4D Printing is 1 D Better

What is 4D printing? What are programmable materials? What's the potential for 4D printing?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future. It says, I'm
just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control. I'm

(00:20):
Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocon, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
you know, on this podcast once or twice we've talked
about three D printing, right, yes, additive manufacturing. Well, Joe,
I I'm not surprised you don't remember. So much time
has passed now. Three D printing, of course, is like
you said, Lauren, it's additive manufacturing. It's when you're using

(00:42):
a device to create some sort of object, three dimensional object,
layer by layer, and it's uh, it's it's somewhat of
a painstaking process, but it's less wasteful than subtractive manufacturing,
which is where you would take a block of something
and then carve away all the stuff you don't want, right, Yeah,
And it gives you the ability to design virtually with precision. Right,

(01:07):
you can prototype stuff, you can print it out, you
can test it see if it has has any merit.
If not, you can go back to the drawing board
a lot more cheaply than than traditional prototyping would have worked,
and much faster too. Because you don't have to sit
there and try and carve it away and then send
a mold or or some sort of other model off
to be manufactured in a more uh sturdy format. You

(01:29):
can actually test things out very rapidly, and it really
helps you when you're developing something brand new. Okay, well,
I want to talk about this idea that popped up
this year. I think it popped up this spring. Um.
It's called fort printing. And you know, Joe, you're not
the only one I want to talk about this. In fact,
almost instantly after we uploaded our three D printer video,

(01:53):
we had someone commenting, what about four D printing? What
is for D printing? Well, I assume it must be
one better. Yes, it's better than three by a whole one.
It's it's it's at least better than three. Um. Okay,
so for D printing maybe better than three D printing.

(02:15):
But what it really breaks down to it comes from
this guy named Skylar Tibbots, which is an awesome name.
Yeah uh. And most people became familiar with this idea
through a Ted talk he had that sort of went
viral in the popular science media sphere. UM And in

(02:37):
this Ted talk he introduces this idea of for D printing,
and essentially what it is is combining two major concepts.
It's three D printing with programmable materials. So when you
think about things that are programmable, one would be like
computer software, and that means that it has a function
that unfolds across time. So you you give some sort

(03:00):
of input and the software takes that input, performs some
form of operation upon that input, and gives you output
as a result. Right, it's a it's a sequence of
events in linear time. UM. And so what if you
could create materials, just three D materials like a block
or a sheet that also we're programmable, meaning they had

(03:23):
they had functionality, not not not not reality, No, it's
for real. What on the nano scale. That's what happens
all the time within your own body. Now you're blowing
my mind. Yeah, Well we'll get into those metaphors in
a bit. But basically, what we're talking about is a
piece of plastica UM that can change its own shape

(03:44):
or physical properties in response to a stimulus over time. Right,
So you put something like this in your mind, a
string of black plastic. It's just a tube. It doesn't
do anything as far as you know. But submerge it
in water and it curls up to spell a phrase
in cursive like, uh, Jonathan, the programmable material skeptic is

(04:09):
stupid that I would not at all be shocked to
find that. And then you can just remove it, Okay.
So you could remove it from the water and it
might revert to its original state, or you could apply
a different kind of energy, say instead of water, you
could apply solar energy to it, or heat, or you

(04:29):
could applying cone. Yeah, exactly. Um. So you shake it
up and it curls into a pre arrange shape. And
the way this works is just basic physical design. It's
got um it's got inherent tendencies towards certain shapes, and
when it encounters this energy. It doesn't have an electric motor,

(04:50):
it doesn't have any moving parts or chemicals or anything
like that. The molecules just realign to this other shape.
They have an affinity for right. And in the case
of that first example, with submerging something in water, what
you're really doing is is printing a single object with
different materials from a three D printer UM. And those
different materials have different water absorption properties, and so when

(05:13):
when you get them wet, they do different stuffs right, right,
So that makes it bend in a different way. So
on the macro scale we see it end up taking
a particular shape. On the micro or nanoscale, lots of
complicated things are happening so that those structures form the
shape you're looking at right. Um. And so what Lauren
just introduced is where three D printing hits this. So

(05:35):
I was talking about programmable materials, but what for D
printing says is, hey, you can print programmable materials pretty
easily with a three D printer UM. And this could
be useful in a lot of ways that we'll talk
about in a bit, uh. But but essentially the idea
is you're using a three D printer to put together
a thing that changes over time given a certain amount

(05:58):
of energy applied to it and particular form. It's kind
of if you want to think of it in the
terms of programming as far as software goes, You know,
anyone who's programmed knows the if then statement, right, if
X then Y, that kind of idea. So in this case,
it would be if certain type of energy is applied
to this material, then take this particular shape. That's kind

(06:22):
of the if. Then a programmable materials, you've you've printed
something that, by its very nature, when something specific is
applied to it, it will change shape in a predetermined way.
It's not like this is going to change shape in
in ways that we didn't intend. You're you're designing it
from the get go so that it will acquire a
specific shape. Yeah, so you can imagine more useful applications

(06:47):
for programmable materials like this than just spelling out insults
in cursive. You could think about furniture, say yeah, so
so let's say let's say I go to my favorite
furniture store. I key uh, because of course there's the
wonderful Jonathan Coulton song about it. Anyway, I decided to
go and I buy something, and I bring it back
home and I open it up and then I look

(07:08):
at the quote unquote simple instructions, and I realized that
the rest of my weekend is gone. As I try
and put this together, and invariably something goes on the
wrong way or backwards or whatever. But let's say that
we have reached a point where we have this self
assembling style of material, this programmable material that not only
will take its specific shape once you've applied the right

(07:30):
kind of energy, but we'll even interlock with other parts
that are that are made out of that same sort
of material. They've got this great part in that Ted
talk you were you were referring to, where they show
this material that's broken up into little bitty pieces inside
a beaker, and when you shake the beaker, you're you
are introducing random energy into the system. It starts to

(07:52):
come back together and form a a full unit as
opposed to a bunch of little pieces. And this is
done basically with with with with magnets and stuff like that.
I mean on at the current moment. These are more
ideological um experiments than really deep chemical experiment and it's
not and it's not something that you know, the the
average person is going to have at their disposal any

(08:15):
time and say like the next year or two years
or whatever. But the principle there is that maybe in
the future, instead of buying a box that you come
home and you open it up, it's got all these
different pieces and then you spend the next if you're
me seventy two hours trying to put it all together.
You get something that when you add heat or you
shake it up, it ends up actually taking the shape

(08:37):
of whatever it is you specifically wanted, and it saves
you a lot of time and energy and effort, and
it really all the way down the line, it means
that things get simpler in design. Yeah, you could just
merely dunk a plastic sheet into water, or say, expose
it to sunlight or electricity from wall socket and it

(08:57):
reconfigures itself into a coffee table. Right. And I've seen
some great video that was also either part of the
Ted talk or just related stuff that's in the the
lab that Scalar Tipots works out of, where, for example,
they showed a a sheet of plastic. It wasn't it
wasn't just a rectangular sheet. You could actually tell that

(09:18):
it was meant to fold up into a cube and
then submerged in water and then it very slowly because
I think the video is sped up by fifty times
normal speed, but very slowly. No, but it does, it
does configure itself into the shape of a cube, which
is pretty cool to see. Now if you're watching that
and you're thinking this is sped up at fifty times

(09:39):
normal speed, and all this sheet is doing is turning
into a cube. It's hard to grasp how this could
have applications, but it's really just a proof of concept
at that stage. Right. This lab that we're talking about
the tipots friends, UM, it's called the self assembly lab.
It's at M I, T and UM. They're they're defining
self assembly as a process by which disordered parts build
an ordered ructure through local interaction. UM. So, so what

(10:03):
they're really focusing on is non electronics stuff. I mean,
I think that the interesting future applications are all involving
some form of computerization. And they have played around a
little bit with with robots, which I'll talk about in
another moment. But but but but yeah, there, you know,
trying to eliminate the need to simulate and then build,

(10:24):
or to build and then adjust, um in the long run,
by by running these thought experiments and seeing, you know, like, well,
what what can we how can we use physics and
chemistry to get stuff to do what we want it
to for us rather than us having to go in
and physically change things. Yeah, it's important to remember that
while the examples of this we've seen are pretty basic.

(10:46):
This is extremely primitive technology and well sort of respectively,
in this field, it's brand new. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
really just collaborations at this point between architects and artists.
And there's a company called UH status is I think,
and an Autodesk, and in a bunch of other industry

(11:08):
three D printing and UH and other tech leaders are
are getting in on this and going like this is cool,
what can we do? Yeah? And then you know, there
are some great potential benefits to this, for example, cutting
way down on the amount of resources and energy and
money that takes to go into manufacturing, building out infrastructures,

(11:29):
that kind of thing. And that's in fact, a large
part of Skylar's talk is to to on on the
Ted Talks. I call him Skylar, sometimes I just call
him sky Yeah, that's fair. So anyway, there's he really
points out that that they're they're taking a long term
view of this potential approach and saying this is something

(11:52):
that could be you know, we love to use the
word disruptive, like this could be disruptive and these these
established chains of things like manufacturing where UH it simplifies
stuff and saves lots and lots of money in the
long run, also saves energy, which, of course that's really important,
you know, as we're still trying to develop a way

(12:13):
of producing energy that meets the world's needs without making
it an uninhabitable place. Then saving it it matters a lot. Yeah,
because infrastructure right now, the way that we do it
is is so rigid. It's rigid by design because it
needs to be, because we we need it to last
a long time and and be sturdy and whether the

(12:34):
elements and all of that kind of stuff. And so
do we want to start talking about applications about like
like like like what if instead of having UM giant
metal and concrete sewer pipes or water pipes, UM, we
could have forty printed water pipes that could actually adjust
to demand. Yeah, this is a concept that Tibots himself
talks about UM in one of his talks. I think

(12:55):
it's the Ted talker, Okay, yeah, but he talks about
UH piping UH. And that's a perfect example because a
lot of the UH materials they've already come up with
respond to water. And so the idea he has is
a pipe that undulates, so it could expand when there's
more demand for water, contract when there's less demand for water,

(13:17):
or it could even undulate to push the water along
without the need for turbines to to move the water through. Yeah,
you would reduce the requirement for things like pumping stations
to to be able to get water exactly where it
needs to go. I think a lot of people when
they're turning their faucets on don't realize the incredible amount
of engineering it took to make that a possibility. Yeah. Um,

(13:38):
but if the pipe itself could just work like say
you're esophagus does when you swallow something. You know how
you can swallow even when you're upside down. It's because
of that muscle motion and softly swallow when I'm upside down.
That's why you see me staying on my head whenever
I met lunch, I know, hanging from the ceiling, drinking
blood in your apartment in the darkness. We call you

(13:59):
we gotta let's keep it on the download days. But
your esophagus, when you're drinking blood like that, your esophagus goes.
I think it's called peristalsis Is that correct? The name?
I just call it miller time anyway, It's a muscle
contraction that pushes what's in your mouth down your throat
and towards your stomach um. And yeah, and if pipes

(14:21):
work that way, that could be really useful. Another application
that that I think is interesting is in space exploration. Yes, yeah,
In fact, that was one of the other points, is
that this idea, that this could allow you to put
together things, uh in environments that are traditionally difficult or
dangerous or deadly to human beings. So, whether it's in
the Antarctic or in the outer reaches of space, if

(14:44):
you need to be able to take some materials and
build out structures, then something that would be self assembling,
just given the right kind of energy would be really useful. Yeah.
Let's say we want to establish a Mars colony for humans, Okay,
and we have talked about that in the past obviously,
so that's a that's a big step right now, but

(15:05):
clearly people are looking towards it, So it's a good
thing to think about how we would actually do it.
We put some astronauts down on the surface of Mars,
they need a protective structure in which to live. Uh,
where does that come from? Right? I mean, and it's
not going to be exactly easy to do construction on
the surface of Mars. Yeah, they're they're already limited by

(15:26):
the fact that they're in space suits. They can they
really don't need to be spending extended periods of time
out on the surface of Mars in the first place, because,
as we've established in a previous episode, Mars is trying
to kill you. So you want to spend as as
little time on the surface, especially unprotected as possible, because
you're still prone to things like radiation, let alone the

(15:49):
toxic environment of Mars. So one possible application would be
to have this four D printed stuff to help make
at least the shell of some of the habitats that
you would want, right and there the various uh um well,
like the Mars One Project talks about using rovers to
help build stuff and construct things, which on its face

(16:11):
seems really really complicated to me. Like I I have
a hard time believing that we could build robots that
would be sophisticated enough to help doing that. But but
if they're using stuff like this, that could really go
a long way the process share, you know, cut down
a little bit on that programming and or the durability
of the robot itself, right. Yeah. Also, I'm just thinking

(16:34):
about how unwieldy it is to transport construction materials. I mean,
if you've ever seen like a truck on the way
to a construction site and all the junk it's got
trying to fit together on the bed um and clearly
you couldn't it couldn't already be put together because there's
no space then, right, so you have so you just
flow the entire house. You just put rockets on the

(16:55):
bottom the whole house, on the oversized load on the
back of it as it's flying off. Instead, you get
there with your for D printer and you've got just
bulk material basically that's not as unwieldy to transportenttridges that
hold the hold the stuff that you're printing out. Yeah,

(17:15):
and it there on the surface of Mars, goes ahead
and prints out the parts that you need, and so
they can reconfigure and interlock however you need them to
make the structure you're going to live in. Yeah. Yeah, No,
that makes, you know, far more sense to me than
trying to rely on essentially a slightly more sophisticated version

(17:35):
of the curiosity rover. Right. I mean, I think about
the Curiosity Rover, and it is an amazing piece of technology,
don't get me wrong. I think that is one of
the most phenomenal achievements for NASA post Moon landing. But
that being said, I can't imagine it building a house. Yeah,
it doesn't. It doesn't have and it's not like you

(17:56):
could guide it easily because the amount of time it
takes to get data from what minimum fourteen minute time laps.
It all depends on the position of Mars and Earth
in relation to one another. And also, I mean even
which side of Mars is facing which side of Earth.
I mean, all of that plays apart, right, So you know,
you wouldn't be able to in real time guide the robot.

(18:18):
It would have to be able to do a lot
of this autonomously, right, And that's the kind of thing
that autonomous robots aren't actually that good at. I mean,
you might be sitting there thinking like, oh, but robots
build our cars and stuff all the time, but but
that's in a very specific environment and in which things
have been very specifically laid out for. It does one job.
It only has one job, and if you had if

(18:38):
you had changed that up somehow, it's not like the
robots could adjust to the new layout, right, It's not
like they could suddenly uh realize that things were different
and react to that. It's just they would try to
keep doing what they usually do on top of all that.
I mean a rover for construction. I mean, think about
how exactly much work can you get done with a

(19:00):
solar powered bulldozer. I mean, one would wonder what kind
of I mean, there might be some other form of
power sell aboard it, but I wouldn't know. I mean,
because that just is the way that Mars one has suggested.
But yeah, I think using like a four D approach
would cut back on that. Now, whether or not four
D afford D approach would be sophisticated enough to meet

(19:20):
the needs of the Mars one colony by the time
they actually start to launch things at least according to
their own launch plan, that that's a different story. I
just think that that would be a more It seems
like a more promising approach to me than what I
have read so far. I'd be very skeptical about it
developing that fast, but I do think that leads us

(19:42):
to the interesting question of how it advanced. Exactly can
this kind of thing get, Yeah, let's have it. Let's
have a discussion about that. I've got I've got an
alternative to this too that i want to talk about,
but I'll tag that on at the end. I want
to talk about what what do you see, Joe as
like the the let's let's imagine that this this approach

(20:03):
really does pan out, that we learn uh, a lot
of the different advantages and a lot of different ways
of utilizing this. What do you see as some future
like really far future applications. Right now, we've got basically
art projects. Where else can it go? So right now,
you can make a string that curls into this knotted
up shape, or say a sheet that folds into a cube.

(20:26):
But if you were to shrink that way down and
make billions of them, and make millions of different kinds
of them that all interact in ways that produce complex
macro effects. What you're talking about is something that's not
all that similar from how living things work. I mean

(20:46):
what a human body is, or what an insect is,
or pretty much any living material right yeah, is long
chains of molecules that they're polypeptides that are the I
mean no acid sequence in them. Determines what shape they
curl up into, and the shapes they curl up into

(21:07):
interact in interesting ways that produce macro effects. First with
with hydrogen bombs, hydrogen bombs, hydrogen bonds, goodness, migracious, and
uh and then and then in tertiary structures with them
with with sell fites and all kinds of other stuff.
And you know, when we had this quick discussion before
we came in here to record, I pointed out that

(21:28):
when you think about nature has had billions of years,
really millions and billions of years too to really experiment
and see which of these these shapes are the ones
that work. Because anything that doesn't work doesn't live, and
if it doesn't live, then you're you discard that and
you go on. So it's not like it's necessarily any

(21:49):
sort of intelligent experimentation. It's just that by the very
nature of the way life works, we see which shapes
are the ones that actually end up being uh advent tageous.
So the question is can we catch up with you know,
billions of years of evolution in twenty to fifty years
of R and D well, I mean, that's the years

(22:11):
that's that's our standard that's our standard prediction. Right. I'm skeptical,
but I think it's a really interesting idea, and I
think that in theory it's not impossible because of what
I just said about how you know you can create
incredibly complex and powerful things without micro chips or electro
mechanical motors. Yeah, it does. We had this discussion earlier

(22:33):
as well about let's say that you are using this
four D stuff and it's able to take on multiple
shapes depending upon whatever seth circumstances are applied to it. Right,
So let's say that you have created some kind of
of of of movable robotic structure. It's got some computational abilities,

(22:55):
it's able to perceive and move around its environment in
some way, but it doesn't have any electronic part. But
doesn't have electronic parts. It's all this four D printing approach.
And the first response I had was I can't under
I can't quite grasp how you would apply the right
type of energy and the right amounts to the right

(23:16):
spots within this robot to make it coordinated and have
it move in in a meaningful way. But Joe, you
had an interesting counterpoint, right, Yeah, Well, I can't imagine
that either that seems just too impossible to me. But
then again, I think if you went and you talk
to somebody in the nineteen forties when computers were nascent,

(23:39):
I mean, would they really think that electrons would someday
be as programmable as they are now in our computers.
I certainly think that. And and of course this, this
is this completely bears out if you look at all
the predictions that people had back in the early early
days of computers. They talked about, you know, one day
these computers will be small, all enough to fit in

(24:00):
a room in your house, and you'll be able to
use it. But that's about able to compute five digit
addition probably well. Essentially, essentially, they could not foresee the
development of miniaturization. The transistor was something that they could
not necessarily predict in those early days, and therefore that

(24:21):
did not factor into their vision of the future with computers.
Their vision of the future of computers was completely based
on the state of the art as it was at
that time, right And clearly, if you've read if you've
read science fiction from the time, it's not the people
were incapable of imagining that. It's just that they were
incapable of imagining it practically. It was more like if
they imagined it, it was you know, most most of

(24:44):
the computers that you would read about, even in science
fiction back in those days, would still be these enormous
devices that would take up huge amounts of space because
they didn't think, oh, well, there's going to be this
development where we're gonna shrink these components and still maintain
and even increase their power over time. So from that
same perspective, I could say, you know what, Joe, You're right,
I'm basing my my skepticism about reaching that point simply

(25:09):
because I'm thinking about the state of the art as
it is today. But who's to say there won't be
some development maybe a year from now, maybe tomorrow, where
it makes all of those those concerns I have. Moot,
You're you're using your intuitions, and these intuitions usually serve
us well, right, but but sometimes sometimes they're This is

(25:31):
why predicting the future is such a tricky thing, because
there's so many different elements that we cannot possibly predict.
Uh that that happened, and then it suddenly changes everything
and you think, wow, I I was not thinking big
enough I'm excited in the short term about combining these
kind of materials sciences with with electronic robotics. And I mean,

(25:54):
you know, we we have talked about three D printing electronics,
and um, if you take some of these materials and uh,
you know, hook them up to very basic computers hardwire
them together, you could you could construct chains nodes that
would that that would be you know, programmable, and that
would would uh carry instructions back and forth along the

(26:17):
chain into you know, telling the materials what to do
and where to apply the heat to bend something, or
where to apply the water to create a certain effect.
This is very similar to something the other thing I
was going to talk about, the alternative to four D printing.
That's taking a similar approach to for D printing in
the sense of materials that can assemble themselves in different ways,

(26:39):
but it's a it's a different it's a different pathway
to that, which is the whole idea of the self
reconfigurable modular robot, similar to what you're talking about here.
And they've been playing with this at the Self Assembly
Lab back in two thousand and eight, two thousand nine,
they were constructing these macrobots and DESSI bots that that
are that are basically just robotic versions of that of
that chain of plot stick that you put in the

(27:00):
water and then it folds up into something different. Yeah,
and I've seen some interesting approaches with this. Now, technically
what I've seen is, uh, these modular robots tend to
look like little cubes or other some other simple shape polygon,
and then they can join together to make you know,
each of these is sort of its own little autonomous unit,
but they can join together to form vultron I me,

(27:22):
you know, a larger robot. But but see, it's if
they can form in different ways. So for example, you
might see one that ends up forming essentially legs to
let it crawl over an object. But let's say it
comes up to a tunnel, like it's crawling over rocks
and it's doing just fine, but then comes up to
a tunnel that's too small for it to crawl through

(27:42):
based on its it's it's shape right then and there,
so it reconfigures itself into a snake format and then
uses some snake slithering like motion to propel itself through
the tunnel until it gets to the other side. And
then maybe it reconfigures itself into a new shape based
upon the terrain that's on the other side. Now, this
is in its current form, still very very young, just

(28:04):
like the four deep printing is. So the designs are
when you look at them, I mean, they blow my mind.
I think it's amazing what's been done so far, But
it's still pretty primitive stuff. They can't get down to
teeny tiny levels of precision. But let's say that we
extend this form of of reconfiguration and self assembly forward
and we think, well, maybe we're able to miniaturize that

(28:26):
and make it even more sophisticated. You could have robots.
They're essentially collections, kind of like a hive of various
little autonomous units that can self assemble, reassemble, reconfigure numerous
times based upon whatever the task is that needs to do.
And if you go even further, you've got the well,

(28:46):
you've got the one. But in furniture format, y'all, I'm
talking about taking nanotechnology that can make macro sized furniture
based upon your whim and then your whim and then
kill your guests. Right, But no, the the idea here
being that you actually have nano materials that can self

(29:07):
assemble and reconfigure based upon whatever it is you need
them to do. That's kind of like the super science
fiction version of these two different pathways. Now, it may
very well be that neither of these end up developing
into that. It could be that they converge and together
they develop into that. It's too early to say, but
there are a lot of people who really are excited

(29:28):
about this idea of the future where we have you know,
you don't you don't have to go out and buy
a new couch. You just program your couch to have
a new shape. I like that. I like this idea
that you know, you can decide to you know, I
have decided to change the way I live. I want
my entire living space to be a completely different style
because I am no longer that version of me anymore.

(29:49):
And then with a couple of programming clicks and clacks
and whatever user interface there happens to be, you could
do that. Or let's say that your robot cat is
scratching up your couch. Um it could if the couch
has this technology, it could be self healing. It could
it could mend itself. You could have a self healing couch.
I wonder, and I'm not saying this is necessarily possible,
but I'm just wondering how programmable materials might figure into

(30:13):
larger infrastructure, like say, buildings or bridges or highways. Yeah,
I mean, would it would it be useful to think
about this type of material in that setting? I mean,
is it possible that in some way a building built
of programmable materials would be able to, say, withstand an
earthquake or something like that. Interesting, it's you know, it's

(30:34):
again based upon what we've seen right now, it's it's
difficult to imagine. But then if you were to design
the building so that the kinetic movement actually strengthened the
building as opposed to weakened it, or in a different way,
say if a building responded to shaking by becoming less rigid,
which might be exactly what you want actually, so that
so there's more give and it can ride out the earthquake.

(30:56):
For example. Yeah, if you've ever seen photos of of
tension bridges during earthquakes or something like that, Yeah, that
that kind of that kind of if it were all
made of steel cable and was therefore tensile, then then
it could end up ripping apart. And being a terrible tragedy.
I think, or you know, it could have the flexibility
to to not to not tear apart. There's that too well. Anyway,

(31:20):
that the cool thing to me is that all of
this type of technology has a lot of potential. Now,
whether that potential ever gets realized, we'll have to wait
and see. But it's exciting that people are working on
this kind of stuff and it really is like a
different way of going about manufacturing and construction than I
had ever anticipated. It's not something I had never really

(31:42):
imagined this kind of thing, and it's so cool to
think that it's not just something that someone's imagined, it's
stuff that people are actively working on. That's pretty awesome. Guys.
If you have any comments, you want to chime in
on the idea for d printing, or maybe there's some
other future technology that you think is really exciting, you
should join in on the discussion. Go to f W
thinking dot com. That's where we have all the blog posts,

(32:03):
we have the podcasts, we have the videos, we have
lots of articles that are about the kind of subjects
we're talking about. We want you to be part of
this conversation, so go visit the site, check us out,
and we will talk to you again really soon. We're
more on this topic. In the future of technology, visit
forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's

(32:37):
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