But
Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D
printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more
important—use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a
3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves
customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a
time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery
store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the
powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that
each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates,
protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted
before being returned to the store.
Ubiquitous food synthesizers
would also create new ways of producing the basic calories on which we
all rely. Since a powder is a powder, the inputs could be anything that
contain the right organic molecules. We already know that eating meat is
environmentally unsustainable, so why not get all our protein from insects?
If eating something spat out by the same kind of 3D printers that are currently being used to make everything from jet engine parts to fine art
doesn’t sound too appetizing, that’s only because you can currently
afford the good stuff, says Contractor. That might not be the case once
the world’s population reaches its peak size, probably sometime near the end of this century.
“I
think, and many economists think, that current food systems can’t
supply 12 billion people sufficiently,” says Contractor. “So we
eventually have to change our perception of what we see as food.”
There will be pizza on Mars
The ultimate in molecular gastronomy. (Schematic of SMRC’s 3D printer for food.)SMRC
If
Contractor’s utopian-dystopian vision of the future of food ever comes
to pass, it will be an argument for why space research isn’t a complete
waste of money. His initial grant from NASA, under its Small Business
Innovation Research program, is for a system that can print food for
astronauts on very long space missions. For example, all the way to
Mars.
“Long distance space travel requires 15-plus years of shelf
life,” says Contractor. “The way we are working on it is, all the carbs,
proteins and macro and micro nutrients are in powder form. We take
moisture out, and in that form it will last maybe 30 years.”
Pizza
is an obvious candidate for 3D printing because it can be printed in
distinct layers, so it only requires the print head to extrude one
substance at a time. Contractor’s “pizza printer” is still at the
conceptual stage, and he will begin building it within two weeks. It
works by first “printing” a layer of dough, which is baked at the same
time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then
it lays down a tomato base, “which is also stored in a powdered form,
and then mixed with water and oil,” says Contractor.
Finally, the
pizza is topped with the delicious-sounding “protein layer,” which could
come from any source, including animals, milk or plants.
The prototype for Contractor’s pizza printer (captured in a video,
above) which helped him earn a grant from NASA, was a simple chocolate
printer. It’s not much to look at, nor is it the first of its kind, but at least it’s a proof of concept.
Replacing cookbooks with open-source recipes
SMRC’s prototype 3D food printer will be based on open-source hardware from the RepRap project.RepRap
Remember
grandma’s treasure box of recipes written in pencil on yellowing note
cards? In the future, we’ll all be able to trade recipes directly, as
software. Each recipe will be a set of instructions that tells the
printer which cartridge of powder to mix with which liquids, and at what
rate and how it should be sprayed, one layer at time.
This will
be possible because Contractor plans to keep the software portion of his
3D printer entirely open-source, so that anyone can look at its code,
take it apart, understand it, and tweak recipes to fit. It would of
course be possible for people to trade recipes even if this printer were
proprietary—imagine something like an app store, but for recipes—but
Contractor believes that by keeping his software open source, it will be
even more likely that people will find creative uses for his
hardware. His prototype 3D food printer also happens to be based on a
piece of open-source hardware, the second-generation RepRap 3D printer.
“One
of the major advantage of a 3D printer is that it provides personalized
nutrition,” says Contractor. “If you’re male, female, someone is
sick—they all have different dietary needs. If you can program your
needs into a 3D printer, it can print exactly the nutrients that person
requires.”
Replacing farms with sources of environmentally-appropriate calories
2032: Delicious Uncle Sam’s Meal Cubes are laser-sintered from granulated mealworms; part of this healthy breakfast.TNO Research
Contractor
is agnostic about the source of the food-based powders his system uses.
One vision of how 3D printing could make it possible to turn just about
any food-like starting material into an edible meal was outlined by TNO
Research, the think tank of TNO, a Dutch holding company that owns a
number of technology firms.
In TNO’s vision of a future of 3D printed meals, “alternative ingredients” for food include:
algae
duckweed
grass
lupine seeds
beet leafs
insects
From astronauts to emerging markets
While
Contractor and his team are initially focusing on applications for
long-distance space travel, his eventual goal is to turn his system for
3D printing food into a design that can be licensed to someone who wants
to turn it into a business. His company has been “quite successful in
doing that in the past,” and has created both a gadget that uses microwaves to evaluate the structural integrity of aircraft panels and a kind of metal screw that coats itself with protective sealant once it’s drilled into a sheet of metal.
Since
Contractor’s 3D food printer doesn’t even exist in prototype form, it’s
too early to address questions of cost or the healthiness (or not) of
the food it produces. But let’s hope the algae and cricket pizza turns
out to be tastier than it sounds.
3D printers are undeniably cool, but their price also puts them out of the reach of most; that’s where 3Doodler steps in, a 3D printing pen hitting Kickstarter today
and promising to make sketches physical. The chubby stylus squirts out
of a stream of thermoplastic from its 270 degree-C nib, which is
instantly cooled by an integrated fan. By laying different streams of
plastic, tugging up streams of it to make 3D structures, and piecing
different layers together, you can create 3D designs on a budget.
In fact, early Kickstarter backers will be able to get the 3Doodler
from $50, though that award tier is already nearly halfway claimed at
time of writing. Next is the $75 bracket, which should stick around a
little longer, with the eventual Kickstarter goal being $30,000.
Unlike traditional printers, which require programming, the 3Doodler
takes a more abstract approach. You can freeform draw sketches, or
alternatively trace out patterns that have been printed, and then peel
the set plastic off; 3Doodler suggests possibilities include jewelry, 3D
models, artwork, and more.
It’s not going to be the way you print your next
coffee cup or car wheel, as we’ve seen promised from regular 3D
printers, but the plug-and-play approach has plenty of appeal
nonetheless. The Kickstarter runs for the next month, with first
deliveries expected in the fall of 2013 assuming it’s funded.
This is exactly what architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars
has been working on. The Dutch native is planning to build what he
calls a "Landscape House." This structure is two-stories and is laid out
in a figure-eight shape. The idea is that this form can borrow from nature and also seamlessly fit into the outside world.
Ruijssenaars describes it on his Web site as "one surface folded in an
endless mobius band," where "floors transform into ceilings, inside into
outside."
The production of the building will be done on a 3D printer called the D-Shape,
which was invented by Enrico Dini. The D-Shape uses a stereolithography
printing process with sand and a binding agent -- letting builders
create structures that are supposedly as strong as concrete.
According to the Los Angeles Times,
the printer will lay down thousands of layers of sand to create 20 by
30-foot sections. These blocks will then be used to compile the
building.
The "Landscape House" will be the first 3D-printed
building and is estimated to cost between $5 million and $6 million,
according to the BBC. Ruijssenaars plans to have it done sometime in 2014.
Filament is expensive. Ask any 3D printing enthusiast and they will
agree that the cost of the plastic filament used to print objects is
oftentimes overpriced. If only there was a product that let you recycle
all the worthless plastic sitting around your house into usable
filament. Oh wait, there totally is.
Say hello to Filabot, a new machine
that melts down junk plastic into the plastic filament used by the
majority of desktop 3D printers. The machine can process a variety of
plastics including HDPE, LDPE, ABS and PLA. The latter two are sold by
major 3D printing companies, but now you can make your own if you’re up
to melting down a few of your LEGO pieces.
Filabot already had a successful funding run on Kickstarter
early last year when the creator, Tyler McNaney, asked for $10,000. In
the end, he received $32,330 from 156 backers. Sixty-seven of those
backers will be receiving their very own Filabot.
Not only is Filabot a great idea, but it solves one of the major
hurdles facing 3D printing – sustainability. Not all 3D printers yet
support PLA, a bio-degradable plastic. With Filabot, most plastics can
now be melted down into filament to be used in future designs. It saves
the creator money while putting the plastic in something besides a
landfill. Now that’s what I call a win-win situation.
The popularity of 3D printing
has exploded, but even as prices for the devices have fallen, not
everyone is prepared or able to shell out the cash necessary start
experimenting. But what if there was a 3D vending machine that made
experimenting quick and easy, without the printer investment? Well, now
there is.
Created at Virginia Tech's DREAMS Lab, the DreamVendor
allows students to quickly print out prototype designs by simply
inserting an SD card containing a physible data file into a large bank
of four Makerbot Thing-O-Matic 3D printers. Once completed, the printed
object is deposited into a vending-style
retrieval shelf, similar to the one from which you might snag a candy
bar or a bag of potato chips. Designed to encourage 3D prototyping at
the lab, students are allowed to use the machine free of charge.
And while the school hasn't announced any plans to take the idea
commercial, it's not difficult to imagine a day, in the very near
future, when you'll see a similar, pay-per-3D-print version of the
DreamVendor stationed at your local OfficeMax or Staples. You can see
the DreamVendor in action in the video below.
Spoiler alert: a reoccurring cast member bids farewell in the latest James Bond flick. When the production of Skyfall
called for the complete decimation of a classic 1960s era Aston Martin
DB5, filmmakers opted for something a little more lifelike than computer
graphics. The movie studio contracted the services of Augsburg-based 3D
printing company Voxeljet to make replicas of the vintage ride.
Skipping over the residential-friendly MakerBot Replicator,
the company used a beastly industrial VX4000 3D printer to craft three
1:3 scale models of the car with a plot to blow them to smithereens. The
18 piece miniatures were shipped off to Propshop Modelmakers in London
to be assembled, painted, chromed and outfitted with fake bullet holes.
The final product was used in the film during a high-octane action
sequence, which resulted in the meticulously crafted prop receiving a
Wile E. Coyote-like sendoff. Now, rest easy knowing that no real Aston
Martins were harmed during the making of this film. Head past the break
to get a look at a completed model prior to its untimely demise.
What happens when you combine advances
in 3D printing with biosynthesis and molecular construction?
Eventually, it might just lead to printers that can manufacture vaccines
and other drugs from scratch: email your doc, download some medicine,
print it out and you're cured.
This concept (which is surely being worked on as we speak) comes from Craig Venter, whose idea of synthesizing DNA on Mars
we posted about last week. You may remember a mention of the
possibility of synthesizing Martian DNA back here on Earth, too: Venter
says that we can do that simply by having the spacecraft email us
genetic information on whatever it finds on Mars, and then recreate it
in a lab by mixing together nucleotides in just the right way. This sort
of thing has already essentially been done by Ventner, who created the world's first synthetic life form back in 2010.
Vetner's idea is to do away with complex, expensive and centralized
vaccine production and instead just develop one single machine that can
"print" drugs by carefully combining nucleotides, sugars, amino acids,
and whatever else is needed while u wait. Technology like this would
mean that vaccines could be produced locally, on demand, simply by
emailing the appropriate instructions to your closes drug printer.
Pharmacies would no longer consists of shelves upon shelves of different
pills, but could instead be kiosks with printers inside them.
Ultimately, this could even be something you do at home.
While the benefits to technology like this are obvious, the risks are
equally obvious. I mean, you'd basically be introducing the Internet
directly into your body. Just ingest that for a second and think about
everything that it implies. Viruses. LOLcats. Rule 34. Yeah, you know
what, maybe I'll just stick with modern American healthcare and making
ritual sacrifices to heathen gods, at least one of which will probably
be effective.
The MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer. (Image Credit: Kevin Hall/DVICE)
The new Replicator 2 looks good on a shelf, but also boasts two
notable upgrades: it's insanely accurate with a 100-micron resolution,
and can build objects 37 percent larger than its predecessor without adding roughly any bulk to its size.
In a small eatery in
Brooklyn, New York, MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis unveiled the next generation
Replicator 2, which he presented in terms of Apple-like evolution in
design. From the memory of its own Apple IIe in much smaller DIY 3D
printing kits comes the all-steel Replicator 2. The fourth generation
MakerBot printer ditches the wood for a sleek hard-body chassis, and is
"designed for the desktop of an engineer, researcher, creative
professional, or anyone who loves to make things," according to the
company.
Of course, MakerBot, which helps enable a robust community of 3D printing enthusiasts,
is all about the idea of 3D printing at home. By calling them desktop
3D printers, MakerBot alludes to 1984's Apple Macintosh, the first
computer designed to be affordable. The Macintosh was introduced at a
fraction of the cost of the Lisa, which came before it and was the first
computer with an easy-to-use graphical interface.
Each iteration of MakerBot's 3D printing technology has tried to find
a sweet spot between utility and affordability. Usually, affordability
comes at the cost of two things: micron-level layer resolutions (the
first Replicator had a 270-micron layer resolution, nearly three times
as thick) and enough area to build. The Replicator 2 prioritizes these
things, and, while it only has a single-color extruder, can still be
sold at an impressive $2,100.
Well, to really be a Macintosh, the Replicator 2 also needs a
user-friendly GUI. To that end, MakerBot is announcing MakerWare, which
will allow users to arrange shapes and resize them on the fly with a
simple program. If you don't need precise sizes, you can just wing it
and build a shape as large as you like in the Replicator 2's
410-cubic-inch build area. More advanced users can set out an array of
parts with the tool across the build space, and print multiple smaller
components at once:
Even with all that going for it, $2,100 isn't a very Macintosh price —
the original Macintosh was far cheaper than the Lisa before it.
MakerBot's 3D printers have gotten more expensive over the years: $750
Cupcake, $1,225 Thing-O-Matic, $1749 Replicator
(which the company still sells), and now a $2,100 Replicator 2. With
that in mind, maybe it's not price that will determine 3D printers
finding a spot in every home, but the layer resolution.
Printing with a 100-micron layer resolution, the amount of material
the Replicator 2 puts down to build an object is impressive. To
illustrate, each layer is 100 microns, or 0.1 millimeters, thick. A
six-inch-tall object, which the printer can manage, would be made of at
least 1,500 layers.
Most importantly, at 100 microns, the objects printed feel smooth,
where the previous generation of home printers created objects that had
rough wavy edges. The Replicator 2 uses a special-to-MakerBot bioplastic
that's made from corn (to quote Pettis: "It smells good, too"), and the
3D-printed sample MakerBot gave us definitely felt smooth with a barely
detectable grain.
The MakerBot Replicator 2 appears on the October (2012, if you're from the future) issue of Wired
magazine with the words, "This machine will change the world." Does
that mean 3D printing affordable, useable, accurate and space-efficient,
yet? If the answer is yes, you can get your own MakerBot Replicator 2 from MakerBot
(One last thing, Pettis urged us all to check out the the brochure
as the MakerBot team "worked really hard on it" to make it the "best
brochure in the universe." Straight from my notes to your screen.)
Even your most advanced toaster won't ask that much of you these
days. No matter what you're browning, it all boils down to lowering that
lever and knowing that something is about to get toasty.
So, how do you make a complex piece of technology such as a 3D
printer easy enough for everyone to use, like a toaster? Well, to start,
you focus around a one-button design. There are 3D printers on the way
that want you to be able to start fabricating cool stuff just like that — just with one button. For the most part, it really can be that easy.
Here we preview 3D System's forthcoming Cube 3D printer, which is
looking toward a nearer-than-you-think future where 3D fabrication is
commonplace and something anyone can do.
Photo Credit: Kevin Hall/DVICE
With One Press Of This Button
If there really is a 3D printing at home revolution waiting to
happen, then 3D printers need to sort out two big barriers to entry: 1)
the steep learning curve one must overcome to use the technology and 2)
the capability of easily providing people with useful stuff to print.
While there are a number of options available
and on the way, the trailblazer for 3D printing at home was Makerbot's
Thing-O-Matic, followed up by the group's more versatile Replicator.
The Thing-O-Matic epitomizes the 3D printer as geared toward hobbyists:
it's industrial looking, requires technical know-how to get started and
— though you could buy them fully assembled — the Thing-O-Matic was
designed to be put together by someone who can solder. With the
Replicator, Makerbot hasn't left its hobbyists behind, offering a bigger
build space and two-color printing, but the platform now comes fully
assembled and tested, and Makerbot's robust and growing Thingiverse makes finding designs to print easy and free.
That same thinking — making 3D printing easier out of the box — is
shared by 3D Systems but taken along a little farther with the Cube. The
Cube comes in a box like any old gadget on a shelf. It also doesn't
look industrial and tinkery like other 3D printers, appearing a lot more
like a desktop PC or a sewing machine. Where the Replicator would be at
home in your workshop or garage, the Cube can sit on a kitchen counter
next to your toaster. The Cube also connects to your home network via
Wi-Fi, meaning you can use your PC to push new designs over to it,
although you don't need a PC to get it to work.
The Cube has a build space that's 5.5-inches all around (length,
width and height), which makes it perfect for action figures, cups,
jewelry and anything small. Larger objects can also be made, you just
need to print them out in smaller pieces and put them together. The Cube
will come paired with different apps and software to help you design
specific objects. For instance, one app we saw was like Build-A-Bear, but you were putting together your own robot instead.
In our video below, 3D Systems Social Media Manager Adam Reichental
walks us through just how easy it is to fire the Cube up.
Screencap: Cubify.com
If Apple's App Store Sold 3D Objects
The real difference between the Cube and its hobbyist competitors is
how you discover objects to print. For 3D printing enthusiasts,
Thingiverse represents the easiest go-to. Outside of Thingiverse and
Google-fishing for objects, you're really only left with the option of
making your own designs.
3D System's solution? Cubify, a Thingiverse-like site with some crucial differences.
Whereas objects on Thingiverse are free, on Cubify they aren't. Think
of Cubify as the Apple App Store of the 3D printing world — it's
curated. Designs uploaded to the site are checked out individually
before they're approved, and any obscene or copyright infringing
templates won't get through. This also allows 3D Systems to test the
designs and make sure they're ready to print with the Cube, taking out
some of the guesswork on your end.
You buy the 3D models you want to print, which range from a few bucks to this $155 oil rig design,
which is the most expensive model we could find. Cubify also lets folks
who don't own 3D printers buy objects, and 3D Systems will print it out
for them and mail it over. That service also starts out cheap, and goes
all the way up to this $8,799 table,
which would take quite a while to print out in small chunks using the
Cube; 3D Systems also operates an industrial printing arm for heavier
duty print jobs. One upside to charging for 3D objects: you support the
designers. Like app makers, 3D modelers will get a cut of the cash for
objects sold.
Using the Cube doesn't mean you have to use Cubify, however. Any
printable 3D model that conforms to the Cube's build area should work.
That said, paired up with Cubify, the Cube promises an experience that
is as easy as browsing for a design on your computer, sending it to the
Cube via Wi-Fi and then printing that object out with the touch of a
button.
How To Get One
The 3D Systems Cube 3D printer is available for a $1,299 pre-order now and starts shipping this Friday, May 25.
Insect printable robot. Photo: Jason Dorfman, CSAIL/MIT
Printers can make mugs, chocolate and even blood vessels. Now, MIT scientists want to add robo-assistants to the list of printable goodies.
Today, MIT announced a new project, “An Expedition in Computing
Printable Programmable Machines,” that aims to give everyone a chance to
have his or her own robot.
Need help peering into that unreasonably hard-to-reach cabinet, or
wiping down your grimy 15th-story windows? Walk on over to robo-Kinko’s
to print, and within 24 hours you could have a fully programmed working origami bot doing your dirty work.
“No system exists today that will take, as specification, your
functional needs and will produce a machine capable of fulfilling that
need,” MIT robotics engineer and project manager Daniela Rus said.
Unfortunately, the very earliest you’d be able to get your hands on
an almost-instant robot might be 2017. The MIT scientists, along with
collaborators at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania,
received a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation for
the 5-year project. Right now, it’s at very early stages of development.
So far, the team has prototyped two mechanical helpers: an
insect-like robot and a gripper. The 6-legged tick-like printable robot
could be used to check your basement for gas leaks or to play with your
cat, Rus says. And the gripper claw, which picks up objects, might be
helpful in manufacturing, or for people with disabilities, she says.
Printable gripper. Photo: Jason Dorfman, CSAIL/MIT
The two prototypes cost about $100 and took about 70 minutes to
build. The real cost to customers will depend on the robot’s
specifications, its capabilities and the types of parts that are
required for it to work.
The researchers want to create a one-size-fits-most platform to
circumvent the high costs and special hardware and software often
associated with robots. If their project works out, you could go to a
local robo-printer, pick a design from a catalog and customize a robot
according to your needs. Perhaps down the line you could even order-in
your designer bot through an app.
Their approach to machine building could “democratize access to
robots,” Rus said. She envisions producing devices that could detect
toxic chemicals, aid science education in schools, and help around the
house.
Although bringing robots to the masses sounds like a great idea (a
sniffing bot to find lost socks would come in handy), there are still
several potential roadblocks to consider — for example, how users,
especially novice ones, will interact with the printable robots.
“Maybe this novice user will issue a command that will break the
device, and we would like to develop programming environments that have
the capability of catching these bad commands,” Rus said.
As it stands now, a robot would come pre-programmed to perform a set
of tasks, but if a user wanted more advanced actions, he or she could
build up those actions using the bot’s basic capabilities. That advanced
set of commands could be programmed in a computer and beamed wirelessly
to the robot. And as voice parsing systems get better, Rus thinks you
might be able to simply tell your robot to do your bidding.
Durability is another issue. Would these robots be single-use only?
If so, trekking to robo-Kinko’s every time you needed a bot to look
behind the fridge might get old. These are all considerations the
scientists will be grappling with in the lab. They’ll have at least five
years to tease out some solutions.
In the meantime, it’s worth noting that other other groups are also building robots using printers. German engineers printed a white robotic spider last year. The arachnoid carried a camera and equipment to assess chemical spills.
And at Drexel University, paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara and mechanical engineer James Tangorra are trying to create a robotic dinosaur from dino-bone replicas.
The 3-D-printed bones are scaled versions of laser-scanned fossils. By
the end of 2012, Lacovara and Tangorra hope to have a fully mobile
robotic dinosaur, which they want to use to study how dinosaurs, like
large sauropods, moved.
Lancovara thinks the MIT project is an exciting and promising one:
“If it’s a plug-and-play system, then it’s feasible,” he said. But
“obviously, it [also] depends on the complexity of the robot.” He’s seen
complex machines with working gears printed in one piece, he says.
Right now, the MIT researchers are developing an API that would
facilitate custom robot design and writing algorithms for the assembly
process and operations.
If their project works out, we could all have a bot to call our own in a few years. Who said print was dead?