Posted on 12/28/2014 4:04:52 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
If 3D printers don’t already fall somewhere on your list of the top ten coolest things ever, then you really need to take some time to rethink your priorities. The following list of eight unbelievably awesome things that 3D printing is already being used for should help to convince you (if you need convincing) that 3D printers are science fiction come true.
1) Prosthetic Legs for Dogs
With a prosthetic leg created by designers at 3D printing company 3D systems, Derby the disabled rescue dog (warning: if you’re pregnant, menstruating, or a passionate animal lover the aforementioned link will probably make you cry) recently got to run for the first time. Derby’s leg was designed by an artificial limbs specialist, who worked along with Derby’s adoptive parents to model and print Derby’s new legs.
2) Self-Adjustable Glasses
Researchers advocating the far-reaching potential of 3D printing recently used a RepRap printer to create self-adjustable glasses. The glasses cost just $1 to produce, and the lenses can be self-adjusted, helping low-income families to avoid the costs normally associate with vision correction. The project demonstrates the humanitarian implications of 3D-printing. With 90% of visually impaired people living in countries where corrective eye-care is either impractical or impossible, the Adspec glasses could have a huge global impact.
3) Futuristic Furniture
How cool would it be to print your own furniture? With 3D printing, it could be a real possibility. Already, designers have begun experimenting with 3D furniture models, producing some pretty neat results. Imagine how much easier moving into your college dorm room would have been if all you had to bring was your 3D printer!
4) Human Organs
Already, 3D printing has had a huge impact in the medical field, but its most exciting application is still in the works. Scientists all over the globe are in the race to create the first fully-functional human organ using 3D bio-printing. Bio-printing combines traditional 3D printing methods with stem cell “ink,” creating delicate structures such as human capillaries with an ease that conventional manufacturing methods could never hope to achieve. Already, prominent scientists such as Anthony Atala have begun creating organ prototypes that could feasibly solve the growing organ-donor problem within the next decade.
5) Eco-Friendly Houses
WinSun Decoration Design Engineering, a company in China, has used a giant 3D printer to create ten single-story homes. An environmentally-friendly project, the houses were constructed out of construction waste and glass fiber. Although the buildings only measure 10 x 6.6 meters, the project has laid the groundwork for 3D building, a development that is well on its way to revolutionizing the construction industry.
6) Modernist Jewelry
3D printed jewelry is already on the market, and it’s surprisingly affordable. By using 3D printers, jewelry makers can produce intricate designs in half the time, using precious metals as well as plastic and brass. This 3D printed jewelry is an art form in its own right, creating geometrically modern custom designs that are already growing popular amongst consumers around the globe.
7) Perfect-Fit Clothing
3D printed clothing has hit the catwalk in recent years, and may soon revolutionize the fashion industry. Although 3D-printed clothing is somewhat materially restricted, it makes ordering perfect-fit clothing easy and affordable. With companies like Australia’s XYZ Workshop already offering downloadable dress designs, soon anyone with a 3D printer will be able to manufacture their own clothing at home.
8) Fully-Functional Firearms
Non-profit 3D printing firm Defense Distributed has created a series of fully-functional gun components using 3D printing methods. All of the blueprints are available for free through the Defense Distributed website, so if you have a 3D printer at home (or if you plan on buying one now that you’ve discovered how awesome they are), you can make your own 3D weapons.
Ok, so it prints, but can it learn to do cursive?
I’ll know 3-D printing has become an important part of everyday life when the government starts talking about regulating all aspects of it. I don’t think we are very far from that point now. Maybe within the next six years, the type of ‘ink’ used will be strictly regulated, especially the kind used to produce weapons. Not now, but soon, after the prices fall for these handy ‘thing makers’.
The End of Chinese Manufacturing and Rebirth of U.S. Industry
http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/07/23/the-end-of-chinese-manufacturing-and-rebirth-of-u-s-industry/
Even if the Chinese automate their factories with AI-powered robots and manufacture 3D printers, it will no longer make sense to ship raw materials all the way to China to have them assembled into finished products and shipped back to the U.S. Manufacturing will once again become a local industry with products being manufactured near raw materials or markets.
So China has many reasons to worry, and manufacturing will undoubtedly return to the U.S.—if not in this decade then early in the next. But the same jobs that left the U.S. won’t come back: they won’t exist. What will the new jobs be? We can only guess. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says that just as we have created new, higher-paying jobs in every other industrial transition, we will create a new set of industries and professions in this one. Look at the new types of jobs and multi-billion dollar businesses that the Internet and mobile industries created—these came out of nowhere and changed our lives, Bass says.
Already too late:
New Process Recycles Milk Jugs Into 3D Printer Filament (10 cents per KG, vs. $50 now)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3130558/posts
Solid Concepts 3D Prints Another Metal Gun, ‘Reason’, a 10mm Auto 1911
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3219719/posts
Actually it can do cursive, (well script font). My kids got me a 3d printer for Christmas this year! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoZ2BgPVtA0
3D-Printed “Magic Arms”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT3772yhr0o
MakerBot and Robohand | 3D Printing Mechanical Hands
Ping to #5.
3-D Printing Will Change the World
https://hbr.org/2013/03/3-d-printing-will-change-the-world
It seems that the United States and other Western countries, almost in spite of themselves, will pull off the old judo technique of exploiting a competitor’s lack of balance and making its own massive weight instrumental in its fall.
China won’t be a loser in the new era; like every nation, it will have a domestic market to serve on a local basis, and its domestic market is huge. And not all products lend themselves to 3-D printing. But China will have to give up on being the mass-manufacturing powerhouse of the world. The strategy that has given it such political heft won’t serve it in the future.
The great transfer of wealth and jobs to the East over the past two decades may have seemed a decisive tipping point. But this new technology will change again how the world leans.
Can anybody out there print me up a high volume high velocity intake for a GM 3800 series ii? Thanks in advance.
“The End of Chinese Manufacturing and Rebirth of U.S. Industry”
I’ve been thinking for a while now that manufacturing might go back to a pre Industrial revolution cottage industry type thing. Don’t know if this would be good or bad. The microprocessor got me thinking along this line.
China has nothing to worry about. Their 'Growth' industries will be
1. clean up the environmental disaster they created
2. providing medical care to the millions injured by polution
I’m looking at one sometime this year.
There are a few things slightly higher priority. I look at reviews and subscribe to some mailing lists to try to keep track of developments.
Those things just consume resources ...
Sure it will. As long as the premiums imposed by unions, frivolous lawsuits, regulations, and taxes continue to add up to more than the transportation costs nothing is going to change.
You are right. I was thinking from the perspective of Western Civilization again. I've stopped thinking about Islam with that lens for a long time. China is little better than ISIS when to comes to respecting life.
This is clearly going to revolutionize the world.
Even with all that, in one article I was reading about “reshoring” manufacturing, right now (without 3D printing) one manufacturer calculated they would only have a 10% increase in costs in America, as compared to overseas. It’s not that kind of equation as you think it is, anymore.
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