3D printing at the Rio Olympics and in Russia

As the Olympics continue and teams are beginning the final stretch in Rio, athletes continue to look forward to competition and wins. In this day and age with all of our technological advances, 3D printing has been run to the forefront. And quite literally, so it seems.

For this year’s Olympics, Nike invested time and money into the 3D printing process to give athletes a new set of shoes to run in. They worked with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, an Olympic sprinter, and a 3D printing company to design a set of spike shoes for the Olympic runner that would aid in getting her to the finish line even faster. A silly thing, you might think, since she has won gold in the past two summer Olympics. However, when the race comes down to mere tenths of a second, every advantage increases the opportunity to keep winning.

The Nike company utilized the 3D printer to make spike plates, and not just one, but several of varying stiffness to work best with the actual shoes the Fraser-Pryce would be practicing in and later using for the actual race. Fraser-Pryce is not the only athlete to be able to take advantage of these new 3D printing practices, so would over 100 other Nike sponsored athletes at this year’s summer Olympics.
Now, while these athletes will not actually be running in shoes with 3D printer spike plates, the 3D printing process was monumental in creating a design that could later be molded in plastic and give these runners an advantage over their competitors.

In other news, we will leave earth and hurl ourselves to outer space, specifically over Russia, where we find Russian scientists working to create a bio-printer to be used in space. These scientists are working with the country’s national space agency to create this bio-printer that will print actual tissue at the International Space Station. The bio-printer will have to work with magnets because there is no gravity in space. The scientists are hoping that zero gravity will actually provide new answers that can help speed up the process of 3D printing and bio-printing process.

They hope to have this Bio 3D printer up and running in 2018. The study they will be conducting once the printer is operational, is to see what affects long term space travel and zero gravity has on the human body with particular interest in tissue.

With the interest of getting life created and living on Mars, the scientists feel that studying these effects now and have the bio-printing in place, will reduce the length of time to heal certain ailments. Not only on Mars or pre-existing, but also back on earth and with new ailments that crop up. This study will prove to be quite invaluable, as it will catapult space exploration a great distance. Not only will this procedure help our astronauts in space but also civilians on the ground, by providing a quicker way to create and print this tissue.

For more on what Nike is doing with 3D printing, take a look here: http://news.nike.com/news/allyson-felix-track-spike