"Fascinating!!!" - Book Summary of "Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing"

Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. © 2013
getAbstract © 2013

Rating (10 is best)

Overall: 8
Importance: 8
Innovation: 10
Style: 7

Take-Aways

A 3D printer lets you make anything, anywhere, at any time.
People often explain 3D printers by likening them to “the Replicator in Star Trek.”
The 3D printing technology, or “additive manufacturing,” constructs objects one fine layer at a time.
The process for 3D printing entails the specific method of printing, the “raw material” and the “design software.”
You control the shape and composition of the objects you make.
You can customize and individualize common items, or invent a new product to meet your needs.
A 3D printer lets you create objects that can’t be made by any other means.
Today, 3D printing can manufacture artificial limbs and teeth.
3D printing will revolutionize the economy, bringing changes to manufacturing, design, education, art, cooking and architecture.
Because it lets you print anything, even guns or drugs, 3D printing will challenge the existing legal system.

Relevance

What You Will Learn

In this summary, you will learn: 1) What 3D printing is, 2) What the possibilities of 3D printing are and 3) How 3D printing will change the world.

Recommendation

Professor Hod Lipson and tech writer Melba Kurman have written a fascinating celebration of 3D printing. They believe in and detail 3D printing’s transformative possibilities. They describe the history and current technology of the process, as well as what the future of 3D printing will bring, with its myriad industry-shattering implications for art, architecture, design, manufacture, law, food and education. Lipson and Kurman also make clear the drawbacks and limitations of the process. The 3D printing revolution will take place in small increments, and, like its products, the process will be specialized – even individualized – but life-altering and inclusive. getAbstract recommends this work to inventors, entrepreneurs, innovators, craftspeople, do-it-yourselfers and anyone seeking an early ride on a coming wave of economic change.

Summary

What is 3D Printing?

Imagine waking up one morning to the smell of fresh muffins. You already know that they are organic, low in sugar and personalized for your health, because they were printed in your own “kitchen food printer.” Personalized food? A food printer? Those are two of the almost countless possibilities that the emerging technology of 3D printing promises.
In the near future, with the right designs and a 3D printer, you’ll be able to create a variety of items, from replacement body organs to fabricated homes to rescue tools for miners trapped by a cave-in. Not every possibility is a reality today, but many are. Someday, relatively soon, you could own a “machine that could make anything.” Today’s 3D printing output would have seemed like science fiction a few years ago, yet NASA’s Mars Rover contains parts printed in 3D that couldn’t have been made any other way.
People often explain 3D printers by citing “the Replicator in Star Trek” – a device that could create anything the crew of the starshipEnterprise desired. Usually, they only wanted “a cup of Earl Grey tea.” The “Earl Grey Syndrome” serves as worthy shorthand for people’s inability to embrace an imaginative future without clinging to the past.
A 3D printer makes what you want, when you want it. This can be good and bad. A 3D printer makes custom parts and medicine, but it also makes weapons and illicit drugs. The 3D printing technology bridges the analog and digital worlds. The slow and stubborn material world is analog; the world of computers – where anything is possible and everything happens quickly – is digital. With computers and specialized software, 3D printers bring the spontaneity of the digital into daily life.

“Additive Manufacturing”

The formal name for 3D printing is additive manufacturing. 3D printers construct objects by putting down one fine layer at a time. This process enables the printers to assemble shapes that are incredibly expensive or downright impossible to make by other methods. The process provides great control over the composition of items. A 3D printer currently works only with a limited array of fairly expensive raw materials. In the near future, it will build products using “controllable materials.” Soon, you’ll print things comprised of circuits, which will allow for the printing of robots that can see and hear.
The 3D printing technology is constantly evolving, so it’s difficult to cite technical specifics. All 3D printing follows a cluster of principles: Complexity and variety – two qualities that prove expensive in traditional manufacturing – are free. Made products require no assembly. A 3D printer needs little lead time and little space; it lets you obtain the raw materials and print as soon as you have the design. 3D printing provides “unlimited design space” and doesn’t require milling or casting objects. You don’t need specialized skills. Because 3D printing is far more precise than traditional manufacturing and produces “less waste,” more accurate copies and more intricately blended materials are possible. “Additive manufacturing may be the ultimate tool that will change human culture forever.”

“The 3D Printing Process”

There are three elements to 3D printing – the actual printing; the raw material your printer uses, which varies according to the type of printer you have; and a “design file.” A design file must interface successfully with the printer’s software, and that process can be complicated. Some design files were created for other purposes, and must be converted to or adapted for 3D printing. If the file isn’t right, the printer won’t print anything, wasting expensive supplies in the process.
Computer-aided 3D printing “design tools” map shapes in three dimensions using an “x, y, z” coordinate system. Mapping a basic shape like a cube is simple, but mapping gets progressively more difficult and intricate when mapping complex shapes like flowers. Today’s design software draws from the “solid modeling” that engineers practice and from the “surface modeling” that illustrators and animators use. The software intersects with increasingly sophisticated imaging technology, which relies on scanning to represent something digitally. This software, created before vast computational power became inexpensive, struggles to keep up.

Your 3D Printer

A “selective deposition printer...deposits layers of raw materials to make things.” These printers “squirt, squeeze or spray” material through a nozzle. The raw material has to be soft – a gel or plastic that hardens later. This printer works from a computerized design file to map the appropriate path for the “print head.” The print head moves along “horizontal and vertical rails” to outline the “footprint” of the printed object. Once an outline is in place, the print head moves back and forth, spraying fine layers of material until the object is complete.
“Polyjet printers” spray “droplets” of material quickly and precisely. “Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS) blows powdered material into” the path of a strong laser, which melts the powder in place. “Laminated object manufacturing” doesn’t use a print head; it laminates sheets to create objects.
Other 3D printers employ “a selective binding process to fuse or bind” articles in layers. “Stereolithography” uses a technique whereby the printer shoots a laser across a “UV-sensitive polymer.” This material “hardens when exposed to UV light.” A table moves a fraction of a millimeter with each pass, exposing more material to the laser. In “Selective Laser Sintering,” a laser beam fires across “a bed of powder”; the powder melts, and the printer disperses more powder. “Three Dimensional Printing” expels adhesive onto powder to hold the object together.

The Impact of 3D Printing on the Economy

The technology of 3D printing will destroy some jobs and create others. It won’t take over all aspects of manufacturing. When you need to make a lot of something basic that needs no customization – like, for example, 10,000 staplers – “mass manufacturing” remains the production method of choice.
Using 3D printers cuts out much of the “supply and distribution chains” of conventional manufacturing. Those chains account for a large percentage of the energy involved in providing goods to the public, but 3D printers will change that. Rather than shipping a wide array of raw materials, you’ll need transport only the raw materials printers require. Apps for printers will sell as apps for phones sell now, and they will let you print objects you can’t design yourself.
A 3D printer will work as part of the “experience economy,” in which people pay less for objects and more for services and experiences. Easy customization means people will pay for the unique. While a number of businesses incorporate 3D printing successfully, and even focus there, no one is making a living doing just 3D printing. However, 3D printing augments many businesses, such as manufacturers, jewelers and design agencies.

Transformative Technology

The 3D printing technology can transform a range of fields and practices in different ways:

Medical – For those needing prostheses, 3D printers can print replacement body parts made of one material, such as plastic or metal. Doctors print prosthetic limbs that are light, strong and a better match than those made using older technologies. Dentists use 3D printers to print superior caps that match your teeth perfectly. These are only the first steps on “the 3D-printed Ladder of Life.” The second, just beyond reach today, is printing “bone implants and artificial joints.” A third step will be printing living tissue, most likely using stem cells, because 3D printers can spray cells exactly where they’re needed, and the cells would then grow into the desired tissue. This “bioprinting” will create replacement organs that match their hosts perfectly. A 3D printer can make unique and personalized objects that are more responsive to user needs and specific bodies. These items will merge strength with qualities like light weight or “honeycomb structures.”
Culinary – When people hear 3D printers can print food, they’re intrigued, but something about squeezing food through an industrial printing nozzle can make them queasy. Many 3D printers can work with food pastes like pastry dough to make customized cookies. A 3D printer offers the possibility of “digital cuisine” or even “digital gastronomy” by combining ingredients in new ways to generate completely new foods. The “Cornucopia” printer aims to radically transform cooking through new shapes and textures. In the future, you could program a 3D printer to monitor both your health and your daily activities, and to only print food that contributes to your well-being. 3D printing can help feed an ever-growing population by printing synthetic foods.
Educational – Students benefit from observing physical representations of concepts and by engaging in practical, hands-on learning. Expect 3D printers in the classroom to follow an arc similar to that of computers: First, courses focusing on 3D printing or on directly related activities, like engineering and design, will emerge. Later, entire curricula will incorporate 3D printing. Young children will be able to use the printers to manufacture or design simple objects. Older students could apply 3D printers to a wider array of contexts.
Art and design – By removing barriers to creation and offering possibilities for materials and processes, 3D printers could even result in “a new aesthetic.” A 3D printer can generate decorative items according to mathematical algorithms. Artists like Bathsheba Grossman use 3D printers to generate artworks that express mathematical concepts, like her “Klein Bottle.” Other design companies employ 3D printers to design and make shoes and to print “lattices” that are strong but very light. A 3D printer can borrow from evolutionary practices and apply “biomimicry” to print items inspired by cell structures.
Law and legislation – The 3D printing technology challenges the existing legal structure because it provides access to previously controlled substances like guns. In the arms manufacture and sales processes, licensing or background checks control access to arms. With 3D printers, you could print your own guns at home. The same would be true for drugs, but even more so: Users could print entirely new drugs at home, rendering potential poisons and intoxicants about which the law knows nothing. Many products sold on the open market have passed through consumer safety testing. The legal system, companies selling these products and people buying them all have a clear idea of the safety of these products and where their risks reside. People printing their own products, one at a time, invalidates any systemic sense of safety and responsibility. On its most basic level, 3D printing tests existing legal protections, like patents and copyrights, just as downloading music challenged the rights to music copyrights. Copying something at home by printing it obviates rights of ownership. So far, given how 3D printing has barely begun to make a societal impact, “the legal challenges introduced by 3D printing flicker on the edges of public consciousness.”

The Future

Limitations in 3D design software exist, but most of the limits of the process reside in the human mind. To fully exploit this amazing technology, people must change their mind-sets. Instead of using 3D printers to create objects you already know, use software that generates new designs to meet your needs. You input what you want the object to do – for instance, hold up a bookshelf – and let the printer invent new devices made for that function. A 3D printer applies “interactive evolution” to generate designs in an almost biological sense.
For an online version of this process, visit the website Endless Forms. Choose two images and “breed” them to produce a third, new design. The computer, and then the printer, offers you novel options as well as related models. People will come to understand “generative design,” in which neither rules nor guidelines dictate the shape of an object but only control the parameters of its growth. The future promises “reactive” designs that respond to your needs and your environment. Ultimately, printers will be able to think and adapt.

About the Authors

Professor of engineering at Cornell University Hod Lipson directs the Creative Machines Lab. Technical writer Melba Kurmanblogs on complex technologies.

Quotes

“What would you make if you had a machine that could make anything?”
“A popular way to describe the potential of 3D printing as the ultimate manufacturing machine is to compare it to the Replicator in Star Trek.”
“A single 3D printer can make many shapes. Like a human artisan, a 3D printer can fabricate a different shape each time.”
“The printing process begins with a design file. Like the bulk of an iceberg that lurks underwater, a substantial amount of preparation involves preparing the design file and setting up the printer.”
“Food printing may be to 3D printing what gaming was for personal computers: the frivolous activity that turned out to be the ‘killer ap’.”
“Architects, industrial designers and artists are quickly and eagerly tapping into a vast reserve of design possibilities.”
“Like the magic wand of childhood fairy tales, 3D printing offers us the promise of control over the physical world.”
“The new personal chef will be a 3D printer in your kitchen, one that’s hooked up to the Internet to await text messages or email instructions about your next meal.”
“Precision food printers are the ideal output device for an era where diet, health and medicine are increasingly driven by data.”
“One of the great things about 3D printing is that the field moves faster than the speed of light, and technological advances take place in huge leaps and bounds.”
“Is 3D printing going to change the classroom? Yes. Will there be a sudden and dramatic transformation of classroom curricula? No.”
“At its heart, 3D printing is a manufacturing, not a printing, process.”
“In a 3D printed world, people will make what they need, when and where they need it.”