3-D Printers - Bringing About Paradigm Change To Likely Every Aspect of Life

[rdunk]

More and more we are seeing and hearing about the great new things 3D printers can do and are doing. And the capability for the use of 3D printing does appear to be very broadly diverse, into almost every aspect of materials and technology - truly a process medium that clearly is leading us to extreme paradigm changes through out various area of our human existence.

"This Low-Cost 3-D Printer Can Produce Human Organs And Bones" - another recent article of news about 3-D printing, and where is it going quickly. Talk about a cheap 3-D printer -  $5,000 each for the "beta printers"!

Wow!! Printing human organs and bones! Someday, no more waiting upon someone having to die to get an organ transplant!!

At a lab in Philadelphia's Drexel University, a desktop 3-D printer is cranking out miniature samples of bones. In Toronto, another researcher is using the same printer to make living tumors for drug testing. It looks like an ordinary 3-D printer, but instead of plastic, it squirts out living cells.

BioBots, the startup behind the device, wants to change how researchers do biology. "We've been doing experiments on cells in a dish since 1905, and that's still what we're doing today to learn about how things work inside of our body," says Danny Cabrera, CEO of BioBots. "But the body is a three-dimensional structure. Cells in our body are used to interacting with the world in 3-D. The fact that we've been doing biology in 2-D for over 100 years now is sort of limiting.

In the past, the researcher with the 3-D printed tumors would have tested new tumor-fighting drugs in a dish or on an animal—neither of which really represents how the drug would actually work in the human body. The 3-D printed version gets much closer to the real thing. "It mimics the tumor micro-environment really well," says Cabrera. "So when you pass drugs to it, it really is a much better predictor of what the effects of those drugs is going to be."

The researcher studying bones is learning how bones form. "The vision is that once we understand these processes we can recreate them, and we can begin to engineer bones for people who need them," he says. Other researchers have printed out samples of heart tissue, lungs, the brain, skin, and cartilage".

More:http://www.fastcoexist.com/3049787/this-low-cost-3-d-printer-can-produce-human-organs-and-bones?utm_source=facebook

[rdunk]

3-D printers to make human body parts? It's happening!

This article was published about 5 months ago, and it goes into some top level detail about where 3-D printing is, and some areas of where it is headed.

It sounds like something from a science fiction plot: So-called three-dimensional printers are being used to fashion prosthetic arms and hands, jaw bones, spinal-cord implants - and one day perhaps even living human body parts.

While the parts printed for humans so far have been fashioned from plastic, metal and other inorganic materials, researchers in California and elsewhere also have begun printing living tissue, with the goal of eventually employing these "bioprinters" to create customized kidneys, livers and other organs for people needing transplants. What's particularly attractive about the technology, according to its proponents, is that 3-D printers can produce body parts much quicker and cheaper than other methods.

"You can make things for tens of dollars rather than thousands of dollars," said Stanford University professor Dr. Paul Wang, a cardiovascular and bioengineering expert who is among those studying the printers' potential for prosthetics, replacement bones and other applications. "It's totally opened up what's possible."

Developed in the 1980s by physicist Charles Hull, 3-D printers have been used to make everything from jewelry, toys and guns to smartphone cases, car components and portions of NASA's robotic Mars rover. Last year, a Chinese firm even constructed a five-story apartment building from 3-D-printed walls and other pieces.
Although the process varies, 3-D printing typically involves using an inkjet-like printer that extrudes layer upon layer of substances into shapes digitally fashioned with computer-aided-design software. Applied to medicine in recent years, the technology is producing remarkable results. People missing limbs or suffering other physical problems have been outfitted with printed arms, hands, shoulder joints, heel bones and portions of spines, hips, faces and skulls, among other things.
Bespoke Products of San Francisco 3-D-prints "fairings," which fit around prosthetic legs to make them look more natural. And a researcher for software company Autodesk is helping Ugandan officials learn how to print other prosthetic leg parts for children in that country.
But among the most ambitious dreams for the technology is that it will prove useful for making implantable human tissue, especially organs, which are in short supply, said Carlos Olguin, who is part of an Autodesk research team he describes as "looking at life as a new design frontier." Replacement organs, he said, are a "need that is not being satisfied at all in many cases."


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-d-printers-human-body.html#jCp

[rdunk]

And next from NASA, maybe some 3-D printing for space mission stomachs, and maybe for ours someday - 3-D Printing: Food in Space 

With some people, for all kinds of crazy health reasons, moving toward eating food that tastes like cardboard anyway, then why not just 3-D print it?
For sure, 3-D printing of food in space would certainly be a 1st step toward the full capability to manufacture food, like was demonstrated often in the Star-Trek type shows - push a button and WALLAH, instant food!!

This NASA article is not new, but it does demonstrate NASA's seriousness to the 3-D food printing mission.

May 2013
NASA and a Texas company are exploring the possibility of using a "3D printer" on deep space missions in a way where the "D" would stand for dining.

NASA has awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract to Systems and Materials Research Consultancy of Austin, Texas to study the feasibility of using additive manufacturing, better known as 3D printing, for making food in space. Systems and Materials Research Consultancy will conduct a study for the development of a 3D printed food system for long duration space missions. Phase I SBIR proposals are very early stage concepts that may or may not mature into actual systems. This food printing technology may result in a phase II study, which still will be several years from being tested on an actual space flight.

As NASA ventures farther into space, whether redirecting an asteroid or sending astronauts to Mars, the agency will need to make improvements in life support systems, including how to feed the crew during those long deep space missions. NASA's Advanced Food Technology program is interested in developing methods that will provide food to meet safety, acceptability, variety, and nutritional stability requirements for long exploration missions, while using the least amount of spacecraft resources and crew time. The current food system wouldn't meet the nutritional needs and five-year shelf life required for a mission to Mars or other long duration missions. Because refrigeration and freezing require significant spacecraft resources, current NASA provisions consist solely of individually prepackaged shelf stable foods, processed with technologies that degrade the micronutrients in the foods.

Additionally, the current space food is selected before astronauts ever leave the ground and crew members don't have the ability to personalize recipes or really prepare foods themselves. Over long duration missions, a variety of acceptable food is critical to ensure crew members continue to eat adequate amounts of food, and consequently, get the nutrients they need to maintain their health and performance.

NASA is funding this phase I six-month $125,000 study on 3D printing of foods to determine the capability of this technology to enable nutrient stability and provide a variety of foods from shelf stable ingredients, while minimizing crew time and waste. NASA selected this proposal because the research team, subcontractors and consultants included premier food rheology and flavor expertise that would be required for a novel product development system. The work plan for this feasibility study also was well laid out and the technology offers the potential to meet some of the food requirements using basic food components for long duration missions.

NASA recognizes in-space and additive manufacturing offers the potential for new mission opportunities, whether "printing" food, tools or entire spacecraft. Additive manufacturing offers opportunities to get the best fit, form and delivery systems of materials for deep space travel. This's why NASA is a leading partner in the president's National Network for Manufacturing Innovation and the Advanced Manufacturing Initiative.

3D printing is just one of the many transformation technologies that NASA is investing in to create the new knowledge and capabilities needed to enable future space missions while benefiting life here on Earth.

The full text of this article is included above.
http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/home/feature_3d_food.html#.VdTl63gvvFw

[zorgon]

EUREKA TV Sci Fi series had a full body printer

Sign of things to come

Problem was in the show the body was hacked so when the 'program' was uploaded to the new body it had flaws

Need a new ear?



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10629531/The-next-step-3D-printing-the-human-body.html

[rdunk]

Thanks Zorgon for showing us the 3-D printed ear, and for the addition of the video related to the 3-D printing of cells/tissues. It seems that there is another story "around ever corner" about 3-D technolpgy advancements, and where this capability may be headed

I am beginning to think that there may be no limit to the use and usefulness of 3-D printing capabilities - maybe only limited by the speed of the advancement of the associated technologies. and by the public's acceptance of "the reality of troublesome paradigm changes to our life habits.

There is an article and video on a Ted Blog, that really gets into the "meat" of 3-D printing - pun intended! In this Andras Forgacs presents what he and his father's company are doing relative to 3-D printing of human/animal tissue. In the video, he actually goes into quite a bit of detail about 3-D printing of tissues for "meat" and leather.

How to print meat and leather: Andras Forgacs at TEDGlobal 2013

Andras Forgacs is trying to grow meat. This is a concept he had to be talked into.

See, Forgacs and his father, Gabor, co-founded Organovo, which 3D-prints human tissue. And as people found out what the company did, they would often ask: If you can grow human body parts, can you also grow animal products like meat and leather? He thought they were crazy. Soon, however, he came around to it.

"This isn't so crazy. What's crazy is what we do today," says Forgacs on the TEDGlobal 2013 stage. "We raise and slaughter billions of animals to make our hamburgers and our handbags." According to Forgacs, each year we raise almost 60 billion land animals for meat and dairy goods. These animals occupy a third of Earth's ice-free land, they drink 8% of global water, they create 18% of greenhouse gases and, because they live in such close quarters, they create a breeding ground for disease.

"Clearly, we cannot continue on this path which puts the environment and public health and food security at risk," he says. "Animal products are just collections of tissues. So what if instead of starting with animals, we started with cells."

Thus was born Forgacs' latest company, Modern Meadow. For its first product, they opted to start by printing leather; they see it as a "gateway material." It's two-dimensional, and made from mainly one type of cell. If cultured leather works, Forgacs says, he believes people will be open to meat made in the same way.

From here, Forgas walks us through biofabrication, a process through which cells are used to grow biological products. First, cells are gathered through a simple biopsy. From that, new cells are grown, coaxed to produce collagen, spread out to form sheets, layered together like phyllo pastry, and finally tanned.

Forgacs has brought a batch of cultured leather to show and, in the camera closeup at least, it looks convincing. He points out that it even has some distinct advantages over leather — there's no hair to remove, no scars to be contended with. This leather can be layered to be transparent or opaque, and can be altered for softness, durability, breathabilty, elasticity, even pattern. There is also no limit to shape: this leather can be directly grown in the shape of a wallet or carseat. "We can mimic nature and also improve upon it," says Forgacs.

"We've already been growing food with cultures to make beer, wine, yogurt," he points out. "Perhaps biofabrication is a natural evolution. It's clean, efficient and humane ... Perhaps we are ready for something literally and figuratively more cultured."

http://blog.ted.com/how-to-print-meat-and-leather-andras-forgacs-at-tedglobal-2013/

[Dyna]

Now if only they could combine it with a replicator. I am looking forward to tossing the dirty dishes in and they are broken down to their most basic particles and my program can then print out new ones.

In goes garbage,dirty laundry, dead animals, furniture, food waste...everything and all new food furniture and cloths daily or weekly!

[rdunk]

Chinese Company Builds Houses Quickly With 3D Printing

China is into the 3-D printing too - in a big way, with this example:

It's a house in a hurry.

A Chinese company harnessed 3D-printing technology to build 10 one-story houses in a day — a cheaper, faster and safer alternative to more traditional construction.

WinSun Decoration Design Engineering built the houses in Shanghai using four giant 3D printers, which are each 10 meters (33 feet) wide and 6.6 meters (22 feet) high, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. They produce a mix of cement and construction waste to construct the walls layer by layer, a process much like how a baker might ice a cake.

"We purchased parts for the printer overseas, and assembled the machine in a factory in Suzhou," WinSun CEO Ma Yihe told the International Business Times. "Such a new type of 3D-printed structure is environment-friendly and cost-effective."

Each approximately 2,100 square-foot building costs less than $5,000 to construct. The houses' components are checked for quality as they are being erected because there are no building codes yet for 3D-printing construction in China. WinSun uses a special quick-dry cement to speed up the process.

In addition to decreased construction time, this process also means that construction workers are less likely to be exposed to hazardous materials or work environments. Plus, it's eco-friendly.

"To obtain natural stone, we have to employ miners, dig up blocks of stone and saw them into pieces," Ma told Xinhua. "This badly damages the environment."

The houses WinSun built are fairly simple, but Ma added that he hopes the company's 3D-printing technology will one day be used to build skyscrapers.

http://mashable.com/2014/04/28/3d-printing-houses-china/


                                           

[Dyna]

Would be great, have a printer sent out and get a garage built in one day!

[rdunk]

Glass Printing from Mediated Matter - Additive Manufacturing of Optically Transparent Glass

More of the paradigm change- now with glass!! This provides us a very brief bit of technology insight into this type of 3-D printing!

Mediated Matter Group in collaboration with MIT's Department of Mechnical Engineering and MIT's Glass Lab

Ancient yet modern, enclosing yet invisible, glass was first created in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt 4,500 years ago. Precise recipes for its production - the chemistry and techniques - often remain closely guarded secrets. Glass can be molded, formed, blown, plated or sintered; its formal qualities are closely tied to techniques used for its formation. From the discovery of core-forming process for bead-making in ancient Egypt, through the invention of the metal blow pipe during Roman times, to the modern industrial Pilkington process for making large-scale flat glass; each new breakthrough in glass technology occurred as a result of prolonged experimentation and ingenuity, and has given rise to a new universe of possibilities for uses of the material. This show unveils a first of its kind optically transparent glass printing process called G3DP. G3DP is an?additive manufacturing platform designed to print optically transparent glass.?The tunability enabled by geometrical and optical variation driven by form, transparency and color variation can drive; limit or control light transmission, reflection and refraction, and therefore carries significant implications for all things glass.?The platform is based on a dual heated chamber concept. The upper chamber acts as a Kiln Cartridge while the lower chamber serves to anneal the structures. The Kiln Cartridge operates at approximately 1900°F and can contain sufficient material to build a single architectural component. The molten material gets funneled through an alumina-zircon-silica nozzle.?The project synthesizes modern technologies, with age-old established glass tools and technologies producing novel glass structures with numerous potential applications.

Note: There is also a "video link" at the bottom of the page in the below link that gives us a bit of the use of this technology, showing actual 3-D glass printing. (could not embed it here)

More: http://matter.media.mit.edu/news/article/glass-printing-from-mediated-matter1

[rdunk]

3D Printing - Do we even realize just how far along this paradigm change in our technology for product manufacturing really is?? Well, we may or may not, but I have found one link on the subject that can really take us to the forefront for our knowing about 3D printing. That link website is .............. "3D Printing Industry".

Actually, the first article in the link is titled "Museum of Design Atlanta Unveils All-Star 3D Printing Exhibition", and this article discusses the technology areas, and the fact of a months long exhibition in Atlanta Ga, that started September 20 of this year, and continues until January 10, 2016. And even this article does discuss many of the technology areas of 3D printing!

This 3D Printing Industry link has many different articles of specific 3D printing actions relative to a large variety of different products and product areas. Each article would be good for including in this thread separately, but, I think it better to simply provide a link directly to all of that information, for those interested. I have looked at some of the articles, and they are the real deal about the moving 3D printing technology!!

http://3dprintingindustry.com/aerospace/