The latest on 3D printing

What’s the latest on 3D printing? Well, for one, science is amazing! From back in the beginning where people usually didn’t even smile in photos and had to stand absolutely perfectly still to being able to make prosthetic arms, legs, and other body parts. 3D printing is the popular term for additive manufacturing that refers to the process of creating a 3D object from plastic.

So in the news now is how a computer science professor at Michigan State University was approached by local P.D. to create a 3D rendering of a dead man’s fingers so that they could gain access to his phone. The police were hoping to find clues to the man’s death by accessing his phone. By using a 3D printer, the professor was able to duplicate the man’s fingers from photos and fingerprints obtained from the crime scene. As the professor worked, knowing that our skin conducts small electrical currents he had to rely on metallic particles because the plastic renderings would not work as living human fingers do. It’s not an exact science yet, but there are large leaps and bounds being accomplished.
Students enrolled at Siena College in New York, made a prosthetic arm for a young girl. The girl, who was born without her right hand, loved the movie “Frozen”. The students formed their own chapter of e-Nable Siena at the college. This chapter of e-Nable works to provide free prosthetics to people in need around the world. The prosthetic hand and arm, which features characters from the movie, took 30 hours of printing to make it real. While this is just one piece of many that e-Nable has created, it is no less of a piece of art for this little girl.

3D printing may one day be used to make buildings in the future. By demonstration, a company in China has already printed a number of 3D houses. One is an 1,100 square meter mansion and the other, a 5 story apartment building. These were created using a vast material extrusion 3D printer. To accomplish this, their printer had to be huge. The printer at 20 feet tall, 33 feet wide and 132 feet long, printed the house out in 24 hours. The parts of the house were all printed out separately. Materials used were recycled construction waste, industrial waste and tailings. It was produced using a mixture of cement and construction waste to build the walls one layer at a time. A CAD design was used as the template and a computer controlled the mechanical arm. The mechanical arm layed down each layer of concrete that was treated with special hardeners. These hardeners created a solid structural base to build the next layer on top of.

A benefit of this type of house building is that the structure is more reliable. The walls won’t crack, heating and cooling is more efficient, they are waterproof and have low carbon pollution. Is this the answer to all of our housing needs? Certainly not, but it’s a fantastic idea.