Nature is a Grand Material Engineer

 

Artist, Designer and Engineer, Neri Oxman by Noah Kalina

"Nature is a grand material engineer, we already know that it can generate abalone shells which are twice as strong as our high-tech ceramics and silk that is five times stronger than Steel."                                                                                Neri Oxman

MIT Media Lab Professor, Neri Oxman, and her students are committed to learning and applying the processes of nature to address the architectural challenges of the modern world. Their studies have included silk worms, bees, and plants to gain understanding in how nature grows structures. 

In addition to their structural relevance, the projects Oxman and her team have created are also beautiful works of art. Her work is part of the permanent collections a number of museums in the United States and Europe including the Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Pnuema 2 by Neri Oxman, Photo by John Cummings

In 2016, the group published a paper on a 3D Printed Multimaterial Microfluid Valve which provides better control in printing using fluid materials including molten glass. While it had been possible before to 3D print with glass by binding glass powder and subsequently sintering the powders, the results were not fully transparent. The MIT process provides structural control and full transparency.

3D Printed Glass by Neri Oxman

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3D printed shoes from Naim Josefi's Collection Melonia

For several years, fashion designers have been experiment with 3D printed clothing. Generally, their fanciful creations have been unique, but unlikely to be worn beyond the runway. The thermoplastics that work great in the typical 3D printer are not conducive to creating comfortable, flexible garments.

Shoes are another story. They are perfect candidates for 3D printing. Every foot is slightly different than every other, and a shoe that is perfectly matched with the foot may be more comfortable than a mass produced shoe. A shoe needs to be strong and lightweight which are characteristics well suited for 3D printing. Finally, people are willing to spend significant resources on finding and buying shoes which justify the extra design and manufacturing costs required for a personalized product.

Image from Feetz press kit

Feetz, which has just completed round one of beta testing, bills itself as the digital cobbler. Using three pictures of each foot, the Feetz app allows you to design a pair of custom made shoes that they will build and ship to you. Their marketing claim is "We offer 7 billion sizes: 1 for everyone in the world."

 For a more traditional look, People Footwear have combined 3D printing and digital knitting to create a line of shoes that look remarkably normal. These, however, are produced in a standard set of colors and standard sizes which leads me to wonder how much they differ from non-3D printed shoes.

Nike Vapor Laser Talon

Nike is using Selective Laser Sintering to print the cleats on the Nike Vapor Laser Talon which is designed to improve traction and acceleration on football turf. The process shortened the prototyping time and enabled the manufacturing of a unique mesh that weighs only 159 grams.

What type of shoes would you to print?

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3D printed shoes on the catwalk in Paris

Print the Legend Highlights the Drama of Entrepreneurship

While many people admire and envy the entrepreneurs who start successful companies, few can envision the reality of building a company while under pressure from investors, customers and competitors. Print the Legend, a Netflix original documentary, highlights those challenges clearly as it tracks the creation of the 3D printing companies Makerbot and Formlabs.

Makerbot's Bre Pettis and Formlab's Max Lobovsky have dramatically different personalities, but they faced similar pressures as their companies grew and both had to make difficult decisions about people, policies and partners as they moved from the startup phase into full production mode. Print the Legend follows this progression and highlights both the drama and the impact of those decisions.

As I have written frequent in this blog, I believe that 3D printing is one of the most important technologies impacting manufacturing. That's what drew me to watch this movie on the day it was released. After seeing it, I recommend it to anyone who is interested in entrepreneurship, regardless of their interest in 3D printing.

What is your favorite movie about entrepreneurship?

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Electron Beam Melting is Hot

Custom Cranio-Maxillofacial implant

The Swedish Arcam AB, which produces 3D printers that use Electron Beam Melting, does not get much news coverage in the United States. However, the company's 2014 financial results show that it is one of the most interesting success stories in the 3D printing space.

Net sales for 2014 grew 70% over 2013 to $40* million while net income increased 57% to $6.8* million. The number of machines shipped grew from 25 to 35 and the order volume increased from 27 to 42. With five new orders in January, the Arcam is starting the year with a nice backlog.

Low Pressure Turbine blade in γ-titanium aluminide.

Courtesy of Avio Aero.

Arcam's machines use a powerful electron beam to selectively melt powdered metals, primarily Titanium and Cobalt. The most import applications are orthopedic implants and aerospace components.

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*Amounts converted from Swedish Kroner using Google Finance.

Tinkering with Tinkercad

Peter Penguin for Sharkweek Designed by Maker Advocate

In the 1980s, when Apple introduced the first laser printers and launched the desktop publishing era, we all needed to learn a few basic principles of graphic design. Will 3D printers turns us all into mechanical designers?

If so, Tinkercad is a great place to start. Tinkercad was created by Kai Backman and Mikko Mononen in 2011 to be an easy-to-use online tool for creating 3D designs that are ready to be 3D printed into physical objects. In June of 2013, it became part of Autodesk's 123D family of design products.

Not only is Tinkercad easy to use, it also includes step-by-step lessons which teach the basics of 3D modeling then move on to more complex modeling techniques. A basic account is free and will have you learning to design in 3D within minutes of your first visit.

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Print Your Dinner

Cake topper printed on ChefJet Pro

During the holiday season, family gatherings often include hours in the kitchen preparing the traditional holiday feast.  While electric mixers, food processors, pre-packaged dishes and modern stoves and ovens have greatly reduced the amount of time required to prepare a big meal, some wonder if we will soon reach the point where we can simply press a button and print dinner on a 3D printer.

The first course that will be able to be 3D printed will probably be desert. The crystalline nature of sugar allows it to work well in a powder bed printer using water as a binding agent. The ChefJet printer from 3D Systems uses this method to create beautifully complex confectionery that can be a delicate as a snowflake.  The ChefJet Pro goes even further by including color dyes in the binder enabling full color deserts.

Pizza printed on a Foodini printer.

Most of the rest of the engineering around 3D food printing involves extruding pastes to build up structures which would require cooking after printing. Since flour, tomato paste and cheese can all be formulated into pastes, pizza and pasta dishes are excellent candidates for printing. The Foodini 3D food printer in development by Natural Machines can print with all of these ingredients and many more including chocolate, chicken and chickpeas.

Printing a full turkey or a rib roast is unlikely to happen in the near future, if ever. But it won't belong before 3D printers sit next to the mixer and the microwave in a modern kitchen.

What would you like to print in your kitchen?

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Thankful for Bioprinting

Cross-section of multi-cellular bioprinted human liver tissue

This is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. As always, I have a lot to be thankful for and one of those things is 3D Bioprinting. As an amateur futurist and technology analyst, I enjoy following all types of technical discovery. But medical innovations are particularly exciting.

Last week represented a major inflection point in 3D bioprinting. Organovo, the San Diego based bioprinting company, introduced their first commercial product; a 3D printed human liver tissue that can help predict liver tissue toxicity in potential new drugs. Based on work done at the University of Missouri, this process will speed the development of new drugs by eliminating toxic compounds earlier in the discovery process.

This development, along with advancements in printing of orthopedic implants by companies like Arcam AB and improvements in 3D printed prosthetics, have made 2014 a watershed year for medical applications of 3D printing. Going forward, medical applications will be one of the largest and most important segments of the additive manufacturing market.

Are you thankful for any particular technologies?

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Avastars Makes You the Star

The Avastarship, which launched yesterday in the main foyer of the St. Louis Galleria Mall, would have looked right at home on the set of the original Star Trek series. An aluminum cylinder, ringed with glowing bands of psychedelic color, is hard to miss. The 3D scanner in the center of the ship won't break you apart and beam you through space, but it will launch you instantly into a 65 inch tall, personalized Avastars video where you are the star.

The animated videos let you be a rockstar, fashionista, cheerleader, veterinarian, firefighter, cool rocker, special forces hero or a martial arts master.  A few days after the mall experience, you will receive a 3D printed personalized doll or action figure with your own face.

"This isn't about 3D technology," explains Avastars' cofounder Dan Lauer. "The girl who comes to Avastars doesn't care about 3D printing.  She wants to be a princess or a popstar and that's what really maters."

The St. Louis startup was cofounded by Lauer and Jill Barad, the former Chairman and CEO of Mattel who led the explosion in the popularity of Barbie in the 1980s and 1990s. Lauer's previous ventures include the creation of the Water Babies brand of realistic baby dolls. The management team also includes Scott Harmon who honed his 3D technology experience at Zcorp prior to and after its acquisition by 3D Systems and Brandon Elliot, formerly the Director of Digital Ventures at Build-a-Bear Workshop.

In addition to the St. Louis Galleria, Avastarships are also launching this year in Oak Brook, Illinois and Cincinnati, Ohio.  The companies goal is to expand into thousands of retail locations.

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Influenced by the Future

Forecasting is a critically important skill for a businessperson or an investor. But almost all forecasts are wrong to some degree. Why is it so difficult?

George Soros, in his book The Alchemy of Finance, postulates a theory of reflexivity that sheds light on some of the reasons why predicting the future is almost impossible. Reflexivity observes that people make predictions based upon their expectations of the future. The actions people take based upon those predictions actually change the course of events to create a different future. Actions, influenced by future expectations, of millions of people interact in ways that are far too complex to model.

Reflexivity is easiest to observe in the stock market where it leads to the boom and bust cycles that we saw in the technology boom of the late 90s and the housing bubble that caused the great recession. Although the book was originally published in 1987, before either of these crashes, those events fit the theory precisely.

Reflexivity predicts that in the early build up of a boom/bust cycle, there is accelerated growth in a sector that accurately reflects the fundamental growth potential. The accelerated growth creates an expectation of future growth that pushes prices higher than the fundamentals support. After a period of growth, there is usually a price correction that stokes fear of a price crash. When the prices recover from the correction, investors are relieved and the growth cycle begins anew. The very fact that the correction didn't cause a crash makes investors less wary. Prices continue to increase, fueling expectations of more increases until the the difference between the price and the value becomes to great to ignore leading to a catastrophic crash.

If we consider the reflexivity model and 3D printing stocks, it would appear that the period from 2008 through 2013 represents the initial period of accelerated growth. The dramatic decline in prices during the first quarter of 2014 represents the correction. It follows that the stocks should now enter the second period of rapid growth.

What is your favorite growth investment?

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Printing with Human Cells

3D Bioprinter by Organovo

One of the most important applications for 3D printing is still in the very early stages and is projected to grow to a $6 billion dollar market by the next decade. Bioprinting uses 3D printing technology and bio-ink building blocks to create three dimensional tissue where the cell function and viability are preserved within the printed item.

Cross-section of multi-cellular bioprinted human liver tissue

Using research and patents developed by Dr. Gabor Forgacs at the University of Missouri, Organovo is on the verge of releasing a product that uses 3D bioprinting to create a Human Liver System that can detect toxicity in potential new drugs. By detecting toxicity earlier, the Human Liver System reduces the risks of introducing dangerous drugs and saves the expense of testing in live patients.

While the first applications for Organovo's bioprinting are drug testing, the company believes that "engineered tissues will someday be a routine source of therapy for patients with damages or diseased tissue.  Using bioprinted organ patches made from the patient's own cells could prevent transplant rejection and the need for immunosuppresant drugs.

 

Organovo's scientific founder, Gabor Forgacs, presents on bioprinting at TEDMED.

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What to 3D Print at Home

3D Printed Shoes by Recreus at Thingiverse

I have been looking for an excuse to buy a 3D printer to play with at home. But I am struggling to figure out something useful to print with it. While some of the large industrial 3D printers can form beautiful metals and ceramics, the inexpensive home printers are limited to several varieties of plastics.

Here are some of the types of filaments that are currently available for a typical desktop fused filament fabrication 3D printer:

• PLA - Polylactic acid is a biodegradable polyester derived from renewable sources, often cornstarch or sugarcane.  It is the most popular material for desktop 3D printing because it has a low melting temperature, can be used without a heated bed, and can produce finer feature detail than ABS.
• ABS - Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene is a strong thermoplastic that requires a higher temperature on the printer and a heated bed. While it is less brittle than PLA, it is harder to work with and creates toxic fumes during the printing process.
• PET - Polyethylene terephthalate is a transparent thermoplastic that can be used for food and beverage containers. Perhaps I could print some uniquely shaped Tupperware replacements.
• Nylon - Nylon is a silky, flexible thermoplastic that requires much higher temperatures to print than PLA or ABS. Being strong and flexible makes it a good candidate for printing a personalized iPhone case.
• Rubber - Not really rubber, but a rubber like thermoplastic elastomer that looks and feels like rubber. It also requires higher temperatures than PLA and ABS so not every desktop printer can use it. Perhaps my wife would like a unusually shaped pair of new shoes.
• Wood - Actually a composite of polymers blended with 40% wood fiber. It has thermal characteristics similar to PLA, but it looks and feels like wood.

After learning more about these materials, I visited the Makerbot Thingiverse to browse through the downloadable digital designs. While there are many interesting pieces of art and fashion on the site, it is hard to get enthusiastic about printing plastic sculpture or jewelry.


My search for a real use for a home 3D printer continues.

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Learning About 3D Printing

Robo 3D Printer

3D printing, or more precisely, additive manufacturing, is one of my favorite areas of research. I believe the technology fits perfectly with the long term trends of more personalized products and shorter manufacturing runs. Here are some of the best sources for 3D printing information and news:

 

The Basics

How to 3D Print - Beginners Guide via 3D Printer Plans

3D Printers For Sale - A guide to consumer level 3D printers that is maintained by 3D Printer Plans

3D Printer News and Blogs

3DPrint.com

3DPrintingIndustry.com

3DPrinterPlans.info/blog/

Tctmagazine.com

Shapeways.com/blog

Investment Opportunities

These are publicly traded companies that manufacture 3D printers:

Stratasys

3D Systems Corp

Arcam AB

ExOne

Voxeljet AG

Organova Holdings

 3D Printing Services

Shapeways

Sculpteo

i.materialise




I feel this information is important enough that I have included it as a new page on this blog to keep it more easily accessible.

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Drug Delivery Via 3D Print

3D Printed Implants for Drug Delivery via 3DPrint.com

The most interesting story I found this week about 3D printing explains a new method of delivering antibiotics and cancer treatment drugs using 3D printed implants. Researchers at Louisiana Tech University have used a Makerbot Replicator to print biodegradable implants using a filament infused with the medication.

3D printing allows the implant to be shaped in a way to provide even and efficient delivery of the medicine directly to the area of the body where it is needed. Delivery of the drugs directly where they are needed is more efficient and reduces side effects. The ability to make the implants on an inexpensive home printer has broad implications for creating personalized treatments anywhere in the world.

What is the most interesting 3D printing story you read this week?

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Titanium Aluminide in the News

3D Spinal Implant via 3DPrint.com

Titanium aluminide is not a material that is in the news every day. So when two news articles mention it in the same day, it is worth pointing out.

Titanium aluminide is an extremely strong and light material that is ideal for 3D printing aerospace components and orthopedic implants. These items are built up in layers by melting the metal powder using the Electron Beam Melting method perfected by Arcam AB.

The first article notes that the first 3D printed spinal vertebrae have been implanted in patients in China. This is a major medical breakthrough that can greatly help those suffering from spinal injuries or spinal degeneration.

In the second article, GE revealed that they will be using the alloy and Electron Beam Melting in the production of the turbine blades for their GEnx engine, used in Boeing’s Dreamliner and 747-8 aircraft.

These are fascinating stories and lead me to believe that we will be hearing a lot more about Arcam AB and titanium aluminide in the future.

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Shapeways Announces Full Color 3D Printing in Plastic

3D Plastic Parts by Shapeways

For the first time, full color 3D printing is available in a durable, functional plastic. The new service was announced Wednesday by Shapeways.

Shapeways describes the parts as "grainy" and that the process consists of an inkjet binder and a powder bed of plastic which implies strongly that the service uses 3D System's ColorJet technology. The service will initially be available to a select group of Pilot Designers to test the usefulness of the parts before rolling it out to Shapeway's entire customer base.

This is an important milestone in 3D printing and will open the doors to a much wider set of manufacturing applications.

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Can Design Have Integrity?

Integrity is one of the most important characteristics in a business partner, associate, even a customer. We want to work with people we can trust and rely upon. If integrity is important in a person, is it important to design?  Can design have integrity?

Dictionary.com defines integrity as an adherence to principles, honesty, the state of being whole, entire, sound and undiminished. I believe it is possible and essential for great design to live up to this definition.

Howard Roark, the heroic and visionary hero of Ayn Rand's Fountainhead followed these rules for architectural design:

What can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. 

These are important rules for mechanical designers to remember as we move into the age of additive manufacturing. 3D printers can build easily with materials that have been difficult or impossible to  shape with machine tools. They can create geometries that are impossible to produce with traditional machining processes. Those are the strengths of 3D printing that need to drive the creativity of the designer.

Direct Metal Laser Melted Part by GE

GE understands these principles and already has over 300 3D printers in operation. Using additive processes, they have been able to reduce the weight and improve the efficiency of their LEAP jet engines. GE projects that they will manufacture over 100,000 additive parts by 2020. 

What are your rules for design integrity?


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Full Color 3D Printing

World of Warcraft Figure by Figure Prints

I have been on a quest to find a full color 3D printing technology that can create beautiful and functional personalized models. In recent months, great progress has been made by several 3D printer manufacturers.

Figure Prints has been making personalized figurines from World of Warcraft avatars for several years using the ColorJet Printing method from 3D Systems. But I don't consider these truly functional. Made of gypsum powder held together with a binder, the models are brittle and best suited to display on a shelf.

CubeJet Print from 3D Systems

At CES in January, 3D Systems announced the CubeJet which offers the ColorJet Printing technology in a desktop version. The samples at CES showed fine color resolution similar to the company's larger ProJet 4500 and a video from CES by Make shows a CubeJet printed iPhone case that is full color and flexible. The CubeJet is not yet available but expected to begin shipping later this year.

For a model that looks, feels and functions similar to wood, the Mcor Iris offers inexpensive 3D printing in full color with over a million colors. Iris builds using paper and the selective deposition lamination process. Since color printing on paper is a mature and well tested method to product accurate color, Iris produces the most accurately colored models that I have seen so far. It is the only 3D printer that supports ICC profiles.

Cyan Magenta Yellow Palette for the Connex3

Arguably, the most durable multi-color parts can be made using the Objet500 Connex3 printer from Stratasys. Connex3 can print using a variety of PolyJet materials including Digital ABS which mimics the strength, toughness and thermal resistance of ABS and high impact polystyrene. The printer's PolyJet technology jets resin droplets of three different colors onto the build tray and he colors can blend to create up to 46 colors in a single model. While there is a choice of 10 different palettes of 46 colors, none of them have the color resolution to create a model with a continuous tone photographic texture map.

Every week, I see a new article on a research lab working on a full color 3D printer and even some new models coming onto the market. The definition of full color varies though and most of these processes would be better described as multi-color because their ability to blend colors is limited.

What would you like to print in full color?

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Construction Paper

If you are the type who believes that printers should stick to putting ink on paper, here is a 3D printer for you! The Iris printer from Mcor Technologies uses an Epson inkjet printer and a stack of 20 lb sheets of paper to build full color 3D parts that look and feel like wood.

In the selective deposition lamination (SDL) process developed by Conor and Fintan MacCormack, each sheet of paper is printed in the area that will become the edge of the final part. The paper is thin enough to allow the ink to be absorbed through the entire thickness of sheet.

Next, the first sheet is placed on the build platform and a layer of glue is applied in the area that represents the solid part of the first layer of the model. The paper is sliced along the printed outline and the next sheet is dropped into position. The process continues, layer after layer, until the entire part is constructed.

When the model is finished, the excess paper is pulled away to reveal the finished part. The finished items are light, strong and brilliantly colored.

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Changing the World with a Glue Gun

In 1989, Scott Crump wanted to make a toy frog for his two-year-old daughter. As he worked in the kitchen shaping the frog with a glue gun, he was also inventing the 3D printing process that would transform manufacturing in the 21st century. Crump formed Stratasys to commercialize the process he named Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) and the company is now the largest manufacturer of 3D printers with a 44% market share.

FDM works by depositing droplets of melted thermoplastic in a computer controlled pattern much like a regular desktop printer jets ink.. The plastic solidifies after it is deposited to form one layer of a 3D object. When each layer is finished, the print head or print table are moved to allow the next layer to be added. This process is repeated layer after layer until the 3D item is completed.

The raw material for an FDM printer is typically a coil of plastic filament which is fed into a heating block to heat the end of the filament to the melting temperature. Stepper motors or servo motors move the print head to the precise x, y and z position to extrude each droplet.

Diagram from RepRap Wiki

Stratasys manufactures a wide range of FDM machines from desktop models for designers to large industrial models for manufacturing plants.  Stratasys has a trademark on the term Fused Deposition Modeling and the abbreviation FDM so the RepRap, Makerbot and most other small 3D printers which use the same process refer to it as Fused Filament Fabrication or FFF.

The FDM process works with several types of thermoplastics including acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) polymer, polycarbonates, polycaprolactone, polyphenylsulfones and waxes making it suitable for a wide variety of prototyping and manufacturing applications.

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The Thrill of Ownership

Desktop 3D Printers from Stratasys

For me, it started with Stratasys, the 3D printer company. I had been researching additive manufacturing tools for building a new product and had even visited the Stratasys headquarters to see the machines in operation. Ultimately, we selected an Objet printer for the project and our new product was not successful.

Statasys remained intriguing however.  This was a mostly unknown technology that seemed like it could change the world.  So after carefully research and consideration, I took some of our savings out of some slow growing mutual funds and purchased a portion of the company.

Since that purchase, the company has grown, added new printers, introduced new modeling materials and made several acquisitions.  As an owner, it has been thrilling to watch.

There is an important psychological difference between buying stock and purchasing part of a company, even if the actual financial transaction is exactly the same. Often, buying stocks is similar to a poker game; you try to guess what the other stock buyers are thinking and whether investor sentiment will push the stock price up. In purchasing a company, the focus is on the intrinsic value of the company, the suitability of the products for the marketplace and the skill the management team has in operating the company.

As an owner, I have a responsibility to understand the marketplace and know the strengths and weaknesses of our products compared to those of our competitors. I need to pay attention to revenues and margins.  I need to watch cash flows just like any other business owner. For me, this is both exciting and good practice for the assessments that I have to make regularly for my employer.

Since that initial investment, I have purchased a few other companies. Ownership is a lot more challenging and rewarding than following the daily fluctuations in an index fund. Instead of watching the game, you are in the game.


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