3D printing seems to have gone quiet. Where are we all at?

I have a sense of deja vu here.

The fact that the media aren't wetting their knickers over 3D printing is probably a good thing. I don't recall them getting excited about CNC lathes or mills, but presumably nobody is saying that those machines aren't useful just because the media aren't going on about them?

In my case at least I'm using my 3D printer as and when it is needed, exactly the same as I do with my other machines.

Andrew

I'm not so sure about that. We're not talking about amateur or prototyping printers here. There will be a range of heavy duty industrial printers for different materials, all capable of accurate work.

Thousands of them could be warehoused in a lights-out automated factory with robotic input ,assembly, packing and dispatch. Products will be computer designed anywhere in the world and the instructions downloaded directly into the 3D printers and robots needed to make them. This will involve several printers working with different materials with groups of such printers working in parallel to achieve volume followed by assembly by robot.

The benefits are considerable. Very few people will be needed, and there is none of the tooling and preparation cost needed to set up a conventional assembly line. 3D printing is flexible: it can be told to make something different at the press of a button, products can be printed wherever it is cheapest to make them, and the production of small and medium quantities of niche goods is economic. Just in time production adjacent to local markets could reduce transport costs. Energy and raw materials are used more efficiently.

Much of the technology already exists and the economic pressure to get the whole working together is substantial. I think this is well on the way and the impact on industry will be revolutionary.

Obviously 3D won't be suitable for everything or even a good way to make high-volume items. But it's hard to think of things that could never be 3D printed, particularly when many different types of 3D printer cooperate to do the job. The potential is enormous.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 09/11/2016 18:06:43

A couple of additive techniques widely used in mass production - casting (whether with dies or sand), and injection moulding. One could add epitaxy as used in VLSI manufacture; and pick and place; amongst many others. Those things set the bar for speed of production. Hard to compete with a high speed automated injection moulder with a 3D printer. On the other hand, as a way to prototype the parts to prove the design it's brilliant. Also to make small quantities of specials.

As an example of the latter, see this website, they used 3D printing to make initial quantities of a gadget that fits on to a smartphone and converts it into a low cost professional ophthalmoscope and retinal camera. It's portable and can be used in remote rural areas in Africa to enable front line carers to make eye exams and have the images sent back to eye specialists all over the world for diagnosis. Obviously several designs needed for different phones, the quatities will never be extremely large so may never be worth tooling up an injection mould. 3D printing together with smartphones are a key technology for preventing blindness which is a scourge in Africa.

Most high-volume consumer goods are assemblies of plastic components with bits of metal and usually these days circuit boards. Hard to see how those assemblies are going to be printed at home.

Poor 3D printing.

Every time it does something useful, the goalposts lift up their skirts and trot another 100 yards towards the horizon - or is it the neo-luddites carrying them away?

Neil

I disparage over the use of the meaning of the word luddite, they had nothing against technology. There are far more fitting groups who deserve that moniker.

They actually had more in common with anarchists, punks, beatniks and protesters than rosey eyed mill workers who thought things were always better in the past and someone ought to tear down the machinery in order to make it that way, it's hardly worth getting hung for or jail. It was about sticking it to the man, ahead of their own time if anything. 

They knew alot about the design and construction of the factories they attacked and knew which parts were going to knock it out and strike a fatal blow for a long time. 

If you want to know how much of a lasting effect it had on history, they completely redesigned factories because of the fear they inspired surrounding them, look at alot of old factories and they always have high windows and none on the ground floor level and brick built rather than wood. 

The also moved quite quickly, in a kind of flash mob to make sure it would happen so fast and with so many people that nobody could be precisely identified. The fact that only a relatively few people were caught suggests the local population supported them and covered for them. 

The army also maintained a presence around northern areas of england for a long time for the fear it could happen again. 

If there was any group that was good at wrecking things, then these guys probably elevated it to an art form, thing is they had to know something about the technology in order to effectively destroy it, like i said, was hardly worth going to jail for wrecking a machine that would only put the factory out for a day or two.

It was just the highly selective and sudden and organized nature of the attacks that makes them so interesting as far as a protest movement goes. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 10/11/2016 00:21:37

So how about this for a serious use. As a favor to the hospital our workshop recently printed a human skull from a CAT scan of a patient with a serious head trauma. This enabled the surgical workshop to correctly manufacture a plate to fit the hole in the scull and for the surgery team to come up with the best strategy for the procedure. All this was able to be done non-invasively reducing the time in surgery and very positively affecting outcome. Usually there would have been some exploratory surgery followed by a wait whilst the bits were made and then more surgery to fix the skull.

regards Martin

Excellent example, Martin

.. 'though presumably Peter would classify that under "except in a few very specialised cases."

MichaelG.

You can do this on a personal level, see:

**LINK**

[ Edit: I actually tried there to both show the actual link and make it clickable. When I did that, the actual link disappeared, replaced by **LINK**.  Seems you can either have an exposed, visible URL or a clickable link - but not both. ]

Edited By Bandersnatch on 10/11/2016 17:16:50

This: **LINK** seems quite a serious application too.

Also: http://www.gereports.com/post/116402870270/the-faa-cleared-the-first-3d-printed-part-to-fly/

Trevor

Edited By TSH on 10/11/2016 17:52:10

.

You can have both, but it's a bit of a faff ...

**LINK**

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/3D-Printing-Medical-Models-CT-MRI-Images/1482879409/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478797792&sr=1-1&keywords=3d+Printing+of+medical+models

MichaelG.

.

... and curiously: things behave differently when editing a previous post ...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/3D-Printing-Medical-Models-CT-MRI-Images/1482879409/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478797792&sr=1-1&keywords=3d+Printing+of+medical+models

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 10/11/2016 18:05:18

That's what I was trying to do but I still don't see how you got there.

Edit: huh? It happened again. I quoted yours with the exposed clickable link and when I posted, it went back to hidden again! Gotta love this editor.

Edited By Bandersnatch on 10/11/2016 18:13:59

If the URL starts with HTTP... it will display as **LINK**

Just paste it in with the link button the either delete the displayed HTTP part OR type over the link with something to say what it is.

Example:

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=93669&p=16#2089319

If entered as a link will display as:

**LINK**

But if I edit the http:// from the display text (not the embedded link):

www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=93669&p=16#2089319

Alternatively:

THIS PAGE

Neil

The second form I knew but some here have expressed concern about hidden urls with the potential of a malicious link. (I think that's pretty unlikely here and you can, in any case, see actual link by hovering on it - still if it helps ....).

Didn't occur to me to just omit the http. Thanks a bunch.

There seems to be some suggestion that printing is only 'serious' if it is used for mass production. Daft. It is now an essential part of the prototype stages. If you have bought any, absolutely any consumer plastic product this year it will have been printed several times during the design process. When you are going to commit to millions of production a few thousand spent on iterations of the case design is very reassuring.

Here's another "serious" use of 3D printing.

I do a lot of work for REMAP and we recently had a request to help a man to hold his walking stick - the trouble was that as a result of injury, the hand to hold the stick had just a thumb and forefinger: the 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers were just stumps. No big deal you might think, but it turns out that the thumb and forefinger do very little to control the stick - without the other fingers the stick cannot be prevented from turning sideways.

We first took an alginate mould of his hand holding the walking stick handle, then did a 3D scan of the mould which was subsequently edited to create a 3D model of the cavities created by his hand actually holding the stick - a sort-of specialised glove. We gave the model a suitable thickness and then printed it with NinjaFlex, which is a rubbery type of plastic suitable for 3D printing. When the "glove" was fastened to the stick, his damaged hand fitted it exactly, and gave him total control of the stick, resulting in one satisfied client.

Exactly, prototyping one-offs is how it started! we haven't got to mass 3D printing quite yet.

Especially when it came to car models etc. the body work were sculpted out of clay, still are in alot of places as it's easy to skim a bit off here and there, but with technology it can be made into an almost exacting shape in the design process, before any model needs to be produced.

It's not that the sculptors were no good, far from it, but it was labour intensive, which might be one of the reasons the development of 3D printing got alot of money behind it. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 11/11/2016 12:20:39

In a 'few' years(or maybe decades) from now we will not call these things 3D-printers anymore but replicators. (Star trek - the next generation). And everyone will have acces to it or own one of these things.
Will Ricker will say to Pickard : "did you knew that in the beginning of the 21st century they called our replicators 3D-printers". Pickard to Will : "What is a 3D-printer Ricker..?"

I have two of these things, 3D-printers that is... And btw, I have lots of fun with them.

I bet they'll even have micro 3D builders, viewed through an electron microscope, where they can assemble specially designed medicines and implants and devices molecole by molecole using a tractor beam!

For eg. they have special medicines now called MR or modified release, with tiny holes running through the pill and seperated layer by layer so that the drug is slowly released rather than giving you a full hit in a couple of hours, soon they'll be able to control stages on an hour by hour basis, possibly combining drugs that work together in a treatment all into one pill. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 11/11/2016 13:56:52