3D printers put drones in flight(this could screw up our economic system)

[ScienceRocks]

3D printers put drones in flight
PUBLISHED: 30 Jul 2012 22:52:02 | UPDATED: 31 Jul 2012 04:49:25

http://www.afr.com/p/technology/printers_put_drones_in_flight_Dq2f2EC3hsbVQ8LTlgR2ZK

Open up any electronic device and inside there are circuit boards, components and bundles of wire. Assembling these items into a product like a phone can be a tedious, labour-intensive process, and one that is often subcontracted to low-wage countries such as China. Now new ways of printing electronics in three dimensions are being developed. This makes it possible to incorporate circuitry and components into the material the product is made from, such as the phone’s case. It could revolutionise the way electronic goods are made.

Printing electronics is not new; screen printing, lithography, inkjet and other processes have long been used to manufacture circuit boards and components. But the technologies are improving rapidly and now allow electronics to be printed on a greater variety of surfaces. In the latest developments, electronics printing is being combined with “additive manufacturing”, which uses machines popularly known as 3D printers to build solid objects out of material, one layer at a time.

Printing electronics requires “inks” with electrical properties that can act as conductors, resistors or semiconductors. These inks are becoming more versatile. One example comes from the American company Xerox. Its research centre in Canada has developed a silver ink which can be used to print flexible electronic circuits directly onto materials like plastic or fabrics. Silver is a better conductor of electricity than copper, which is typically used in circuits, but silver is expensive and tricky to print because it melts at 962°C. However, by making silver into particles just five nanometres (billionths of a metre) in size, Xerox has produced a silver ink which melts at less than 140°C. That allows it to be printed using inkjet and other processes relatively cheaply, says Paul Smith, the director of research at the laboratory. Only minuscule quantities of silver are used and there is no waste, unlike chemical-etching processes.

Xerox’s PARC research centre in Palo Alto, California, is developing ways to use such inks. These can print circuits for various components, including flexible display screens, sensors and antennae for radio-frequency security tags. With the emergence of additive-manufacturing techniques, it starts to become possible to print such things directly onto the product itself, says Janos Veres, the manager of PARC’s printed-electronics team.

That includes products with complex shapes. Optomec, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has developed additive-manufacturing systems for a variety of industries. It can print electronics directly onto a pair of glasses, for “augmented reality”; it can make a plastic water tank that uses embedded electronics to measure how full it is and turn pumps on or off; it can print sensors on military armour; or an antenna on the case of a mobile phone.

Seriously, if this 3-d printing grows it could start replacing some parts of labor. This will seriously screw up the economic system.

It may bite China in the ass. But it will also bite us in the ass.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_printing

Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands and thus undermines economies of scale. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did....Just as nobody could have predicted the impact of the steam engine in 1750—or the printing press in 1450, or the transistor in 1950—it is impossible to foresee the long-term impact of 3D printing. But the technology is coming, and it is likely to disrupt every field it touches. ”
—The Economist, in a February 10, 2011 leader[17]

 

[ScienceRocks]

3-D printing: the shape of things to come

By Matthew Knight, CNN

updated 5:57 AM EDT, Tue July 24, 2012 |

Once a useful tool for rapid-prototyping, 3-D printers are now entering the mainstream building anything from plastic toys to parts for airplanes.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Advances in 3-D printing could transform manufacturing in the 21st century
Manufacturing objects layer by layer is more precise and saves waste
U.S. researcher hopes to print a fully working robot in next few years
Aviation company EADS hoping to build wings and possibly whole planes using 3-D printing by 2050

London (CNN) -- Three-dimensional (3-D) printers have come a long way from their 1980s origins as machines for building prototypes for industrial engineers and architects.

Today, thanks to advances in technology and high-performance materials, they are being hailed as enablers of a "new industrial revolution."

The technology, which creates 3-D objects layer by layer from 2-D computer models, could transform manufacturing in the 21st century.

Hod Lipson, director of Cornell University's Creative Machines Lab and co-author of "Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing," says there's virtually no material you can't print with.

"We are focusing on bio-printing and recently worked on food printing. Now we are focusing on multi-material printing -- integrating electric wires, batteries and motors," Lipson said.

"We really want to print a robot that will walk out of a printer. We have been able to print batteries and motors, but we haven't been able to print the whole thing yet. I think in two or three years we'll be able to do that."

Lispon says the commercial 3-D printer market is now growing exponentially, likening the change to the switch from mainframe computers to desktop during the 1980s.




We really want to print a robot that will walk out of a printer. We have been able to print batteries and motors, but we haven't been able to print the whole thing yet
Hod Lipson, Cornell University

You can now buy printers for $1,000 going up to around $500,000, he says. But you might not need one at all.

"If you're interested in, say, making iPhone covers and you wanted to make them high quality, you could send the file online and it could be shipped overnight to you or your customer. So, essentially there is a cloud manufacturing model that is happening that is allowing people to do this," Lipson said.

See more: How you can 'print' 3-D objects at home

The scale of 3-D products is also expanding with printing ranging from the micro scale right up to building-size, according to Lipson.

Most people are printing toys at the moment, but industrial applications are also growing.

Engineers at EADS (The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company) -- parent of plane manufacturer Airbus -- are at the vanguard of the rapidly advancing field.

The benefits are enormous, says Jonathan Meyer, leader of Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) Research at EADS Innovation Works, based in the UK.

3-D printing: the shape of things to come - CNN.com

 

[oldernwiser]

Seriously, if this 3-d printing grows it could start replacing some parts of labor. This will seriously screw up the economic system.

It may bite China in the ass. But it will also bite us in the ass.

How so?
Sintering technology (which is what this is a form of) has been around for a lot of years already.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Seriously, if this 3-d printing grows it could start replacing some parts of labor. This will seriously screw up the economic system.

It may bite China in the ass. But it will also bite us in the ass.

How so?
Sintering technology (which is what this is a form of) has been around for a lot of years already.

The benefits are enormous, says Jonathan Meyer, leader of Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) Research at EADS Innovation Works, based in the UK.

"For us, it's very advantageous to have a technology where we don't need specialized tooling. When you invest in tooling it drives you to a requirement for higher volumes in order to make the cost case," Meyer said.

EADS is working with titanium alloys, high-strength steels and aluminum alloys, turning them from powder into a solid object (a process called sintering) using a laser or an electron beam.

As well as cutting down on waste, the technology also presents the opportunity to make new system parts that are more complex than ones made using conventional machining, Meyer says.

Whatever happens, it's going to be a lot easier to make things, Lipson says.

"The bottom line is that for the first time in human history complexity is free -- making something complicated takes the same amount of time, resources and skill of making something simple," said Lipson. "This is a profound departure from the past."


Hydraulic manifold channels can now be curved instead of straight, he says, while complex small-scale trusses can now be defined with far greater accuracy.
3-D printing: the shape of things to come - CNN.com

Very limited, but now everything is going to start being done this way. China drives a lot of its growth from employing its people into sweat shops to put things together.

 

[expat_panama]

Business as usual. Americans create an amazing technology and make a fortune selling it to others. We sell our newly created capital and buy goods and services. This is how the US gets richer with an increasing trade deficit.

What's not to like?

 

[TakeAStepBack]

3D printing is going to be a windfall if you get in early.

The division of labor will not suffer from the advancement of technology. It will adjust accordingly. Another of those terminator fantasies.

 

[william the wie]

Business as usual. Americans create an amazing technology and make a fortune selling it to others. We sell our newly created capital and buy goods and services. This is how the US gets richer with an increasing trade deficit.

What's not to like?

Did you see the dresses made from this, I took one look and went I will never understand any woman ever. (I wear 9.5 6Es as the best approximation of a shoe that fits. I really would like to someday have shoes that fit, so I follow this stuff.) The Economist had some decent pics of the products that have been made with print manufacture a few months ago but implied Europe was the hot spot not the US. Who does make the printers?

 

[Politico]

Sounds like cool tech.

 

[oldernwiser]

Business as usual. Americans create an amazing technology and make a fortune selling it to others. We sell our newly created capital and buy goods and services. This is how the US gets richer with an increasing trade deficit.

What's not to like?

Did you see the dresses made from this, I took one look and went I will never understand any woman ever. (I wear 9.5 6Es as the best approximation of a shoe that fits. I really would like to someday have shoes that fit, so I follow this stuff.) The Economist had some decent pics of the products that have been made with print manufacture a few months ago but implied Europe was the hot spot not the US. Who does make the printers?

Google "sintering" to get more accurate info, but I believe Hitachi was one of the leaders in the field.

This technology has been available for the last 20+ years. It was originally intended for quick product demos, but gained popularity mighty quickly. About 10 years ago, during a root canal, my dentist used modeling software to "design" the tooth he was replacing. The tooth was manufactured by a robot which ground a cube of ceramic into a perfect replacement in less than 10 minutes right there in his office.

I guess this could have ramifications down the line - a lab is now deprived of some work meaning a tech or 2 may lose their jobs, but less hands on a product usually means lower costs. Technology is a double edged sword sometimes.

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

Sorry, but technological advancements don't crush economies. If they did the industrial revolution would've left the industrialized nations in abject poverty. Last I checked, industrialized nations tend to be the ones able to feed themselves.

What people who make your argument tend to miss in their reasoning is that companies switch over to new methods of production for one reason and one reason alone: because it increases their overall profitability. That means that the only way they'll switch over to 3d electronic printing with no specialized labor is if it lowers the cost of production.

Thus, when said technology becomes available, the company producing the goods is theoretically able to sell those goods at a reduced price and still enjoy the same profit margin. What reinforces this reduction in cost to consumers is that said company's competitors are also pushing for technology to make their production cheaper, and as the option to undercut each other becomes more and more widely enjoyed, prices are generally forced downward (provided a few measures are in place to avoid industry price fixing). These technological advancements in production all contribute to lessening the amount of time the average person has to spend earning the same amount of stuff.

It is EXACTLY this relationship between technology in production and the economy that accounts for the fact that the average person has to work far fewer hours to provide for their basic upkeep than did their agrarian predecessors, and it is EXACTLY that fact that accounts for the fact that our society has the time and resources to throw at non necessities. . . like these computers through which we argue politics for, typically, no reason other than our own entertainment. That's why the economy doesn't really suffer as we get more advanced. The less time the average person has to spend working each day to secure food and shelter, the more time that same person has left over to cram chalk full of recreation, and as available recreational time increases, so does the demand for recreational products.

With technology, pretty much every time some new shit closes a door, it opens a few windows.

 

[oldernwiser]

Sorry, but technological advancements don't crush economies. If they did the industrial revolution would've left the industrialized nations in abject poverty. Last I checked, industrialized nations tend to be the ones able to feed themselves.

What people who make your argument tend to miss in their reasoning is that companies switch over to new methods of production for one reason and one reason alone: because it increases their overall profitability. That means that the only way they'll switch over to 3d electronic printing with no specialized labor is if it lowers the cost of production.

Thus, when said technology becomes available, the company producing the goods is theoretically able to sell those goods at a reduced price and still enjoy the same profit margin. What reinforces this reduction in cost to consumers is that said company's competitors are also pushing for technology to make their production cheaper, and as the option to undercut each other becomes more and more widely enjoyed, prices are generally forced downward (provided a few measures are in place to avoid industry price fixing). These technological advancements in production all contribute to lessening the amount of time the average person has to spend earning the same amount of stuff.

It is EXACTLY this relationship between technology in production and the economy that accounts for the fact that the average person has to work far fewer hours to provide for their basic upkeep than did their agrarian predecessors, and it is EXACTLY that fact that accounts for the fact that our society has the time and resources to throw at non necessities. . . like these computers through which we argue politics for, typically, no reason other than our own entertainment. That's why the economy doesn't really suffer as we get more advanced. The less time the average person has to spend working each day to secure food and shelter, the more time that same person has left over to cram chalk full of recreation, and as available recreational time increases, so does the demand for recreational products.

With technology, pretty much every time some new shit closes a door, it opens a few windows.

Absolutely.

Technology is a good thing.
Except to those who are being replaced by it. Those young enough can be re-trained, while the others can become well-educated security guards.

[Incidentally, the time the average person spends securing food and shelter has been increasing over the last few decades in spite of the advances in technology...]

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

Sorry, but technological advancements don't crush economies. If they did the industrial revolution would've left the industrialized nations in abject poverty. Last I checked, industrialized nations tend to be the ones able to feed themselves.

What people who make your argument tend to miss in their reasoning is that companies switch over to new methods of production for one reason and one reason alone: because it increases their overall profitability. That means that the only way they'll switch over to 3d electronic printing with no specialized labor is if it lowers the cost of production.

Thus, when said technology becomes available, the company producing the goods is theoretically able to sell those goods at a reduced price and still enjoy the same profit margin. What reinforces this reduction in cost to consumers is that said company's competitors are also pushing for technology to make their production cheaper, and as the option to undercut each other becomes more and more widely enjoyed, prices are generally forced downward (provided a few measures are in place to avoid industry price fixing). These technological advancements in production all contribute to lessening the amount of time the average person has to spend earning the same amount of stuff.

It is EXACTLY this relationship between technology in production and the economy that accounts for the fact that the average person has to work far fewer hours to provide for their basic upkeep than did their agrarian predecessors, and it is EXACTLY that fact that accounts for the fact that our society has the time and resources to throw at non necessities. . . like these computers through which we argue politics for, typically, no reason other than our own entertainment. That's why the economy doesn't really suffer as we get more advanced. The less time the average person has to spend working each day to secure food and shelter, the more time that same person has left over to cram chalk full of recreation, and as available recreational time increases, so does the demand for recreational products.

With technology, pretty much every time some new shit closes a door, it opens a few windows.

Absolutely.

Technology is a good thing.
Except to those who are being replaced by it. Those young enough can be re-trained, while the others can become well-educated security guards.

[Incidentally, the time the average person spends securing food and shelter has been increasing over the last few decades in spite of the advances in technology...]

Very true. Sucks to be the guy losing his job to a robot, but into each life a little rain must fall.

And yes, that time required for personal maintenance fluctuates for any number of reasons. My point is simply that the effect of production technology itself is, overall, economically positive.

 

[Moonglow]

Business as usual. Americans create an amazing technology and make a fortune selling it to others. We sell our newly created capital and buy goods and services. This is how the US gets richer with an increasing trade deficit.

What's not to like?

Did you see the dresses made from this, I took one look and went I will never understand any woman ever. (I wear 9.5 6Es as the best approximation of a shoe that fits. I really would like to someday have shoes that fit, so I follow this stuff.) The Economist had some decent pics of the products that have been made with print manufacture a few months ago but implied Europe was the hot spot not the US. Who does make the printers?

Google "sintering" to get more accurate info, but I believe Hitachi was one of the leaders in the field.

This technology has been available for the last 20+ years. It was originally intended for quick product demos, but gained popularity mighty quickly. About 10 years ago, during a root canal, my dentist used modeling software to "design" the tooth he was replacing. The tooth was manufactured by a robot which ground a cube of ceramic into a perfect replacement in less than 10 minutes right there in his office.

I guess this could have ramifications down the line - a lab is now deprived of some work meaning a tech or 2 may lose their jobs, but less hands on a product usually means lower costs. Technology is a double edged sword sometimes.

What did the tooth replacement cost?

 

[Douger]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmDz7Q9_h6c]Printing a Giant Wrench with a 3D Printer - YouTube[/ame]

 

[oldernwiser]

Did you see the dresses made from this, I took one look and went I will never understand any woman ever. (I wear 9.5 6Es as the best approximation of a shoe that fits. I really would like to someday have shoes that fit, so I follow this stuff.) The Economist had some decent pics of the products that have been made with print manufacture a few months ago but implied Europe was the hot spot not the US. Who does make the printers?

Google "sintering" to get more accurate info, but I believe Hitachi was one of the leaders in the field.

This technology has been available for the last 20+ years. It was originally intended for quick product demos, but gained popularity mighty quickly. About 10 years ago, during a root canal, my dentist used modeling software to "design" the tooth he was replacing. The tooth was manufactured by a robot which ground a cube of ceramic into a perfect replacement in less than 10 minutes right there in his office.

I guess this could have ramifications down the line - a lab is now deprived of some work meaning a tech or 2 may lose their jobs, but less hands on a product usually means lower costs. Technology is a double edged sword sometimes.

What did the tooth replacement cost?

$1200 - I didn't save anything by having the dentist carve it.
But it was cool as hell to watch!