• Question: @ Ciaran what can a 3D printer do?

    Asked by 439brna35 to Ciarán on 18 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Ciarán O'Brien

      Ciarán O'Brien answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      A regular printer works by putting ink on paper in a pattern that you can change to look like a picture, or writing, right? Now, imagine that instead of ink, it’s putting a thin layer of molten plastic on the paper, which quickly hardens up as it cools. And then imagine that it can put another layer of molten plastic on top of that plastic, and another, and another, and so on. If you keep doing that, the plastic builds up and you can make shapes. It’s exactly the same concept as a 2D printer, only it builds up layers instead of just printing the one. It can print anything we can make a 3d model of. And a lot of 3d printers can scan objects to generate those models. Here’s a video of a 3D printer making a stature of Yoda from Star Wars:
      https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=3d+printer

      It prints out layers of plastic 0.1mm thick on top of each other. You can control the colour of the plastic, the thickness of the layers, and all sorts of other settings to make the exact shape you want.

      They’re not good at making moving parts though, unless you get it to print out the pieces separately and then put them together yourself. Some people are working on making guns through 3d printers, although the plastic isn’t much good at holding up to the force of firing a bullet, they break pretty quickly.

      Still, there’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with a 3d printer that doesn’t involve hurting people. Instead of selling sculptures, an artist could make one sculpture, scan it with a 3d printer, and then sell the blueprint instead. He gets to keep the original and doesn’t have to spend time sculpting copies for other people. Anyone with a talent for 3d modelling could create a sculpture now without even knowing one end of a chisel from the other. Anything that’s already been designed in 3d could be 3d printed. Video game characters, the giant robots from the movie Pacific Rim, the only thing stopping them is copyright.

      Doctors are looking into using 3d printers for more interesting uses, too. If you scan someone’s skeleton into a 3d printer, you could print out a hip replacement for them that’s exactly the right shape for them. If a surgeon is going to be working on something very tricky like the heart of a newborn baby (really tiny), then they could scan the heart and print out a bigger model of it before they start surgery, to help the surgeons work.

      There’s also the possibility for printing out human organs, or bioprinting. You could make a plastic version of the thousands of tiny blood vessels that carry blood through an organ, and use that to grow, say, human liver cells around it. Then you can dissolve the plastic and you have a complex maze of blood vessels in your new organ, ready to transplant into a patient!

    • Photo: Ciarán O'Brien

      Ciarán O'Brien answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      A regular printer works by putting ink on paper in a pattern that you can change to look like a picture, or writing, right? Now, imagine that instead of ink, it’s putting a thin layer of molten plastic on the paper, which quickly hardens up as it cools. And then imagine that it can put another layer of molten plastic on top of that plastic, and another, and another, and so on. If you keep doing that, the plastic builds up and you can make shapes. It’s exactly the same concept as a 2D printer, only it builds up layers instead of just printing the one. It can print anything we can make a 3d model of. And a lot of 3d printers can scan objects to generate those models. Here’s a video of a 3D printer making a statue of Yoda from Star Wars:
      https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=3d+printer

      It prints out layers of plastic 0.1mm thick on top of each other. You can control the colour of the plastic, the thickness of the layers, and all sorts of other settings to make the exact shape you want.

      They’re not good at making moving parts though, unless you get it to print out the pieces separately and then put them together yourself. Some people are working on making guns through 3d printers, although the plastic isn’t much good at holding up to the force of firing a bullet, they break pretty quickly.

      Still, there’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with a 3d printer that doesn’t involve hurting people. Instead of selling sculptures, an artist could make one sculpture, scan it with a 3d printer, and then sell the blueprint instead. He gets to keep the original and doesn’t have to spend time sculpting copies for other people. Anyone with a talent for 3d modelling could create a sculpture now without even knowing one end of a chisel from the other. Anything that’s already been designed in 3d could be 3d printed. Video game characters, the giant robots from the movie Pacific Rim, the only thing stopping them is copyright.

      Doctors are looking into using 3d printers for more interesting uses, too. If you scan someone’s skeleton into a 3d printer, you could print out a hip replacement for them that’s exactly the right shape for them. If a surgeon is going to be working on something very tricky like the heart of a newborn baby (really tiny), then they could scan the heart and print out a bigger model of it before they start surgery, to help the surgeons work.

      There’s also the possibility for printing out human organs, or bioprinting. You could make a plastic version of the thousands of tiny blood vessels that carry blood through an organ, and use that to grow, say, human liver cells around it. Then you can dissolve the plastic and you have a complex maze of blood vessels in your new organ, ready to transplant into a patient!

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