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The next time you’re about to bite into a hamburger, take a moment to consider the resources that went into making it. In a recent Solve for X talk, Andras Forgacs laid out all the statistics, and explained how tantalizingly close we are to a more sustainable method of meat production. Basically, humanity may soon be 3D printing meat instead of growing it in an animal.
Forgacs starts by explaining just how costly a single quarter-pound beef patty is to produce. For that one serving, 6.7lbs of grains, 600 gallons of water, and 75 square feet of grazing land were used. Now multiply that by 1000 to find your (approximate) impact — the average American eats over 220lbs of meat each year. Additionally, at least 18% of greenhouse gas emissions are due to meat production. All this for one burger?
As economic opportunities continue to lift populations around the world into the middle class, demand for meat is rising. With 7 billion people on the planet, we are sustained by 60 billion land animals. When the population hits 9 billion somewhere around 2050 we would need 100 billion land animals. That would be ecologically devastating, so something has to change.
If vending machines can dispense beer, pizza and movies, why not 3D-printed objects?
Combining the hyper-local convenience of Redbox with cutting edge technology, Dreambox is a vending machine that aims to fuel the 3D-printing revolution from the bottom up.
NEWS: 3-D Printed Skull Implant Ready for Operation
Dreambox was created by co-founders David Pastewka, Ricard Berwick and Will Drevno, who all met in a mobile application development class and competition at the University of California, Berkeley. Frustrated by their lack of accessible, on-campus 3D printing options and the two- to four-week lead time for online 3D printing services, the trio came up with the idea for a more ubiquitous option.
“Having an item 3D printed with a Dreambox is as simple as uploading or choosing a design online, clicking the ‘Print’ button and retrieving the item once it’s ready,” the group states in their press kit.
In what will be the first operation of its kind, an anonymous man is on track to receive a 3D-printed prosthesis that will replace 75 percent of his skull cap, according to Oxford Performance Materials (OPM), the company that is supplying the cranium replacement.
The news comes after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave OPM its approval to use poly-ether-ketone-ketone (PEKK) as a skull implant. As opposed to metallic compounds such as stainless steel and titanium found in many prosthetics, PEKK has the advantage of being more flexible, more resistant to abrasion, and more similar to bone in terms of density and stiffness.
And now people with skulls injured by disease or trauma are now cleared to get operations in the U.S., even though OPM has been selling 3D-printed implants as a contract manufacturer overseas.
According to TechNewsDaily, OPM's 3D-printed prosthetics can also encourage cell growth:
"3D printing's advantage comes from taking the digitally scanned model of a patient's skull and 'printing' out a matching 3D object layer by layer. The precise manufacturing technique can even make tiny surface or edge details on the replacement part that encourage the growth of cells and allow bone to attach more easily."
OPM president Scott DeFelice says up to 500 patients in the U.S. could benefit from skull bone replacement every month, specifically those with cancerous skull bones, car accident victims and U.S. military personnel. The skull prosthetic will lay the groundwork for using PEKK to replace other bony voids says DeFelice, which will be a huge win for medical science and another win for 3D-printing.
March 12, 2013 -- Stratasys introduced the Objet30 OrthoDesk 3D printer, designed for smaller orthodontic labs and clinics, at this week's International Dental Show (IDS) in Cologne, Germany.
Digital orthodontics offers many business advantages -- including the ability to significantly shorten delivery times, increase production capacity, and eliminate bulky model storage -- but cost considerations have made 3D printers practical only for larger labs, Stratasys noted in a press release.
Objet30 OrthoDesk can fit on a desktop in any lab and is designed to automate the entire workflow from CAD file to model fabrication. By transitioning to a fully digital workflow, the process of physical impressions can be eliminated as well. In addition, models can be stored digitally.
The Objet30 OrthoDesk comes with specialized dental printing materials in sealed cartridges, and can be used to produce stone models, orthodontic appliances, delivery and positioning trays, clear aligners, retainers, and surgical guides. As many as 20 models can be created with every print run, according to Stratasys.
Airbus Explores Building Planes With Giant 3D Printers
Airbus Explores Building Planes*With Giant 3D Printers*- Updated With Video - Forbes
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 passengers perspective. From that came a radical concept: build the aircraft itself from the ground up with a 3D printer thats 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 its 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 companys 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.
It wouldn't fucking surprise me by 2050 we're building our homes and cities this way.
Jellyfish tentacles inspire DNA chains to snag roving cancer cellsJellyfish tentacles inspire DNA chains to snag roving cancer cells
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Dark matter detected in orbit? Not so fast, scientists sayDark matter detected in orbit? Not so fast, scientists say
By Amina Khan
April 4, 2013, 1:24 p.m.
Scientists have built a 3-D printer that creates material resembling human tissues. The novel substance, a deceptively simple network of water droplets coated in lipids, could one day be used to deliver drugs to the body -- or perhaps even to replace damaged tissue in living organs.
The creation, described in the journal Science, consists of lipid bilayers separating droplets of water -- rather like cell membranes, whose double layers allow the body’s cells to mesh with their watery environments while still protecting their contents.
“The great thing about these droplets is that they use pretty much exclusively biological materials,” said study co-author and University of Oxford researcher Gabriel Villar, making them ideal for medical uses.
Lipid bilayers are formed by two rows of molecules that each have a hydrophobic, water-repelling side and a hydrophilic, water-loving side. They’re crucial to the existence of cells: In cell membranes, the hydrophobic tails of each layer face inward, creating the inner layer of the cell membrane, and the water-loving heads point outward.
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.
For the first time, human liver tissues have been generated that are truly three-dimensional, being up to 500 microns in thickness in the smallest dimension, and consisting of multiple cell types arranged in defined spatial patterns that reproduce key elements of native tissue architecture. The tissues, fabricated using Organovo's proprietary NovoGen™ bioprinting platform, are highly reproducible and exhibit superior performance compared to standard 2D controls.
These tissues are first step towards larger 3D liver, laboratory tests with these samples have the potential to be game changing for medical research. We believe these models will prove superior in their ability to provide predictive data for drug discovery and development, better than animal models or current cell models.
The tissues are not a monolayer of cells; our tissues are approximately 20 cell layers thick. Second, the multi-cellular tissues closely reproduce the distinct cellular patterns found in native tissue. Finally, our tissues are highly cellular, comprised of cells and the proteins those cells produce, without dependence on biomaterials or scaffold for three-dimensionality. They actually look and feel like living tissues
Three-dimensional (3D) printers are quickly proving to be capable of creating just about anything out of little more than thin air, and that could be the military’s key to keeping an endless arsenal of drones at its disposal.
Just as 3D-printed organs, pizza and even firearms are being made with the post-modern machinery, the United States military is eyeing the up-and-coming technology as to further their upper-hand on the battlefield. Recently, a decorated member of the US Navy made an argument for adding unmanned aerial vehicles and even munitions to the list of items that can be made with little more than a well-equipped printer and a few clicks of a mouse.
Navy considers 3D-printing future fleets of drones
Navy considers 3D-printing future fleets of drones ? RT USA
Three-dimensional (3D) printers are quickly proving to be capable of creating just about anything out of little more than thin air, and that could be the militarys key to keeping an endless arsenal of drones at its disposal.
Just as 3D-printed organs, pizza and even firearms are being made with the post-modern machinery, the United States military is eyeing the up-and-coming technology as to further their upper-hand on the battlefield. Recently, a decorated member of the US Navy made an argument for adding unmanned aerial vehicles and even munitions to the list of items that can be made with little more than a well-equipped printer and a few clicks of a mouse.
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.
Right, because the future isn't going to happen...
Navy considers 3D-printing future fleets of drones
Navy considers 3D-printing future fleets of drones ? RT USA
Three-dimensional (3D) printers are quickly proving to be capable of creating just about anything out of little more than thin air, and that could be the militarys key to keeping an endless arsenal of drones at its disposal.
Just as 3D-printed organs, pizza and even firearms are being made with the post-modern machinery, the United States military is eyeing the up-and-coming technology as to further their upper-hand on the battlefield. Recently, a decorated member of the US Navy made an argument for adding unmanned aerial vehicles and even munitions to the list of items that can be made with little more than a well-equipped printer and a few clicks of a mouse.
thin air--quite the exaggeration don't you think ? Fly into space and I'll email you some oxygen
Still 3-d printers can do some amazing stuff.
Navy considers 3D-printing future fleets of drones
Navy considers 3D-printing future fleets of drones ? RT USA
thin air--quite the exaggeration don't you think ? Fly into space and I'll email you some oxygen
Well, thin air isn't the word I'd use if I was writing this.
thin air--quite the exaggeration don't you think ? Fly into space and I'll email you some oxygen
Well, thin air isn't the word I'd use if I was writing this.
be more amazing if you didn't have haul the printer and the ingredients around with you everywhere
Well, thin air isn't the word I'd use if I was writing this.
be more amazing if you didn't have haul the printer and the ingredients around with you everywhere
Support science and you'll have that one day!
Molecular assembler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Molecular machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Molecular assembler finally created
Assembler Books
50 years from now this could be the next big thing. "Air" or what's its made of into something you like. hehe
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.
Right, because the future isn't going to happen...
and never has
Right, because the future isn't going to happen...
and never has
Really?
