Saturday 16 September 2017

3D Printer Filament Is Reinventing Everything

By Dorothy Miller


It is doubtful that anyone could have imagined the technological breakthrough of the three-dimensional printers. Although it is still little more than a toy to most people, this toy is better than Lego blocks, erector sets, fashion plates, and real working Hot Wheels combined. With a little 3D printer filament, the boundaries of potential creation do not exist.

The initial introduction of this technology did not seem to raise very many glasses at first. In fact, not many average people really had any notion of exactly where the tech was most easily applied to their lives. It is doubtful that anyone, including technical gurus, really understood how this technology would create the potential to completely rewrite manufacturing as it is done today.

It was the Hobby Lobby crowd that first gave us a peek into this new potential. Holiday ornaments began to appear on social media pages, then there were solar powered self lighting versions, and finally there were ornaments that functioned like tiny machines, jingling with the power of motion. These first shiny objects of idle entertainment sparked the first embers of recognized potential.

There are many children who, for whatever reasons, are born with hands, arms, feet, limbs missing. When a parent of such a child saw these tiny machines hanging from artificial trees, ornamenting the Holidays of strangers, an idea suddenly emerged into concept. A parent made a child an artificial hand that was radically Transformers in appearance, and could be redesigned over and over as they grew.

With the expansion of the materials available for these printers, so do the ideas and objects that human beings create. Some first prototypes do not live up to their originals, such as the first musical instruments created. However, electric instruments created in this way have a most excellent sound, and some of them are unlike anything anyone has ever dreamed could be.

Clothing designers have even taken a hand at creating the first styles and designs utilizing this medium. There is no end to how this industry, and others, will be forever changed with this technology. From the mind of an artist that utilizes the hands of robotic whimsy, even our clothing is three dimensional now.

Erupting from this flood of creative flow came yet another unexpected tsunami of potential. The implications of using this type of manufacturing in order to create body parts from stem cells carries a heavy implication that our bodies could one day be self-maintained biological machines, and we can be our own mechanics. This potential for all of us to live longer and better without doctors is heavy.

The truth of the matter is that all manufacturing, of all products we use in our daily lives, may one day be designed by us and printed in our own homes. This means warehouse districts are over, along with all the jobs that they represent. This technology will force us to rethink everything we know about how and why people work, and we must recreate ourselves as fully as we might recreate our aging bodies someday sooner than we knew.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment