Firstly lets clarify what is meant by 3D printing,
well in a nut shell it is a way of fabricating objects designed on
computer, for example if you designed a mug using computer aided
design, within a few hours you could have the real thing sitting in
front of you. It is possible to watch your very creations come to life
in true Star Trek fashion, before your very eyes.
To go into more
detail, currently printers are fairly slow, limited and not
tremendously precise. A home 3D printer will typically set up back
about ten thousand pounds, but this is cheap considering the first
commercially available printers cost at least ten times that amount. 3D
printers presently are capable of fabricating objects using silicon and
certain types of metal, other substances that have been tested are
plaster, play-doh and even chocolate!
A home 3D printer is about
the size of a Microwave and connects directly to a desktop computer
running software that controls its operation. It then creates objects
layer-by-layer by squeezing material from a mechanically-controlled
syringe. Unfortunately printers are somewhat limited in the sense they
still produce a fairly rough end product and the time scale it takes to
print an object is considerable.
Despite all the technical
implications, there are huge possibilities for the future of 3D
printing. All ground breaking technology starts somewhere, for example
in the case of the PC, mainframes had existed for years, but personal
computing only took off in the late seventies. A cheap self-assembly
computer called the Altair 8800, launched in 1975, sparked the rapid
development of personal computing. In similar circumstances self
assembly 3D printers hope to spark the same rapid development in rapid
prototyping.
There are a number of different 3D printers
available on the market today, all with slightly different advantages,
disadvantages, quirks and features. Some interesting projects include
an open source 3D printer which has successfully been used to fabricate
better parts to replace existing parts on the printer itself. The
ultimate goal of 3d printers is to perfectly replicate themselves,
allowing much more cost effective manufacturing.
The future for
3D printing seems very promising, it is the fastest growing part of the
rapid-prototyping industry with revenues this year expected to be
approximately a billion US dollars. Many industries are showing huge
amounts of interest and are seem great potential in different
applications where they could utilize three dimensional printing. The
US army have experimented using rapid prototyping to create parts for
broken tanks, guns and other hardware in combat situations. Businesses
believe a rapid prototyping machine could prove invaluable in showing
factories how to assemble parts remotely, for example in China. Even
NASA has requested a high resolution machine to manufacture crucial
parts in space.
In conclusion what is stopping you being part of
a truly revolutionary technology, which could become one of the major
breakthroughs of the twenty first century? 3D printing has merely been
science fiction until recently, where it is now most certainly science
fact. What can we expect to see in the not so far away future? Well one
ultimate goal is printable organic parts, for example replacement
organs, identical skin grafts and even limbs, to combat victims of
illness, disease and war.
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