May 7, 2014 • 41 mins
It's time to talk about 3D printing again. What are some of the advances we've seen over the last year? From houses to medical casts, we cover it all.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, I'll see everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future and says our
house in the middle of the street. I'm Jonathan Strickland
and I'm Lauren bulk bomb Our other coast. Joe McCormick
(00:23):
is out today, so we are going it alone. Yep.
But you know it's all right because we've done this
show without me. We've done an episode I think or
maybe two without Lauren. So really, I mean, we all
just take turns, and Joe knows that the future is
strong in our hands. We're going to keep the future going.
We're not going to break the future. Yes, we we
(00:44):
sadly do not have the Mystical Acts in the studio,
but it's presence really has imputas Yeah, the mystical Acts
is really now a metaphor. It's it's the mystical Acts
that's inside us all. But Joe is the caretaker of
the mystical accent, and frankly we didn't want to do
around his desk and find where he keeps it for
fear of discovering something we cannot unlearned. But Today, we're
(01:06):
going to learn more about something we've already talked about
a couple of times on this podcast, three D printing.
And the reason we're talking about again is because folks
keep coming up with really cool applications for this stuff. Now,
if you've only ever seen a demo of a three
D printer, or perhaps have managed to work on one
in some small capacity, you're probably aware it's it's what
(01:29):
we call additive manufacturing, right, is this process of adding
layer upon layer of very thin material to build a
three dimensional object from the ground up. Now, traditionally plastics
are used in these things, but um, but these days
lots of different materials are are being used to create
all kinds of different uh end objects. Yeah, I remember
(01:51):
that you and Joe talked about printing things like pizza,
which which may or may not have been a success
less than a total success. But but but I mean edible.
I mean something that is relatively nutritious and not completely disgusting. Yeah. Hey,
you know, baby steps, baby steps towards the replicator, my friends.
(02:12):
And honestly, if I can cook something that falls into
those categories the traditional way, then I'm pretty proud of myself.
I counted as a win myself. Yeah, same here. So
the cool thing we wanted to talk about today a
couple of different things. Actually, well, one was something that
we talked about in this week's Forward Thinking video three
D printed houses. I mean an entire entire house. Yeah,
(02:34):
And when we're talking about three D printer, this thing
is enormous. If you were to look at you would
just think this is some really bizarre construction machinery because
it's so big. It measures ten meters wide, which is
thirty three ft by six point six meters high, which
is twenty two ft, so thirty three ft wide twenty
(02:55):
two ft tall. And this thing can print a house
out of recycled materials no less. Yeah. Now, specifically, it
was a company in China, near Shanghai that was using
this as a demonstration. They printed ten houses in a
single day, and these were relatively small houses. The material
(03:16):
looks very much like concrete is, but they were able
to take runoff like the stuff that isn't used in
other manufacturing processes and use that recycle that into actual
construction material. So it cuts down on waste not only
by taking this recycled material, but by using this additive uh,
(03:37):
manufacturing process because, like we talked about in previous podcasts,
if you're talking about subtractive, that means you take something
and then you carve away all the stuff you don't want. Right.
This is traditional sculpture is a subtractive process where you
take a block of whatever material is, so let's say
it's marble, and then you cut away all the stuff
that doesn't look like David, you know. That's the ballistic
(04:00):
way of putting it. But three D printing is additive,
where you're only adding the stuff you need and you
don't add anything that's that's superfluous or necessary, so you
have less waste. It can also be more structurally sound,
uh than than having to worry about how the corners
joined up, because they're built joined up right now. The
Chinese version I saw, which by the way, they bought
(04:21):
that three D printer from the United States. But the
Chinese version I saw it looked more like they were
printing large segments together and then assembling them. But there's
another version that was proposed and built by the University
of Southern California that could print an entire house in
twenty four hours, and it in fact is printed you
(04:42):
get the whole house. It's not printed. It's not like
you get four walls that you didn't have to put
together and then a roof that you have to put
on top. It prints the whole thing. Wow. So so
it's on some kind of some kind of rail system
or scaffolding. The three the three D printer itself is
on rails. So imagine two arms, each of which are
mounted on a rail that are separated by However, why
do you want the house to be? So? These rails
(05:04):
allow the the printer head to move up and down
the entire length of where that house is going to
be and laid down, layer by layer everything in this house.
It's pretty phenomenal. Now, granted, this approach also means that
you're really just creating the foundation, the structures, the walls,
the ceiling, that kind of thing, even leaving uh spaces
(05:27):
for things like windows and doors. But you are not
printing components that will be necessary that you have to
add in later, things like plumbing or electricity, that stuff
we have to Yeah, we haven't quite gotten to the
point yet where we can print all of that together.
As it turns out, mixing materials within a single project
is relatively difficult. It is something that that we're as
we're going to talk about later on, people are working on. Yes,
(05:49):
So it's really cool that this this approach is being
used for multiple reasons. One is just the idea that
you could you could build a house ten houses and day.
That could be fine for people who have who need
low income housing, because these houses are also really cheap.
One the houses are since they're being uh created by
(06:10):
a printer, mean that the labor costs are lower and
to the materials cost because it's recycled, are lower. So
the approximate price of one of these houses is less
than five thousand dollars for a house. So you think,
all right, print ten of those in a day. You've
got fifty thou dollars worth of houses, which normally fifty
(06:33):
thou dollars wouldn't even buy you much of a of
a large house in most major areas in the especially
here in Atlanta, um if you're living in the city anyway,
So it's it's pretty interesting on those levels. And they
also are talking about possibly using something like this to
construct the actual levels of a skyscraper, so perhaps one
(06:54):
day being able to print floor by floor a skyscraper
that then gets assembled. It's really interesting idea. I don't
know how far it's going to go, but the idea
of being able to do something like this, use computer
assisted design to build your dream home and then print
it out is pretty cool. Well, considering that that some
segments of the construction industry are are already trying to
(07:18):
to use that kind of three D modeling and um
and cheaper labor through these pre designed uh customs little
bit almost like modules modules right right, thank you, and
out of manufacturing is is really just the next step
in all of that. So, and and not having to
drag giant pre built modules around on trucks is also
(07:41):
you just have to move the giants, the giant three
D printer to wherever you need to go. But I mean,
even if even if this means printing something and then
using a giant tractor trailer to to haul at someplace,
you're still talking about building a house in a fraction
of the time it would take. I mean, anyone who
has seen a house being built no that that tends
to be a pretty long process. So being able to
(08:04):
do it in a day, like even the the the
University of Southern California version, which was a multi room
house with multiple floors. They said they could still do
it in twenty four hours. So twenty four hours start
to finish, you have a you have a house. It
may not quite be ready to be to move into,
but that all the structures are built. That is amazing.
So it's it's really cool. But that's that's just one
(08:27):
use of three D printing that we wanted to cover.
There's actually a whole bunch, especially in the medical field, right,
I mean, anything that's on a smaller scale is obviously
going to be a little bit easier to deal with,
and there are so many opportunities for for advancements in medicine. Yeah,
one of the ones that I wanted to talk about
is is actually a pretty simple one in the grand
(08:49):
scheme of things, because some of the stuff we're gonna
talk about tends to be let's let's use the word
invasive the in order to take advantage of it. We're
talking about things some kind of surgery. Yeah, this in
this case, this is just replacing the good old broken
arm or broken leg cast Like I don't know, I
have never had to wear one, all right, so neither
(09:10):
of us have experienced the joy of having a plaster cast.
But they but they look they look itchy and unwieldy
and terrible, right, and they don't allow your skin to
breathe or anything like that. I can just imagine just
going crazy thinking I just I just want some air
on my skin and coming out even more pasty and
translucent to the neither of us, which would pretty much
(09:30):
mean we'd be completely transparent. Yeah, we go from translucent
to transparent like those little frogs at the or or
the the invisible woman type uh model that you could
get in school where it show all the veins, and yeah,
that would be us. It's really not far from where
we are already. But yeah, so so one way of
(09:52):
perhaps going a different route than the plaster cast is
to follow the design of Dinna's Kasan And I have
no idea if I pronounced his name correctly, but he's
a Turkish designer who created this super cool three D
printed essentially a plastic cast. Uh. The way it works
(10:13):
is you would first have whatever body part needed to
have the cast on it completely scanned three D scanned,
so you're getting all the different angles there. The cast
is then built specifically to the contours of that limb,
so it fits nice and snug. It prints into two
segments which then snapped together, just like if you've ever
put together any kind of plastic toy, you know that
(10:35):
has a little pegs, poles, same sort of thing, And
instead of being a solid piece like a plaster cast is,
it looks more like a net. So it's got holes
that are opened up so that your your skin can breathe.
You've got that ability to if an itch hits you
actually scratch it without having to stick some sort of
chopstick down the cast and hope you can hit the
(10:57):
right spot. Uh. And also an interesting idea, although it's
somewhat untested or at least the tests are inconclusive, is
to allow using an ultrasonic emitter to put ultrasonic signals
into your your your body to help stimulate bone healing.
(11:18):
So there's some studies that suggest this actually works. There's
some studies that say that ultrasonic stimulation has a negligible,
if any effect, So the jury is still out on
whether or not ultrasonic stimulation is really a benefit, and
if it is, if it's a measurable enough benefit to
justify the cost. So there's still some debate on that,
(11:42):
but one thing is for sure. If you have a
big plaster cast on, you can't really take advantage of
it anyway, because the ultrasonic frequencies are going to have
trouble just penetrating that. So if you have have one
that has holes in it where you can actually put
the emitter right up against the skin, you get around that.
I'll take the being able to scratch an itch thing. Yeah,
even even if the ultrasonic ends up ultimately proving to
(12:05):
not be a scientifically valid means of helping heal the bone.
The comfort factor alone, plus these things look kind of
kind of badass. They do, They really do. I mean,
you know, if you want to go sort of punk,
fishnetty sort of look and hey, I'm punk, but maybe
that's that's me I want. I want the fish nets
and they can be printed in any color. Yeah yeah, yeah.
(12:27):
The ones I saw were black, but they also had
them printed in white, which was nice. Um, I mean
I would probably go hot pink because that's clearly what
I always think of you, Yeah, because I mean I'm
punk rock, but I like to feel pretty, So yeah,
super cool use of it. But then we have some more.
I guess you could say extreme uses of three D
(12:48):
printing things for something beyond a broken bone. So for example, prostheses, right,
which we've talked a bunch about before on the show.
And uh, and I think that in the last time
that we were talking about prostheses, we didn't mention the
possibility of three D printing things specifically for specific people. Yeah,
but but it's become so much cheaper and more widespread,
(13:10):
so much easier to access right now, A lot of
these prostheses tend to be fairly primitive compared to say,
you know, your top of the line prosthetics. Like there's
some procetics out there that are fully have you know,
robotic motors and everything in them so that they can
respond to either muscle control or some other control mechanism.
(13:30):
These that we're talking about here are less um less sophisticated,
but they can still make a dramatic impact on the
life of someone who has lost a limb or perhaps
was born without, say, fingers. We're going to talk a
little bit about a person like that. So this is
really cool stuff. I love the idea of of democratizing
(13:51):
a technology and getting it into a lot more fields.
Where people would not necessarily have the means, maybe they
don't have the money or they don't have accessibility of
getting one of these incredible prosthetics, because seeing a doctor
paying for that kind of thing exactly. Project Daniel is
a really good example of that. Yeah, this is a
came This came from Not Impossible Labs. So so Mike
(14:14):
of Not Impossible Labs, He's actually done quite a few videos,
including a ted talk about some of the work he's
done with this. This group flew down to Sudan to
print a prosthetic arm for a young man named Daniel,
who had lost both his arms in a bomb blast.
I mean, obviously, the Sudan is the the is a
region that has just been uh plagued by war, very
(14:35):
violent conflicts for years and years, and they're countless victims
of this, lots of people who have lost one or
more limbs. So he went down and worked with the
people of this little town in the Sudan and brought
along a three D printer, brought brought along spools of
(14:55):
the material that the three D printer uses, and began
to work on building a three D printed arm for Daniel. Yeah,
but not just too I mean, and that alone is wonderful,
of course, but also to teach the community how to
use these tools so that they can continue using it
after he and and the other project leaders had gone
(15:16):
back home. Yeah, and that's exactly what has happened. That
there's a follow up that talks about how they have
printed I think an arm a day, they've printed limbs
to help people. It gives them a new range of motion,
gives them freedom. For example, with with Daniel, they talked
about how this allowed him to feed himself for the
first time in two years. So that is something we all,
(15:39):
most of us, I won't say we all, most of
us take for granted. We take this stuff for granted.
So to think of someone regaining that kind of agency
in their own lives is it's really moving. And so
we're seeing that being used in places like uh, the
Sedan and other places that have very little access to
tap of the line kind of prosthetics. You know, that
(16:02):
gets a lot of attention in the robotics field over
in other countries like in the United States, But this
is something that could dramatically change a lot of people's lives.
Another example, another really heartwarming story. Yeah, there's a Kansas
teenager named Mason Wilde who used a three D printer
to make a prosthetic hand for a neighbor of his.
(16:24):
So one of his neighbors is this nine year old girl. Yeah, no,
no fingers on one hand. Um, And so Mason Wilde
printed up, he designed and worked, and he had already
built a computer from scratch when he was a little
bit younger. So this teenager goes and builds, designs and
builds a three D printed hand and uh and and
(16:46):
the girl absolutely adores it. And it can do things
like it can grip pick things up. She's able to
have a lot more mobility. She was born without these fingers,
so it wasn't due to an injury, but now she
has um a working hand and she loves it. The
neat thing about this three D printing approach is also
that as a person grows, you can print new new prosthses.
(17:09):
Yeah and you you know again, combining the three D
scanning with a three D printing makes this much easier. Obviously,
if you don't have the three D scanner, it's a
lot more trial and error. But even but but but
either way, I mean the idea that a high school
er went and did this for his elementary school neighbor.
Is just so cute and and indicative of the way
(17:30):
that the industry can go right. This is very clearly
something that is is at a core of a large
part of the three D printer community, like a three
D printer enthusiasts, the folks who have been behind this
technology for the better part of a decade while most
of us were unaware that such a thing could even exist.
This is the sort of stuff they've been championing from
(17:52):
the very beginning, and now we're seeing the stories come
out as the technology has become sophisticate enough to actually
make it a reality, because clearly, you know, in the
early days, you're talking about resolutions of several microns thick
per layer, which means that you couldn't have a really
smooth kind of object that you printed on a on
(18:12):
a micro level, anything that had a lot of moving parts.
It was a little complicated. And now we're getting to
the sophisticated printers that can print on either are micron
thick or even thinner, and that's that just means that
you're able to make much more complex materials by by
combining all the little things that you've printed out sophistication
and also am inexpensiveness in this case, you know, giving
(18:36):
that teenager access to a three D printer that that
he can work with. He apparently went to a library
and use the libraries three D printer. So when you
think about that, you right, he was able to print
a hand using a public institutions three D printer. Uh,
this is something that again, a prosthetic can cost thousands
(18:56):
of dollars depending upon the complexity and how it needs
to be fitted to the person. I mean, this is
a process that usually takes months and months and and
thousands of dollars of money that a lot of people
just don't have. So it's pretty phenomenal stuff. Back on
the sophistication side though. Um Over in Wales, a man
(19:17):
who had been in a motorcycle accident that had affected
half of his face has has been printed replacement skull parts. Yeah, now,
this is pretty phenomenal. He broke both cheekbones, a joy,
lost teeth. I mean it was it was a terrible injury.
Oh yeah yeah, but they but they were able to
scan the healthy side of his head using CT that's
that's computerized tomography in which a series of X rays
(19:37):
from many angles are combined to create cross sections of
a patient's bones and soft tissue. Um they used that
to create and print a three D model of what
they wanted to do, including like custom fit surgical guides,
and then printed titanium implants specified for this dude's face,
which is phenomenal. Yeah. It means that they were able
to make his face much more symmetrical than any other
(20:00):
means and that uh, he would end up looking more
like his old self, because I mean, this is this
is incredible surgery. I mean, you're talking about replacing a
significant portion of his skull. Yeah. The doctors also said that,
you know that that specificity allowed them to take a
lot of the kind of dangerous guesswork out of out
of the surgical work that they were doing. Sure, because
(20:21):
I mean, if you end up miscalculating and then you're
in the process of implanting that and you realize this
isn't going to work, then that means you already have
to have another surgery down the line. If you're in
the middle of an eight hour surgery and this is Yeah,
that that's terrible. So yeah, this was this is a
pretty phenomenal use. And then the next one makes my
(20:43):
mind boggle. This this, it's hard for me to even
imagine this idea. So, Lauren, why don't you tell me
about the equivalent of a three D printed pacemaker? Okay,
this one is a lot more experimental. So so researchers
have printed a custom fit electronic membrane that can wrap
over a heart and provide the same monitoring and an
(21:03):
emergency stimulation that pacemakers can. Today, now, Jonathan and I
did a whole episode about pacemakers over on our other
show Text Stuff, and I meant to go grab the
date and episode title, but I did not, So we'll
throw that in with the when we publish this podcast,
I'll make sure that to tweet out and everything of
the link to that so you guys can listen. So yeah,
so so watch for that on social guys. But um,
(21:25):
but but so, I mean, basically, what a pacemaker does
is if um, you know your your your heart runs
on electrical single signals, and if something goes wrong, a
sensor can tell and and give it a little bit
of a of a burst to keep a little defibrillator
almost to reregulate it, to get it pumping back in
a normal, uh, normal beat. So what these researchers did
(21:47):
They scanned the heart and we're talking about a rabbit
heart that was x vivo so so outside the body
and in laboratory conditions. And then they printed this kind
of polymer glove that can be integrated with silicon and
uh electronic sensors, all structured in a way that lets
them stretch without breaking. This allows the sensors in the
device to be in this constant easy contact with the heart.
(22:09):
You know, you don't have to like staple it onto
the heart or whatever you use when you're trying to
attach things to the heart, probably not staples, I I imagine,
which could allow the device to hypothetically be a lot
more useful and less traumatic to a body than the
comparable technology that's in use today. Is pretty amazing. Thinking
thinking of as a heart glove that monitors the hearts activity,
(22:32):
can respond if the activity is not is not healthy,
it's and it's custom fit for you. So it's so
I mean, I don't have words for how incredible this is.
I mean, the idea, it's it's so science fiction e E
E that I have a hard time wrapping my mind
around it. The idea of scanning an organ inside my
(22:54):
body and then printing this thing that would wrap around
it and keep it healthier longer is amazing. I mean,
it's the idea of a pacemaker alone makes me kind
of sit there and marvel. But this is this is
if this works out, because obviously this isn't that experimental stage,
(23:14):
and perhaps this will never will never see this in
this particular implementation, but the work that's being done will
surely inform us in other ways that we can anticipate.
So even if this does not ultimately work out to
be the future of pacemaker technology, it's really exciting work. Yeah. Yeah,
any any one element of it, from the from the
stretchable electronics to too Yeah. Well, I mean just the
(23:38):
idea of a a custom made glove that fits on
your heart. I mean, now, for the fashion conscious, I
can see where the the desire is. But that's not
what we're talking about here, obviously, And obviously it's not
just for any normal human person walking around. This would
be for patients who who already have some kind of
(23:59):
some kind of trouble or are expected to have some
kind of trouble. Now, it's also interesting to me this
idea of printing something that has electronics worked into it.
Because any again, anyone who's worked with printers, three D printers,
especially the more primitive ones, they're mostly used to printing
like a little uh figurine made out of this plastic stuff,
(24:21):
and not necessarily something that has electronic parts. But we've
actually found evidence of stuff people who are who are
printing electronics, Like they're printing all the different components of
an electronic device and then putting it together. Yeah. And
even more than that, people have started creating single additive
(24:42):
products that have some of those electronics built right in. Um. Uh,
there's a speaker that has come out of Cornell Labs
that using using two different printers working on on a
single product at different stages, researchers have created a working
consumer level speaker uh that the casing seamlessly integrated with
the conductive coils made of silver ink and magnets made
(25:04):
of a viscous, curable blend of strontium ferright, And so
you hook this thing up with wires to an electronic
device and you've got sound. Back in two thousand nine,
the same lab used a three D printer to create
a working replica of the telegraph receiver and recorder that
Samuel Morse and Alfred Vale used to send the very
first Morse code message in What was the message the
(25:28):
same as the first actual Morse code message? What hath
god rot? Well? Oh yeah, the classics never die. Uh,
you know this is really interesting. Actually, watch the video
of the speaker, not not the telegraph, but the speaker
being built, and then at the very end of it
they actually demonstrate the speaker. They play an audio clip
of President Obama talking about three D printers. Um, it's
(25:52):
a little tenny. It's not. It's not it's not the
best speaker, not the best quality. But the proof of
concept again, this idea of being able to print entire
electronic device. They made electromagnetic components from a three D printer. Yeah,
that's crazy. That's that's the really cool. So and this
is also where we get into the discussion about you
know this this is a really cool proof of concept.
(26:13):
It also illustrates how tricky this is because you know,
I'm pretty sure this the speaker approach used two different
three D printers. That's correct. Yeah, I mean they used
a single object and transferred it from one printer to
the end, right right, It's not that, but it was
in order for them to be able to print in
these different materials. And that's and that's partially because these
(26:35):
materials have, you know, extremely different melting points and different
recoagulation points. They're different, they have different conductivities. Some are conductive,
some are not conductive. There are a lot of different
um features that these various materials have that are not
necessarily compatible with one another, and you don't want to
contaminate one with another. So, for example, if you want
(26:56):
to print in a conductive material, this is something that's
going to con duct electricity. It's going to be a
primary component of your electronic device. You do not want
that to get contaminated with non conductive material. You don't
want plastic mixed in with that. It's going to inhibit
any kind of electricity flow. So, you know, using the
exact same device to print all the stuff on, you
have to make sure you're really good about designing it
(27:19):
so that you're not going to have any sort of
waste material left over at the end of the plastic
printing section before you move on to say the silver
printing section, and vice versa. You wouldn't want any silver
still kicking around in there when you start printing the
plastics that are supposed to be insulating whatever you're doing,
right exactly. So these are things that people are working on.
We have we have we have top scientists to this,
(27:41):
top people. Yeah, they're the very top. I want to
say top men. Every single time it's not right. No,
it's not right. It's not right. I mean it's the
right quote, but it's not okay. So yeah, yeah, so
that's really cool. I mean, how do you do this
without having that sort of corruption involved in the actual printer.
This is how these are the problems people are working
on now to make these things even more precise and useful,
(28:04):
and people are working on them. Um. There was a
Kickstarter funded project that lets you print circuits in the
form of layers of silver nanoparticles onto basically whatever you want, um,
you know, be that plastics or ceramics or glass or
wood or fabric or paper. Right, you can actually design
a circuit, you know, a working circuit to do whatever
it is you wanted to do, and then print it
(28:24):
on one of these materials. There's the implications are endless.
I mean, you could do anything with this Circuits are
are very basic components of electronics, and once you understand
how they work, then you're really only limited by how
small can you make the circuit, right, because that's one
thing that with a microprocessor, obviously, we're talking about stuff
(28:46):
on the nano scale, which is something that three D
printers can't do yet. They can't get down to that scale.
So it's not like you're gonna print the next amazing
microprocessor that's going to power the next supercomputer. But you
could print some awesome circuits that lets you to do
some really creative things and redefine what we think of
when we say the word electronics. And you can print
your own circuits at home. I mean, that's the really
(29:08):
interesting part of this is that someone who is getting
started in electronics and you know, understands a little bit
about how to make a printed circuit board, or even
doesn't understand that much about it, could take this equipment
and use it to start playing in that arena. Yeah,
to me, it really excites me in the realm of cosplay,
being able to print circuits onto costume pieces. Working circuits, yeah, Yeah,
(29:32):
you don't have to think about all the wires, you
don't have to worry about anymore. Like I'm thinking, like
you know, daft punk style helmets where when you put
the helmet on you aren't immediately bathed with wires all
over your face. My my mind is blown. I'm only
my entire brain is stuttering right now. Okay, even even
cooler than this, and this is pretty cool. Uh There
(29:54):
there are some people who are working on integrated circuits
from three D printers. A team out of stay Aford
designed a three D printer attachment that can let you
integrate circuitry into a piece as you print it. It's
it's like a second printer head. They're calling it the
Rabbit proto Um and it's for rep wrap machines, which
are already designed to work with really strong, high temperature
(30:15):
polymers like a crylon nitrial of but two dyeing styrene
or a B S, which is the stuff for example,
that most of the components of that three D printed
gun that made headlines a while back was made of
also like lego bricks. Yeah, lego bricks. That's a BS material,
as I learned on Current Geek when they quizzed me
about it. Um, Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's like a
(30:36):
primary component and a lot of different stuff, And the
idea of an integrated circuit where you're printing the circuit
inside the object itself so it's all incorporated together is
is incredible. In an early demo, they printed out these
puzzle pieces that had circuits running through them so that
when you put the puzzle together, it would complete the circuit.
So let's say you have a battery on one side
(30:57):
and the light on the other, and you when you've
finished putting the puzzle together, the light bulb lights up
because you've completed the circuit. That's really cool. This is
even cooler for cosplay than the other one. So the
other one you would print a circuit on top of something,
which you know, granted you could if you damage the
circuit then you would break it. Possibly, So this way
you could have incorporated in the costume piece itself. I'm thinking, yeah,
(31:19):
Tron costumes, I'm thinking Halo. So many choices other than costuming.
It could probably have many useful applications for industry. Sure,
oh yeah, sure, there there are practical applications obviously, but
those aren't important to me, and and to be fair,
I don't really see what is more practical than than
(31:41):
I'm after chief suits. Yeah, so so start Spartan Armor
is where it's at. But so so, this is an
open source project and the students are looking to create
a startup once they graduate this year. Um this is
all designed by students. I don't think that I mentioned
at the top of this paragraph. This is students at Stanford,
like grad students. That's incredible to um. So, they're they're
already accepting pre orders for the Rabbit proto, ranging from
(32:04):
a single syringe for like three fifty fifty dollars to
a replace one of your your own printer heads piece
for four hundred and fifty dollars to a fully integrated
printer for only two thousand, five hundred dollars. Only two
hundred dollars. Now I know that I say, I mean,
that's a big chunk of change for me. That's like
more than my lunch. But yeah, but still, when you're
talking about three D printers, it was not that long
(32:24):
ago that was outside the realm of any three D printer,
let alone one that could print an integrate circuit. So
it really just shows how far along this this technology
has come. Also, when you think about it and you know,
I made some jokes about cosplay and everything I am
legimately is excited by that. It's actually true. No, but
but one of the things that this this could potentially
(32:46):
lead to is the idea that's been around ever since
people have started talking about three D printers, which is
to use a three D printer to print another three
D printer, so that once you have something that is
capable of printing and all the materials you need for
a basic three D printer, that's it, and the rep
wrap is almost there. It's it's able to print most
(33:07):
of itself already, and so once we get to the
point where we're able to do the whole thing, really
all you need is for a group of friends to
get together and say, all right, we're gonna pull our
money by one of these we're gonna buy the raw
materials we need. Then we print them out for everybody,
and now we all have one. So for the price
of one printer, we're able to buy unlimited number of printers,
(33:29):
internal printers, infinity printers. Yeah, it's just that you then
have to make sure you still have some money because
you can have to buy the raw materials. But other
than that, you're good so that's pretty cool. Okay, so
all of this has been, you know, even if experimental,
definitely within the realm of reality that is happening today.
Let's talk about the weird stuff. Okay. You sent me
(33:51):
a link to a regenerative regenerative running shoes, so I
thought I would look this thing up and uh talk
about whackadoodle crazy. All right, So I know what you're thinking, right, Lauren.
I mean, I'm I'm okay about shoes, but I'm a
typical guy and that when I find a pair of shoes,
I like, I just want to wear those shoes for forever.
(34:12):
Don't need to ever buy a different type of shoe,
except the fact that shoe manufacturers, often without any regard
for my sanity, will stop producing a certain type of shoe,
forcing me to go out and buy a different type
of shoe once my shoes have worn out, which they do.
I could show Lauren the bottom of my shoe right now.
(34:34):
It has a hole in it. The shoe I am
wearing needs to be replaced. However, I stopped making this
type of shoe, so I'm already going through this existential crisis. Anyway,
what if you had a shoe that was made out
of a material that could actually repair itself after you
had finished wearing it. You put it up at the
end of the day, and it repairs itself. It heals
(34:56):
it actually doesn't just repair, it heals itself so that
you you can then wear it again the next day
and just wear it until you get tired of these shoes.
And not only that, it's three D printed perfectly molded
to your foot, so it's a perfect fit. That's incredible, right,
that that is in fact literally incredible. What if I
(35:18):
also told you that it was made out of biosynthetic
material called protocells that themselves are not living, so it's
not like you're putting on a shoe life form on
your feet. However, it works with your your your actual
skin to create this kind of symbiotic relationship where when
(35:40):
you're running around, it can inflate or deflate and thus
cushion your foot or remove that cushioning if you don't
need it, and then order Yeah, like like those little
fingertoe shoes that that that my wife despises because she
thinks they're creepy. Uh, sort of like that, except actually
printed straight for your foot. You peel those off at
(36:03):
the end of the day. I'm sure it makes a
pleasant sound. And then you put them into a little
back to container like thing like you would have seen
an Empire strikes back where Luke has lost his hand.
He's been put in there and he's healing up anyway,
it's the same sort of thing you put it in there.
It's got this living protocell type fluid inside of it
which actually works to heal the shoe at the end
(36:24):
of the day. I'm not sure they're sure whether I'm
impressed or creeped out at this juncture. It sounds like
it's probably the most amazingly disgusting type of shoe I
would put them on. This sounds like some Cronenberg stuff.
I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with with life fluid
regenerating my shoes at the end of the day. I
don't know if I want my shoes to be a
(36:45):
potentially living organism. According to the article which we was
in the Verge. By the way, we'll we'll link out
to the article as well. Um. According to the article,
the the goo that you would put these shoes in
at the end of the day could be dyed in
any color which would then make your shoes that color.
So well, that's that's good. You choose what color. I
(37:05):
wouldn't want want living protocel organisms to you know, dye
my shoes whatever color they wanted. Now you want to
be strict on that kind of thing. You give them
an inch, they'll walk all over you. Uh yeah, this
is something that um is both incredible and creepy somehow
at the same time. I mean, they're not actually living, obviously,
(37:27):
it's not that we've created some sort of life form.
And also this is not something that's going to be
coming out in stores anytime soon. In fact, No, No,
the projection was by twenty fifty, which who knows. By
then maybe we have reached a point with the singularity
where we don't need feet anymore, so it might be
a moot point. Yeah. And this, this whole project was
was done for the Wearable Futures conference, and so you know,
(37:50):
it wasn't an extremely serious like like top people are
working on this. No, this is more of a kind
of thinking outside the box, what what is in the
realm of possibility? And but again it would have been
a three D printed uh shoe, So really another wonderful
thing about three D printing is this idea we mentioned
at at the very beginning of this podcast of being
(38:12):
able to tailor make something specifically for a person and
no two people are alike. This is another thing that
the prosthetic approach is very promising. If you're able to
get very specific measurements incorporated into the design, you can
build a prosthetic that's going to work for one person
really really well, and then when the next person comes along,
(38:32):
you tweak some things and you make one that works
for them. Uh, you're not using a one size fits
all kind of approach, which obviously would not work great
for anybody. That's that's not that's like the worst of
all worlds. This is the opposite of that. So that's
really exciting stuff. And again we're just scratching the surface
with the sort of things that three D printing is
(38:53):
going to be able to do. I mean, we still
have people who are genuinely concerned that three D printing
is going to really disrupt a lot of businesses, like
like furniture stores, where you're able to print the equivalent
of something that you would find at saying whatever fancy
chair you like. Yeah, we're still a ways away from that.
But that's that's in a lot of minds. There's some
(39:16):
thought of trying to make that into a virtual store
where you would go to a virtual store by the
plans for whatever piece of furniture you happen to like
and then printed at home, uh, or you would send
that to if you don't have a printer at home,
you might send it to a facility near you, a
local designer printer. Yeah, it could be a small business
(39:36):
that just has a bunch of different bays of printers,
and all those printers are being used to build stuff
on spec from customers. Like, that's a perfectly workable business
model that is probably just a few years away. And
and even even if for some reason all of this
is just a fad, the idea of three D printers
and all of our homes making all of our stuff
(39:58):
is never going to happen. These kind of medical capacities
and and you know, skull replacement parts and and bone
replacements and and or grafting new bone onto your existing
bone with a three D printing bone pen. That kind
of stuff is absolutely going to change our world. It's
already changing lives right now. It's just going to continue
(40:18):
to do so, so that is incredible stuff. Well, if
you have any questions about what we just talked about,
or maybe you've got a suggestion for a topic we
should tackle in another episode of Forward Thinking, let us know.
Send us a message. Our email addresses f W Thinking
at Discovery dot com, and then you can let us
know on Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus. Our handle
(40:39):
at all three is f W Thinking and we will
talk to you again really soon. For more on this
topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
(41:03):
brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, I'll see everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future and says our
house in the middle of the street. I'm Jonathan Strickland
and I'm Lauren bulk bomb Our other coast. Joe McCormick
(00:23):
is out today, so we are going it alone. Yep.
But you know it's all right because we've done this
show without me. We've done an episode I think or
maybe two without Lauren. So really, I mean, we all
just take turns, and Joe knows that the future is
strong in our hands. We're going to keep the future going.
We're not going to break the future. Yes, we we
(00:44):
sadly do not have the Mystical Acts in the studio,
but it's presence really has imputas Yeah, the mystical Acts
is really now a metaphor. It's it's the mystical Acts
that's inside us all. But Joe is the caretaker of
the mystical accent, and frankly we didn't want to do
around his desk and find where he keeps it for
fear of discovering something we cannot unlearned. But Today, we're
(01:06):
going to learn more about something we've already talked about
a couple of times on this podcast, three D printing.
And the reason we're talking about again is because folks
keep coming up with really cool applications for this stuff. Now,
if you've only ever seen a demo of a three
D printer, or perhaps have managed to work on one
in some small capacity, you're probably aware it's it's what
(01:29):
we call additive manufacturing, right, is this process of adding
layer upon layer of very thin material to build a
three dimensional object from the ground up. Now, traditionally plastics
are used in these things, but um, but these days
lots of different materials are are being used to create
all kinds of different uh end objects. Yeah, I remember
(01:51):
that you and Joe talked about printing things like pizza,
which which may or may not have been a success
less than a total success. But but but I mean edible.
I mean something that is relatively nutritious and not completely disgusting. Yeah. Hey,
you know, baby steps, baby steps towards the replicator, my friends.
(02:12):
And honestly, if I can cook something that falls into
those categories the traditional way, then I'm pretty proud of myself.
I counted as a win myself. Yeah, same here. So
the cool thing we wanted to talk about today a
couple of different things. Actually, well, one was something that
we talked about in this week's Forward Thinking video three
D printed houses. I mean an entire entire house. Yeah,
(02:34):
And when we're talking about three D printer, this thing
is enormous. If you were to look at you would
just think this is some really bizarre construction machinery because
it's so big. It measures ten meters wide, which is
thirty three ft by six point six meters high, which
is twenty two ft, so thirty three ft wide twenty
(02:55):
two ft tall. And this thing can print a house
out of recycled materials no less. Yeah. Now, specifically, it
was a company in China, near Shanghai that was using
this as a demonstration. They printed ten houses in a
single day, and these were relatively small houses. The material
(03:16):
looks very much like concrete is, but they were able
to take runoff like the stuff that isn't used in
other manufacturing processes and use that recycle that into actual
construction material. So it cuts down on waste not only
by taking this recycled material, but by using this additive uh,
(03:37):
manufacturing process because, like we talked about in previous podcasts,
if you're talking about subtractive, that means you take something
and then you carve away all the stuff you don't want. Right.
This is traditional sculpture is a subtractive process where you
take a block of whatever material is, so let's say
it's marble, and then you cut away all the stuff
that doesn't look like David, you know. That's the ballistic
(04:00):
way of putting it. But three D printing is additive,
where you're only adding the stuff you need and you
don't add anything that's that's superfluous or necessary, so you
have less waste. It can also be more structurally sound,
uh than than having to worry about how the corners
joined up, because they're built joined up right now. The
Chinese version I saw, which by the way, they bought
(04:21):
that three D printer from the United States. But the
Chinese version I saw it looked more like they were
printing large segments together and then assembling them. But there's
another version that was proposed and built by the University
of Southern California that could print an entire house in
twenty four hours, and it in fact is printed you
(04:42):
get the whole house. It's not printed. It's not like
you get four walls that you didn't have to put
together and then a roof that you have to put
on top. It prints the whole thing. Wow. So so
it's on some kind of some kind of rail system
or scaffolding. The three the three D printer itself is
on rails. So imagine two arms, each of which are
mounted on a rail that are separated by However, why
do you want the house to be? So? These rails
(05:04):
allow the the printer head to move up and down
the entire length of where that house is going to
be and laid down, layer by layer everything in this house.
It's pretty phenomenal. Now, granted, this approach also means that
you're really just creating the foundation, the structures, the walls,
the ceiling, that kind of thing, even leaving uh spaces
(05:27):
for things like windows and doors. But you are not
printing components that will be necessary that you have to
add in later, things like plumbing or electricity, that stuff
we have to Yeah, we haven't quite gotten to the
point yet where we can print all of that together.
As it turns out, mixing materials within a single project
is relatively difficult. It is something that that we're as
we're going to talk about later on, people are working on. Yes,
(05:49):
So it's really cool that this this approach is being
used for multiple reasons. One is just the idea that
you could you could build a house ten houses and day.
That could be fine for people who have who need
low income housing, because these houses are also really cheap.
One the houses are since they're being uh created by
(06:10):
a printer, mean that the labor costs are lower and
to the materials cost because it's recycled, are lower. So
the approximate price of one of these houses is less
than five thousand dollars for a house. So you think,
all right, print ten of those in a day. You've
got fifty thou dollars worth of houses, which normally fifty
(06:33):
thou dollars wouldn't even buy you much of a of
a large house in most major areas in the especially
here in Atlanta, um if you're living in the city anyway,
So it's it's pretty interesting on those levels. And they
also are talking about possibly using something like this to
construct the actual levels of a skyscraper, so perhaps one
(06:54):
day being able to print floor by floor a skyscraper
that then gets assembled. It's really interesting idea. I don't
know how far it's going to go, but the idea
of being able to do something like this, use computer
assisted design to build your dream home and then print
it out is pretty cool. Well, considering that that some
segments of the construction industry are are already trying to
(07:18):
to use that kind of three D modeling and um
and cheaper labor through these pre designed uh customs little
bit almost like modules modules right right, thank you, and
out of manufacturing is is really just the next step
in all of that. So, and and not having to
drag giant pre built modules around on trucks is also
(07:41):
you just have to move the giants, the giant three
D printer to wherever you need to go. But I mean,
even if even if this means printing something and then
using a giant tractor trailer to to haul at someplace,
you're still talking about building a house in a fraction
of the time it would take. I mean, anyone who
has seen a house being built no that that tends
to be a pretty long process. So being able to
(08:04):
do it in a day, like even the the the
University of Southern California version, which was a multi room
house with multiple floors. They said they could still do
it in twenty four hours. So twenty four hours start
to finish, you have a you have a house. It
may not quite be ready to be to move into,
but that all the structures are built. That is amazing.
So it's it's really cool. But that's that's just one
(08:27):
use of three D printing that we wanted to cover.
There's actually a whole bunch, especially in the medical field, right,
I mean, anything that's on a smaller scale is obviously
going to be a little bit easier to deal with,
and there are so many opportunities for for advancements in medicine. Yeah,
one of the ones that I wanted to talk about
is is actually a pretty simple one in the grand
(08:49):
scheme of things, because some of the stuff we're gonna
talk about tends to be let's let's use the word
invasive the in order to take advantage of it. We're
talking about things some kind of surgery. Yeah, this in
this case, this is just replacing the good old broken
arm or broken leg cast Like I don't know, I
have never had to wear one, all right, so neither
(09:10):
of us have experienced the joy of having a plaster cast.
But they but they look they look itchy and unwieldy
and terrible, right, and they don't allow your skin to
breathe or anything like that. I can just imagine just
going crazy thinking I just I just want some air
on my skin and coming out even more pasty and
translucent to the neither of us, which would pretty much
(09:30):
mean we'd be completely transparent. Yeah, we go from translucent
to transparent like those little frogs at the or or
the the invisible woman type uh model that you could
get in school where it show all the veins, and yeah,
that would be us. It's really not far from where
we are already. But yeah, so so one way of
(09:52):
perhaps going a different route than the plaster cast is
to follow the design of Dinna's Kasan And I have
no idea if I pronounced his name correctly, but he's
a Turkish designer who created this super cool three D
printed essentially a plastic cast. Uh. The way it works
(10:13):
is you would first have whatever body part needed to
have the cast on it completely scanned three D scanned,
so you're getting all the different angles there. The cast
is then built specifically to the contours of that limb,
so it fits nice and snug. It prints into two
segments which then snapped together, just like if you've ever
put together any kind of plastic toy, you know that
(10:35):
has a little pegs, poles, same sort of thing, And
instead of being a solid piece like a plaster cast is,
it looks more like a net. So it's got holes
that are opened up so that your your skin can breathe.
You've got that ability to if an itch hits you
actually scratch it without having to stick some sort of
chopstick down the cast and hope you can hit the
(10:57):
right spot. Uh. And also an interesting idea, although it's
somewhat untested or at least the tests are inconclusive, is
to allow using an ultrasonic emitter to put ultrasonic signals
into your your your body to help stimulate bone healing.
(11:18):
So there's some studies that suggest this actually works. There's
some studies that say that ultrasonic stimulation has a negligible,
if any effect, So the jury is still out on
whether or not ultrasonic stimulation is really a benefit, and
if it is, if it's a measurable enough benefit to
justify the cost. So there's still some debate on that,
(11:42):
but one thing is for sure. If you have a
big plaster cast on, you can't really take advantage of
it anyway, because the ultrasonic frequencies are going to have
trouble just penetrating that. So if you have have one
that has holes in it where you can actually put
the emitter right up against the skin, you get around that.
I'll take the being able to scratch an itch thing. Yeah,
even even if the ultrasonic ends up ultimately proving to
(12:05):
not be a scientifically valid means of helping heal the bone.
The comfort factor alone, plus these things look kind of
kind of badass. They do, They really do. I mean,
you know, if you want to go sort of punk,
fishnetty sort of look and hey, I'm punk, but maybe
that's that's me I want. I want the fish nets
and they can be printed in any color. Yeah yeah, yeah.
(12:27):
The ones I saw were black, but they also had
them printed in white, which was nice. Um, I mean
I would probably go hot pink because that's clearly what
I always think of you, Yeah, because I mean I'm
punk rock, but I like to feel pretty, So yeah,
super cool use of it. But then we have some more.
I guess you could say extreme uses of three D
(12:48):
printing things for something beyond a broken bone. So for example, prostheses, right,
which we've talked a bunch about before on the show.
And uh, and I think that in the last time
that we were talking about prostheses, we didn't mention the
possibility of three D printing things specifically for specific people. Yeah,
but but it's become so much cheaper and more widespread,
(13:10):
so much easier to access right now, A lot of
these prostheses tend to be fairly primitive compared to say,
you know, your top of the line prosthetics. Like there's
some procetics out there that are fully have you know,
robotic motors and everything in them so that they can
respond to either muscle control or some other control mechanism.
(13:30):
These that we're talking about here are less um less sophisticated,
but they can still make a dramatic impact on the
life of someone who has lost a limb or perhaps
was born without, say, fingers. We're going to talk a
little bit about a person like that. So this is
really cool stuff. I love the idea of of democratizing
(13:51):
a technology and getting it into a lot more fields.
Where people would not necessarily have the means, maybe they
don't have the money or they don't have accessibility of
getting one of these incredible prosthetics, because seeing a doctor
paying for that kind of thing exactly. Project Daniel is
a really good example of that. Yeah, this is a
came This came from Not Impossible Labs. So so Mike
(14:14):
of Not Impossible Labs, He's actually done quite a few videos,
including a ted talk about some of the work he's
done with this. This group flew down to Sudan to
print a prosthetic arm for a young man named Daniel,
who had lost both his arms in a bomb blast.
I mean, obviously, the Sudan is the the is a
region that has just been uh plagued by war, very
(14:35):
violent conflicts for years and years, and they're countless victims
of this, lots of people who have lost one or
more limbs. So he went down and worked with the
people of this little town in the Sudan and brought
along a three D printer, brought brought along spools of
(14:55):
the material that the three D printer uses, and began
to work on building a three D printed arm for Daniel. Yeah,
but not just too I mean, and that alone is wonderful,
of course, but also to teach the community how to
use these tools so that they can continue using it
after he and and the other project leaders had gone
(15:16):
back home. Yeah, and that's exactly what has happened. That
there's a follow up that talks about how they have
printed I think an arm a day, they've printed limbs
to help people. It gives them a new range of motion,
gives them freedom. For example, with with Daniel, they talked
about how this allowed him to feed himself for the
first time in two years. So that is something we all,
(15:39):
most of us, I won't say we all, most of
us take for granted. We take this stuff for granted.
So to think of someone regaining that kind of agency
in their own lives is it's really moving. And so
we're seeing that being used in places like uh, the
Sedan and other places that have very little access to
tap of the line kind of prosthetics. You know, that
(16:02):
gets a lot of attention in the robotics field over
in other countries like in the United States, But this
is something that could dramatically change a lot of people's lives.
Another example, another really heartwarming story. Yeah, there's a Kansas
teenager named Mason Wilde who used a three D printer
to make a prosthetic hand for a neighbor of his.
(16:24):
So one of his neighbors is this nine year old girl. Yeah, no,
no fingers on one hand. Um, And so Mason Wilde
printed up, he designed and worked, and he had already
built a computer from scratch when he was a little
bit younger. So this teenager goes and builds, designs and
builds a three D printed hand and uh and and
(16:46):
the girl absolutely adores it. And it can do things
like it can grip pick things up. She's able to
have a lot more mobility. She was born without these fingers,
so it wasn't due to an injury, but now she
has um a working hand and she loves it. The
neat thing about this three D printing approach is also
that as a person grows, you can print new new prosthses.
(17:09):
Yeah and you you know again, combining the three D
scanning with a three D printing makes this much easier. Obviously,
if you don't have the three D scanner, it's a
lot more trial and error. But even but but but
either way, I mean the idea that a high school
er went and did this for his elementary school neighbor.
Is just so cute and and indicative of the way
(17:30):
that the industry can go right. This is very clearly
something that is is at a core of a large
part of the three D printer community, like a three
D printer enthusiasts, the folks who have been behind this
technology for the better part of a decade while most
of us were unaware that such a thing could even exist.
This is the sort of stuff they've been championing from
(17:52):
the very beginning, and now we're seeing the stories come
out as the technology has become sophisticate enough to actually
make it a reality, because clearly, you know, in the
early days, you're talking about resolutions of several microns thick
per layer, which means that you couldn't have a really
smooth kind of object that you printed on a on
(18:12):
a micro level, anything that had a lot of moving parts.
It was a little complicated. And now we're getting to
the sophisticated printers that can print on either are micron
thick or even thinner, and that's that just means that
you're able to make much more complex materials by by
combining all the little things that you've printed out sophistication
and also am inexpensiveness in this case, you know, giving
(18:36):
that teenager access to a three D printer that that
he can work with. He apparently went to a library
and use the libraries three D printer. So when you
think about that, you right, he was able to print
a hand using a public institutions three D printer. Uh,
this is something that again, a prosthetic can cost thousands
(18:56):
of dollars depending upon the complexity and how it needs
to be fitted to the person. I mean, this is
a process that usually takes months and months and and
thousands of dollars of money that a lot of people
just don't have. So it's pretty phenomenal stuff. Back on
the sophistication side though. Um Over in Wales, a man
(19:17):
who had been in a motorcycle accident that had affected
half of his face has has been printed replacement skull parts. Yeah, now,
this is pretty phenomenal. He broke both cheekbones, a joy,
lost teeth. I mean it was it was a terrible injury.
Oh yeah yeah, but they but they were able to
scan the healthy side of his head using CT that's
that's computerized tomography in which a series of X rays
(19:37):
from many angles are combined to create cross sections of
a patient's bones and soft tissue. Um they used that
to create and print a three D model of what
they wanted to do, including like custom fit surgical guides,
and then printed titanium implants specified for this dude's face,
which is phenomenal. Yeah. It means that they were able
to make his face much more symmetrical than any other
(20:00):
means and that uh, he would end up looking more
like his old self, because I mean, this is this
is incredible surgery. I mean, you're talking about replacing a
significant portion of his skull. Yeah. The doctors also said that,
you know that that specificity allowed them to take a
lot of the kind of dangerous guesswork out of out
of the surgical work that they were doing. Sure, because
(20:21):
I mean, if you end up miscalculating and then you're
in the process of implanting that and you realize this
isn't going to work, then that means you already have
to have another surgery down the line. If you're in
the middle of an eight hour surgery and this is Yeah,
that that's terrible. So yeah, this was this is a
pretty phenomenal use. And then the next one makes my
(20:43):
mind boggle. This this, it's hard for me to even
imagine this idea. So, Lauren, why don't you tell me
about the equivalent of a three D printed pacemaker? Okay,
this one is a lot more experimental. So so researchers
have printed a custom fit electronic membrane that can wrap
over a heart and provide the same monitoring and an
(21:03):
emergency stimulation that pacemakers can. Today, now, Jonathan and I
did a whole episode about pacemakers over on our other
show Text Stuff, and I meant to go grab the
date and episode title, but I did not, So we'll
throw that in with the when we publish this podcast,
I'll make sure that to tweet out and everything of
the link to that so you guys can listen. So yeah,
so so watch for that on social guys. But um,
(21:25):
but but so, I mean, basically, what a pacemaker does
is if um, you know your your your heart runs
on electrical single signals, and if something goes wrong, a
sensor can tell and and give it a little bit
of a of a burst to keep a little defibrillator
almost to reregulate it, to get it pumping back in
a normal, uh, normal beat. So what these researchers did
(21:47):
They scanned the heart and we're talking about a rabbit
heart that was x vivo so so outside the body
and in laboratory conditions. And then they printed this kind
of polymer glove that can be integrated with silicon and
uh electronic sensors, all structured in a way that lets
them stretch without breaking. This allows the sensors in the
device to be in this constant easy contact with the heart.
(22:09):
You know, you don't have to like staple it onto
the heart or whatever you use when you're trying to
attach things to the heart, probably not staples, I I imagine,
which could allow the device to hypothetically be a lot
more useful and less traumatic to a body than the
comparable technology that's in use today. Is pretty amazing. Thinking
thinking of as a heart glove that monitors the hearts activity,
(22:32):
can respond if the activity is not is not healthy,
it's and it's custom fit for you. So it's so
I mean, I don't have words for how incredible this is.
I mean, the idea, it's it's so science fiction e E
E that I have a hard time wrapping my mind
around it. The idea of scanning an organ inside my
(22:54):
body and then printing this thing that would wrap around
it and keep it healthier longer is amazing. I mean,
it's the idea of a pacemaker alone makes me kind
of sit there and marvel. But this is this is
if this works out, because obviously this isn't that experimental stage,
(23:14):
and perhaps this will never will never see this in
this particular implementation, but the work that's being done will
surely inform us in other ways that we can anticipate.
So even if this does not ultimately work out to
be the future of pacemaker technology, it's really exciting work. Yeah. Yeah,
any any one element of it, from the from the
stretchable electronics to too Yeah. Well, I mean just the
(23:38):
idea of a a custom made glove that fits on
your heart. I mean, now, for the fashion conscious, I
can see where the the desire is. But that's not
what we're talking about here, obviously, And obviously it's not
just for any normal human person walking around. This would
be for patients who who already have some kind of
(23:59):
some kind of trouble or are expected to have some
kind of trouble. Now, it's also interesting to me this
idea of printing something that has electronics worked into it.
Because any again, anyone who's worked with printers, three D printers,
especially the more primitive ones, they're mostly used to printing
like a little uh figurine made out of this plastic stuff,
(24:21):
and not necessarily something that has electronic parts. But we've
actually found evidence of stuff people who are who are
printing electronics, Like they're printing all the different components of
an electronic device and then putting it together. Yeah. And
even more than that, people have started creating single additive
(24:42):
products that have some of those electronics built right in. Um. Uh,
there's a speaker that has come out of Cornell Labs
that using using two different printers working on on a
single product at different stages, researchers have created a working
consumer level speaker uh that the casing seamlessly integrated with
the conductive coils made of silver ink and magnets made
(25:04):
of a viscous, curable blend of strontium ferright, And so
you hook this thing up with wires to an electronic
device and you've got sound. Back in two thousand nine,
the same lab used a three D printer to create
a working replica of the telegraph receiver and recorder that
Samuel Morse and Alfred Vale used to send the very
first Morse code message in What was the message the
(25:28):
same as the first actual Morse code message? What hath
god rot? Well? Oh yeah, the classics never die. Uh,
you know this is really interesting. Actually, watch the video
of the speaker, not not the telegraph, but the speaker
being built, and then at the very end of it
they actually demonstrate the speaker. They play an audio clip
of President Obama talking about three D printers. Um, it's
(25:52):
a little tenny. It's not. It's not it's not the
best speaker, not the best quality. But the proof of
concept again, this idea of being able to print entire
electronic device. They made electromagnetic components from a three D printer. Yeah,
that's crazy. That's that's the really cool. So and this
is also where we get into the discussion about you
know this this is a really cool proof of concept.
(26:13):
It also illustrates how tricky this is because you know,
I'm pretty sure this the speaker approach used two different
three D printers. That's correct. Yeah, I mean they used
a single object and transferred it from one printer to
the end, right right, It's not that, but it was
in order for them to be able to print in
these different materials. And that's and that's partially because these
(26:35):
materials have, you know, extremely different melting points and different
recoagulation points. They're different, they have different conductivities. Some are conductive,
some are not conductive. There are a lot of different
um features that these various materials have that are not
necessarily compatible with one another, and you don't want to
contaminate one with another. So, for example, if you want
(26:56):
to print in a conductive material, this is something that's
going to con duct electricity. It's going to be a
primary component of your electronic device. You do not want
that to get contaminated with non conductive material. You don't
want plastic mixed in with that. It's going to inhibit
any kind of electricity flow. So, you know, using the
exact same device to print all the stuff on, you
have to make sure you're really good about designing it
(27:19):
so that you're not going to have any sort of
waste material left over at the end of the plastic
printing section before you move on to say the silver
printing section, and vice versa. You wouldn't want any silver
still kicking around in there when you start printing the
plastics that are supposed to be insulating whatever you're doing,
right exactly. So these are things that people are working on.
We have we have we have top scientists to this,
(27:41):
top people. Yeah, they're the very top. I want to
say top men. Every single time it's not right. No,
it's not right. It's not right. I mean it's the
right quote, but it's not okay. So yeah, yeah, so
that's really cool. I mean, how do you do this
without having that sort of corruption involved in the actual printer.
This is how these are the problems people are working
on now to make these things even more precise and useful,
(28:04):
and people are working on them. Um. There was a
Kickstarter funded project that lets you print circuits in the
form of layers of silver nanoparticles onto basically whatever you want, um,
you know, be that plastics or ceramics or glass or
wood or fabric or paper. Right, you can actually design
a circuit, you know, a working circuit to do whatever
it is you wanted to do, and then print it
(28:24):
on one of these materials. There's the implications are endless.
I mean, you could do anything with this Circuits are
are very basic components of electronics, and once you understand
how they work, then you're really only limited by how
small can you make the circuit, right, because that's one
thing that with a microprocessor, obviously, we're talking about stuff
(28:46):
on the nano scale, which is something that three D
printers can't do yet. They can't get down to that scale.
So it's not like you're gonna print the next amazing
microprocessor that's going to power the next supercomputer. But you
could print some awesome circuits that lets you to do
some really creative things and redefine what we think of
when we say the word electronics. And you can print
your own circuits at home. I mean, that's the really
(29:08):
interesting part of this is that someone who is getting
started in electronics and you know, understands a little bit
about how to make a printed circuit board, or even
doesn't understand that much about it, could take this equipment
and use it to start playing in that arena. Yeah,
to me, it really excites me in the realm of cosplay,
being able to print circuits onto costume pieces. Working circuits, yeah, Yeah,
(29:32):
you don't have to think about all the wires, you
don't have to worry about anymore. Like I'm thinking, like
you know, daft punk style helmets where when you put
the helmet on you aren't immediately bathed with wires all
over your face. My my mind is blown. I'm only
my entire brain is stuttering right now. Okay, even even
cooler than this, and this is pretty cool. Uh There
(29:54):
there are some people who are working on integrated circuits
from three D printers. A team out of stay Aford
designed a three D printer attachment that can let you
integrate circuitry into a piece as you print it. It's
it's like a second printer head. They're calling it the
Rabbit proto Um and it's for rep wrap machines, which
are already designed to work with really strong, high temperature
(30:15):
polymers like a crylon nitrial of but two dyeing styrene
or a B S, which is the stuff for example,
that most of the components of that three D printed
gun that made headlines a while back was made of
also like lego bricks. Yeah, lego bricks. That's a BS material,
as I learned on Current Geek when they quizzed me
about it. Um, Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's like a
(30:36):
primary component and a lot of different stuff, And the
idea of an integrated circuit where you're printing the circuit
inside the object itself so it's all incorporated together is
is incredible. In an early demo, they printed out these
puzzle pieces that had circuits running through them so that
when you put the puzzle together, it would complete the circuit.
So let's say you have a battery on one side
(30:57):
and the light on the other, and you when you've
finished putting the puzzle together, the light bulb lights up
because you've completed the circuit. That's really cool. This is
even cooler for cosplay than the other one. So the
other one you would print a circuit on top of something,
which you know, granted you could if you damage the
circuit then you would break it. Possibly, So this way
you could have incorporated in the costume piece itself. I'm thinking, yeah,
(31:19):
Tron costumes, I'm thinking Halo. So many choices other than costuming.
It could probably have many useful applications for industry. Sure,
oh yeah, sure, there there are practical applications obviously, but
those aren't important to me, and and to be fair,
I don't really see what is more practical than than
(31:41):
I'm after chief suits. Yeah, so so start Spartan Armor
is where it's at. But so so, this is an
open source project and the students are looking to create
a startup once they graduate this year. Um this is
all designed by students. I don't think that I mentioned
at the top of this paragraph. This is students at Stanford,
like grad students. That's incredible to um. So, they're they're
already accepting pre orders for the Rabbit proto, ranging from
(32:04):
a single syringe for like three fifty fifty dollars to
a replace one of your your own printer heads piece
for four hundred and fifty dollars to a fully integrated
printer for only two thousand, five hundred dollars. Only two
hundred dollars. Now I know that I say, I mean,
that's a big chunk of change for me. That's like
more than my lunch. But yeah, but still, when you're
talking about three D printers, it was not that long
(32:24):
ago that was outside the realm of any three D printer,
let alone one that could print an integrate circuit. So
it really just shows how far along this this technology
has come. Also, when you think about it and you know,
I made some jokes about cosplay and everything I am
legimately is excited by that. It's actually true. No, but
but one of the things that this this could potentially
(32:46):
lead to is the idea that's been around ever since
people have started talking about three D printers, which is
to use a three D printer to print another three
D printer, so that once you have something that is
capable of printing and all the materials you need for
a basic three D printer, that's it, and the rep
wrap is almost there. It's it's able to print most
(33:07):
of itself already, and so once we get to the
point where we're able to do the whole thing, really
all you need is for a group of friends to
get together and say, all right, we're gonna pull our
money by one of these we're gonna buy the raw
materials we need. Then we print them out for everybody,
and now we all have one. So for the price
of one printer, we're able to buy unlimited number of printers,
(33:29):
internal printers, infinity printers. Yeah, it's just that you then
have to make sure you still have some money because
you can have to buy the raw materials. But other
than that, you're good so that's pretty cool. Okay, so
all of this has been, you know, even if experimental,
definitely within the realm of reality that is happening today.
Let's talk about the weird stuff. Okay. You sent me
(33:51):
a link to a regenerative regenerative running shoes, so I
thought I would look this thing up and uh talk
about whackadoodle crazy. All right, So I know what you're thinking, right, Lauren.
I mean, I'm I'm okay about shoes, but I'm a
typical guy and that when I find a pair of shoes,
I like, I just want to wear those shoes for forever.
(34:12):
Don't need to ever buy a different type of shoe,
except the fact that shoe manufacturers, often without any regard
for my sanity, will stop producing a certain type of shoe,
forcing me to go out and buy a different type
of shoe once my shoes have worn out, which they do.
I could show Lauren the bottom of my shoe right now.
(34:34):
It has a hole in it. The shoe I am
wearing needs to be replaced. However, I stopped making this
type of shoe, so I'm already going through this existential crisis. Anyway,
what if you had a shoe that was made out
of a material that could actually repair itself after you
had finished wearing it. You put it up at the
end of the day, and it repairs itself. It heals
(34:56):
it actually doesn't just repair, it heals itself so that
you you can then wear it again the next day
and just wear it until you get tired of these shoes.
And not only that, it's three D printed perfectly molded
to your foot, so it's a perfect fit. That's incredible, right,
that that is in fact literally incredible. What if I
(35:18):
also told you that it was made out of biosynthetic
material called protocells that themselves are not living, so it's
not like you're putting on a shoe life form on
your feet. However, it works with your your your actual
skin to create this kind of symbiotic relationship where when
(35:40):
you're running around, it can inflate or deflate and thus
cushion your foot or remove that cushioning if you don't
need it, and then order Yeah, like like those little
fingertoe shoes that that that my wife despises because she
thinks they're creepy. Uh, sort of like that, except actually
printed straight for your foot. You peel those off at
(36:03):
the end of the day. I'm sure it makes a
pleasant sound. And then you put them into a little
back to container like thing like you would have seen
an Empire strikes back where Luke has lost his hand.
He's been put in there and he's healing up anyway,
it's the same sort of thing you put it in there.
It's got this living protocell type fluid inside of it
which actually works to heal the shoe at the end
(36:24):
of the day. I'm not sure they're sure whether I'm
impressed or creeped out at this juncture. It sounds like
it's probably the most amazingly disgusting type of shoe I
would put them on. This sounds like some Cronenberg stuff.
I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with with life fluid
regenerating my shoes at the end of the day. I
don't know if I want my shoes to be a
(36:45):
potentially living organism. According to the article which we was
in the Verge. By the way, we'll we'll link out
to the article as well. Um. According to the article,
the the goo that you would put these shoes in
at the end of the day could be dyed in
any color which would then make your shoes that color.
So well, that's that's good. You choose what color. I
(37:05):
wouldn't want want living protocel organisms to you know, dye
my shoes whatever color they wanted. Now you want to
be strict on that kind of thing. You give them
an inch, they'll walk all over you. Uh yeah, this
is something that um is both incredible and creepy somehow
at the same time. I mean, they're not actually living, obviously,
(37:27):
it's not that we've created some sort of life form.
And also this is not something that's going to be
coming out in stores anytime soon. In fact, No, No,
the projection was by twenty fifty, which who knows. By
then maybe we have reached a point with the singularity
where we don't need feet anymore, so it might be
a moot point. Yeah. And this, this whole project was
was done for the Wearable Futures conference, and so you know,
(37:50):
it wasn't an extremely serious like like top people are
working on this. No, this is more of a kind
of thinking outside the box, what what is in the
realm of possibility? And but again it would have been
a three D printed uh shoe, So really another wonderful
thing about three D printing is this idea we mentioned
at at the very beginning of this podcast of being
(38:12):
able to tailor make something specifically for a person and
no two people are alike. This is another thing that
the prosthetic approach is very promising. If you're able to
get very specific measurements incorporated into the design, you can
build a prosthetic that's going to work for one person
really really well, and then when the next person comes along,
(38:32):
you tweak some things and you make one that works
for them. Uh, you're not using a one size fits
all kind of approach, which obviously would not work great
for anybody. That's that's not that's like the worst of
all worlds. This is the opposite of that. So that's
really exciting stuff. And again we're just scratching the surface
with the sort of things that three D printing is
(38:53):
going to be able to do. I mean, we still
have people who are genuinely concerned that three D printing
is going to really disrupt a lot of businesses, like
like furniture stores, where you're able to print the equivalent
of something that you would find at saying whatever fancy
chair you like. Yeah, we're still a ways away from that.
But that's that's in a lot of minds. There's some
(39:16):
thought of trying to make that into a virtual store
where you would go to a virtual store by the
plans for whatever piece of furniture you happen to like
and then printed at home, uh, or you would send
that to if you don't have a printer at home,
you might send it to a facility near you, a
local designer printer. Yeah, it could be a small business
(39:36):
that just has a bunch of different bays of printers,
and all those printers are being used to build stuff
on spec from customers. Like, that's a perfectly workable business
model that is probably just a few years away. And
and even even if for some reason all of this
is just a fad, the idea of three D printers
and all of our homes making all of our stuff
(39:58):
is never going to happen. These kind of medical capacities
and and you know, skull replacement parts and and bone
replacements and and or grafting new bone onto your existing
bone with a three D printing bone pen. That kind
of stuff is absolutely going to change our world. It's
already changing lives right now. It's just going to continue
(40:18):
to do so, so that is incredible stuff. Well, if
you have any questions about what we just talked about,
or maybe you've got a suggestion for a topic we
should tackle in another episode of Forward Thinking, let us know.
Send us a message. Our email addresses f W Thinking
at Discovery dot com, and then you can let us
know on Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus. Our handle
(40:39):
at all three is f W Thinking and we will
talk to you again really soon. For more on this
topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
(41:03):
brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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