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The concept plane by Airbus to be made circa 2050 with a 3D printer
[Updated with video, below] We already know that 3D-printing has revolutionized the way we can make everyday objects from Lego pieces, to guitars, and from car bodies to artificial livers. But the scale of this change could be much, much bigger if the “printers” themselves scale up enough to incorporate structures as large as airplanes.
Bastian Schaefer, a cabin engineer with Airbus, has been working for the last two years on a concept cabin that envisions what the future of flight would look like from the passenger’s perspective. From that came a radical concept: build the aircraft itself from the ground up with a 3D printer that’s very large in deed, ie. as big as an aircraft hangar. That probably sounds like a long shot, since the biggest 3D printers today are about the size of a dining table. But the Airbus design comes with a roadmap, from 3D-printing small components now, through to the plane as a whole around 2050.
Why use 3D printing at all? Airbus parent EADS has been looking into using the process, known as additive layer manufacturing, for making aircraft for some time because it’s potentially cheaper, and can result in components that are 65% ligher than with traditional manufacturing methods. Airbus’ concept plane is also so dizzyingly complicated that it requires radical manufacturing methods: from the curved fuselage to the bionic structure, to the transparent skin that gives passengers a panoramic view of the sky and clouds around them.
“It would have to be about 80 by 80 meters,” said Schaefer of the eventual, yet-to-be-created 3D printer. “This could be feasible.”
3D printing technology has been around for a while and there are plenty of innovators pushing it in extraordinary ways. Some of the biggest structures have come from Enrico Dini, the man behind British company Monolite UK, who has worked for years using 3D printing technology to mould sand and an inorganic binder into large, house-like structures. Dini has claimed that his 3D printer, known as the D-Shape, is the largest in the world.
Among the biggest challenges in scaling up 3D printing are money and regulation. Dini struggled to finance his large-scale printing projects because of the global financial crisis; his story is told in the forthcoming documentary “The Man Who Prints Houses.”
Airbus meanwhile needs its designs to pass through stringent aircraft regulations before it can use the process to make plane components. One reason to start small: by the end of this year Airbus will have updated certain cabin brackets for the A380, making its super jumbo the company’s first commercial plane to use 3D-printed components. New models of Airbus’ Eurofighter Typhoon, a military jet, already contain non-structural parts of its air-conditioning unit that have been 3D printed, Schaefer said.
An 80mX80m printer implies that they will be making giant, one piece structures.
An aircraft takes off, gets pressurized then de-pressurized and lands. It does that for many thousands of "cycles" over the years and develops cracks everywhere.
How can a giant, one piece structure like that get repaired? If at all?
Since just a few employees run dozens of printers — vs. several hundred or thousands of workers in traditional factories — some experts say the technology can neutralize the low-cost labor advantage that countries such as China and India enjoy over the U.S. That, along with 3-D printing's ability to accommodate quick product launches, is expected to accelerate a nascent "reshoring" trend that has seen a growing number of manufacturers bring some production back to the U.S.
"It becomes very cost competitive with anything you can get from China," says Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
At its factory here, ExOne makes 3-D printers for manufacturers but also uses the machines to turn out parts on a contract basis. On a recent weekday, a torque converter for a car transmission and a corporate trophy were being made side by side in one printer. Another was making fingers for a prosthetic hand. A third was printing 12 stove burners as part of an order of 500.
To make the gas burners, which look like sewing thimbles, a computer-aided design, sliced into multiple cross-sections, is entered into a computer, telling the printer precisely how to shape the burner. A roller puts down a layer of gray metal powder. A cartridge then glides across the surface like a quiet dot matrix print head, depositing a chemical to bind together certain particles and form 12 images of three concentric circles. It looks like a rough sketch of a gas burner, but it's actually a 1/4000-inch layer of it. The completed layer drops down and a new gray sheet of powder is smeared across. After a box is filled up and its contents heated, a worker removes the block of powder and clears away the excess to reveal the burners.
Other 3-D printers follow different processes. Many plastic parts, for example, are shaped by squirting successive layers of melted plastic through a nozzle.
It takes 5½ hours to make the 152 layers that will constitute each of the 12 burners, about half the time it took two years ago with slower machines. This fall, ExOne will install new machines more than four times faster than current models.
"Every time we drive down our (unit costs), we add another potential market group," says ExOne President David Burns.
Making the burners the traditional way would have required the creation of a die, out of which metal parts are stamped. Dies, molds and other tools cost thousands of dollars and take weeks or months to forge, delaying product rollouts. They still make sense if manufacturers can spread that cost across many thousands of products — but not for a few hundred or even several thousand.
Another benefit is that the 3-D printer layers only as much metal powder as needed. Standard manufacturing cuts figures out of blocks of metal or other substances, often wasting as much as 90% of the raw material. Also, inventory costs are sharply reduced or eliminated, because a small number of parts can be made on the fly, circumventing traditional industrial machinery that must make many thousands of widgets to be cost-effective.
The gas burners are well suited for 3-D printing because they're complex. Each has dozens of tiny holes out of which flames shoot. The 3-D printer is uncannily precise, making the holes evenly spaced so all sides of a frying pan are heated equally, says ExOne CEO Kent Rockwell. Printers also make multisection pieces with odd twists and angles as easily as a simple square — the printer just follows the design. With conventional manufacturing, the gas burner's two parts would have to be made separately and welded, adding time, labor and occasional errors.
For example, 3-D printers routinely make surgical tools, medical implants and orthodontic braces that are tailored to patients' unique bone or tooth structures.
But as production speeds and quality continue to improve, and printer and material prices fall, a growing universe of industrial parts is expected to be printed rather than bolted, bent or molded. Large sneaker manufacturers, for instance, are considering making latticework soles that use less material — so shoes are lighter, yet durable — that can be shaped only with 3-D printers, Wohlers says.
Christine Furstoss, who heads General Electric's manufacturing and materials technology group, says up to half of the parts in GE's energy turbines and aircraft engines could be 3-D printed in 10 years.
"It's difficult to name an industry that won't be impacted," Wohlers says.
But can they print a printer with a 3D printer?
I think we have established that 3D printers are awesome. From organs and houses to guns and drugs, 3D printers are the future. Of course, you now want a 3D printer of your very own, but you don’t know where to get one. If you have the cash and a free weekend, one group will show you how to build your own.
Starting on July 28, NextFab Studio will be hosting three weekend events in Philadelphia where people will be building their own MendelMax 1.5, the most advanced version of the RepRap 3D printer. How does that work? Well, the RepRap is a particularly awesome 3D printer because it’s made primarily out of plastic. That means that you can build a 3D printer with a 3D printer.
The weekend classes will cost you $2,000. That’s about the price of an assembled RepRap printer so you get the printer and the knowledge of how to make your own for such a low price. As an added bonus, they will even thrown in a free copy of MOI v2, 3D modeling software that will allow you to make your own models for printing.
So you’re already at the “Shut up and take my money” phase. What will you need to start building your new 3D printer? Surprisingly, not a lot.
•A laptop + powercord (OS X 10.6+ and Ubuntu 11.04+ are recommended for robotics control and 3D printing. Windows should work but due to the variability in Windows systems you may have some hurdles to getting the proper software installed. You will need Python v2.7+, the Arduino environment, and a few other bits.)
•Enthusiasm and a passion for learning and helping others learn.
•Bring your friends! (3 Students MAX per kit): Bring a friend, a parent, your kids, anyone else you want to help you build your kit and learn all of its inner workings and how to fix it!
The deadline for session one has already passed, but you can still jump on the registration for the next two sessions. For the August 11 session, you will have to sign up by July 28. For the August 25 session, you will have to sign up by August 11. You can buy your ticket to the event over at EventBrite.
Considering that you will be the envy of all your friends with a 3D printer, the price definitely seems worth it. Since you can bring up to two friends along for the ride, splitting the cost for the kit will be pretty easy.
But can they print a printer with a 3D printer?
Is there anything 3D printers won’t wholly revolutionize? There’s the gun trade and illicit narcotics market, there’s the fine art of burrito making, and now, Atlantic Cities reports, a USC professor is working on a means of using them to wholly disrupt the construction business. That’s right–he proposes that we jettison prefab construction for just straight 3D printing your next home.
These still highly theoretical houses would be constructed/printed in layers, based on a computer program, with features like plumbing built in. Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis estimates that a 25,000-square-foot home could be built in as little as 24 hours. (Well, it’s not like the robots are making a daily rate and therefore see any need to drag the process out.)
Here’s the TEDx talk where he works through all this:
“What we are hoping to generate,” he explains, “are dignified, at a fraction of the cost, at a fraction of the time, far more safely, and with architectural flexibility that would be unprecedented.” He argues that this is one of the most promising solutions for the world’s many slums built of makeshift materials in poor conditions.
If you look up “TED Talk” in Wikipedia, pretty sure this is tossed out as a theoretical example.
That sounds great, but it’s also way more likely anyone commercializing this technology would make it into something a lot like a 21st century Levittown for the globe’s rising middle class. Sure, they’ll be snazzy and whimsically shaped, but they’ll be churned out quickly on vast tracts of land–typically called sprawl.
You know where this would be incredibly helpful, though? Colonizing Mars. Quick, someone get Elon Musk on the phone.
3D printing seems to be everywhere these days, but usually it's just for making small machines or mechanical parts. Now a professor from the University of Southern California says that we need to think bigger, and has developed a system to print entire buildings in less than a single day.
Contour Crafting uses what is essentially a giant 3D printer that hangs over the space the home will occupy, building up the walls using layers of concrete. The machine can add plumbing and electrical wiring as it goes, leaving a completed shell needing just windows and doors to complete. There are even ways to robotically paint the walls and add tiling to floors and walls.
Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis say that Contour Crafting will allow for low cost housing that's cheap and fast to build, with far lower labor costs, and with less chance of construction workers being injured in the process. He sees it being especially valuable for eliminating slums in developing countries and for areas ravaged by earthquakes or other natural disasters, but says the process can be adapted for more luxurious homes and even large buildings.
Because the design is determined by a computer program, custom architectural features can be added or changed with a few clicks of a mouse, so you don't end up with a house identical to all your neighbors.
Futurism combined with global warming is the new leftie religion. It has all the elements of a religion and the most important part is faith. You gotta have faith or you would dismiss the radical claims and the si-fy crap outright.
http://www.reeis.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/0228895-engineered-comestible-meat.htmlWe write about 3D printing a lot. A lot. One area that has always showed promise — but never commitment — is using 3D printers to crank out edible replacements. Today, that commitment's there.
Billionaire Peter Thiel, who along with Elon Musk and others founded PayPal, also founded the Thiel Foundation, which supports "innovative scientific research and new technologies that empower people to improve their lives." 3D-printed meat may not sound like it falls inside the scope of that mission, but, as you'll see, it does.
CNET's Declan McCullagh reports:
The recipient of the Thiel Foundation's [Breakout Labs] grant, a Columbia, Mo.-based startup named Modern Meadow, is pitching bioprinted meat as a more environmentally-friendly way to satisfy a natural human craving for animal protein. Co-founder Andras Forgacs has sharply criticized the overall cost of traditional livestock practices, saying "if you look at the resource intensity of everything that goes into a hamburger, it is an environmental train wreck."
We're already working on 3D-print meat — sort of. Medical companies use industrial 3D printers to crank out tissue. Some of that tech is actually going into Modern Meadow, which is being supported by medical startups that are also getting money from the Thiel Foundation's tech-focused arm, Breakout Labs.
Forgacs's remark above shows the vision — to use 3D printing technology to disrupt complex supply chains that have a big impact on the environment — but right now he and Modern Meadow are tasked with creating an edible (and hopefully tasty) one-inch-long strip of synthetic meat. You can read a summary of the company's goals here.
Food, homes and guts: the future of 3D printing3D printers are already being used to create art sculptures, replace appliance parts and fit dentures, but the new technology could soon have a far more profound impact on our lives.
Experts say that in the not-too-distant future we will be able to print out copies of almost everything around us: our phones, our food, our homes and even our body parts.
What is 3D printing?
For the uninitiated 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, involves using a computer-generated model to make three dimensional objects.
An owner of a 3D printer, which now cost as little as $900 in Australia, can download a design from the internet and print out an object in whichever shape they desire.
The vice president of leading 3D printer manufacturer 3D Systems Asia Pacific, Scott Marriott, said people are already downloading and printing their own replacement parts for household items such as fridges and washing machines.
"Items that are traditionally lost or broken can be downloaded and printed out without going into a store," he said.
The dental business is one industry adopting the new technology, using it to customise teeth and dentures to better suit a patient.
We spoke to a some of the people involved in Australia’s 3D printing industry and they gave us a few ideas of what could be printed out in the coming years:
Mobile phones
A 3D-printed phone case. (objective3d.com.au)
Today people can use 3D printers to realise their own designs such as iPhone covers but it won’t be long before an entire phone will be printable, according to Chris Peters, the founder of website 3D Printers Australia.
"Technology is being developed that can print multiple materials in one print, such as a printed circuit board," he said.
"So at the end of the day you could print a finished mobile phone."
The same technology could be applied to build numerous other electronic devices, including MP3 Players, GPS systems, digital watches and cameras.
Food
A 3D chocolate printer developed by the University of Exeter.
Printers could one day sit alongside microwaves as an essential feature of any kitchen, with some firms already selling devices that can be used to ice cakes and make burritos.
Like an ink printer, the device uses cartridges which contain different ingredients that are then layered on top of each other and cooked to your liking.
Printing meals will reduce the waste associated with food packaging and also give users more control by allowing them to regulate the ingredients, fat content and number of calories.
Houses
Homes could be built in a matter of hours. (ContourCrafting)
Scientists at the University of Southern California are working on a printer that could be used to build homes.
"Using this process, a single house or a colony of houses, each with possibly a different design, may be automatically constructed in a single run, embedded in each house all the conduits for electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning," a statement on the university's website said.
"There's also a machine that prints concrete structures."
A combination of these technologies could help create rapidly-built affordable housing. Of course this could also have a downside — the replacement of builders and other tradesmen with machines.
Body parts
Donating organs could be a thing of the past. (Getty Images)
Perhaps the most exciting additive manufacturing breakthroughs are being made in medicine, where 3D printers have been used to make parts of the human body.
"People are printing organic cell structures and reprinting things such as an ear and internal organs," Mr Peters said.
Printers are also being developed that use stem cells and human tissue to produce body parts for transplant. An obvious plus is eliminating the chance that a person's body will reject the organ as it can be made with parts from their own body.
Unborn babies
Parents get an unprecedented look at their child. (Tensi no Katachi)
A Japanese firm has already begun using 3D printing technology to produce life size models of developing foetuses.
Tokyo's Hiro-o Ladies clinic teamed up with 3D printing company Fasotec to offer the world-first "Tensi no Katachi" or "Face of an Angel" service which costs up to $1200.
A Fasotec spokesman said three expecting mothers were the first to try the innovative service that launched on July 30.
"They said it felt great to see how their babies looked before birth and to be able to actually hold the inside of their own body," Tomohiro Kinoshita said.
Drones
The CyberQuad was invented in WA. (Cyber Technology)
Western Australian firm Cyber Technology already produces an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, manufactured in part with 3D printing technology.
The construction of the CyberQuad is actually made easier with 3D printing because it reduces the possibility of any inaccuracies in its design.
Guns
A gun assembled using 3D-printed parts. (Wired)
3D printing also poses some serious problems for law enforcement. Recently 3D printing designs for high-powered weapons including an AR-15 assault rifle have appeared on the internet.
Late last month a man from the US state of Wisconsin announced on online forums that he had successfully printed parts of a 0.22 caliber AR-15 rifle and assembled it into a complete functional gun.
If the technology reaches the point at which complete guns can be printed easily, it could make Australia’s efforts to keep illegal guns out of the country much more difficult.
What are the limits of 3D printing?
The future of 3D printing could be limited by legislation, which will be an issue for the entire 3D printing industry, Director of 3D Printing Systems Australia Bruce Jackson said.
"Let's say you print a part for your dishwasher and it floods. Who do you blame? Do you blame the 3D printing firm who sold you the printer? Yourself for not doing the part properly? Or the manufacturer?," he said.
An array of additive manufacturing devices at MIT. The U.S. hopes such technology can give a boost to its manufacturing sector.
CREDIT: 2010, Courtesy of Neil Gershenfeld, Center for Bits & Atoms, MIT
Laser-armed 3D printers could exorcise the ghosts of shuttered steel mills for U.S. manufacturing. President Barack Obama has awarded $30 million to establish the first national 3D printing institute in an Ohio town at the heart of the so-called "Rust Belt" region of the Midwest.
The National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute — a public-private partnership headed by the U.S. military — wants to harness the power of 3D printing to transform almost any digital blueprint into a physical object. Such technology could not only speed up and cut the costs of manufacturing robots or military weapons, but could also create human organs, bones or body parts tailored for specific patients.
"I'm pleased that we are taking steps to strengthen American manufacturing by launching a new manufacturing institute in Ohio," said Obama in a statement. "This institute will help make sure that the manufacturing jobs of tomorrow take root not in places like China or India, but right here in the United States of America."
The town of Youngstown, Ohio, won the $30 million in federal funding through a competitive selection process. Its pilot institute for 3D printing will also receive an additional $40 million from the winning consortium of manufacturing firms, universities, community colleges, and nonprofit organizations based in the "Tech Belt" across Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
A 3D printing institute represents just the first of 15 manufacturing innovation institutes — the first step toward realizing Obama's $1 billion vision for a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation.
Researchers have already used 3D printers to make everything from spider robots to artificial blood vessels, as well as a tailor-made jawbone surgically implanted in an elderly woman. A gun enthusiast has even used a 3D-printed gun part in a pistol. [3D Printer Helps Make Working Gun]
U.S. manufacturing has already experienced startling growth since the loss of many jobs before and during the recent economic recession. The U.S. economy has added more than 530,000 manufacturing jobs since February 2010, as rising business costs in countries such as China have led many U.S. companies to return home.
The speed and flexibility of 3D printing promises to give U.S. manufacturers the capability to quickly print out even the rarest parts of an old machine, or customize parts to fit the needs of a certain customer. That means the U.S. military could someday print on-demand replacement weapons or machines for the battlefield, even as DIY tinkerers create and innovate upon designs in their own homes.
When I said that this could charge our economic system, I wasn't kidding.
Lets All 3D Print Our Houses, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
It's like the holy grail of TED talks!
By Kelly Faircloth 1:45pm
Is there anything 3D printers wont wholly revolutionize? Theres the gun trade and illicit narcotics market, theres the fine art of burrito making, and now, Atlantic Cities reports, a USC professor is working on a means of using them to wholly disrupt the construction business. Thats righthe proposes that we jettison prefab construction for just straight 3D printing your next home.
These still highly theoretical houses would be constructed/printed in layers, based on a computer program, with features like plumbing built in. Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis estimates that a 25,000-square-foot home could be built in as little as 24 hours. (Well, its not like the robots are making a daily rate and therefore see any need to drag the process out.)
Heres the TEDx talk where he works through all this:
What we are hoping to generate, he explains, are dignified, at a fraction of the cost, at a fraction of the time, far more safely, and with architectural flexibility that would be unprecedented. He argues that this is one of the most promising solutions for the worlds many slums built of makeshift materials in poor conditions.
If you look up TED Talk in Wikipedia, pretty sure this is tossed out as a theoretical example.
That sounds great, but its also way more likely anyone commercializing this technology would make it into something a lot like a 21st century Levittown for the globes rising middle class. Sure, theyll be snazzy and whimsically shaped, but theyll be churned out quickly on vast tracts of landtypically called sprawl.
You know where this would be incredibly helpful, though? Colonizing Mars. Quick, someone get Elon Musk on the phone.
Lets All 3D Print Our Houses, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? | Betabeat
Build a custom home in 20 hours using a giant 3D printer
Build a custom home in 20 hours using a giant 3D printer | DVICE
3D printing seems to be everywhere these days, but usually it's just for making small machines or mechanical parts. Now a professor from the University of Southern California says that we need to think bigger, and has developed a system to print entire buildings in less than a single day.
Contour Crafting uses what is essentially a giant 3D printer that hangs over the space the home will occupy, building up the walls using layers of concrete. The machine can add plumbing and electrical wiring as it goes, leaving a completed shell needing just windows and doors to complete. There are even ways to robotically paint the walls and add tiling to floors and walls.
Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis say that Contour Crafting will allow for low cost housing that's cheap and fast to build, with far lower labor costs, and with less chance of construction workers being injured in the process. He sees it being especially valuable for eliminating slums in developing countries and for areas ravaged by earthquakes or other natural disasters, but says the process can be adapted for more luxurious homes and even large buildings.
Because the design is determined by a computer program, custom architectural features can be added or changed with a few clicks of a mouse, so you don't end up with a house identical to all your neighbors.
When I said that this could charge our economic system, I wasn't kidding.
Lets All 3D Print Our Houses, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
It's like the holy grail of TED talks!
By Kelly Faircloth 1:45pm
Is there anything 3D printers wont wholly revolutionize? Theres the gun trade and illicit narcotics market, theres the fine art of burrito making, and now, Atlantic Cities reports, a USC professor is working on a means of using them to wholly disrupt the construction business. Thats righthe proposes that we jettison prefab construction for just straight 3D printing your next home.
These still highly theoretical houses would be constructed/printed in layers, based on a computer program, with features like plumbing built in. Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis estimates that a 25,000-square-foot home could be built in as little as 24 hours. (Well, its not like the robots are making a daily rate and therefore see any need to drag the process out.)
Heres the TEDx talk where he works through all this:
What we are hoping to generate, he explains, are dignified, at a fraction of the cost, at a fraction of the time, far more safely, and with architectural flexibility that would be unprecedented. He argues that this is one of the most promising solutions for the worlds many slums built of makeshift materials in poor conditions.
If you look up TED Talk in Wikipedia, pretty sure this is tossed out as a theoretical example.
That sounds great, but its also way more likely anyone commercializing this technology would make it into something a lot like a 21st century Levittown for the globes rising middle class. Sure, theyll be snazzy and whimsically shaped, but theyll be churned out quickly on vast tracts of landtypically called sprawl.
You know where this would be incredibly helpful, though? Colonizing Mars. Quick, someone get Elon Musk on the phone.
Lets All 3D Print Our Houses, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? | Betabeat
Build a custom home in 20 hours using a giant 3D printer
Build a custom home in 20 hours using a giant 3D printer | DVICE
3D printing seems to be everywhere these days, but usually it's just for making small machines or mechanical parts. Now a professor from the University of Southern California says that we need to think bigger, and has developed a system to print entire buildings in less than a single day.
Contour Crafting uses what is essentially a giant 3D printer that hangs over the space the home will occupy, building up the walls using layers of concrete. The machine can add plumbing and electrical wiring as it goes, leaving a completed shell needing just windows and doors to complete. There are even ways to robotically paint the walls and add tiling to floors and walls.
Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis say that Contour Crafting will allow for low cost housing that's cheap and fast to build, with far lower labor costs, and with less chance of construction workers being injured in the process. He sees it being especially valuable for eliminating slums in developing countries and for areas ravaged by earthquakes or other natural disasters, but says the process can be adapted for more luxurious homes and even large buildings.
Because the design is determined by a computer program, custom architectural features can be added or changed with a few clicks of a mouse, so you don't end up with a house identical to all your neighbors.
This technology is very intriguing to me. There seems to be nearly limitless possibilities.
