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The Brittle Spear VII: New Business Models

Green begets green. If we want to save the planet, then we should make it profitable to do so. That sadly is the only real path to implementing genuinely global solutions for the hastening end of life on this planet. Our consumption is consuming our home. Our joys in life, achievements, goals are often expressed in stuff. We work for stuff which then gets dug up in one of a million places, shipped to and fro, and ends up in our possession. This stuff is increasingly fragile, shoddier quality, not meant to last long, and we are destined to hang on to it for shorter periods. Then it gets buried in the ground, awaiting perplexed archeologists. Layer upon layer of detritus.

Our layer-by-layer 3D printing solutions may yet alleviate some harm. We could repair things, extend them, repurpose things, and may yet make an aftermarket for many things. But, this is a bit like “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” Sorry to sound so morose, but plasters can’t save gangrenous limbs. What is happening, however helpful and good-natured, is a sop to a tidal wave. We need to direct the power of the invisible hand towards saving our planet. If we can force the creative solutions and power of free enterprise toward solving the world’s problems, then we stand a chance. By 3D printing money, we can save our world.      

A friend of mine opined that bike-sharing was more environmentally friendly than cars and than owning your own bicycle. Theoretically, the “sharing economy” would indeed be a boon; with an efficient allocation and fewer individual vehicles, less material would make more trips. Sadly, modern-day entrepreneurship manages to destroy even simple logical opportunities such as these. Many global cities have had problems with bike pollution as millions of inexpensive bicycles were dumped across the world. Scooter sharing platform Lime says that its scooters last five months. But, external data suggest that Lime, Bird, and other shared scooters last around 28 days. 

Every 28 days, each of these vehicles has to be replaced. But, no mind, given their low cost, this can still be profitable. Its peak human idiocy this kind of thing. But, from the company standpoint is only logical. Making better scooters would eat up more capital now, and they may then get stolen, which would be a higher risk to them. Even the most newfangled businesses that could bring huge gains for the environment as happy externalities, manage to mangle them. From an environmental standpoint, it may actually be better to give everyone their own new scooter; that’s how shoddy these things are.

Without the proper incentives, similar businesses will all come to roughly the same conclusions. Although it is notable that once cities adopt a single bike-sharing scheme throughout the town, these bikes look much more sturdy and durable. Incentives, individual decision-makers, accounting, projections, and goal setting in enterprises, therefore, have a huge impact on the detrimental or positive environmental effects of business. 

In Spain where I am now, we have a shop called Ale Hop, in other places you may have Flying Tiger. If you’re unfamiliar with either, they are direct to landfill stores. Imagine if you hunted night and day for the worst, cheapest stuff on Ali Baba and just put it all in a store. Ale Hop and Flying Tiger have single used the rest of your house, and everything in these stores is of an abysmally low quality. But, for someone willing to pass the time when there’s nothing on Netflix, buying some trinket may very well suffice.

In this example, there is no quality competitor in the space, but these stores eat away at other more honest brokers through offering cheaper products. Could we compete with such a store and make impulse buy sustainable things? Could we have an Ale Hop with all the products made out of glass, so then at least it can be readily recycled? A cork based Flying Tiger? Or in this case, would the best environmental course of action be to put cooler stuff on Netflix, so people don’t leave the house at all? 

Our cargo cult is perplexing, as are the incentives in it. This Wall-E prequel we’re living in isn’t a simple Rubik’s Cube to solve. Destroying the planet is currently free, and it is often cheaper to dig up new earth for new things than to use existing things or recycle. Taxes or grants could change that somewhat, but measures would have to be sweeping and all-encompassing. It’s hard to believe that we’ll pull off some global whip-round and hosanna sing our way into the collective glory of shared action now, though. Out of all the things we could and should do, I can only see a lever big enough to move the world on the materials side. 

If low cost recycled material could be used in wide applications in a predictable and certified way, we would use what we have much more efficiently. If we then made recycling systems more dynamic and local, we could reuse these materials in a targeted manner. The idea of putting a StuffDNA or SDNA mark on all things which would then tell you what the provenance of the thing is, what it is made of, what the material ingredients were, the MSDS etc. is still a relevant one. If that code was easily machine-readable, we could automate the recycling of many things and use things more efficiently.

We could then use a car mirror as a dashboard part, and the next cycle it could be repurposed into a dashboard filler part. If materials companies then started to see their business as one of Materials-as-a-Service then they would turn themselves into custodians of materials not destroyers of the world. With 3D printing we could in this system locally repair and recycle materials into new objects efficiently. To me, the solution would be something like this. What do you think?  

Image Credit: Kristoffer Tolle, Tony Webster, William Murphy, Paulvanderwerf, Chinnian.

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The Brittle Spear Part III: Digital Kintsugi and 3D Printed Spare Parts

In this series, previously we looked at how we’re creating a system designed to spit out less able things and that these things may be better but will be less robust and more challenging to repair. As the tip of the spear grows ever sharper, it also becomes more brittle. We have more things, but they will last longer (in the natural environment), and we will find it easier to throw them away. Rather than individual firms designing certain things for planned obsolescence, we are, all of us, participating in a system that produces more fragile items with shorter life spans. We cannot fight this system head-on, but we may be able to subvert it, change it and help us all. The path to extricating ourselves from a disposable world is Digital Kintsugi.

Kintsugi is a Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with gold and lacquer. A fractured ceramic piece is then proudly restored with a clear remnant of the breakage visible to all. 

“Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated… a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin….Mushin is often literally translated as ‘no mind,’ but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. …The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.”

— Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics

In terms like “mono no aware” and “wabi-sabi” and the related “kintsugi”, we have a potential philosophical and cultural counterweight to contemporary consumer culture. By accepting transience and transformation, by being okay with imperfection and seeing a repaired thing as somehow improved, we can get passed our shrink-wrapped existence. And its Japanese, too, like manga and sushi. 

We live in a world where we lust after things. Indeed, many of our ambitions and desires are for things, and we give our lives for stuff. The moment one acquires the desired something, it fades, slips into being spurned, is then forsaken, and begins somehow to rot. A thing will never fulfill us, but we don’t realize this and instead lust after new newer things. We’re chasing a thing-related high that doesn’t exist.

Kintsugi will help us to break through these barriers. What’s more, we’re no longer making or recycling for making’s sake, nor are we doing it for some grand sustainability goal, we are doing it also to celebrate this thing. Rather than focus our attention on the unattainable new, kintsugi places it on the mindful now of things we already have. 

A patina on some steels or worn leather and just-right jeans are already examples of wear and tear that are celebrated. We just have to extend scratches on polymer and other everyday damage to the realm of the beautiful. 

With 3D printing, we can make things last longer. We can make spare parts and create out-of-production spares to extend the life of many everyday objects. Many more people will need to be able to design for this to take on meaningful proportions of all the things. Perhaps, if our phones became 3D scanners or if it were easier to take 2D and make it 3D, we could radically extend the life of many things.

In particular, small spare parts are very inexpensive when 3D printed on desktop machines and even through services. If the alternative is for the user to throw away the good, then any single repair using a 3D printed part would be extremely valuable for the environment. Imagine if one CAD file leads to 1,000 coffee makers not being thrown away. Now, digital spare parts are part of grand EU initiatives—or the plans of single individuals running into a part that they need—but a more organized approach would be very valuable. 

If we looked at the sum total of e-waste and what were the most popular items to see how they could be repurposed or extended, then we could in, and organized way make the world a lot more sustainable through 3D printing. There are many spares already being made, from Playmobil skateboard wheels, to bass guitar parts to switches for venerable La Pavoni espresso machines. On platforms like Thingiverse or YouMagine we can already see that spare parts are a lively and very popular category. 

Organically and without a business model, it is already growing. From handles for Mokka Makers to the incredibly popular vacuum cleaner parts category to the super-specific, such as a faceplate for a joystick used in forestry equipment, we are currently making a mark.  

Guided development, easier CAD, and better 3D scanning will help but a philosophical edge, and new coolness will do wonders also. Patagonia’s worn wear is a great example of obviously repaired clothing that gives everyone involved a good feeling while extending the life of things. 

In the 3D printing community, we are repairing things because we can, but we need to see if we can make this cool, even desirable. Obviously-repaired objects proudly displaying their scars needs to be an established practice that adds sparkle and history to otherwise quotidian things—especially in a world with so few things that last any effort to extend the life of things, a little bit will do wonders for us all. 

The Japanese don’t use transparent lacquer; they mix in gold to heighten the repair, give it luster, and get one to notice it. What could we do to make 3D printed repairs beautifully obvious? Could we use Bronzefill, a particular purple, or make the 3D printed layers more obvious? What do you think?  

Creative Commons Attribution: Ervaar Japan, Ervaar Japan, Steenaire.

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TaylorMade Uses Formlabs to Prototype Better Golf Clubs with 3D Printing

Golf company TaylorMade extensively used Formlabs machines to prototype a better golf club. The company’s work illustrates a few key emerging trends: that desktop machines could partially displace services, that desktop machines could be used instead of more expensive in-house systems, and that vat polymerization can be used for more functional prototypes than in the past.

The TaylorMade team wanted to look at the weight distribution in the club head of its new Sim Fairway club. They wanted to “lower the center of gravity, improve turf interaction, and create a more forgiving face.” I’m entirely unsure what the last two terms mean but I love them already. They do just go to show you that, for different markets and products, wholly specific engineering terms and goals can come to center stage. For the team prototyping, 3D printing allows them to see and feel the weight distribution. They used Formlabs Draft Resin for initial parts and then turned to Grey Resin for later prototypes. One benefit that TaylorMade enjoyed was the fast turn around times, the other comparatively low cost, and the ability to combine separate components into assemblies.

By printing parts separately and mating them, the team was able to make full assemblies of all of the various shapes of weighted sole plates. TaylorMade’s Chris Rollins said that “the way the Grey Resin parts would mate together, the resolution of the parts, was something we could not find in many other printers, We had better results by printing parts separately and then combining them together.”

Whereas most service bureaus still consider desktop 3D printers mere toys, we cannot ignore that they are improving. Desktop machines are usually significantly lower cost than service bureau parts. Service bureaus, of course, give you a much broader selection of materials and technologies to work with. A desktop 3D printer will never satisfy all of a large company’s prototyping needs. You’d need several machines with a wide variety of materials and people with expertise to make many different types of parts. Even then, the sheer amount of labor involved in 3D printing and finishing parts means that there will have to be in-house resources available to sand and remove supports from parts. Post-processing costs of 3D printed parts are significant and often not fully taken into account.

Most companies will, therefore, use in house desktop systems for initial prints at the engineer’s desk and turn to services for later functional testing or visual prototypes for photography. Desk-side prototypes are always handy and useful to get the discussion going, but, if you require 100 prototypes that need to fit and be available to test a door handle, it usually won’t work with desktop machines or a quick cost calculation may tell you that the in-house parts could indeed be very expensive for you, with all of the prep and post-processing time.

If it would take you ten minutes per part to do file prep, wash, flash, remove supports, and sand, then that would be 16 hours for 100 parts that would set you back 560 Euro in labor (if you assume its a skilled office worker whose total cost would be 35 per hour). Formlabs actually has a super nifty ROI calculator that lets you play with these numbers. On the whole, desktop machines don’t always make sense, but when they do, they convey significant cost advantages and speed up engineering teams. Many machines worldwide sit idle for want of a CAD designer or new nozzle. To me, the only logical response that services could have is to offer to maintain, service, and support fleets of desktop 3D printers at company locations.

At the same time, talk of mating parts may have some other players in the market worried about their prospects. Higher-end vat polymerization machines and those based on other 3D printing processes could also be displaced by these kinds of systems. In-house systems like PolyJet ruled the high-definition, in-house prototyping world. Now capable of color, these systems are still very formidable, especially for visual prototypes. They’re also more reliable and generally a bit easier to use.

I don’t think that someone is really going to make a decision between a J55 or a J750 and a Formlabs machine just yet. But for many edge cases, it could be an interesting choice. In many instances, you can get five or 50 Form 3’s for the cost of your larger industrial system. If you need large parts, then you must pick the larger machine, but, if you don’t, then a cheaper up-front cost is tempting.

The resin costs of Formlabs systems are significantly less than those of larger industrial systems. And here is where the choice goes from tempting to logical, if you need a lot of small parts, the savings will be significant in the long run. If consumables costs on industrial and prototyping systems remain too high, then lower-cost systems will keep making inroads into the office. In particular, companies new to 3D printing may want to start off with a much cheaper system to get their feet wet. If the Formlabs machines suffice, these firms may never again consider a higher-end machine.

Resins and photopolymers are problematic, from a safety, environment, and cost perspective when compared to many thermoplastics. They also lacked strength, UV resistance, and HDT. A few years ago, only very few firms considered vat polymerization for the prototyping of functional products or form and fit. Improvements in photopolymer chemistry have, however, meant that heat deflection and strength are improving. With high resolution, this may mean that vat polymerization machines could occupy a larger share of the prototyping market.

Still less durable and tough and with higher part costs, due to material cost and support removal, FDM still will be a better choice for most (even with the uglier parts). On the whole, we can see competition between technologies and between machines at very different price points. Services will feel desktop machine growth. Overall, we’re seeing blended usage patterns emerge where companies use many technologies from different vendors to get their 3D printing done.

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Additive Manufacturing: The Ongoing Uncertainties and Market Shares

SmarTech Analysis has recently published its Q1 2020 additive manufacturing market guidance for the metal additive manufacturing industry, highlighting the first quarter in an economic universe gripped by effects of coronavirus. The question on everyone’s minds these days is, “just what will the bottom line impact be with regards to COVID 19?”

Most in the AM industry still don’t know. No AM company is able to provide firm expectations for 2020, and certainly not into 2021. And it is this lack of expectations, or at least the continual presence of uncertainty, which may end up being the key market driver for additive manufacturing in the near future.

During the first quarter of the year, the metal additive hardware market was hit hard, down about 33 percent year over year compared to 2019. It’s worth noting however that Q1 2019 was the best first quarter in terms of metal AM hardware revenue in history.

To add a little more context for Q1. Revenues were down about 28 percent versus the average quarterly market revenue from the last twelve consecutive quarters. While that paints a grim picture, during the first three months of the year, revenues from material sales of metal powders and sales of metal AM services were much less dire. Metal powder sales increased slightly year over year, though they declined compared to the previous consecutive quarter for the first time in recent history. Services revenues for metals declined just 3 percent.  In this article we examine the state of play of the AM industry as it starts its planning for 2021, along with the market shares of its leading players.

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NP Swabs Prove 3D Printing’s Scalability and Speed-to-Market Advantages

A year ago, if you would have asked anyone in our industry what they thought might be a future killer application, it’s highly doubtful that anyone would have replied with, “nasopharyngeal swabs.” Until recently, it was a niche product and the entire market was serviced by a few dominant industry players.

While there are now other protocols, the main test for COVID-19 testing involves gathering virus from deep in a person’s nasal cavity. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is collected using a nasopharyngeal (NP) swab. Traditionally, these swabs are made in two parts, including a polyester handle and a tip with tiny rayon fibers called flock.

A 3D-printed NP swab developed by Carbon. Image courtesy of Carbon.

The two primary companies that make them, Purtian Medical Products Co. and Copan Diagnostics, bulk manufacture them in multiple steps, which include production, assembly, sterilization and packaging, among others. Their process requires customized machinery and a sizable group of relatively skilled people.

When the global pandemic struck, the demand for COVID-19 test kits skyrocketed, far outpacing the combined capacity of these two companies. For several reasons, they had difficulties scaling their businesses. They both produce many other products for the medical industry and adding new equipment is a timely endeavor. To make matters worse, Copan which is located in Italy (a hotspot for the virus) was challenged with maintaining the health of its own workforce.

3D Printing to the Rescue

As it became apparent that the normal suppliers couldn’t fully meet the need, the additive manufacturing industry began working on the problem. Markforged, a manufacturer of filament-based 3D printers, partnered with Neurophotometrics to produce 3D-printed NP swabs made from their Fiberflex Rayon.

Separately, Northwell Health teamed up with the University of South Florida, Tampa General Hospital and Massachusetts-based Formlabs and worked with physicians to design their own NP swab, which Formlabs recently started printing in its FDA-registered, ISO 13485-certified factory in Ohio.

Results from a clinical trial of 3D-printed NP swabs. Image courtesy of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Soon after, a consortium of 3D printing companies was codified. Their goal was to deliver clinically tested, FDA-registered, 3D-printed COVID-19 NP test swab designs with superior or equivalent efficacy to flocked swabs, at scale.

Origin Partners with Henkel

Origin, manufacturer of stereolithography (SLA) 3D printers was one of the founding members of the consortium. It began working with several partners to develop what it is now calling the world’s first FDA-compliant, sterile, 3D-printed NP test swab. 

3D printed NP swabs with detailed lattice structure. (Image courtesy Origin.)

In a new announcement, the startup is providing more detail about the process. Origin collaborated with materials company, Henkel and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) on the swab’s development. Working with generative design software, Origin was able to design a one-piece swab that performed as well as the traditional version. Henkel leveraged its own Albert software platform to specify a material that would meet the requirements for an in-body medical device. Together they tested the design’s clinical capabilities, in addition to validating each step in the sterilizations process, and conducting rigorous mechanical testing and packaging certification.

Scalability and Speed-to-Market

Within weeks they were able to bring a product to market that is classified as a sterile device and is considered a finished medical product, which is regulated by the FDA.

It’s a perfect example of two of 3D printing’s biggest benefits: scalability and speed-to-market. As Chris Prucha, Founder and CEO at Origin noted in the press release, “by working collaboratively and utilizing each other’s technologies, we identified, optimized and scaled the manufacturing process to bring an application to market extremely fast.”

Origin’s sterile NP swabs are currently shipping to leading healthcare facilities, government institutions, and independent testing centers in the U.S. and several other countries. They’re also available for purchase on Amazon.

But beyond the opportunity with NP swabs, this collaboration also further substantiates the industry’s growth into functional part production.  

In the press release, Ken Kisner, Head of Innovation for 3D Printing at Henkel said, “From inception, the vision behind Henkel’s Open Materials Platform was to enable collaboration all along additive manufacturing’s value chain. Working together with Origin, we were able to develop a product which is just as effective as its mass-produced counterpart. With the constraints commercial medical suppliers are facing, this presents a significant opportunity for the 3D printing industry to demonstrate its capabilities, beyond prototyping.”

Innovate Globally, Produce Locally

The problem wasn’t just related to the manufacturing of NP swabs. There were constraints all across the medical supply chain. Some of it had to do with the traditional model of centralized manufacturing and logistics. The healthcare industry relies on a relatively small number of producers and distributors. When they’re impeded, all bets are off. Further, the vast number of products, the niche nature of some of them, and shelf life issues make some medical products difficult to stockpile.

Perhaps more than anything else, this application demonstrates the value of a nimble, distributed manufacturing network, where identical parts can be made as close as possible to the point of need. In some cases, it can be financially beneficial, but in others like this decentralizing production provides an insurance policy in the event the unimaginable happens. We know it can, because it has.

About the Author

John Hauer is the Founder and CEO of Get3DSmart, a consulting practice which helps large companies understand and capitalize on opportunities with 3D printing. Prior to that, John co-Founded and served as the CEO of 3DLT. The company worked with retailers and their suppliers, helping them sell 3D printable products, online and in-store.

As a technology journalist, John focuses primarily on the topics of 3D printing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and automation. His original content has been featured on Forbes, TechCrunch, Futurism, QZ.com, Techfaster.com, 3DPrint.com and Fabbaloo, among others.

Follow John on Twitter @Get3DJohn

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Stratasys Lays off 10 Percent of Workers

Stratasys, the marketplace leader in industrial fused deposition modeling technology, has announced that it is laying off 10 percent of its workers worldwide. In a statement, the company seemed to suggest that this workforce reduction was not necessarily related to COVID-19, but that the pandemic caused the plan to be implemented sooner:

“This resizing, advanced sooner due to the impact of COVID-19, will affect approximately 10% of employees, and is designed to reduce operating expenses as part of a cost realignment program to focus on profitable growth. The company expects the vast majority of the reduction to take place in the second quarter and to complete the reduction during the third quarter of this year.”

Since the 3D printing stock market bubble burst in 2014, publicly traded additive manufacturing companies have struggled to regain their footing. At 3D Systems, former CEO Avi Reichental stepped down and was replaced by Vyomesh Joshi who, after seemingly putting the firm back on track, has also stepped down.

Stratasys CEO Yoav Zeif.

Stratasys and its MakerBot subsidiary have cycled through executive leadership much more rapidly, executing multiple rounds layoffs at MakerBot. Stratasys CEO David Reis was replaced by Ilan Levin in 2016, who resigned in 2018. Now, Yoav Zeif acts as Chief Executive Officer. Of the layoffs, Zeif said:

“This reduction in force is a difficult but essential step in our ongoing strategic process, designed to better position the company for sustainable and profitable growth. I would like to express my appreciation to each of the employees impacted by this decision for their dedicated service. Current conditions make the job market even more challenging, and we have done our best to provide the departing employees globally with a respectable and fair separation. This measure is not expected to affect the progress on our forthcoming product launch plans, which remain a top priority as we lead the industry to new heights with our best-in-class additive manufacturing solutions.”

Stratasys revenues declined 14 percent in Q1 compared to last year. The company believes that, by eliminating labor, it can reduce operating expenses by $30 million, though it will pay out $6 million in severance costs. The 3D printing company is hardly the only one in the industry or in industry at large suffering economically at the moment. Numerous AM firms have reported lowered revenues due to the COVID pandemic.

The recently released Stratasys J55 3D printer.

While layoffs have come to be par for the course during economic downturns, it is not a prerequisite to the survival of a business, though that may depend on the size of the firm. Stratasys is much smaller than the $13B Mondragon Co-Operative Corporation, which avoids displacing workers by relocating them from one area of the business to another. In turn, the company able to weather the 2008 financial crisis. In 2013, Mondragon’s largest manufacturing company went bankrupt. Instead of instituting layoffs, the employee-owners voted to take small pay cuts and relocated 2,000 workers across the larger business group.

The workforce reduction comes at a time when the U.S. is facing a 20 percent unemployment rate, which is potentially adding fuel to the wave of protests against police violence the country is experiencing. Given the current economic situation, it will not be surprising if we see other 3D printing companies execute similar decisions in the near future.

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Lazy Manufacturing: Making Things Using Less Energy

A friend took a broken part of his old boat out of his pocket.  “Can you fix this?” he asked me.

It was a complicated aluminium die-casting from the cold end of the engine’s heat exchanger.  A tab with a hole for one of the fixing screws had sheared off, and the decades had not been kind to the rest of it either.

“I think so,” I said, and stuck the tab back on with Blu-tack.

His eyes narrowed. “It was a serious question.”

“I know.”  I started to build a riser and sprue structure with more Blu-tack.

“Ah!” he said. “You’re going to make a mould and cast me a replacement.  Thanks!  But how will you melt the aluminium?”

“I won’t,” I said. “Aluminium would shrink, so it would end up the wrong size.  I’m going to use Lego.”

He sighed and wandered into the next room.  I heard him say something to my wife about her bloody husband and seaworthiness. Then he asked her if he could pour himself another whisky.

The application of computers to manufacturing has transformed the way humanity makes things, transformed the efficiency with which we do it, and transformed what it is possible to make.  A great deal has been written about those transformations, going right back to John T. Parsons’ first numerically controlled (NC) machine tool in the 1950s [1].

But, while that has been happening, another change in how we make things has been progressing in parallel.  We have been reducing both the forces and the temperatures that we need to deploy (and hence reducing the energy needed) to make a great range of products.  Much less has been written about this change, and adumbrating it is the purpose of this article.

The Industrial Revolution started with iron; indeed – only slightly apocryphally –  it started at Ironbridge in Shropshire with Abraham Darby smelting iron ore using coke, which allowed his grandson to make, among other things, the eponymous bridge.  The revolution rapidly moved from iron to steel and took in brass, and later aluminium and other metals along the way.

Whenever you are going to make something from a metal, you need to get it very hot, or hit it very hard, or both.  Metals, or at least the metals we use in most products, are tough; that is why we use them.  For 150 years great force and great heat were the way that we made things.

Then, around the time of Parsons’ first NC tool, materials that had begun to be developed decades earlier – plastics – started to become significant.  These were much weaker than metals, but melted at much lower temperatures or – in the case of some thermosets – could even be formed at room temperature.

Moving to the present day, every year now humanity makes about 100 million cubic meters of steel and four times that volume of plastics.  Plastics overtook steel towards the end of the Twentieth Century because we discovered that – for many things – we simply didn’t need the strength, and that plastics were a lot more versatile, in part because they required much lower forces and temperatures to work with.  The introduction of plastics is the first reason that force and temperature have reduced when we make things.

Conventional manufacturing is about cutting or moulding material (and also bending, to a lesser extent).  Given the toughness of metals and the high temperatures at which they melt these – as I mentioned above – need big forces and temperatures.  But of late the application of computers to manufacturing has facilitated a number of new ways of cutting that require little or no force.  The most ubiquitous is the lasercutter – a bandsaw made of light.  But there are also water jet cutters and (pre-dating the NC revolution) spark erosion and electrochemical machining.  All these cutting machines remove material without applying large forces to it.

And now, of course, we also have 3D printing.  All the versions of this (even those that work with metals) apply very little force as they build things.  We can imagine a 3D printer controlled by punched cards like a Jacquard loom that it would have been possible to build in the Nineteenth Century, but that simply didn’t occur to anyone.  So we had to wait until the late Twentieth for the low-force 3D printing revolution to start.  That, and the other methods in the previous paragraph, are the second reason that force has reduced when we make things.

Finally, the most productive manufacturing system on Earth – biology – has always used low-force methods.  A growing organism usually has little more opposition to overcome than the weakest of the forces in physics – gravity.  And what grows is not that strong either.  With a few exceptions (such as tooth enamel) most biological materials are much weaker than metals.  Indeed, almost all of them are plastics of a sort, being formed from polymers of various kinds like hair, which is made from keratin, insect exoskeletons, which are made from chitin, and wood, which is made from cellulose and lignin.

Some time ago colleagues and I did a systematic study of how biological systems evolve solutions to engineering problems, and contrasted that with human solutions to similar problems [2].  One of our conclusions was that, when humans do engineering (at least traditionally) we have tended to throw in energy to create a solution.  But when evolution is doing engineering it tends rather to throw in information in the form of complicated structure or data processing to create its solutions.

Wood is a good example[3].  Both cellulose and lignin are brittle materials, but wood never shatters like glass.  This is because it is made from cellulose fibres in a helix glued together with lignin.  As stress causes wood to fail, the lignin fractures but the cellulose stays intact, stretching like a spring.  This process absorbs a great deal of energy, which is why wood is so tough.  The complexity of this structure is only possible because it is programmed (which is also the way we’d have to do it if we were to imitate it).

A Squash Stem

So, as human manufacturing has progressed we have used lower temperatures, less force, and weaker materials.  To achieve that, in many cases, we use computers to do clever control of the manufacturing process.  In this way human manufacturing is beginning to approach the way that evolution has always solved the same sorts of problems.

I put some rods in the holes in the die casting to act as cores.  Then I built a Lego tank to hold it, and lined its inner faces with Sellotape to stop it leaking.  It made a Lego bridge across the top from which I suspended the hose connector using a length of cotton.

I poured liquid silicone into the tank around and over the die casting and left it to set.

Then I took the resulting solid rectangular lump of silicone from the tank, cut round the embedded die casting with a scalpel, dug out the core rods, and separated the two halves of the mould that I had made.  I scraped away the Blu-tack risers and sprues, put the cores back, and held the two (now empty) halves of the mould together with elastic bands.  I mixed up some resin and poured it in.

An object originally requiring a temperature of 700oC and a pressure of 200 bar to make had been reproduced at room temperature and pressure in a material about a third as strong as the original, which was quite strong enough.

That was a few years ago, and the result is still at sea.  But if it fails, my friend has a couple of spares in his locker.  As I pointed out to him, it was almost as easy for me to make three as to make one…

Adrian Bowyer is a British engineer and mathematician; in 2005 he created the RepRap Project to make a self-replicating 3D printer; this has been widely credited with starting the desktop 3D printer revolution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_control#Parsons_Corp._and_Sikorsky

[2] Julian F.V. Vincent , Olga A. Bogatyreva , Nikolaj R. Bogatyrev , Adrian Bowyer , Anja-Karina Pahl: Biomimetics: its practice and theory, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, ISSN: 1742-5689, (2006).

[3] G. Jeronimides, The fracture of wood in relation to its structure, Leiden Botanical Series, No. 3, 253-265, 1976

Images: Berkshire Community College, Numerical Control Patent, Adrian Snood, Fabrice Florin, Berkshire Community College.

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Aki Inomota – Think Evolution #1

I am excited to do some research and follow up based on some topics and discussions I heard on Dezeen Day. This particular discussion is based on an artist who has done some interesting and fascinating work within 3D Printing that I would like to talk about. I find it interesting a current movement within the art world of exploring scientific concepts within work. Art and design are starting to fuse a bit more with scientific thinking, and it is an interesting development we should be watching for the future. This particular artist will be showcasing a little of this type of thinking.

Aki Inomota is a Tokyo-based artist. She was born in Tokyo in 1983. She also completed an MFA at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Her degree was in Inter Media Art. Her work was mentioned within the Dezeen Talk from Paola Antonelli. Paola has curated Aki Inomota’s work in one of her recent projects at MOMA. The piece, in particular, is named Think Evolution #1. This particular piece is a resin casted ammonite fossil.

Think Evolution Aki Inomata

Ammonites are an extinct species. They are usually one of the most well known and distinguishable fossils to the normal human. They are excellent index fossils. One can link the rock layer they were found to specific geological time periods. These fossils usually have great preservation as well.

This particular ammonite fossil was cast with resin. I think that art is interesting in that it can be the simplest things and ideas that make remarkable pieces. Many of us could do this simply and effectively through 3D Printing, but this particular artist had the creativity to do it. The value of creativity is something to harp on continuously.

Think Evolution

In terms of the piece itself, the message is interesting. When this piece is placed near an octopus in water, an octopus will form itself within the shell. Octopus and ammonites are related in terms of species, so it is interesting to see how an octopus feels comfortable within this foreign shell. Octopus have grown out of the need for their shells through evolution, but this shows that they are comfortable using them still.

This piece was curated by Paola because of her thoughts on extinction and how it relates to humanity. We all are going to die at some point. This is our impending reality, but how do people act upon this? How do people change things for the better? If we know we shall die, what do we do to make our lives and the lives of others better?

I think that with this piece, my opinions come from a different perspective. I am intrigued by how the octopus is playing naturally with this resin cast piece. The octopus recognizes as something of familiarity. When one has an intuitive feel for something, what can explain that? I find it fascinating that something that is instinct still has a familiarity to a descendant or relative species way down the line.

Ammonite Shell

There are a large number of octopus species that devise shelters out of coconut and mollusk shells. The goal of this piece was to explore the effect of transmitted evolutionary knowledge. Inomata recreated an ammonite shell by leveraging 3D scanning to recreate a digital model of the shell.

Using 3D printing to do this artistic piece is very fascinating. I would love to know people’s opinions on this in particular. What should we be doing to prepare for extinction? What does this piece do in terms of shifting your perspective in the way you live?

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.

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Dezeen Day Recap

Dezeen Day

The first annual Dezeen Day conference, was definitely a sight to see and I will do my best to share my opinions on the day as a whole. I did not know what to expect going into the conference, but it seemed like it would be a fun time so I decided to go. It turned out to be an eye-opening and interesting experience.

Firstly I want it to be known that architects and designers think in such an interesting manner. I say this because you can see and hear the fascination they all have with life and building. They try to answer seemingly impossible questions. They design things through such innovative means. My brain was in pain throughout the day. It was not bad pain. It was the pain you get when learning something that is out of your comfort zone; it hurts now but you will feel amazing later. The way designers think allows them to have no fear of tackling large issues. The focus of this particular conference was on the Circular Economy and sustainability practices within design. In the design community, there is no one way to solve a problem. There are various ways to tackle an issue. Through the panel discussions and keynote speakers, we got a sense of how there are so many people working in different sectors of design to make this happen. I will reflect on a couple of major talks and discussion points from some of the panel conversations.

The first talk of the day was my favorite, and it had a lot of information packed within it. Paola Antonelli, the Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture & Design and the Director of R&D at MOMA, gave an interesting perspective to the audience. Her belief is that the understanding of humans and their likely extinction can lead to better resulting futures. What I deduced from this was that being aware of extinction leads us to be aware of the future generations and people we may be affecting. It is important for us to focus on future scenarios and think about how our actions can hurt others. This begs the question, “What can people do?”. The rest of the conference was aligned toward answering the question of what can people do to make effective change for the future within design. Paola also stated, “We want people to understand the complexity of the systems but not to be scared of them.” Designers are able to readily grasp design thinking and problem solving, but a variety of people outside the field may not be able to implore the same skills. This makes it important for design to help others outside of its community, and Dezeen Day also had a discussion on education reform. The conference was interwoven and facilitated elegantly. Each panel there was able to feed into one another.

Paola Antonelli at Dezeen Day

There was a lot of information packed within this talk so I did my best to summarize a lot of her ideologies and main points of discussion. The talk had a focus on waiting for making things. Within the design community, ideas are a dime a dozen, but which ones are effective? Typically the ones that well mapped out and executed over time. This ties into her discussion about extinction. We are planning towards building better infrastructures to help humanity over time, and this takes a lot of diligence. This reflected the rest of the day in terms of discussions and panel conversations.

Throughout the discussion, Paola was highlighting the various art she curated for her Broken Nature Exhibition and the significance of each piece. Something of interest to me was the scientific lens that most of the pieces were taking. It lead to other discussion panels throughout the day focused on science, design, and architecture.

A final large takeaway of the talk was that anger could be a source of change.

The only way to live well is to be for others or amongst others. Anger could be a better engine to try and improve things in the future.

This mindset is interesting as it shows the raw emotion needed to drive change. Anger is a great motivator for change because when we are lukewarm, complacent and not very engaged with our surroundings, we have no reason to improve.

The rest of the conference was conducted through the lens of the initial talk. The discussion panels held were the following:

  • Panel discussion: post-plastic materials
  • Panel discussion: future cities
  • Keynote: Liam Young
  • Conversation: Designing for the circular economy
  • Panel discussion: entrepreneurs
  • Panel discussion: fixing education
  • Keynote: Dr. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

Work by Arthur Mamou-Mani

The ideals and conversations at the conference were outlined thoroughly with this introductory talk with Paola. I personally resonated well with the Panel Discussion for Post-Plastic Materials. The conversation was oriented towards the various ways we as humans can be innovative in the materials we are using. I was able to talk to some people from the discussion panel after their talk such as Natsai Audrey Chieza. She is a designer and founder of Faber Futures, and they create biologically inspired materials. After hearing the talk and seeing the work that these individuals are doing it opened me up to a critical lens of understanding with societal material usage. It also inspired me to think big in ways that seemed unfathomable. This was the result of listening to Arthur Mamou-Mani. Arthur is an architect and director of Mamou-Mani Architects. He also specializes in digital fabrication and advanced bioplastics. I was in awe by the extremely large structures he creates with 3D printing and the use of wood. I will be following up on his work later as well.

I also met some other people who helped with the conference. This included Stacie Woolsey who is a design graduate who created her own master’s course. We were able to have a fun chat before her actual panel discussion. She definitely is a great inspiration for young people who want to rid of the typical educational model. I will be discussing this thought process a bit more later.

There were a couple of conversations had about 3D printing and biomaterials that I will be discussing more in-depth because they require some more research. For the overall conference though, it was a good time. The staff was excellent, and the overall programming was extremely engaging. There was no moment without engagement talk wise. I am a reporter who mostly focuses on 3D printing, but after the conference, my eyes have opened up significantly to the importance of design practices. It was awesome to see people who were combining architecture, bioengineering, and design to build interesting things.

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Industrie 4.0: Mein Har(t)z Brennt Part 3 Industrie 5.0

I hate the term 4D printing. Abhor it. I was horrified when I saw it quicker than anticipated gain currency in our market and in the lexicons of journalists. But, in order to print a future for ourselves and this planet, I’ll happily jump on the wordforge myself in order to help us all. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Industrie 5.0 is a bit of a stretch. But, it seems logical and this is all you need really. So what is Industrie 5.0? Industrie 5.0 is the autonomous design, development, and manufacturing of goods in a sustainable way. Using learning algorithms, big data, 3D printing, robotics, and automation the future of manufacturing will be more precise, on-demand and respect our scarce energy resources. Manufacturing is no longer about making the most things but making the right things at the right place at the right time. Using recycling systems, renewable power and resources, and energy reclaiming systems goods will be designed for sustainability and for many efficient lives in many forms. Natural, recycled and recyclable sources will replace those that deplete the earth and software, automation and intelligent systems will monitor, optimize and reduce waste throughout the entire supply chain.

Happily I think I’ve managed to come up with something that almost everyone could get behind. If we look at supply chains holistically and in a cradle to cradle manner (and beyond into new goods for many decades!) we could come up with truly sustainable products. If at the design stage people started with which materials were available where and what they could be turned into later we could use the intelligence in the system to plan goods’ many lives throughout their many recycled iterations. We could design for optimizing low waste and low land usage while taking into account factors such as the availability of other products and the need for prioritization. More efficient industries help save the planet. More holistic looks at the entire supply chain and how things are made and distributed will bring savings for everyone in the value chain, especially the oft-forgotten planet.

The black bloc man kicking in a Mcdonald’s window may not like commerce, industry or 3D printing. But, if we could prove to him that there was a new future to believe in where a select group of companies were embarking on a journey towards lower waste and more environmentally friendly technologies and futures he may kick in their windows less. An environmentalist may not like a polymer chemist or industrial engineer until she sees that they to now with Industrie 5.0 are working actively towards a no-carbon future. A farmer may get the Heebie Jeebies from industry but would welcome a group of firms that are actively working for a greener world. A leftist politician will always distrust automation but if it is coupled with a greener planet and brighter future may find it in his heart to help out. Potentially with Industrie 5.0 we have a future that many people can believe in.

Industrie 5.0 gives us a technological business solution to the fact that our planet is dying. Industrie 5.0 could potentially unite many disparate people under one umbrella where building technology does not equate destroying the planet. If we as a 3D printing community want to engage with Industrie 5.0 we will have to be mindful of being as sustainable as possible while advancing the march towards better-suited end-use parts. Thermohardend or post-printing and curing heated stereolithography parts are a good example of this. On the one hand these parts are definitely much more world friendly than previous generations of resins. These materials are thermosets and can not be recycled, however. In some cases, these materials and their processing aids may be carcinogenic. Are these parts and processes that fit into an increasingly environmentally conscious world? If we’re a niche technology with mostly B2B applications, who cares but as we move into larger and more visible use cases we too need to make a choice. Environmentalism for us can not be an afterthought. So, on the one hand, the burning resins may be the future but on the other hand, we kind of already know that they’re in the past.

Part one of this story can be found here, part two is here.

Image credit: Stefan, Gerald.

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