where my priorities lie...)
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The three main drivers of the Fab Age are breakthroughs in materials science, the expiration of patents and the DIY/Maker movement.
Following the lead 3D Pied Piper, Bre Pettis, whose Brooklyn-based hacker collective NYCResistor developed the Makerbot, there are now dozens of companies—many with strong connections to makerspaces—prototyping and selling comparatively low cost 3D printers for the consumer market.
This past fall, Make magazine set up a three-day test lab, bringing together top techs from all over the country to put 15 of the most promising printers through their paces. Hundreds of people jumped into Google+ hangouts to watch online. The result: Make's Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing.
[video:https://youtu.be/KajXSV_KExg]
•••••••
3D printer sales are still counted in the low tens of thousands, but are set to explode. In fact, sales in the five years between 2007 and 2011 grew by a hype-delirious 35,000%:
...Until recently, 3-D printing was limited to large companies that could afford the industrial machines. Daimler AG, Honda Motor Co. (7267), Boeing Co. (BA) and Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) all have used 3- D printers to fashion prototypes and make parts that go into final products.
“To me, this change is similar to the supercomputers of the 1970s that were only affordable to the major corporations, and now we’re in a period analogous to the 1980s, where the personal computer came about; now we have personal printing,” said Jeff Moe, founder of Aleph Objects Inc., a Loveland, Colorado-based maker of the less-expensive machines. “Not only does that mean that people can print in their homes, but also the engineers can even do it at companies as well.” ...
What Gutenberg's clever wine-press hack did for words, 3D printers are doing for things. Now you can print the bookshelves, too.
— J. A. Ginsburg / @TrackerNews
RELATED
• Thingiverse: crowd-shared 3D design library
• The New MakerBot Replicator Might Just Change Your World / by Chris Anderson / Wired
