3D Printer of the Gods II

D printers of the Gods. Uh. The idea here and the snazzy title, of course, refers to the idea that three D printers essentially allow almost any idea that's out there to take physical form, which in a way is kind of kind of godlike and it and it forces us to really rethink what the future is going to be, like, what our relationship with objects is going to be, and really also it makes us sort of think about what

our relationship with objects is now. We talked in the last podcast about some of the current things that are going on, such as Devantie is wearing a dress that it was three D printed, people trying to three D print the perfect plastic gun like an actual gun that kills people, oxygen aryans printing out novelty adult toys exactly, novelty to us exactly. And uh, and today we're going to we we talked a little bit about the future in the last one, but this time we're gon we're

gonna go a little more detailed on that. We're going to talk about some of the near future revolutions in three D printing that are really going to change the world. It's true because although three D printers aren't quite the transporter devices we hoped for at this point, the fact of the matter is that they are rearranging matter and they are sort of defined space and time when it comes to objects, into consumerism and to making what you

want when you want it. So some of the things that are going to be happening very soon with three D printing um that are going to change everything. First of all, we're looking at three D printing reaching the industrial strength level. Now, three D printing, as we've mentioned before, has been a part of industry for about twenty years now, and it's been useful in UH create rapidly producing UH

prototypes in some cases. But we're talking about a situation where three D printing will be able to produce objects of high quality, industrial grade that can be that can

be a part of automobiles, etcetera. And now some automobiles already have through some three D printing parts, but we're talking about an age win pretty much all parts are going to be produced by three D printing as opposed to traditional subtractive methods such as printing the pieces out of a sheet of metal or using a mold to

pour and pouring a mold to create the device. Yeah, because I mean, at the end of the day, when you're when you're talking about the future three D printing, you're talking about materials that are lighter, that can be made faster, and can be customized. So it's a perfect fit for manufacturing. Um, So you know you're going to see more of these printers and factories just printing out parts. You also see them in the nano manufacturing industry, which

will talk more about. And then you look at you're gonna see it just in actual like hey, we're gonna build something. We're gonna build a building, and so imagine large blocks of like custom building materials being printed out on a job site. Yeah. And and to go back to prototyping real quick, you're just gonna see that that speeded up even more. The ability to quickly produce a working prototype for for a new product. It's just gonna

be it's gonna be exponentially improved. Yeah. In fact, the D shape printer, which was created by Enricodini, is capable now of printing a two story building complete with rooms, stairs, pipes, and partitions, and it uses nothing but sand an inorganic binding compound, and then the resulting material has the same durability as reinforced concrete. With this is super cool the

look of marble um. Of course, now you can only use this on rounded structures, but the process itself takes approximately about a fourth of the time as traditional buildings,

and it doesn't really require any specialized knowledge or skill set. Yeah, because a lot of the you know, we get into the idea of printing nano materials, and we've talked before about like when whether we're talking about space elevators or super tall buildings, we always come back around to the use of nano materials because when you're building things from the smallest level up, which to a certain extent is three D printing in itself. It's the idea that I'm

starting small and building everything up from the bottom. But if you start really small, if you're building things up from the from the smallest structures possible, then you're able to create super strong materials capable of tethering a space elevator in place, or creating the sort of skyscrapers that

right now we can only dream of. It doesn't change physics, but it changes the way that materials act in in the realm of physics, which is really cool because that is really liberating as as someone who is a designer in someone who is trying to do something like see a spacecraft. Yeah, I mean, it's the difference between me selling two things together, or me sewing up a hole in my hoodie or something as opposed to to an

actual scene stress or an or or sewing machine doing it. Um. And you know, in the difference between a big visible um stitch and an invisible stitch. And it's just the finer level of detail, the finer grade of craftsmanship that you get when you when you build things up from that very small level. And when you're speaking about building up things for a very small level, of course, you start thinking about the medical ramifications that this because we're

built up very small exactly exactly, um. And we have experiments and printing soft tissue that are underway now. UM. But the idea is that if if you can master that, you may begin to print veins and arteries to you to be used in operations and then um, you know, taking to the extreme, you can then print organs and you're not even taking into the strain. The extreme is

of course printing the whole bodies. Yeah, I mean, which not only would would vanquish the whole organ uh donor problem that we have, right, but I mean you write you just hey, here's another me. Yeah, I'm just going to keep it in the and storage until I need to replace myself. And this is a great example of three D printer of the gods here, because we're essentially talking about a three D printer creating objects, creating a

person as nature creates a person. You know, the the idea that it's it's just it's created from the smallest piece, it's it's grown. Yeah, there is an element of bio mimicry about this. We'll talk about this more when we talk about four D printing. But um, it is interesting that we're getting sort of back to the basics when we're talking about three D printing, because it really is sort of saying, let's take take nature's way of building up and see if we can recreate this process in

a machine. Um. Consumerism, Yes, this is gonna be huge. I mean, this is what I think is going to be one of the most interesting aspects about three D printing because I think it will greatly change our behavior. And you and I talked about this in the last

podcast last episode. Is that you know, one day you could go to Amazon and you could click on a box there that says I want to customize this because as Amazon has now decided to use this technology with their companies, um in their manufacturers, and it's just gonna be something pretty wrote like, Hey, I need to get this new SYNC, but I really would love to have I don't know, some sort of crazy design of vampire

state building, yeah, you know in it or I don't know. Yeah, I mean, and we already have some of those options, for instance, with some of our our digital and some non digital media media. You want a book, okay, if you want it in hardback? You want and soft back? You want in paperback? Or do you want it uh? Digital? Right? Uh? And how do you want that album? Do you want it joined vinyl, you want it on c D, you want it on a retrocassette which is coming back in

some case? Do you or you want it digitally? All right? Well, we have five options for that. You want to in flak, you want an MP three, you want it, and and you know, it just goes on and on. So you'll see that kind of stuff when you buy things. All right, what size do you want it? In? What color do you want it? Also upload the dimensions of your hand to upload that your actual physical dimensions, and we'll make sure that it fits you to a t us. So

try to imagine that. So let's say that you want a specific design that you can get to pick from all these stock files of this specific design or you know stock art, and then yeah, you can upload if it if the object relates to your body, then you upload your own dimensions and then Amazon surely will deliver that to you within the hour because now even now they're trying to do same day delivery. So we have wait. Since we're extrapolating in the future, we have to think

about this, you know, five years out. Yeah, and you're gonna see that It's going to be like with any technological innovation, there are going to be companies that adapt and shift and survive, and then they're gonna be ones that fall to the wayside, and there are going to be new entrepreneurs that that pop up that are like, hey, this is how people are going to be consuming. What can we do to game it? They're going to be products that come out that are specifically aimed at three

D printing. Well, see, I'm glad that you brought that up, because it really does change the landscape of companies in their ability to produce. So, you know, I wonder does Amazon then begin to produce items instead of just distribute, because essentially they can take over if you can print anything, then why even half manufacturers that you distribute? Why why just um, why not just be the point persona and then that process? And then to what extent did these

companies become the means of creating? You know? I mean because like we mentioned before, I mean everybody, everybody wants to to be an artist, Everyone wants to be a writer, everyone wants to be a musician to varying degrees that the Internet is a great example of all sorts of different people producing something and wanting to share it with the world. And then take that and translated to the

world of objects. So do these companies end up becoming more and more involved in user generated content like the Wikipedia of objects? Right? And you know our our storefronts replaced by just a storefront. Yeah. Do you go to the mall and it's just one uh three D printing kiosk. We'll probably multiple chaos where you go in and you you print out the things you want. I mean maybe you have a situation where the stores are still there so that you can you can shop. People like to

look at things before they buy them. But then when you decide you print it out. You go to the kiosks, you print it out, and you can print out you know, your your new shoes, your new dress, the toy for the kid, uh and maybe even your hamburger. I would but just say you could also pray. If you're a little bit you know, you feel like you mean a gnash, then hey you can. This is an ability that Cornelling University's fab Home fab at Home project can actually do

right now. They use gel like substances that can be combined with other materials, including artificial flavor yeum uh to mimic the taste in mouth feel of many different foods. Yeah, this was really interesting because they also talked a little bit about the the Uncanny Valley of foods with this because because the gel like substance called hydro collides is is apparently a little unsettling, like it's filled with artificial flavoring.

And you can print it, say, in the shape of a turkey leg, sure, but if it doesn't taste like a turkey leg, it's gonna be a little weird. So they they've really kind of decided that they need to work on the taste first and then worry about printing it out in to the four into the actual shapes, which which makes sense, and maybe to a certain extent it's I mean, it makes me think of candy, right, and specifically banana flavored candy. You ever had banana flavored candy?

It doesn't taste like bananas, and to a certain extent, orange candy doesn't taste like oranges. But you get into that area, how close can the taste be to the thing and still get away with it? And to what extent it does it become a new thing because orange candy it's nothing like an actual orange in flavor or

in texture. But I know, I was just thinking about to the twenties, and we talked about um when we did the food episode, and we were talking about the candy that became a stand in for a meal, because remember, people didn't have much money and they had those turkey meals and it was I don't know if it actually was supposed to taste like a roast turkey or I think I think they had chocolate and it was the idea. The idea was, hey, you need a meal, here's a meal.

Peel it back and eat it. So we have evidence that we've done this before, and certainly if you don't have the resources, then maybe you can't accept that. And after all, it's a shot of glucose. Anyways, look at some of the stuff people eat already, Like a chicken nugget is nothing like anything real. It's you know, it's it's you know, you look at stuff with pink slime. I mean, we're already magnufacturing unreal food out of strange things.

So and people and people love it. So um, pink slime is found in hamburger meat, right, yeah, yeah, So I I have no doubt that three D printing could easily create something that people would love, if not tolerate. Specifically, when you're talking about like say, long term space missions, I mean these are environments where, yes, you want people in space to want to eat because sometimes there's less

of an appetite there. But but ultimately you know, survival food right well, And so that just made me think about the parallels between the Uncanny Valley and smell racams for food, right because there are some people who will say the Uncanny Valley isn't as uncanny or creepier as we think. You know, see a robot that's supposed to look like a human or act like a human, or move like a human and they don't because they are not in it unsettles us. But we get used to things.

I mean, new food is uncanny Valley when you first have it, like you know, have Thai food for the first time, and you'll be like, this is a little uncanny, but you know you'll love it in a week. So guarantee you guaranteed. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're gonna talk even more about the future of three D printing and we're going to talk about four D printing. All Right, we're back and we're gonna talk here about four D printing.

And just to be clear, the term four D printing is a it's a little bit of science headline bait. It's misleading. Yeah, it's it's it looks great in the headline, but when you really get down to the meat of it, it's not. You're not really printing in space and time, no more than you're always printing in space and time. It's kind of like three D printing on steroids. Um. And what we're talking about, we're talking about for D printing is passive self assembly systems, which is still pretty

odd them. Don't let me underplay it. It's very cool. Self assembly m I T. Researcher Skylar Tipbitts is sort of the face of this right now in terms of self assembly. And when I talk about it being on steroids, we're talking about its allowing three D printers allowing to print parts to self assemble and reassemble into a number of products. So each part would be comprised of a regular rigid plastic layer along with an outer layer made

up smart materials, not dumb ones. And then when they're submerged in water, the smart materials absorb and they expand and they cause the parts to move and form a pre specified object. It's like if you're wearing kite jeans and then you, and then you get reined on really heavy layer. You fall in a swimming pool, and then they start to shrink up, and then you were your your form changes and you you you go into into like stiff legged mode because you can't move your legs anymore.

It's kind of like that the outer layer is the gene the blue jeans, and then the inner layer is you. Yeah, well, I mean think it's really interesting. And this is uh from a Ted talk that you sent me that Tibbott is talking about the future of this and what makes no sense so much sense. He's saying that currently we build skyscrapers with about five hundred thousand into one million parts,

which all told takes about two years. And that's not even counting the dead gangsters in the concrete exactly or the vampires, um. And then he says though that we should look toward natural systems to get a better idea of how to use forty or self assembly. He says that we have proteins that have two million types, they can fold in ten thousand nanoseconds, and he says we also have DNA with three billion base pairs we can

replicate in roughly an hour. So he said that out of all this complexity complexity in our natural systems, UM, there's still this idea that they're really efficient at what they do, far more efficient than anything that we can build, and far more complex than anything that we can build. And so he says we should look towards this model because it's it's really good, um and making something out

of as little energy as possible. Yeah, I mean, and right now we're talking about again a little like a three D printed stick that when the water is at it, it it becomes a cube. But he's talking long term the idea of the self assembly of large scale structures, which is which is pretty phenomenal. I like how in the talk he gets a little philosophic too and talks

about ultimately objects that have desire. Not only do we desire them, but they have they have a desire in the sense that there is something that they will be. I mean, it gets a little we want Yeah, when you get into one. I mean, it's kind of like when you're talking about memory, like say a spring having memory of spring. It doesn't have memory in the sense that we speak of it, but it does have engineering, uh, in a physics level of memory. And this would be

that same level of desire. So you could also argue to say, my earbuds always have a desire to break after one year. Well, this is uh. This kind of goes back to Susan Black when she talks about Dawkins. She talks about memes and how humans are just meme machines, right, We're meant to communicate certain messages and over and over again and just spread the memes. But then she says

technology is really the thing that we're spreading. So that's why she plays on teams UM And so I think about this in that instance, like we are creating UM the technology to ultimately reproduce itself and brings us back into the world of nanotech. But I was gonna say, really, at a very small scale, which is now um possible in nano three D printing, I cause you're talking about really fine resolutions that enable the creation of intricately structured sculptures.

Is tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny as a grain of sand. There's actually a great video we'll we'll try to remember to post this, but it shows that in fifty seconds this aircraft is created through a nano three D printer, and if you look at it through obviously there's like magnified and you see the details and it is perfectly scale. It's it's a beautiful rendering and it is an object and it is as big as a tiny grain of salt. Yeah.

I mean it comes back into again to what I've been talking about with the idea of building things with the smallest parts possible. The more that the smaller that the building blocks, the more power you have over the structure,

over the ultimate finished product. It's like with legos. Think back to the legos you had when you were really young, whether it were kind of big and and boxy because it would be harder to fit in your mouth, and then the smaller legos you eventually grew into, which one would which blocks allow you to create the more detailed

model the smaller blocks of course, of course. And then when you think about something that we mentioned before, the gaming controllers, in which there's the ability to throw down to lay down electronics and those objects that are three D printed, and you look at nano printing and you know it's just a matter of time where you can get the same sort of electronics into the object. Then you start to think more about what does the future

look like long term sicky years from now. Um, it's not just about creating nano printed scaffolding to grow tissue on or to use in other nano manufacturing parts. There is a real ability to say, create a robot that is at the nano scale and what happens then, well, then we have the idea that we have machines that

can repair themselves. We have we have structures that can repair themselves, buildings that can heal, bridges that can build themselves, little tiny robots that can peek into your private life. We're talking about this the other day when we're shooting a video. Yeah, we were just saying that, Um, I mean, how do you combat that we have your own little army of nano robots system really of nanobots to protect your privacy and your interests. And we all kind of lit.

We're just all crawling with them like fleas that we just and maybe they're also programmed to cut our hair and to groom ourselves, which is nice, it's lovely. Um. Other considerations. We talked about this when we talked about the atropasy, and this is the idea of we are now in the age of man and that human activity has left a stratigraphic signal in the soil and scars in the earth, chemical signatures, etcetera. Yeah, and we find

this an ice cores. Right, there's data retreat from glacial ice cores that show the beginning of a growth in atmospheric concentrations of several greenhouse gases, in particular CEO two and c H four. And the starting date actual actually coincides with James Watt's invention of a steam engine in four So you begin to see this layer of sediment.

So the question is, you know if a human or some other intelligent being were to look at the soil a thousand years from now, um, and would they look at the soil and say, ah, this is this is the year that they really began to use a three D printer, because now we have this huge polymer sediment. Yeah, this is the age in which they took all available mass and used it to print a whole bunch of nonsense.

So you just have to and just drown themselves. And again a come back to the idea of the Internet vomiting into the physical world as it is as three D printing is this gateway way by which the Internet and all of its nonsense and all of its beauty and all of its horror can actually take physical form well, and you kind of think about this is another prong in the Internet of things. We talked about the Internet of things being that that data is alive around us

at all times. In other words, you know, you could have a refrigerator that could tell you if you needed eggs or your eggs were expired. And you know, this is just another idea of how objects play into this. I like to think of it in terms two of our work print printer, Like, think of all the things that you find printed out that people have forgotten about.

You find like say, um, detailed tax information, legal information, personal information, private correspondences, recipes, work Once I found that somebody had written and it wasn't me, somebody else in the office had written um, like a large portion of like a sci fi novel. So things just sitting there on the on the on the printer. If we had three D printers, what kind of stuff would you find they're just sitting sitting there on the desk or clogged

up in the printer. Would you find like, by the way, we're not giving anything away when we say that someone wrote a chunk of sci fi novel here because there there's a good many people here. I can't even narrow down who it might have been at the time, but

the manifesto on popcorn there's only one person. But but just think, you know, you would go to the printer and then there's somebody has printed out, you know, a size perfect dress for themselves that they were going to wear that night and left early and forgot to pick up. Someone printed out some sort of rather personal, um adult device that you know, they could be fired for. Someone

else printed out just a toy that that that was interesting. Oh, they needed to know the action figure to go on their death, so they printed out eight of them by accident by accidentally hitting the button eight times. I mean, you can just go on and on. I know, I'm just trying to figure out if this is glorious? Are awful? I know that's a little but that's the question we always ask the technology and and probably yeah, it's a

little column may, a little column B. Yeah. All right, Well there you go a little more stuff to blow your mind there with three D printing and for D printing. And we would love to hear from everyone, what are your thoughts on on the future of three D and fort D printing. How do you think it's going to change our lives? How would it change your life? How do you think it's going to change manufacturing? How do

you think it's going to change the business. How do you think it's gonna weigh the change the way we interact with objects and to what extent are personalized like handcrafted objects. I mean, I can't imagine it would go away. There's still gonna be a value for things that are created in the old ways that things are complete, that are created by hand. You know, it'll be the same

way that people are willing into craft beers. People will still be into the idea of of, say a miniature that was created with mold rather than a three D printer. But at the same time, will intellectually intellectual property Will that become a really archaic term? Yeah, The legal ramifications are are crazy enough themselves. So hey, let us know what you think. You can find us on face Book,

you can find us on tumbler. We are stuff to blow your mind on both of those, and also check us out on Twitter, where our handle is is blow the mind, and we there's different content on all three of those so so they don't think that they're all just replications with the same material. And you can always drop us a line at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does It How Stuff Works dot com