Print the Change : Go 3D

Who doesn't like Robert Rodriguez films? And, who doesn't love the movie-series ‘Spy Kids’? Here I am another fan of the series and would you care to guess my favorite gadget?

Yeah, yeah… All those spy-gadgets are cool, I know, but, the foodie in me won’t vote for any of them. I’ll go for the re-hydration machine that turns packaged articles into smoking hot McDonald burgers with just a spark! 

When I laze about, I just think in my mind… WOW! A single flicker and delicious fresh food in hand! And how I wished someday NASA will make it happen and I’ll be motivated to be an astronaut (or, even a kitchen plongeur for those culinary marvels). And, then a newsflash caught my eyes, PIZZA PLEASURE FOR ASTRONAUTS!! 

Not a drone/quadrocopter delivery from Domino’s but a garden-fresh one printed in space! PRINTED!!!

I confess being an easy-to-amaze person and a mere Telefax machine keeps me astounded till date but this is something which is ‘very very VERY’!

When I used this ‘Roman Holiday’ dialogue I couldn't avoid thinking of the protagonist, the timeless star Audrey Hepburn! I used to long for a breakfast date with the lovely and serendipitous ‘Holly Golightly’ at Madamme Tussauds. But it’s not a big deal these days as I can always own the exact same model now, thanks to 3D printing. All I’m gonna need is a few bucks, as low as  £30.

THE PRICE

In fact 3D printing has gone so cheap that people are printing plastic knobs of coffee mug lids  and all sorts of thingamajiggy with it. Even you can own a 3D printer of your own:

• Velleman K8200 3D Printer Kit uses electric energy 12V/3A at max., costs £700 and prints in plastic of 7 available colors; 1 kg of the plastic printing material costs £30.
• Open-source metal 3D printer costing less than $1,500 in parts is in the works at Michigan Technological University (MTU). You can easily assemble them to get your printer ready with a home-available tool-kit.
• Makerbot Replicator Mini is an entry-level 3D printer. The product, which is priced at $1,375, is designed with ease of use and simplicity in mind with a one-button interface and offers "plug and play" usability.
• The scope of 3D printers have already transcended the realm of utility, 3Doodler arrives in the form of a pen, allowing users to sketch objects in a 3D space, with the doodles they draw coming off the paper. 3Doodler is presently available at $99.
• 3D Systems Chefjet isn't your average 3D printer, either. Chefjet use sugar for 3D printing producing various sweet treats. However, Chefjet printers have a $5,000 starting price. 
• The LumiFold photopolymerisation 3D printer is both small and affordable. Most desktop 3D printers aren't small or portable, but a new LumiFold claims to be both – easily fits in a backpack and available for $400.

LumiFold photopolymerisation 3D printer - small and affordable
Photograph: Indiegogo

Can’t afford? Keep calm and outsource!

Many traders offer      'in store' 3D printing service besides retail giant Asda. The supermarket chain is trialing a new facility that allows shoppers to scan and replicate anything in ceramic. Shoppers can walk into the 3D scanning booth in Asda’s York store and replicate just about anything bigger than a shoe, including people and pets. The object is scanned within minutes in-store. The model is then sent to a specialist 3D printing company, which produces a ceramic print in up to 6m different colors at various sizes for as little as £40 within a few days shipping it back to the store, "ready to pick up with your next week's shopping".

Astonishing indeed, isn’t it?

BRIEF HISTORY

The more startling fact is 3D printing technology has been around since the 1980s. The first working 3D printer was created in 1984 by Chuck Hull of 3D Systems Corp which chronologically corresponds to Windows1.0! The solid imaging process was then known as stereolithography rather than 3D Printing. 

Stereolithography (SLA or SL; also known as optical fabrication, photo-solidification, solid free-form fabrication and solid imaging) is an additive manufacturing technology used for producing one layer at a time by curing a photo-reactive resin with a UV laser or another similar power source. Chuck Hull also invented and got patent of the first commercial rapid prototyping technology, and the STL file format (3D scanned image). 

Contrary to common perception, 3D printing using metal has been possible for quite some time - but the price has limited its availability to industry rather than hobbyists. One of the techniques, direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), fuses metal powder into a solid part by melting it with a powerful focused laser beam, often used to make prototype metal parts for the aerospace industry. But the boom in the 3D printing industry came with putting it within the grasp of anyone with an interest, no sooner than 2010. So, if I claim the sheer cause of this upsurge is the rapid fall of the cost, you can’t blame me for over simplification.

3D printing technology goes way beyond simple plastic trinkets and puts it within the grasp of the multitude… metal 3D printing at home becomes a reality. And the flare is up, as said Joshua Pearce (the scientist who led the designers of the low-cost Open-source metal 3D printer which uses a gas-metal arc welder to lay down thin layers of steel which can be built up into complex geometric objects ), “Within a month, somebody will make one that’s better than ours, I guarantee it.”

KNOW HOW: WHY IS 3D PRINTING SO DIFFERENT?

Before I get to discuss the scopes and socio-economic impact of this mind-blowing technology, let us have a glimpse of the fundamental distinguishing features of the expertise designated as the ‘forerunner of new industrial revolution’.

1. 3D printing is known as the additive manufacturing as it adds layer by layer of materials to construct the scanned geometric shape. What traditional molding machines do is subtractive manufacturing. Subtractive processes remove undesired materials to achieve desired forms. On a large scale, the later results in big environmental problems and undue costing.
2. It is being said that there is no additional benefit on gross production with a 3D printer. Hence, we are heading to a world with all goods personalized, better ergonomics and output!
3. Finally, this machine has got an incredible property of self-replication. This machine can precisely print parts to construct its sisters or even parts required for an upgrade! So you simply buy a basic one and print out an even better one!

SCOPES

Household

Still confused about the importance of one 3D printer in household? To fully appreciate the way 3D printing might impact our lives, consider this: in under an hour, your $2,000 3D printer can turn a couple of meters of coiled plastic filament into anything from jewelry and artworks to gadgets and kitchen tools. So, physical items, mass produced and bought in outlet stores, will become replicable and editable by anyone who knows computer-aided drawing (who doesn't these days?) and/or has access to a 3D scanner (it’s cheap as a service!). This inevitably means we will face new frontiers in global trade.
People are definitely getting along with this, as evident from Shapeways produced 1.5 million objects for its customers this past year, including self-designed jewelry, iPhone cases, lampshades and vases. In the coming year, the company expects that number to reach 6 or 7 million, with its products made from around 30 different materials. So, this autumn Shapeways opened a new production facility in the New York City borough of Queens, with long rows of 3-D printers of many different types. (Reminds me of laundromats.)
The next step of-course will be clothing produced by 3-D printers, tailored exactly to fit each customer's figure. And what could possibly beat 3D printed shoes, custom-made for each pair of feet?

Machine Tools

Since antiquity 3D printing technology is being used in the field of aeronautics for making trial designs. Later on BMW started experimenting with motor-parts.  But now, "It's safe to assume that every auto racing team works with components from our printers", says Eos CEO Hans Langer.

This also turned the vintage car sphere inside-out as you can print durable versions of rare motor-parts at a minimum cost.

Medicine

One of the two fields that got hit the hardest by the 3D wave is undoubtedly medicine.

Printable body-parts : Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine head Anthony Atala, M.D. is one likely candidate for this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine after a successful 3D printed bladder transplant. Dr Atala said, in an interview with Ray Martin (at a 60 Minutes episode), they started with flat structures like skin and then progressed to tubular structures like blood vessels and wind-pipe (tracheo-bronchial tree), hollow non-tubular structures like stomach and bladder and finally attempting the most complicated solid structures like heart or kidneys, and “this is just a beginning”! The technology is already a big hit among dentists. A dental prosthesis requires very skilled technicians and extensive hours of sitting to be a good fit. But a 3D printed denture will be a spot-on fit and will be printed in whatever material the patient wants. Similarly, an artificial 3D printed hip prosthesis weights just 200 grams (a titanium prosthesis currently available weighs 450- 900 gram) which means early recovery and grossly curtailed post-operative physiotherapy session!

Earlobe (Pinna), Nose and a Finger 3D Printed by Dr Anthony Atala
of Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

Tailored Medication : As we print customized flavor adjusted pizza we are also printing pills with dosage exactly as required for the patient. Firstly, though individualized drug dosage was long been recognized as the best way to treat patients, a drug company can’t make billion different doses for every person but the printer gives us a fine opportunity to quench every thirst. Secondly, all drugs given to the patients can be combined in a single pill which increases compliance.
‘Orphan Drugs’: In nutshell, these are rarely prescribed but important drugs most pharmaceutical companies refuse to market as they spell all-cost-and-no-profit since demand is low. We learned by now, 3D printing has been bestowed with the peculiarity of making production on the small-scale as efficient as large scale production. These two plus two equals four as well as good news to those in need!

Balanced Diet: As we can choose ingredients and add precisely, individualized accurately balanced diet is another soon-to-become reality.

Guns

crypto-anarchist & libertarian Cody Wilson,
 co-founder of Defense Distributed
holding his creation 'Liberator'-the 3D-gun

If on one hand we see this saves lives, it can be the very contrast too! ‘Liberator’, the 3D printed gun plan is up in the internet and downloaded by more than 1 million people by now. Download-Print-Fire… it’s as easy as that and now metal printed guns fire 50 tandem shots accurately. The government automatically banned these guns. On the other end, the libertarians are in monumental glee as  universal gun-right is now a very close possibility! On being asked if it’ll lead to an unsafe society, crypto-anarchist & libertarian Cody Wilson, creator of the 3D-gun, co-founder of Defense Distributed who is designated as the 14th Most Dangerous Person in the World told, 

“It means people will abuse these rights. But what does it mean, as a structural feature, to have access to military weapons as a society? I'm not trying to brush it off but it means accepting people will abuse their liberties, but that's why they deserve protection. If no one is going to abuse a gun, it wouldn't be a right worth protecting. If no one was going to make a speech, we wouldn't need to defend the principle of freedom of speech. The same thing with the right to be secure in your possessions."

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN MAKING

The 3D printing industry is predicted to be worth over $8bn globally by 2020.

An expert panel under US President Barack Obama sees 3-D printing as a "megatrend of the future" and the US government is putting hundreds of millions of dollars toward developing the new technology. Industrial giants including Boeing, Siemens, General Electric (GE), Samsung, Canon and Daimler are all experimenting with the related production methods.

"I absolutely believe this will come to be very important", says Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of global conglomerate GE. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who made his own fortune in new technologies, calls 3-D printing "an exciting new industry with virtually unlimited potential" and one that "could completely revolutionize manufacturing". 

Assuming that 3-D printing technology continues to develop steadily, four colossal transforms are obvious:

1. A High Season for Entrepreneurs.

Need explanation? There are a few :

• Lower Start-up capital (seed money) - Considerably fewer production steps, fewer tools needed and lower material costs all spell enormous cost savings.

• The economies of scale that make mass production necessary for reducing costs will be a fairytale. Even small production batches can and will be profitable. 

• More innovative products will be brought into the market, since this method makes it easy to try out new ideas cheaply.

• Changing a product's design no longer means the entire assembly line must be reworked as well. This shortens product cycles considerably and makes it possible to introduce improvements more quickly.

• One or two skilled workers are enough to run a professional-grade industrial 3D printers that can use as many as 10 materials at a time to make complex, multi-component objects relatively cheaply.

May be, this technology is the harbinger of the future with ‘intelligentsia as the ruling class’. 

2. High Season for Tycoons Too: 

There is no good reason why the advantages spelled above will bless the entrepreneurs alone. Plus, the mass scale production will also become more cost-efficient due to the additive nature of 3D printing technology. With products no longer needing to be cut from the materials from which they are made, some 3-D printers require just 10 percent the amount of plastic or metal that conventional subtractive methods such as milling do.

But, sorry, the days of monopoly is over!

3. Poor Proletariat

A wise man once told when Karl Marx was toying with his Utopian model at the British Museum Library, if only he could know, what just a few miles away (at Cambridge) Maxwell is working with. I mean, the concept of electromagnetic induction motor was a giant leap towards factory mechanization and defied the concept of labor-based production, the pillar of Marxist concepts. But until now, using the techniques of traditional manufacturing, the production of one-off items and prototypes was very costly or impossible as the absence of specialized machines and molds makes production labor-intensive. This labor-intensity has driven many types of production offshore and helped millionaires holding monopoly. (What an irony!). But with a 3D printer in hand? Marxism and the long decorated ‘proletariat’ work-force is another chapter of ancient history! No one will search for unskilled labor anymore. 

Now, just think about the largest structural economic shifts over the past 30 years : the flight of relatively low-skilled manufacturing jobs to nations with lower wage rates and a comparative advantage in manufacturing. 3D printer just pressed Ctrl+Z.

4. Dare to be Deutsch, ‘Once More’...

Given the potentially vast global impact of this new technology, it's surprising that so far only around two dozen companies dominate the market. Along with US giants 3-D Systems and Stratasys, about 10 German companies provide this technology, some of them market leaders in their respective segments, for example Eos and Concept Laser, both in the southern state of Bavaria. German companies are seen as leaders, especially when it comes to 3-D printing of metals. In fact, some of these German 3-D printing specialists are growing at a rate that has some industry experts hoping this nascent digital industrial age will finally see the emergence of new innovation drivers "made in Germany." 

In conclusion, theGuardian aptly declared, “This is just one of many technological advances challenging us to change our way of thinking about international trade and economic growth”.

HITCH

Like everything 3D printers has their vices:

1. Very important one: time-factor. Three-dimensional printing as currently practiced is a long, slow process.

2. The scanned copies are not perfect yet - though a layperson just hears a violin music experts can hear the difference when the 3D printed instrument is played. 

INDIA

If you think that 3D printing service is available overseas only, just read the Tech Panda report and see how the industry is mushrooming in the fertile Indian soil.

Wan't to buy one? Go to 3Ding or, protomaker or, any other company and order a new one for yourself!

Or, as I said earlier, keep calm and collect your demo 3D-printed model as a free gift from 3digi prints!  

Mainak Prakash (Guest Author)

About the Author:

Mainak Prakash is a freelance writer who wants to write for masses. Being a self-proclaimed expert in sensing the pulse of people, he feels very comfortable in explaining quantum mechanics to a class five student. He passionately hates social networking sites.