Some day her prints will come...
Posted on 02/21/2016 12:19:16 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
SIDNEY -- We've seen some truly eye-popping developments with 3D printers and medicine lately -- cells from an eye that were inkjet printed, for example; prosthetic ears that look real; complex silicon pathways used to stimulate nerves to grow and repair themselves -- just to name a few of the marvels.
But medicine is not the only arena where 3D printing offers eye-popping possibility for the future. With the advent of cheaper and cheaper printers and better and better materials -- some of them approaching metallic strengths -- 3D printers could one day be as common a tool on the farm as a tractor. Among the many uses some experts predict are printing custom or replacement parts, to solve individual farming problems more quickly than ever before.
That kind of use is probably at least 10 years or more away, but in the meantime, existing uses have still been interesting and helpful.
Some companies can now offer a vastly accelerated testing cycle for custom prototypes, allowing, as an example, six different models of wear points to be tested in a single harvest. Since tooling costs average $10,000 to $12,000 a pop, that significantly lessens the cost of manufacturing a custom part to solve an individual farmer's technical difficulties in the field. That's just one example of the inroads 3D printing is beginning to make into agriculture in some areas of the country.
In the meantime, area farmers got a closer look at how a home-operated 3D printing system works at the latest brownbagger series, held every other week at the USDA Agriculture Research Center in Sidney, Mont. Brian McGinnis of Exdivio Solutions, Inc. brought along his own home-operated 3D printer and used it to demonstrate how to print a customized gear from start to finish.
The gear happened to be designed and printed for a relative who was restoring an old juke box for which parts are no longer available. The restoration of old-time gizmos is another of the many uses 3D printing is finding as materials improve and prices for printers decline.
"You cannot create anything you want," McGinnis said. "You are limited by gravity and nature."
The printer lays down flat layers of heated plastic material, which must then cool and dry before it can be picked up and manipulated, McGinnis explained. Gravity will pull on the material while it is warm and soft, hence the restrictions in how a design may be oriented.
The gear McGinnis demonstrated was a fairly simple project, but he has also used his home contraption for more complex projects to solve vexing mechanical problems.
He built a bracket that uses a bicycle reflector and a laser pointer to align some wi-fi units out in the field. Those have to be almost perfectly aligned to work with each other.
He also modified a pellet dropper that was malfunctioning in his home water system so that it no longer jams up every month. Along the way, he included a little computer chip that could communicate information to a home-programmed system, making that particular little mousetrap far better than anything available on the market.
These days he uses a printer he spent $2,000 on back in 2012, which is probably now available for closer to $1,000.
For those who want to design their own parts, it's important to select a program that is "parametric." What that means is, the program can be instructed to keep an opening 3 mm from the edge, for example. That's useful if you need to scale a model up or down that was almost but not quite the right size.
Presently he's using a program called GeoMagic Design, though he's considering a switch to Fusion360.
"If you don't want to design stuff, there is a site called Thingiverse. All the designs and plans are available online," McGinnis said.
Thingiverse is associated with Makerbot, which offers an open source printer, so if you decided to branch out into making your own designs, you still could.
McGinnis brought a variety of his flawed and failed items to demonstrate printing problems and the iterative process he uses to design finished projects. Among these were three pink piggies with screw-in tails he made for Valentine's Day. A couple of them had come off the printer too hot, so they had rough and jagged bottoms. These were passed around for closer inspection.
One thing that is particularly exciting, McGinnis said, is the advent of newer and better materials. Polymer scientists are coming up with all kinds of new materials to use in 3D printers, and that is going to further revolutionize this revolutionary technology. Among some of the latest and greatest McGinnis particularly likes is something called "ninja-flex" which is stretchy and perfect for crafting custom seals. Then there's a product called T-glass which prints a reddish white transparent plastic that lets light shine through. There's even one with small particles of wood infused in it, which he used to invisibly repair a hollow bifold closet door in his home.
While a lot of McGinnis' examples were on the hobby level, his presentation turned on a few lightbulbs for some of the professionals in the audience, among them Bill Iverson, with the USDA-ARS center. He is working out a method to craft wind sensors exactly 2 inches above ground level for a study on strip tilling versus conventional tilling.
Up to now, he's been going home to machine parts and retrofit existing pieces, with a sometimes awkward result. With the 3D printer, however, he could see his efforts taking a giant leap forward.
"Theoretically, we could print it with a base instead and have everything we need where we need it, and have it be water resistant, too," Iverson said.
You can find a lot more descriptive info on youtube.
This year will be an investment year for me in 3d printing.
People are taking the 3D printing thing, way too far, imo.
What most people don’t understand is how simple 3d printing actually is.
You can create by hand a crude version of the same sorts of things a cheap 3D printer makes with a precision glue-gun loaded with low-temp plastic sticks....it’s just tedious and stupid since there are cheap 3D printers.
A 3D printer is a devise that lays down tiny blobs of hot plastic according to a plan generated on a computer. The computer is also a simple tool consisting of little more than a mass of simple on/off transistor switches.
The power behind it all is the marvelous God-given mind of Man. The computer is an amplifier for the mind of man...it is so fast that in a way it almost stops time in its tracks.
Using this amplifier men will be able to repair horrific damage to the human body! Surgeons could do it by hand if they only had the time! They know exactly what needs doing, they just can’t do it quickly enough to keep the tissue viable. They also cannot act at the cellular level to glue cells back together....but this is quickly coming!
3D printing will some day soon begin to negate the need for donor organs as the tech gets good enough to create new organs from a patients own tissue.
Entire new skins will be created.... the ultimate face lift :-)
Cognitive enhancement will become possible by repairing brain cells and even replacing whole sections with your own tissues. Adding digital I/O directly to the brain in a non-invasive way will become possible.
I’m loath to say more since so many cannot get their heads around a technology so advanced and powerful that will soon arrive.
I’m a tech guy... I see no possibility that these things will not come to pass.
Spot on. In the architectural and civil engineering fields, site models were constructed of cardboard, illustration board, and later foam layers tedious cut from topograhic map overlays and glued together like a layer cake. Result was a very heavy model. 3D printing means that the model can become a light weight shell as well as freeing professional staff from grunt work better utilized in other tasks.
Other modeling uses as well.
Old geezer professional welcomes slick new stuff.
Some day her prints will come...
Someday it will take just sand, energy and advanced 3D printing to create enormous building projects that cost virtually nothing.
The actual printing will be done by millions of tiny drones. some crawling, some flying, that can fuse sand together using a laser.
Buildings, homes, roads, bridges, dams...etc
Think of the construction abilities of some insects but with more intelligence and endless supplies of energy and an endless supply of worker drones.
No unions, no workers, no cost homes...it’s inevitable.
Everything is going to change.
See, computers really do have some good uses.
Everything has been changing, faster and faster, for at least 500 years.
Are we coming to the singularity? Or will human limitations dampen the pace of change to a merely incredibly rapid pace?
I’m going to be better about investing.
3D printer uses concrete to construct houses at the rate of 10/day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzmCnzA7hnE
I could see this used to cheaply create decent housing in poor areas of the world.
I agree. It's in its infancy, and is not yet practical for most purposes people would like them to do. I've been 3D printing for a couple years now, and it's hard tedious work, besides time consuming, to create stuff you can obtain by other means.
It's great for the scientists who have the means to do R&D. I've used mine to make things I cannot easily obtain. For instance, to repair some tools and to make custom hangers for my tools. Sometimes trying to obtain a part costs more than the machine you're repairing. I created a part to repair my wet/dry vac and it works great. By mixing 3D filament components with steel and aluminum nuts and screws, I've created some great hangers for a lot of my tools. Other stuff I made took a long time, it's really like arts & crafts where you make it for yourself to appreciate - you won't make money on it!
I think it's still 5 to 8 years away from mass acceptance in both the home and industry.
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