3D Printing Our World
WestWorld and the Real World: From Science Fiction to Science Fact
In the previous edition of Eysight, “The End of the Assembly Line” discussed 3D printing through the lens of manufacturing, while this piece is a stand-alone, “3D Printing Our World” will build upon definitions and meanings discussed in part one.
You breathlessly hobble into the habitat after suffering the recoil of a fuel tank explosion. Thankfully you were able to repair your suit before too much oxygen escaped but you look down to realize that you did lose two fingers from the accident. Your captain messages Earth with the parts needed—and files containing your new fingers and the optimal method of reattachment, as decided by artificial intelligence, is sent back to the hub at the speed of light. Within minutes, your fingers appear, layer by layer, before your very eyes. Blood vessels and nerves are reattached and apart from some scarring, it’s like they were never gone.
While this is currently science fiction, Dr. Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest School of Medicine said it best: “3D printing is turning science fiction into science fact.” In a process that would have normally taken weeks to fabricate and months to arrive on Mars, 3D printing has turned into a nearly instantaneous affair by allowing for “virtual shipping” and the rapid creation of human tissue through additive manufacturing.
While this technology may seem not only far away, but also narrow in its application, 3D printing is already allowing the transplant of manufactured skin cells on burn victims, the construction of houses at a fraction of the cost and time, and the shipping of prototypes and parts around the world as a printable file.
Source: AI SpaceFactory
Printing with Fire...
3D Printing, or additive manufacturing, is the process of making three dimensional objects by adjoining successive two-dimensional layers. While a far more technical explanation was described in “The End of the Assembly Line,” the basic and likely familiar description of this technology is all that is necessary to understand the profound capabilities derived from this one process.
Since inception, additive manufacturing has been confined to the realm of resin and basic plastics, limiting its function to prototyping and the creation of niche parts that could not be made from injection molds. When the first 3D printing patents expired in 2013, companies and labs around the world picked up the technology and experimented with its uses in a creative manner not yet explored. The first of these alternative uses was additive manufacturing with metal.
While the idea of 3D printing molten metal was first seen as absurd and impractical, laughing soon turned to fear from the traditional manufacturing industry. The process of melting steel and carbon fiber into long filaments and layering a part together, effectively printing with fire, quickly became an effective means of creating specialty or complex components.
Source: SAI International
At first, these labs could produce gears and low volume car parts that were useful in the pre-production stage. Rather than spend weeks creating and refining a dozen gear sticks, a company like Lamborghini can drastically speed up production time by outsourcing specialty parts to 3D printing firms. Whereas before 3D printing, the company would have to laboriously carve away at a solid block until a final product was produced—and discard the entire model if it was millimeters off-kilter—they could now order several different sizes at once and be assured that one model would fit.
Some 3D printing-as-a-service firms, like Desktop Metal and Markforged, have established a worldwide network of printing warehouses that has allowed for additive manufacturing to become cost competitive in the series production market. As the technology progressed to better incorporate metal printing, the introduction of materials like Kevlar, nylon, stainless steel, and fiberglass allowed the versatile industry to innovate faster than classical manufacturing.
Parts that were once mass produced on the assembly line are now being replaced by additive manufacturing. Everything from Ford’s parking brackets to Callaway’s putter heads to Gillette’s custom razors can now be mass manufactured with 3D printing cheaper than any other method.
This is in large part due to a drastic reduction in waste. The buy-to-fly ratio, which refers to the weight of raw material purchased compared to the weight of the final product, often exceeds 10:1 in the fabrication of certain aviation parts. This means that for every kilo of material purchased, 90% is thrown away as scrap. Rather than mill away from a block, additive manufacturing solves this problem by building from the ground upwards. This feature is especially important with metal fabrication as material costs can trend upwards of $30 per kilogram in some titanium alloys. With $27 of this thrown away after every large part, it is easy to imagine how additive fabrication could be cost effective when volume scales.
3D printing with metal is also superior in terms of its design versatility and prototyping speed, but it has a more surprising advantage too: size. Relativity Space, an orbital rocket startup, is designing fuel tanks for NASA using 3D printing. The company turned the creation of aerospace-grade, 11-foot-tall aluminum fuel tanks from a 12 month engineering feat to a seven day printing chore. Because it is not feasible for the classical manufacturing industry to create molds or assembly lines for gigantic parts, every product used to have to be made and formed by hand by a team of engineers. Now, only one developer must oversee the free-ranging printing arms as it calmly welds the rocket part together.
Source: Shutterstock
This concept is even being tested with cars: auto startup Local Motors successfully printed an entire car body in one go and drove it off the floor. After adding headlights and wheels, Local Motors’ all electric Strati is able to top out at 30 MPH after a nine hour printing time. Kyle Rowe, an advanced material engineer for the company, believes that the next generation of 3D printed cars will be highway ready, with a top speed and acceleration rivaling current consumer models.
Local Motors even demonstrates the power trio of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and additive manufacturing through the Olli, a self-driving, 3D printed, taxi bus. A few Ollis have already made it out into the world where they run autonomously on a fixed route, delivering people across a campus or mall. Autos of this type are ideal for additive manufacturing as the dynamic nature of EVs and AI require that the design be constantly evolving and in need of updates. Whereas the traditional manufacturing industry takes between five and seven years from pitching a product to releasing it on the market, 3D printing can lower this timeframe to under 12 months. With additive manufacturing, assembly lines are not constantly becoming out of date and design improvements do not have to be postponed until the next model release. Rather, new changes and tweaks can be rolled out the next day with each successive print. Local Motors and other innovators in the field have gone through many iterations of their product, with each design slightly updated. They plan to keep the industry titans on their toes with new products to challenge the status quo.
“Now the buses are in a geofence fixed-route environment. In the future we plan to do dynamic routing where people could actually call the Olli similar to an Uber or Lyft.”
- David Woessner, Chief Development Officer of Local Motors
...And Blood
Perhaps the most fantastical form of 3D printing is additively creating human beings, or at least part of them. Science has already progressed to the level of printing with fire and blood as bioprinting begins to realize its full potential. As if out of WestWorld, doctors and labs are now experimenting with the very creation of human organs and invention of enhanced people, or cyborgs. In a topic perhaps deserving of its own full collaboration with genomics, here is a glimpse at the “dizzying array of possibilities opened up by the integration of biology and technology” as described by Taneka Jones, a bioengineer at the University of Illinois.
Source: HBO
It should not be confused that the most sensational of these developments are over 15 years away. However, the mere prospect of being able to watch a human being or android created from a pool of resin and cells is tantalizing to the imagination. In fact, most of the machinery needed to bring WestWorld into the real world is here, it just has not been synthesized with biology yet.
One field that already has real world application is that of bioabsorbable materials. While not necessarily bioprinting, strides in the implementation of this focus by firms of today represent small steps toward a future of fabricated organs tomorrow. Joseph DeSimone, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Carbon excitedly described their synthetic xenografts as “a digitally printable material that serves a mechanical function in the body, but after a few months is fully bio absorbed and transitions to your own tissue.” What is especially revolutionary is that these complex geometric structures simply cannot be produced by any other means—fabrication with such versatility is unique to additive manufacturing. DeSimone went on to predict that while these supports are primarily used in post surgery applications to maintain structure, the technology also has applications in relinking nerves back together and in shoulder repair meshes.
Synthetic bioabsorbable materials have the benefit of significantly lower rejection rates as they do not contain foreign cells. This is also true with tissue transplants. Because large organs must contain built-in blood vessels, most of today’s success with bioprinting has come in the form of flat body parts like skin and the meniscus (cartilage to prevent bone sliding in the knee). In the case of a meniscus or similar part, a lab will begin with taking a postage stamp sized sample of cells from the skin or inside the cheek and encouraging them to replicate. Incredibly, Wake Forest and other labs have been able to replicate the function of stem cells in some cases allowing them to move away from the controversial practice. The cells are then integrated with bioinks, the filament that will be pushed through a 400 micron nozzle to print, layer by layer, the desired part or organ. Once complete, surgeons introduce the new pieces to the host where they are overwhelmingly, permanently accepted, as the body recognizes the identical DNA.
In the case of skin cells, bioink has been used to cover burn scars, dramatically accelerating the recovery process. It has even challenged skin grafts, the removal of unaffected skin from one part of the body to the damaged area, as the superior method for permanently replacing skin. Researchers at Rensselaer Institute of Technology have developed a method of 3D printing skin, complete with blood vessels directly onto the host’s body. Although only experimental, regenerative medicine labs across the world are excited about the idea of integrating bioprinting with CRISPR-CAS 9, a gene editing technology, to ensure that the resulting skin is accepted by the body and is cosmetically appeasing.
Source: CraftCloud
As larger organs also benefit from lower rejection rates, labs have worked to make strides in advancing additive organ manufacturing. With over 114,000 Americans on the waiting list for donors, Dr. Anthony Atala, Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, believes that the shortage represents the next opportunity for bioprinting to make an impact. A majority of the organs needed for transplant are kidneys, one of the “simpler” internal organs. Dr. Atala himself once performed a surgery on a 10-year-old when his lab printed a bladder and kidney first modeled in an inkjet printer where “the living cells were placed in the wells of the ink cartridge and the printer was programmed to print them in a certain order,” according to him. The most shocking aspect of this story is not that it was successful and the patient now lives a healthy life with organs printed with his own cells, but that the transplant happened almost 20 years ago. Although the first few organs were essentially hand designed with some help from automation, Dr. Atala maintains that 3D printed organs will make headway into the U.S. transplant list by the end of the decade and eventually eliminate the waiting list entirely.
But that is not all these labs have in store—beyond procedures that have actually been performed, there are numerous interesting and experimental uses of bioprinting that are waiting to be further explored. First, a team led by David McCoul and Matthew Varkey of the Wake Forest Institute printed a functioning outer ear and artificial heart valve that they believe have the ability to go into clinical trials. Next, the National Institutes of Health recently reported that bioprinted tissue has promoted facial nerve regeneration in rats. Even more, Dr. Jordan Miller’s team at Rice University printed the first functional, albeit small-scale, lung capable of independently pumping air and mimicking bloodflows. As a final example, researchers at Carnegie Mellon produced the first 3D printed, full-sized heart by inventing a new method of additive manufacturing called FRESH that suspends biological prints in hydrogels, preventing them from collapsing mid-print. If operations like these become approved by regulatory agencies and reach mainstream audiences, the investment opportunity and benefit to humanity will be incalculable.
Disruptive innovation is not without its unfounded hype—that is, until it becomes reality. Regardless, it is fun to engage in speculation of the fantastical, of what could be the future of the next generation. After a burn victim receives new skin, why not utilize CRISPR to fireproof it so no burns can happen again? Either through the application of a thin layer of Aerogel, a fire retardant material that is 99% air, or by integrating human genes with those of the Pompeii Worm, an animal that can withstand living in boiling water, no one can say what scientists will be able to achieve in the years to come. Instead of replacing a failed liver with a purely biological organ, why not embed it with electronic circuitry and become a cyborg? With a cell phone at the hip of nearly every human on earth, some would argue that mankind should make the leap and have chips installed in our brains. Why not scan the entire body of every human at maturity so that their entire being can be reprinted and reborn if they die? How long can the human life be extended? How many lives can be saved?
Regardless of what the future holds, it is easy to forget it is already here. Every single machine depicted in WestWorld, from printing arms that can design by themselves to extruders that can switch between materials mid-stroke, already exists in the real world today, they just have not been integrated with each other or biology yet. It is important to remember that space travel and artificial intelligence were sensational stories until humanity achieved them. Innovation is already here and it cannot be stopped. Conor McGlade of Thomas Insights said it best with “for 3D printing’s future, tomorrow doesn’t have a page count.”
Source: BioSpace
Printing the World Around Us
Another material that has been experimented with as 3D printing filament is concrete. In fact, no idea better embodies how 3D printing is building this world than the use of additive manufacturing to print homes and infrastructure.
In the modern world, many luxury goods, like airplane tickets, cameras, and car rentals have become significantly cheaper for the average American. Meanwhile, the price of consumer staples has been rather stagnant with water, housing, and energy prices remaining relatively fixed, or at least not strictly declining, over the past few decades. This is about to change with the advent of 3D printed homes.
Like most innovations, the idea of 3D printed homes will be mocked and deemed dangerous because it is a contradiction to the normal order. However, specifically in the developing world, additive manufacturing represents an incredible opportunity to end homelessness by providing strong houses that cost under half of the traditionally constructed equivalent.
While any design can be uploaded to the printer, a typical structure involves laying two lines of concrete, that will eventually become the inside and outside walls, with a corrugated center line to add strength and insulation.
Source: Sculpteo
Like with other 3D printing applications, additively constructing homes is the utilization of a simple technology in a creative way. A cement storage tank is attached to the printer which begins layering thin lines of concrete and rises to the final height of the house. The extruder then leaves space for windows, doors, and pipes to be installed. From start to finish, one bedroom house can be constructed in under 24 hours, and soon in just 12.
New Story, a housing charity organizer, and ICON, a construction technology company, have partnered together to bring safe and stable housing arrangements to low income communities where favela-type houses are often cobbled together with sticks, rocks, and scrap metal. With the eventual goal of ending global homelessness, they are printing solid structured homes in the hardest hit areas of El Salvador and Mexico. In fact, the partnership already plans to move past its 50 home project in Tabasco and envisions the creation of 3D printed communities all over the world. ICON believes that innovation rarely reaches those who need it most first, and plans to change this through the creation of these inexpensive, printed villages in Latin America before the Western world.
It is because of 3D printing that the reason that the dream of constructing cheap houses and ending homeless is now being realized. Especially in remote regions, it would be extremely time consuming and costly to create a line of houses using human labor and traditional methods. Even with lower wages in these countries, the cost of transporting these materials and setting up a base before expelling countless weeks of human labor monotonously building the same structure over and over again would be insurmountable for most nonprofits.
Source: Spring Wise
3D printing removes these obstacles. First, the only materials that must be transported to the site is the concrete and the machine itself, barring doors and windows. This drastically simplifies the moving process allowing for a quicker setup time and cheaper logistics. Second, 3D printing is inherently less wasteful. There is no need for scaffolding or complicated bins of screws and boards and the leftover material is significantly minimized. While a classical construction site may have tons of half-cut beams and extraneous shingles, that are too small or few in number to be useful, an entire house that is 3D printed may have less than a molehill of wasted material. This is not only beneficial as less materials must be transported to the site and away as waste, but the construction of houses through additive manufacturing is also better for the environment as less raw materials must be consumed for the same final product. Finally, 3D printing reduces the need to bring in several unskilled workers in regions with labor shortages. In countries like El Salvador, where the unemployment hovers around 4%, more opportunity can be offered to locals through high paying trade jobs as opposed to low paying construction jobs. While classically constructing a house may open up 15 minimum wage jobs, additively creating a home will open up 5 high paying managerial and electrical jobs. This benefits the regional economy and lowers costs for nonprofits, so more houses can be built for those who need them.
But the construction of 3D printed homes has applications in the developed world as well. Homes in Austin, TX and Germany have become the first of their kind to receive certification by their respective housing boards. These prototypes are strong enough to withstand an F5 tornado, cheaper than equivalents on the market, and visually indistinguishable than any other home. And this is in large part due to the persistent and perfectionist mindset of the CEO of ICON, a firm at the forefront of construction innovation.
Source: American Society of Mechanical Engineers
“One of my favorite role models in this regard is Elon Musk and Tesla. For a long time the pitch with electric cars was that they kind of look like clown cars and let's be honest they go 85 miles they might blow up and kill everyone if you get in a wreck, but hey, save the whales and drive an electric car. Elon Musk comes along and goes “baloney.” If we want electric cars to be normal they have to be fast and sexy and safe—they have to be great cars. So we've taken the same approach with regard to housing which is to make efficient sustainable healthy housing normal. They have to be more comfortable, more safe, more beautiful and, very importantly for us, because housing is a basic need unlike a car, they have to be more affordable… we need a disruptive improvement in the way that construction happens.”
- Jason Ballard, CEO of ICON
There are many other unique benefits to 3D printing homes. For example, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence have been used with certain models to strengthen structural integrity and eliminate weak points. This, combined with the fact that round shapes have a more efficient surface to volume ratio (and can be easily printed this way), means that additively constructed homes can be made stronger and with less material than their traditional counterparts. The Head of Construction Printing at PERI, Dr. Meyer-Brötz, cannot wait for architects and tradesmen to “make the best of [3D printing] - not be threatened by it but to see the potential it can have for these individual trades in making their lives easier and making construction more safe and efficient.” He believes that even more opportunities will open up once additively constructed houses become accepted. When the technology is picked up by architects and engineers, they will envision designs and concepts that will innovate the platform to an even higher level.
Additive manufacturing naturally comes with a high degree of autonomy, as opposed to classical construction with predefined board lengths and beam shapes, that will allow more complex and interesting creations. This level of autonomy also spills into portability as the concept of 3D printing guest houses in large backyards for extra rent money transitions from a dream to a reality. While many homeowners would not care to have their lives interrupted by noisy construction in their lawns, relatively soundless extruders could be uploaded with the landlord’s blueprints and be able to finish building within a few days. And while regulations are certainly a speedbump, cities are incentivized to sign off on these additions for higher property tax rates. In fact, the city of Dubai recognizes the innovation, claiming that one quarter of all newly constructed buildings will be 3D printed by 2030. Even more, in an ongoing attempt to solve housing problems, a city in eastern China experimented with creating nine bedroom, 12,000 sq. ft mini-mansions that could be completed in under a week and at a similar cost to smaller houses through the use of 3D printing.
Shipping at the Speed of Light
With the rise of rapid consumer shipping, revolutionized by Amazon, it has never been cheaper and easier to order and attain goods within 48 hours. Just a decade ago, most would have thought this a fantasy, so is it possible for this number to fall even lower for some products in the next 10 years? As logistical networks grow increasingly large and complex, additive manufacturing has a role to play in completely upending the very nature of international shipping and last mile delivery routes.
While traditional transportation networks have whittled down free shipping times from weeks to merely days, the current system nears the end of its innovative capacity. The present logistical model is simply incapable of delivering goods to customers in all areas within a matter of hours. Even if a package was loaded onto Lockheed’s SR-71 Blackbird, the world’s fastest plane, it would still take over four hours, plus docking and last mile delivery times, to reach New York from Hong Kong. Plainly, real-world transportation methods will always be sluggish compared to the speed of light. With 3D printing, the file for a product can be uploaded to the internet and shipped by email as data through satellites. Then, depending on the size and complexity of the good, it will then appear, layer by layer, in the house of the consumer within minutes.
Source: Star Trek
To some, this may be reminiscent of Star Trek’s transporter, a teleportation machine that scans every atom in a human and sends the information to a different machine where the body and person are reconstructed. In fact, the underlying concepts are very similar and just another way that “3D printing is turning science fiction into science fact,” as Dr. Anthony Atala said. As Star Trek demonstrated, an unimaginable amount of time and money can be saved by transporting the data of an object as opposed to the physical object itself.
Although the teleportation of complete human consciousness in this manner is likely impossible, the application of transporting inanimate objects across the world, and between worlds, could be disruptive to the entire logistics industry. This is especially true as there are a plethora of benefits from implementing additive manufacturing into the shipping industry.
As the consumer preferences increasingly favor customization while expecting quicker deliveries, suppliers are met with the choice of holding the inventory on hand or creating the variants as they are ordered. While the former can be expensive and require larger warehouses, the latter sacrifices delivery time. 3D printing, either directly to a home in the future, or to nearby printers today, achieves the best of both worlds as suppliers need not worry about creating goods that may never get used or unsatisfied customers from long delays.
Most significantly, shipping by printing is faster and cheaper. The fact that utilizing additive manufacturing in logistics would eliminate the need for batch manufacturing, reduce inventory costs, and allow designs to be more flexible underscores how convoluted and rigid the current system is. If only half of the infrastructure put in place for the traditional model in the form of warehouses, distribution centers, and fleets of planes, semis, and vans, was established for a new logistical order, it would nearly evaporate shipping costs and decimate delivery times.
In the classical logistical model, a consumer outside of New York City, who wanted to purchase a custom water bottle, would have to wait days to receive their order. First, the base product would be flown from a Mexican warehouse to a distribution center in New Jersey. It would then receive its custom decal before being loaded onto a semi-truck bound for New York. A van would complete the last few miles of the journey where a driver would drop the package off at the consumer’s doorstep. Not even taking into consideration wasted packaging material, emissions from the extensive travel, or risks from porch pirates, this system is highly inefficient.
When shipping at the speed of light, however, a consumer would order a product and the file would be uploaded and sent immediately from anywhere across the globe. If the consumer had their own desktop printer, it would magically begin extruding the product, and if current printing speed trends hold, the bottle would be usable in minutes. Alternatively, printing centers could be placed similarly to present day Amazon Lockers for consumers without printers. Even more, costs associated with truck cost and maintenance, warehouse rent, and inventory storage would vanish, saving billions for logistical companies that could be invested into further increasing printing speeds and quality. Shipping by printing allows for the light speed transportation of goods across nations and makes all other transport nodes besides the cloud storage facility and consumer’s home completely irrelevant.
The shortening of supply chains by way of virtual warehouses and in-home printing threatens the way logistics companies do business. This is why UPS has partnered with 3D printing company, Fast Radius, to move the production of goods closer to the point of consumption while producing smaller quantities in a decentralized fashion. As the technology only becomes more advanced in the realm of logistics, it is proactive to invest in the future by becoming it.
“Additive manufacturing will have a profound impact on how global supply chains work: we call it the fourth modality of logistics. In fact, what we mean is that through human history we have moved parts in three ways: by ground, by air, and by sea. And now we have a fourth mode of transportation and that is moving parts by the Internet at the speed of light.”
— Lou Rossi, Co-founder and CEO of Fast Radius
While it is undeniable that a logistical network created using 3D printing would improve shipping times and reduce costs in some instances, because the traditional system is so well established, it is unlikely that international shipping will be the next area conquered by additive manufacturing. However, shipping between worlds, where transportation costs are astronomically higher, is a space that will be defined and dominated by 3D printing.
3D Printing the Next World
3D printing will have profound and lasting impacts on Earth as it prepares to challenge the traditional systems of fabrication, pharmaceutics, construction and logistics. In the next frontier, there are no established systems and the gruesome conditions require perfect optimization. Humanity will soon oversee 3D printers build society on Mars, the next world.
A self-sustaining civilization on Mars will rely on additive manufacturing in all of these industries—in a very real way, the world of humans on the red planet will be 3D printed from the ground up. With this said, the technology will be much more relevant to interplanetary shipping and hub building in the immediate future.
While the crew of Apollo 11 was able to travel to the moon in a module smaller than a cell on Alcatraz, this is not habitable for the seven months it would take for a manned mission to reach Mars. A journey of this magnitude would require cabin spaces comparable to the International Space Station and would need to be equipped with metric tons of tools and equipment. Alternatively, the two-in-one 3D printer and refabricator aboard the ISS demonstrates that rockets need not carry dozens of spare parts and instead utilize recyclable filament and CAD files.
Source: NASA
“The AMF [Additive Manufacturing Facility] has printed several functional items, including an antenna part, an adaptor to hold a probe in an air outlet on the station’s oxygen generation system, and a part to connect two SPHERES, free-flying robots used for research on the space station...demonstrat[ing] it was possible to remotely send a design from the ground to a manufacturing system more than 200 miles above…
Using recycled material for printer feedstock could save future long-duration exploration missions from having to carry a large supply of material for 3D printing. Recycling also could make use of material that otherwise would represent a nuisance or a trash disposal issue…[transforming] waste plastic materials, including previously printed items, into high quality 3D-printer filament.”
— National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
With a 3D printer and recycler, a manned mission to Mars could pack the bare minimum of necessary equipment and store filament to create any other parts or tools needed. At current prices of over $45,000 to ship one pound to Mars, every ounce counts and these all-encompassing printers are a step towards making interplanetary travel economical. While the two-in-one machine is not lightweight itself, the flexibility provided to astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts would greatly offset the weight of the printer. These printers will then land on the red planet where they will continue to print new designs uploaded from Earth.
Additive manufacturing will certainly play a key role in the transportation of crews to Mars—but for the planet to be habitable, structures must already be in place. Hubs for living quarters and greenhouses for food production will be established on the base before settlers arrive so that the colony can be self-sustaining. Because the spaceship will be cramped, it is crucial that travelers have a permanent residence and food source without having to spend their first months building the hubs whilst living in their cabin. Because of this, either entire buildings must be loaded onto a rocket and blasted off into space, or a single 3D printer can be shipped to build full cities before humans arrive.
As NASA’s deadline of sending humans to Mars by 2033 draws near, the government organization has enlisted the tech of private companies to accelerate development in some areas. To brainstorm housing design choices, NASA hosted the Centennial 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, a competition where organizations would autonomously build a hub, capable of withstanding the Martian atmosphere, in just 30 hours. While Pennsylvania State submitted a strong, modular design made of concrete, it was AI SpaceFactory’s egg-shaped thermoplastic build that took home the gold (and the $500,000 prize).
The versatile machine, traditionally used to build cars, has been equipped with an extruder for the shell and arm for the windows.
Source: AI SpaceFactory
Both finalists were tasked with designing and autonomously printing a one-third scale model that will eventually be built on the surface of the red planet. Even ignoring the harsh time constraint, the teams had to balance a model that incorporated natural light, harvested native materials, and could withstand sandstorms, radiation, and extreme temperature fluctuations. AI SpaceFactory opted for a vertical design that was able to better anchor to the soil and eliminate wasted peripheral space, as compared to the traditional dome structure. This, combined with their use of a resin as their building material, is what deemed SpaceFactory’s MARSHA (MARS HAbitat) as NASA’s favorite structure to thrive in the red planet’s unforgiving environment.
After a suitable terrain is chosen for the first settlement, rockets containing the printer-rover will launch for Mars when it is closest to Earth. The payload will then touch down after several months and the rover will deliver the printing machine to the construction site. While the speed of light is often associated with instantaneous communication, the large distance between the two planets means it would actually take between 5 and 20 minutes for a signal to reach Mars. On the interplanetary scale, light speed is actually sluggish. Because it would be infeasible to expect a human to control a precise machine with a 10 to 40 minute delay, the shelters must be built completely autonomously.
In preparation for human arrival, the rovers would scavenge local deposits in search of basalt fiber to blend with polylactic acid (PLA), which will be extracted from plants grown on Mars. As there is no greenhouse built yet, the gathered materials would be combined with PLA from Earth. After the thermoplastic is formed, it will be extruded to form the base of the structure. Once complete, AI will then control the machine to print the entire building, adding windows and floors along the way. The printer will then seal the home with a skylight, and with the addition of life support systems, the shell will be ready for use. Assuming enough time is provided and PLA can be remotely extracted, enough buildings to support a civilization on Mars could be created because of additive manufacturing.
Source: AI SpaceFactory
While transporting a 3D printer across the solar system will be a complicated logistical task, it will prove to be a necessary and worthwhile investment for humanity’s next frontier. With limited access to materials and advanced machinery, Martians will make use of additive manufacturing as an all-in-one builder to jump-start life in their new world.
Even more, once society is established, new institutions for healthcare, fabrication and transportation will be established with 3D printing in mind. Although it will take years for long-standing systems on Earth to be replaced by additive manufacturing, a new planet means a new start. Scarcity promotes innovation: with fewer people and limited resources, human organs would have to be synthesized using host cells and most products must be printed using recycled resins. Not only will 3D printing help humanity to reach Mars, but it will allow civilization to thrive there.
Source: IFL Science
Printing Green
While 3D printing is beneficial for the environment due to a reduction in wasted material and transport emissions, printing green involves how to earn a profit off of the fourth industrial revolution: additive manufacturing.
Although 3D printing is still a new and relatively untested technology, it has already gone through a hype cycle. When the main patents associated with 3D printing technology expired in 2013, investors flooded into companies like Stratasys and 3D Systems which 10Xed in under 3 years. Similar to the dot-com bubble, all companies even remotely associated with additive technology crashed by over 90%. Just like with the internet-era companies of the 1990s, however, the surviving 3D printing companies are poised to lead the world into a new age. As many screamed that the internet was over, Amazon and eBay emerged from the wake, and followed by dozens of other firms, proved that the web was truly a revolution and not a fad.
Note: No original digital record of this edition could be found except images on forums. A similar story dismissing the internet was archived by the Guardian.
Source: Twitter, Daily News
As Cathie Wood, the CEO of ARK Invest, describes it, “3D printing is in the valley of despair.” Most incredible technologies follow the “s” curve. The initial hype makes the public aware of the industry—this is the craze of believing there will be a 3D printer in every home. It soon fades away into the “valley of despair” when many believe the industry has no future. As the field matures, it approaches a sweet spot where companies in this sphere are ripe for investors as visibility will soon follow the real growth.
Source: Real Vision Finance
Simply, additive manufacturing is now mature and ready to meet the expectations of investors. As the industry begins to take off again, some analysts like ARK’s Tasha Keeney predict an astronomical CAGR of over 57% for the next five years.
“3D printing today is about a ten billion dollar market and we think that could grow to 97 billion in the next five years. That's because we expect 3d printing today is mostly prototyping, and that's about a 12 to 13 billion dollar industry globally. The end-use parts that go into the final product is about a 500 billion dollar opportunity and we think it's only 1% penetrated today, so there's this massive greenfield space opportunity for 3d printing.”
- Tasha Keeny, Chartered Financial Analyst at ARK Invest
In fact, in the 10 months since this interview took place, the value of ARK’s 3D printing index, PRNT, has increased by over 125%. So whether for the industry’s near term potential of replacing the assembly line, as theorized in part one, or for its fantastical future as a panacea for humanity, 3D printing appears to be growing rapidly, with no sign of stopping.
This of course begs the question of: “how should one invest in 3D printing?” In cases of individual stocks, there are two classes: the companies around before the bust, and those that have innovated more recently. In the first category, Stratasys (SSYS) and 3D Systems (DDD) have recently pivoted to focus on the industrial space, selling their advanced machines and offering printing-as-a-service. Both stocks have more than tripled in the past four months signalling their value status and the possibility of reaching their old highs. On the other hand, growth companies like ExOne (XONE) and Proto Labs (PRLB) have experienced tremendous growth recently due to expanded factory networks and the promise of improved technologies. ExOne in particular has utilized its metal binder jetting printer to secure deals with Ford and several research universities.
While not pure plays, tech behemoths Microsoft (MSFT) and HP (HPQ) have seen the potential of additive manufacturing and begun heavily investing in the technology. Although, as 3D printing is still a relatively industry, there may be few winners who take home the lion’s share. To own all of the aforementioned tickers and invest in the industry as a whole, one should consider ARK’s diversified 3D Printing ETF (PRNT). With triple digit returns overseen by the legendary Cathie Wood, investing in PRNT is truly investing in the future, the fourth industrial revolution.
From succeeding Ford’s assembly line to enabling society to thrive on Mars to eventually integrating human flesh with technology, 3D printing will leave a lasting legacy on this world and the next. How many will be lifted out of poverty once homelessness is eliminated? How long can the human life be extended from 3D printed organs? How many planets will mankind settle as a result of this versatile technology? And how many other benefits will arise that cannot even be conceived as of now? The benefits are incalculable, the world of tomorrow is the vision of science fiction today.
This is the final part in a two part series on 3D printing. The first edition, which covered additive manufacturing’s current applications in fabrication, is available here: “The End of the Assembly Line.”
Sources
Printing With Fire…:
3DPrint.com - Relativity Space
…And Blood:
American Transplant Foundation
Printing the World Around Us:
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Shipping at the Speed of Light:
3D Printing the Next World:
Printing Green: