Building our future with 3D printing technology

3D printing technology and its impact on our civilization

3D printing technology is not something new for any of us. In fact they started to develop the 3D printing technology somewhere at the beginnings of the ’80. The initial process was called stereo  lithography, where different polymers were melted with the help of some UV lasers and  laid down in successive layers under computer controlled software. The 3D printing can be seen as a fully automated process that consist in creating three dimensional objects starting from a digital blueprint.

The potential of the 3D printing technology is enormous. Every industry today will take advantage of the latest 3D printing technology developments.  A clear advantage of the 3D printers is their capacity to produce objects otherwise impossible to create with the help of mass producing technology.

The engineers from NASA consider the 3D printing technology the next evolutionary step that has to be implemented on board of the ISS. To transport a kilo of equipment on the ISS costs like 20.000 $, now think about the advantage of having a 3D printer on board and when you need an instrument or something else from Earth you could request it to Huston by email.

Nowadays the prices for 3D printers are already accessible and a lot of people already use the 3D printing technology  to create and print objects and spare parts for different machines. Thingiverse is a site that provides 3D models available for everybody. MakerBot’s Thingiverse is a thriving design community for discovering, making, and sharing 3D printable things. Everybody is encouraged to create and remix 3D things that later on can be available for free for the other members. You can find all type of useful objects and you can even download music instruments if you like.

Think what this technology could mean for the future of our children after it will be affordable and they will learn how to use it. They could design and build their own toys.

During the CES2015 that took place in Las Vegas a few days ago a new step forward was done in the 3D printing technology. The ones that visited the fair were able to eat 3D printed pizza. Thant’s right 3D printed food. Think about the potential of this. An industrial printers delivered in a 3rd world countries that are able to print food for everybody. The potential is really incredible.  You can see below the guys from IGN that tested the printed pizza.

The Pirate Bay announced last year that they will have a dedicated section on their site for 3D models. They also consider that in the near future people will print their own spare parts for their cars and that in a few years we will download our shoes from the Internet.

3D printing technology is already used in medicine with great success. You can see below a TED Talk of Dr. Anthony Atala, that presents us how this technology can help medicine and how they printed a human kidney.

3D printing technology can also mean the end of the tattoo parlors as we know it.  The tattoo lovers would be able to draw their bodies without the help of the professional artists that are really expensive. In France, 3 students already created the prototype of a 3D printer that is able to create real tattoos.

A possible disadvantage of this technology could be the creation of 3D weapons. The 3D printers could be able to print weapon parts that could be later on assembled their users. You can watch below a short documentary related  to 3d weapon printing.

Cheap 3D printers can be bought today on sites like www.dx.com where you can buy the printer, the kit for building your own printer or even spare parts for your printer.

You can even buy a pen like tool which can help you draw 3D objects in thin air. The 3D Doodler is the world’s first 3D printing pen that is available for  less than 100$.

The pros are really overwhelming compared with the cons of this technology. Imagine that in the future, a 3D printer could replicate its own parts and reproduce itself. With industrial large scales printers we could build houses, pipe lines for transporting water and a lot of other useful things. This ideas are also stated by Jacque Fresno, a modern self thought scientist and inventor, in a documentary that you can see it one of my previous posts, Future by design is fucking awesome.