Build your own stuff with a 3D printer
Posted: 16th Jan 2012
Forget Smart TVs and tablets. The next big thing in technology, so big that it could literally revolutionise the world, is something a lot more practical and radical than a new way to browse the news headlines.
Because while interesting new media devices change the way we interact with the world, 3D printing has the ability to change the way we live in it.
3D printing is a catch-all term used to describe any one of a variety of processes which enable a machine to turn a raw plastic (or material) into a 3D object which has been designed on a computer screen.
Technically, this description could refer to traditional manufacturing techniques like lathes, but the key difference is that a 3D printer builds the object up from raw matter, rather than whittling it down from a raw material like wood or metal.
The result is less wasteful and means that complex details can be created that are more akin to using die cast or injection moulds. What makes 3D printing appealing is that one machine can be used to make virtually any 3D object, without having to be retooled and refitted for different designs.
There are several different techniques for 3D printing, though. Large companies have long had access to machines in which a large box is filled with a fine plastic or resin powder. This ‘goop’ is then hardened by firing precisely calibrated lasers into the chamber, which can create an exact shape in the middle of the powder. Using this technique, parts can be quickly prototyped ready for mass production, but the machines and materials cost much more than traditional manufacturing techniques to make lots of similar parts for sale.
The real explosion in 3D printing over the next few years, however, will be from smaller, much cheaper printers for small businesses and homes. Devices like the Makerbot are making headlines around the world for bringing the cost of 3D printing down to less than a thousand dollars.
Makerbot, and others like it, work by heating up a thin plastic filament and then squirting it through a narrow ‘extruder’. They operate like an inkjet printer, creating a pattern on the top of a model and building up in layers. They can be controlled using a desktop printer, and while the results aren’t as precise or smooth as industrial 3D printers, they can be smoothed down and finished to create functioning spare parts – a bush or washer for an old washing machine, say – or even home decorations.
In the future, the pieces made by machines like Makerbot should also be recyclable. With the right plastics, when something wears out you’ll be able to shred it and put it back through the machine.
Most of these desktop printers use technology and techniques developed by a team at the University of Bath, led by Professor Adrian Bowyer, working on a device called RepRap (short for ‘rapid replicator’). The goal of RepRap is to produce a 3D printer that can make all of the parts required to make an identical device. Right now, you’ll need to spend about £300 to buy the electronics and bolts that hold it together, but in the future machines like RepRap could make many things virtually free.
Now that’s something to look forward to.
