April 4, 2013 • 24 mins
3D Printer of the Gods II: Oh, you're into 3D printing? How 20 years ago. It's one thing to print in the three spatial dimensions, quite another to factor in the fourth dimension of time. But it's happening. And in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and Robert break down exactly what it's all about and discuss the future of manufacturing.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb And and this is part
two of our two parter on three D printing three
D printers of the Gods. Uh. The idea here and
the snazzy title, of course, refers to the idea that
(00:26):
three D printers essentially allow almost any idea that's out
there to take physical form, which in a way is
kind of kind of godlike and it and it forces
us to really rethink what the future is going to be, like,
what our relationship with objects is going to be, and
really also it makes us sort of think about what
our relationship with objects is now. We talked in the
last podcast about some of the current things that are
(00:47):
going on, such as Devantie is wearing a dress that
it was three D printed, people trying to three D
print the perfect plastic gun like an actual gun that
kills people, oxygen aryans printing out novelty adult toys exactly,
novelty to us exactly. And uh, and today we're going
(01:07):
to we we talked a little bit about the future
in the last one, but this time we're gon we're
gonna go a little more detailed on that. We're going
to talk about some of the near future revolutions in
three D printing that are really going to change the world.
It's true because although three D printers aren't quite the
transporter devices we hoped for at this point, the fact
(01:28):
of the matter is that they are rearranging matter and
they are sort of defined space and time when it
comes to objects, into consumerism and to making what you
want when you want it. So some of the things
that are going to be happening very soon with three
D printing um that are going to change everything. First
of all, we're looking at three D printing reaching the
(01:50):
industrial strength level. Now, three D printing, as we've mentioned before,
has been a part of industry for about twenty years now,
and it's been useful in UH create rapidly producing UH
prototypes in some cases. But we're talking about a situation
where three D printing will be able to produce objects
of high quality, industrial grade that can be that can
(02:11):
be a part of automobiles, etcetera. And now some automobiles
already have through some three D printing parts, but we're
talking about an age win pretty much all parts are
going to be produced by three D printing as opposed
to traditional subtractive methods such as printing the pieces out
of a sheet of metal or using a mold to
pour and pouring a mold to create the device. Yeah,
(02:32):
because I mean, at the end of the day, when
you're when you're talking about the future three D printing,
you're talking about materials that are lighter, that can be
made faster, and can be customized. So it's a perfect
fit for manufacturing. Um, So you know you're going to
see more of these printers and factories just printing out parts.
You also see them in the nano manufacturing industry, which
(02:55):
will talk more about. And then you look at you're
gonna see it just in actual like hey, we're gonna
build something. We're gonna build a building, and so imagine
large blocks of like custom building materials being printed out
on a job site. Yeah. And and to go back
to prototyping real quick, you're just gonna see that that
speeded up even more. The ability to quickly produce a
(03:16):
working prototype for for a new product. It's just gonna
be it's gonna be exponentially improved. Yeah. In fact, the
D shape printer, which was created by Enricodini, is capable
now of printing a two story building complete with rooms, stairs, pipes,
and partitions, and it uses nothing but sand an inorganic
binding compound, and then the resulting material has the same
(03:37):
durability as reinforced concrete. With this is super cool the
look of marble um. Of course, now you can only
use this on rounded structures, but the process itself takes
approximately about a fourth of the time as traditional buildings,
and it doesn't really require any specialized knowledge or skill set. Yeah,
because a lot of the you know, we get into
(03:59):
the idea of printing nano materials, and we've talked before
about like when whether we're talking about space elevators or
super tall buildings, we always come back around to the
use of nano materials because when you're building things from
the smallest level up, which to a certain extent is
three D printing in itself. It's the idea that I'm
starting small and building everything up from the bottom. But
if you start really small, if you're building things up
(04:20):
from the from the smallest structures possible, then you're able
to create super strong materials capable of tethering a space
elevator in place, or creating the sort of skyscrapers that
right now we can only dream of. It doesn't change physics,
but it changes the way that materials act in in
(04:40):
the realm of physics, which is really cool because that
is really liberating as as someone who is a designer
in someone who is trying to do something like see
a spacecraft. Yeah, I mean, it's the difference between me
selling two things together, or me sewing up a hole
in my hoodie or something as opposed to to an
actual scene stress or an or or sewing machine doing it. Um.
(05:02):
And you know, in the difference between a big visible
um stitch and an invisible stitch. And it's just the
finer level of detail, the finer grade of craftsmanship that
you get when you when you build things up from
that very small level. And when you're speaking about building
up things for a very small level, of course, you
start thinking about the medical ramifications that this because we're
(05:23):
built up very small exactly exactly, um. And we have
experiments and printing soft tissue that are underway now. UM.
But the idea is that if if you can master that,
you may begin to print veins and arteries to you
to be used in operations and then um, you know,
taking to the extreme, you can then print organs and
(05:44):
you're not even taking into the strain. The extreme is
of course printing the whole bodies. Yeah, I mean, which
not only would would vanquish the whole organ uh donor
problem that we have, right, but I mean you write
you just hey, here's another me. Yeah, I'm just going
to keep it in the and storage until I need
to replace myself. And this is a great example of
three D printer of the gods here, because we're essentially
(06:06):
talking about a three D printer creating objects, creating a
person as nature creates a person. You know, the the
idea that it's it's just it's created from the smallest piece,
it's it's grown. Yeah, there is an element of bio
mimicry about this. We'll talk about this more when we
talk about four D printing. But um, it is interesting
that we're getting sort of back to the basics when
(06:27):
we're talking about three D printing, because it really is
sort of saying, let's take take nature's way of building
up and see if we can recreate this process in
a machine. Um. Consumerism, Yes, this is gonna be huge.
I mean, this is what I think is going to
be one of the most interesting aspects about three D
(06:47):
printing because I think it will greatly change our behavior.
And you and I talked about this in the last
podcast last episode. Is that you know, one day you
could go to Amazon and you could click on a
box there that says I want to customize this because
as Amazon has now decided to use this technology with
their companies, um in their manufacturers, and it's just gonna
(07:08):
be something pretty wrote like, Hey, I need to get
this new SYNC, but I really would love to have
I don't know, some sort of crazy design of vampire
state building, yeah, you know in it or I don't know. Yeah,
I mean, and we already have some of those options,
for instance, with some of our our digital and some
non digital media media. You want a book, okay, if
you want it in hardback? You want and soft back?
(07:29):
You want in paperback? Or do you want it uh? Digital? Right? Uh?
And how do you want that album? Do you want
it joined vinyl, you want it on c D, you
want it on a retrocassette which is coming back in
some case? Do you or you want it digitally? All right? Well,
we have five options for that. You want to in flak,
you want an MP three, you want it, and and
you know, it just goes on and on. So you'll
see that kind of stuff when you buy things. All right,
(07:50):
what size do you want it? In? What color do
you want it? Also upload the dimensions of your hand
to upload that your actual physical dimensions, and we'll make
sure that it fits you to a t us. So
try to imagine that. So let's say that you want
a specific design that you can get to pick from
all these stock files of this specific design or you
know stock art, and then yeah, you can upload if
(08:10):
it if the object relates to your body, then you
upload your own dimensions and then Amazon surely will deliver
that to you within the hour because now even now
they're trying to do same day delivery. So we have wait.
Since we're extrapolating in the future, we have to think
about this, you know, five years out. Yeah, and you're
gonna see that It's going to be like with any
technological innovation, there are going to be companies that adapt
(08:32):
and shift and survive, and then they're gonna be ones
that fall to the wayside, and there are going to
be new entrepreneurs that that pop up that are like, hey,
this is how people are going to be consuming. What
can we do to game it? They're going to be
products that come out that are specifically aimed at three
D printing. Well, see, I'm glad that you brought that up,
because it really does change the landscape of companies in
their ability to produce. So, you know, I wonder does
(08:54):
Amazon then begin to produce items instead of just distribute,
because essentially they can take over if you can print anything,
then why even half manufacturers that you distribute? Why why
just um, why not just be the point persona and
then that process? And then to what extent did these
companies become the means of creating? You know? I mean
(09:16):
because like we mentioned before, I mean everybody, everybody wants
to to be an artist, Everyone wants to be a writer,
everyone wants to be a musician to varying degrees that
the Internet is a great example of all sorts of
different people producing something and wanting to share it with
the world. And then take that and translated to the
world of objects. So do these companies end up becoming
more and more involved in user generated content like the
(09:38):
Wikipedia of objects? Right? And you know our our storefronts
replaced by just a storefront. Yeah. Do you go to
the mall and it's just one uh three D printing kiosk.
We'll probably multiple chaos where you go in and you
you print out the things you want. I mean maybe
you have a situation where the stores are still there
so that you can you can shop. People like to
(09:59):
look at things before they buy them. But then when
you decide you print it out. You go to the kiosks,
you print it out, and you can print out you know,
your your new shoes, your new dress, the toy for
the kid, uh and maybe even your hamburger. I would
but just say you could also pray. If you're a
little bit you know, you feel like you mean a gnash,
then hey you can. This is an ability that Cornelling
University's fab Home fab at Home project can actually do
(10:23):
right now. They use gel like substances that can be
combined with other materials, including artificial flavor yeum uh to
mimic the taste in mouth feel of many different foods. Yeah,
this was really interesting because they also talked a little
bit about the the Uncanny Valley of foods with this
because because the gel like substance called hydro collides is
(10:44):
is apparently a little unsettling, like it's filled with artificial flavoring.
And you can print it, say, in the shape of
a turkey leg, sure, but if it doesn't taste like
a turkey leg, it's gonna be a little weird. So
they they've really kind of decided that they need to
work on the taste first and then worry about printing
it out in to the four into the actual shapes,
which which makes sense, and maybe to a certain extent
(11:05):
it's I mean, it makes me think of candy, right,
and specifically banana flavored candy. You ever had banana flavored candy?
It doesn't taste like bananas, and to a certain extent,
orange candy doesn't taste like oranges. But you get into
that area, how close can the taste be to the
thing and still get away with it? And to what
extent it does it become a new thing because orange
(11:27):
candy it's nothing like an actual orange in flavor or
in texture. But I know, I was just thinking about
to the twenties, and we talked about um when we
did the food episode, and we were talking about the
candy that became a stand in for a meal, because remember,
people didn't have much money and they had those turkey
meals and it was I don't know if it actually
(11:47):
was supposed to taste like a roast turkey or I
think I think they had chocolate and it was the idea.
The idea was, hey, you need a meal, here's a meal.
Peel it back and eat it. So we have evidence
that we've done this before, and certainly if you don't
have the resources, then maybe you can't accept that. And
after all, it's a shot of glucose. Anyways, look at
(12:08):
some of the stuff people eat already, Like a chicken
nugget is nothing like anything real. It's you know, it's
it's you know, you look at stuff with pink slime.
I mean, we're already magnufacturing unreal food out of strange things.
So and people and people love it. So um, pink
slime is found in hamburger meat, right, yeah, yeah, So
I I have no doubt that three D printing could
(12:30):
easily create something that people would love, if not tolerate. Specifically,
when you're talking about like say, long term space missions,
I mean these are environments where, yes, you want people
in space to want to eat because sometimes there's less
of an appetite there. But but ultimately you know, survival
food right well, And so that just made me think
about the parallels between the Uncanny Valley and smell racams
(12:53):
for food, right because there are some people who will
say the Uncanny Valley isn't as uncanny or creepier as
we think. You know, see a robot that's supposed to
look like a human or act like a human, or
move like a human and they don't because they are
not in it unsettles us. But we get used to things.
I mean, new food is uncanny Valley when you first
have it, like you know, have Thai food for the
(13:14):
first time, and you'll be like, this is a little uncanny,
but you know you'll love it in a week. So
guarantee you guaranteed. All Right, we're gonna take a quick
break and when we come back, we're gonna talk even
more about the future of three D printing and we're
going to talk about four D printing. All Right, we're
back and we're gonna talk here about four D printing.
(13:34):
And just to be clear, the term four D printing
is a it's a little bit of science headline bait.
It's misleading. Yeah, it's it's it looks great in the headline,
but when you really get down to the meat of it,
it's not. You're not really printing in space and time,
no more than you're always printing in space and time.
It's kind of like three D printing on steroids. Um.
And what we're talking about, we're talking about for D
(13:56):
printing is passive self assembly systems, which is still pretty
odd them. Don't let me underplay it. It's very cool.
Self assembly m I T. Researcher Skylar Tipbitts is sort
of the face of this right now in terms of
self assembly. And when I talk about it being on steroids,
we're talking about its allowing three D printers allowing to
(14:16):
print parts to self assemble and reassemble into a number
of products. So each part would be comprised of a
regular rigid plastic layer along with an outer layer made
up smart materials, not dumb ones. And then when they're
submerged in water, the smart materials absorb and they expand
and they cause the parts to move and form a
pre specified object. It's like if you're wearing kite jeans
(14:41):
and then you, and then you get reined on really
heavy layer. You fall in a swimming pool, and then
they start to shrink up, and then you were your
your form changes and you you you go into into
like stiff legged mode because you can't move your legs anymore.
It's kind of like that the outer layer is the
gene the blue jeans, and then the inner layer is you. Yeah, well,
I mean think it's really interesting. And this is uh
(15:01):
from a Ted talk that you sent me that Tibbott
is talking about the future of this and what makes
no sense so much sense. He's saying that currently we
build skyscrapers with about five hundred thousand into one million parts,
which all told takes about two years. And that's not
even counting the dead gangsters in the concrete exactly or
the vampires, um. And then he says though that we
(15:24):
should look toward natural systems to get a better idea
of how to use forty or self assembly. He says
that we have proteins that have two million types, they
can fold in ten thousand nanoseconds, and he says we
also have DNA with three billion base pairs we can
replicate in roughly an hour. So he said that out
(15:44):
of all this complexity complexity in our natural systems, UM,
there's still this idea that they're really efficient at what
they do, far more efficient than anything that we can build,
and far more complex than anything that we can build.
And so he says we should look towards this model
because it's it's really good, um and making something out
(16:05):
of as little energy as possible. Yeah, I mean, and
right now we're talking about again a little like a
three D printed stick that when the water is at
it, it it becomes a cube. But he's talking long term
the idea of the self assembly of large scale structures,
which is which is pretty phenomenal. I like how in
the talk he gets a little philosophic too and talks
about ultimately objects that have desire. Not only do we
(16:29):
desire them, but they have they have a desire in
the sense that there is something that they will be.
I mean, it gets a little we want Yeah, when
you get into one. I mean, it's kind of like
when you're talking about memory, like say a spring having
memory of spring. It doesn't have memory in the sense
that we speak of it, but it does have engineering, uh,
in a physics level of memory. And this would be
(16:50):
that same level of desire. So you could also argue
to say, my earbuds always have a desire to break
after one year. Well, this is uh. This kind of
goes back to Susan Black when she talks about Dawkins.
She talks about memes and how humans are just meme machines, right,
We're meant to communicate certain messages and over and over
again and just spread the memes. But then she says
(17:12):
technology is really the thing that we're spreading. So that's
why she plays on teams UM And so I think
about this in that instance, like we are creating UM
the technology to ultimately reproduce itself and brings us back
into the world of nanotech. But I was gonna say, really,
at a very small scale, which is now um possible
(17:33):
in nano three D printing, I cause you're talking about
really fine resolutions that enable the creation of intricately structured sculptures.
Is tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny as a grain of sand.
There's actually a great video we'll we'll try to remember
to post this, but it shows that in fifty seconds
this aircraft is created through a nano three D printer,
(17:57):
and if you look at it through obviously there's like
magnified and you see the details and it is perfectly scale.
It's it's a beautiful rendering and it is an object
and it is as big as a tiny grain of salt. Yeah.
I mean it comes back into again to what I've
been talking about with the idea of building things with
the smallest parts possible. The more that the smaller that
(18:18):
the building blocks, the more power you have over the structure,
over the ultimate finished product. It's like with legos. Think
back to the legos you had when you were really young,
whether it were kind of big and and boxy because
it would be harder to fit in your mouth, and
then the smaller legos you eventually grew into, which one
would which blocks allow you to create the more detailed
model the smaller blocks of course, of course. And then
(18:40):
when you think about something that we mentioned before, the
gaming controllers, in which there's the ability to throw down
to lay down electronics and those objects that are three
D printed, and you look at nano printing and you
know it's just a matter of time where you can
get the same sort of electronics into the object. Then
you start to think more about what does the future
(19:00):
look like long term sicky years from now. Um, it's
not just about creating nano printed scaffolding to grow tissue
on or to use in other nano manufacturing parts. There
is a real ability to say, create a robot that
is at the nano scale and what happens then, well,
(19:21):
then we have the idea that we have machines that
can repair themselves. We have we have structures that can
repair themselves, buildings that can heal, bridges that can build themselves,
little tiny robots that can peek into your private life.
We're talking about this the other day when we're shooting
a video. Yeah, we were just saying that, Um, I mean,
how do you combat that we have your own little
army of nano robots system really of nanobots to protect
(19:45):
your privacy and your interests. And we all kind of lit.
We're just all crawling with them like fleas that we
just and maybe they're also programmed to cut our hair
and to groom ourselves, which is nice, it's lovely. Um.
Other considerations. We talked about this when we talked about
the atropasy, and this is the idea of we are
now in the age of man and that human activity
has left a stratigraphic signal in the soil and scars
(20:07):
in the earth, chemical signatures, etcetera. Yeah, and we find
this an ice cores. Right, there's data retreat from glacial
ice cores that show the beginning of a growth in
atmospheric concentrations of several greenhouse gases, in particular CEO two
and c H four. And the starting date actual actually
coincides with James Watt's invention of a steam engine in
(20:31):
four So you begin to see this layer of sediment.
So the question is, you know if a human or
some other intelligent being were to look at the soil
a thousand years from now, um, and would they look
at the soil and say, ah, this is this is
the year that they really began to use a three
D printer, because now we have this huge polymer sediment. Yeah,
this is the age in which they took all available
(20:53):
mass and used it to print a whole bunch of nonsense.
So you just have to and just drown themselves. And
again a come back to the idea of the Internet
vomiting into the physical world as it is as three
D printing is this gateway way by which the Internet
and all of its nonsense and all of its beauty
and all of its horror can actually take physical form well,
(21:14):
and you kind of think about this is another prong
in the Internet of things. We talked about the Internet
of things being that that data is alive around us
at all times. In other words, you know, you could
have a refrigerator that could tell you if you needed
eggs or your eggs were expired. And you know, this
is just another idea of how objects play into this.
(21:34):
I like to think of it in terms two of
our work print printer, Like, think of all the things
that you find printed out that people have forgotten about.
You find like say, um, detailed tax information, legal information,
personal information, private correspondences, recipes, work Once I found that
somebody had written and it wasn't me, somebody else in
(21:56):
the office had written um, like a large portion of
like a sci fi novel. So things just sitting there
on the on the on the printer. If we had
three D printers, what kind of stuff would you find
they're just sitting sitting there on the desk or clogged
up in the printer. Would you find like, by the way,
we're not giving anything away when we say that someone
wrote a chunk of sci fi novel here because there
there's a good many people here. I can't even narrow
(22:19):
down who it might have been at the time, but
the manifesto on popcorn there's only one person. But but
just think, you know, you would go to the printer
and then there's somebody has printed out, you know, a
size perfect dress for themselves that they were going to
wear that night and left early and forgot to pick up.
Someone printed out some sort of rather personal, um adult
(22:41):
device that you know, they could be fired for. Someone
else printed out just a toy that that that was interesting. Oh,
they needed to know the action figure to go on
their death, so they printed out eight of them by
accident by accidentally hitting the button eight times. I mean,
you can just go on and on. I know, I'm
just trying to figure out if this is glorious? Are awful?
I know that's a little but that's the question we
always ask the technology and and probably yeah, it's a
(23:03):
little column may, a little column B. Yeah. All right,
Well there you go a little more stuff to blow
your mind there with three D printing and for D printing.
And we would love to hear from everyone, what are
your thoughts on on the future of three D and
fort D printing. How do you think it's going to
change our lives? How would it change your life? How
do you think it's going to change manufacturing? How do
you think it's going to change the business. How do
(23:24):
you think it's gonna weigh the change the way we
interact with objects and to what extent are personalized like
handcrafted objects. I mean, I can't imagine it would go away.
There's still gonna be a value for things that are
created in the old ways that things are complete, that
are created by hand. You know, it'll be the same
way that people are willing into craft beers. People will
still be into the idea of of, say a miniature
(23:45):
that was created with mold rather than a three D printer.
But at the same time, will intellectually intellectual property Will
that become a really archaic term? Yeah, The legal ramifications
are are crazy enough themselves. So hey, let us know
what you think. You can find us on face Book,
you can find us on tumbler. We are stuff to
blow your mind on both of those, and also check
us out on Twitter, where our handle is is blow
(24:08):
the mind, and we there's different content on all three
of those so so they don't think that they're all
just replications with the same material. And you can always
drop us a line at blow the Mind at Discovery
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does It How Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb And and this is part
two of our two parter on three D printing three
D printers of the Gods. Uh. The idea here and
the snazzy title, of course, refers to the idea that
(00:26):
three D printers essentially allow almost any idea that's out
there to take physical form, which in a way is
kind of kind of godlike and it and it forces
us to really rethink what the future is going to be, like,
what our relationship with objects is going to be, and
really also it makes us sort of think about what
our relationship with objects is now. We talked in the
last podcast about some of the current things that are
(00:47):
going on, such as Devantie is wearing a dress that
it was three D printed, people trying to three D
print the perfect plastic gun like an actual gun that
kills people, oxygen aryans printing out novelty adult toys exactly,
novelty to us exactly. And uh, and today we're going
(01:07):
to we we talked a little bit about the future
in the last one, but this time we're gon we're
gonna go a little more detailed on that. We're going
to talk about some of the near future revolutions in
three D printing that are really going to change the world.
It's true because although three D printers aren't quite the
transporter devices we hoped for at this point, the fact
(01:28):
of the matter is that they are rearranging matter and
they are sort of defined space and time when it
comes to objects, into consumerism and to making what you
want when you want it. So some of the things
that are going to be happening very soon with three
D printing um that are going to change everything. First
of all, we're looking at three D printing reaching the
(01:50):
industrial strength level. Now, three D printing, as we've mentioned before,
has been a part of industry for about twenty years now,
and it's been useful in UH create rapidly producing UH
prototypes in some cases. But we're talking about a situation
where three D printing will be able to produce objects
of high quality, industrial grade that can be that can
(02:11):
be a part of automobiles, etcetera. And now some automobiles
already have through some three D printing parts, but we're
talking about an age win pretty much all parts are
going to be produced by three D printing as opposed
to traditional subtractive methods such as printing the pieces out
of a sheet of metal or using a mold to
pour and pouring a mold to create the device. Yeah,
(02:32):
because I mean, at the end of the day, when
you're when you're talking about the future three D printing,
you're talking about materials that are lighter, that can be
made faster, and can be customized. So it's a perfect
fit for manufacturing. Um, So you know you're going to
see more of these printers and factories just printing out parts.
You also see them in the nano manufacturing industry, which
(02:55):
will talk more about. And then you look at you're
gonna see it just in actual like hey, we're gonna
build something. We're gonna build a building, and so imagine
large blocks of like custom building materials being printed out
on a job site. Yeah. And and to go back
to prototyping real quick, you're just gonna see that that
speeded up even more. The ability to quickly produce a
(03:16):
working prototype for for a new product. It's just gonna
be it's gonna be exponentially improved. Yeah. In fact, the
D shape printer, which was created by Enricodini, is capable
now of printing a two story building complete with rooms, stairs, pipes,
and partitions, and it uses nothing but sand an inorganic
binding compound, and then the resulting material has the same
(03:37):
durability as reinforced concrete. With this is super cool the
look of marble um. Of course, now you can only
use this on rounded structures, but the process itself takes
approximately about a fourth of the time as traditional buildings,
and it doesn't really require any specialized knowledge or skill set. Yeah,
because a lot of the you know, we get into
(03:59):
the idea of printing nano materials, and we've talked before
about like when whether we're talking about space elevators or
super tall buildings, we always come back around to the
use of nano materials because when you're building things from
the smallest level up, which to a certain extent is
three D printing in itself. It's the idea that I'm
starting small and building everything up from the bottom. But
if you start really small, if you're building things up
(04:20):
from the from the smallest structures possible, then you're able
to create super strong materials capable of tethering a space
elevator in place, or creating the sort of skyscrapers that
right now we can only dream of. It doesn't change physics,
but it changes the way that materials act in in
(04:40):
the realm of physics, which is really cool because that
is really liberating as as someone who is a designer
in someone who is trying to do something like see
a spacecraft. Yeah, I mean, it's the difference between me
selling two things together, or me sewing up a hole
in my hoodie or something as opposed to to an
actual scene stress or an or or sewing machine doing it. Um.
(05:02):
And you know, in the difference between a big visible
um stitch and an invisible stitch. And it's just the
finer level of detail, the finer grade of craftsmanship that
you get when you when you build things up from
that very small level. And when you're speaking about building
up things for a very small level, of course, you
start thinking about the medical ramifications that this because we're
(05:23):
built up very small exactly exactly, um. And we have
experiments and printing soft tissue that are underway now. UM.
But the idea is that if if you can master that,
you may begin to print veins and arteries to you
to be used in operations and then um, you know,
taking to the extreme, you can then print organs and
(05:44):
you're not even taking into the strain. The extreme is
of course printing the whole bodies. Yeah, I mean, which
not only would would vanquish the whole organ uh donor
problem that we have, right, but I mean you write
you just hey, here's another me. Yeah, I'm just going
to keep it in the and storage until I need
to replace myself. And this is a great example of
three D printer of the gods here, because we're essentially
(06:06):
talking about a three D printer creating objects, creating a
person as nature creates a person. You know, the the
idea that it's it's just it's created from the smallest piece,
it's it's grown. Yeah, there is an element of bio
mimicry about this. We'll talk about this more when we
talk about four D printing. But um, it is interesting
that we're getting sort of back to the basics when
(06:27):
we're talking about three D printing, because it really is
sort of saying, let's take take nature's way of building
up and see if we can recreate this process in
a machine. Um. Consumerism, Yes, this is gonna be huge.
I mean, this is what I think is going to
be one of the most interesting aspects about three D
(06:47):
printing because I think it will greatly change our behavior.
And you and I talked about this in the last
podcast last episode. Is that you know, one day you
could go to Amazon and you could click on a
box there that says I want to customize this because
as Amazon has now decided to use this technology with
their companies, um in their manufacturers, and it's just gonna
(07:08):
be something pretty wrote like, Hey, I need to get
this new SYNC, but I really would love to have
I don't know, some sort of crazy design of vampire
state building, yeah, you know in it or I don't know. Yeah,
I mean, and we already have some of those options,
for instance, with some of our our digital and some
non digital media media. You want a book, okay, if
you want it in hardback? You want and soft back?
(07:29):
You want in paperback? Or do you want it uh? Digital? Right? Uh?
And how do you want that album? Do you want
it joined vinyl, you want it on c D, you
want it on a retrocassette which is coming back in
some case? Do you or you want it digitally? All right? Well,
we have five options for that. You want to in flak,
you want an MP three, you want it, and and
you know, it just goes on and on. So you'll
see that kind of stuff when you buy things. All right,
(07:50):
what size do you want it? In? What color do
you want it? Also upload the dimensions of your hand
to upload that your actual physical dimensions, and we'll make
sure that it fits you to a t us. So
try to imagine that. So let's say that you want
a specific design that you can get to pick from
all these stock files of this specific design or you
know stock art, and then yeah, you can upload if
(08:10):
it if the object relates to your body, then you
upload your own dimensions and then Amazon surely will deliver
that to you within the hour because now even now
they're trying to do same day delivery. So we have wait.
Since we're extrapolating in the future, we have to think
about this, you know, five years out. Yeah, and you're
gonna see that It's going to be like with any
technological innovation, there are going to be companies that adapt
(08:32):
and shift and survive, and then they're gonna be ones
that fall to the wayside, and there are going to
be new entrepreneurs that that pop up that are like, hey,
this is how people are going to be consuming. What
can we do to game it? They're going to be
products that come out that are specifically aimed at three
D printing. Well, see, I'm glad that you brought that up,
because it really does change the landscape of companies in
their ability to produce. So, you know, I wonder does
(08:54):
Amazon then begin to produce items instead of just distribute,
because essentially they can take over if you can print anything,
then why even half manufacturers that you distribute? Why why
just um, why not just be the point persona and
then that process? And then to what extent did these
companies become the means of creating? You know? I mean
(09:16):
because like we mentioned before, I mean everybody, everybody wants
to to be an artist, Everyone wants to be a writer,
everyone wants to be a musician to varying degrees that
the Internet is a great example of all sorts of
different people producing something and wanting to share it with
the world. And then take that and translated to the
world of objects. So do these companies end up becoming
more and more involved in user generated content like the
(09:38):
Wikipedia of objects? Right? And you know our our storefronts
replaced by just a storefront. Yeah. Do you go to
the mall and it's just one uh three D printing kiosk.
We'll probably multiple chaos where you go in and you
you print out the things you want. I mean maybe
you have a situation where the stores are still there
so that you can you can shop. People like to
(09:59):
look at things before they buy them. But then when
you decide you print it out. You go to the kiosks,
you print it out, and you can print out you know,
your your new shoes, your new dress, the toy for
the kid, uh and maybe even your hamburger. I would
but just say you could also pray. If you're a
little bit you know, you feel like you mean a gnash,
then hey you can. This is an ability that Cornelling
University's fab Home fab at Home project can actually do
(10:23):
right now. They use gel like substances that can be
combined with other materials, including artificial flavor yeum uh to
mimic the taste in mouth feel of many different foods. Yeah,
this was really interesting because they also talked a little
bit about the the Uncanny Valley of foods with this
because because the gel like substance called hydro collides is
(10:44):
is apparently a little unsettling, like it's filled with artificial flavoring.
And you can print it, say, in the shape of
a turkey leg, sure, but if it doesn't taste like
a turkey leg, it's gonna be a little weird. So
they they've really kind of decided that they need to
work on the taste first and then worry about printing
it out in to the four into the actual shapes,
which which makes sense, and maybe to a certain extent
(11:05):
it's I mean, it makes me think of candy, right,
and specifically banana flavored candy. You ever had banana flavored candy?
It doesn't taste like bananas, and to a certain extent,
orange candy doesn't taste like oranges. But you get into
that area, how close can the taste be to the
thing and still get away with it? And to what
extent it does it become a new thing because orange
(11:27):
candy it's nothing like an actual orange in flavor or
in texture. But I know, I was just thinking about
to the twenties, and we talked about um when we
did the food episode, and we were talking about the
candy that became a stand in for a meal, because remember,
people didn't have much money and they had those turkey
meals and it was I don't know if it actually
(11:47):
was supposed to taste like a roast turkey or I
think I think they had chocolate and it was the idea.
The idea was, hey, you need a meal, here's a meal.
Peel it back and eat it. So we have evidence
that we've done this before, and certainly if you don't
have the resources, then maybe you can't accept that. And
after all, it's a shot of glucose. Anyways, look at
(12:08):
some of the stuff people eat already, Like a chicken
nugget is nothing like anything real. It's you know, it's
it's you know, you look at stuff with pink slime.
I mean, we're already magnufacturing unreal food out of strange things.
So and people and people love it. So um, pink
slime is found in hamburger meat, right, yeah, yeah, So
I I have no doubt that three D printing could
(12:30):
easily create something that people would love, if not tolerate. Specifically,
when you're talking about like say, long term space missions,
I mean these are environments where, yes, you want people
in space to want to eat because sometimes there's less
of an appetite there. But but ultimately you know, survival
food right well, And so that just made me think
about the parallels between the Uncanny Valley and smell racams
(12:53):
for food, right because there are some people who will
say the Uncanny Valley isn't as uncanny or creepier as
we think. You know, see a robot that's supposed to
look like a human or act like a human, or
move like a human and they don't because they are
not in it unsettles us. But we get used to things.
I mean, new food is uncanny Valley when you first
have it, like you know, have Thai food for the
(13:14):
first time, and you'll be like, this is a little uncanny,
but you know you'll love it in a week. So
guarantee you guaranteed. All Right, we're gonna take a quick
break and when we come back, we're gonna talk even
more about the future of three D printing and we're
going to talk about four D printing. All Right, we're
back and we're gonna talk here about four D printing.
(13:34):
And just to be clear, the term four D printing
is a it's a little bit of science headline bait.
It's misleading. Yeah, it's it's it looks great in the headline,
but when you really get down to the meat of it,
it's not. You're not really printing in space and time,
no more than you're always printing in space and time.
It's kind of like three D printing on steroids. Um.
And what we're talking about, we're talking about for D
(13:56):
printing is passive self assembly systems, which is still pretty
odd them. Don't let me underplay it. It's very cool.
Self assembly m I T. Researcher Skylar Tipbitts is sort
of the face of this right now in terms of
self assembly. And when I talk about it being on steroids,
we're talking about its allowing three D printers allowing to
(14:16):
print parts to self assemble and reassemble into a number
of products. So each part would be comprised of a
regular rigid plastic layer along with an outer layer made
up smart materials, not dumb ones. And then when they're
submerged in water, the smart materials absorb and they expand
and they cause the parts to move and form a
pre specified object. It's like if you're wearing kite jeans
(14:41):
and then you, and then you get reined on really
heavy layer. You fall in a swimming pool, and then
they start to shrink up, and then you were your
your form changes and you you you go into into
like stiff legged mode because you can't move your legs anymore.
It's kind of like that the outer layer is the
gene the blue jeans, and then the inner layer is you. Yeah, well,
I mean think it's really interesting. And this is uh
(15:01):
from a Ted talk that you sent me that Tibbott
is talking about the future of this and what makes
no sense so much sense. He's saying that currently we
build skyscrapers with about five hundred thousand into one million parts,
which all told takes about two years. And that's not
even counting the dead gangsters in the concrete exactly or
the vampires, um. And then he says though that we
(15:24):
should look toward natural systems to get a better idea
of how to use forty or self assembly. He says
that we have proteins that have two million types, they
can fold in ten thousand nanoseconds, and he says we
also have DNA with three billion base pairs we can
replicate in roughly an hour. So he said that out
(15:44):
of all this complexity complexity in our natural systems, UM,
there's still this idea that they're really efficient at what
they do, far more efficient than anything that we can build,
and far more complex than anything that we can build.
And so he says we should look towards this model
because it's it's really good, um and making something out
(16:05):
of as little energy as possible. Yeah, I mean, and
right now we're talking about again a little like a
three D printed stick that when the water is at
it, it it becomes a cube. But he's talking long term
the idea of the self assembly of large scale structures,
which is which is pretty phenomenal. I like how in
the talk he gets a little philosophic too and talks
about ultimately objects that have desire. Not only do we
(16:29):
desire them, but they have they have a desire in
the sense that there is something that they will be.
I mean, it gets a little we want Yeah, when
you get into one. I mean, it's kind of like
when you're talking about memory, like say a spring having
memory of spring. It doesn't have memory in the sense
that we speak of it, but it does have engineering, uh,
in a physics level of memory. And this would be
(16:50):
that same level of desire. So you could also argue
to say, my earbuds always have a desire to break
after one year. Well, this is uh. This kind of
goes back to Susan Black when she talks about Dawkins.
She talks about memes and how humans are just meme machines, right,
We're meant to communicate certain messages and over and over
again and just spread the memes. But then she says
(17:12):
technology is really the thing that we're spreading. So that's
why she plays on teams UM And so I think
about this in that instance, like we are creating UM
the technology to ultimately reproduce itself and brings us back
into the world of nanotech. But I was gonna say, really,
at a very small scale, which is now um possible
(17:33):
in nano three D printing, I cause you're talking about
really fine resolutions that enable the creation of intricately structured sculptures.
Is tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny as a grain of sand.
There's actually a great video we'll we'll try to remember
to post this, but it shows that in fifty seconds
this aircraft is created through a nano three D printer,
(17:57):
and if you look at it through obviously there's like
magnified and you see the details and it is perfectly scale.
It's it's a beautiful rendering and it is an object
and it is as big as a tiny grain of salt. Yeah.
I mean it comes back into again to what I've
been talking about with the idea of building things with
the smallest parts possible. The more that the smaller that
(18:18):
the building blocks, the more power you have over the structure,
over the ultimate finished product. It's like with legos. Think
back to the legos you had when you were really young,
whether it were kind of big and and boxy because
it would be harder to fit in your mouth, and
then the smaller legos you eventually grew into, which one
would which blocks allow you to create the more detailed
model the smaller blocks of course, of course. And then
(18:40):
when you think about something that we mentioned before, the
gaming controllers, in which there's the ability to throw down
to lay down electronics and those objects that are three
D printed, and you look at nano printing and you
know it's just a matter of time where you can
get the same sort of electronics into the object. Then
you start to think more about what does the future
(19:00):
look like long term sicky years from now. Um, it's
not just about creating nano printed scaffolding to grow tissue
on or to use in other nano manufacturing parts. There
is a real ability to say, create a robot that
is at the nano scale and what happens then, well,
(19:21):
then we have the idea that we have machines that
can repair themselves. We have we have structures that can
repair themselves, buildings that can heal, bridges that can build themselves,
little tiny robots that can peek into your private life.
We're talking about this the other day when we're shooting
a video. Yeah, we were just saying that, Um, I mean,
how do you combat that we have your own little
army of nano robots system really of nanobots to protect
(19:45):
your privacy and your interests. And we all kind of lit.
We're just all crawling with them like fleas that we
just and maybe they're also programmed to cut our hair
and to groom ourselves, which is nice, it's lovely. Um.
Other considerations. We talked about this when we talked about
the atropasy, and this is the idea of we are
now in the age of man and that human activity
has left a stratigraphic signal in the soil and scars
(20:07):
in the earth, chemical signatures, etcetera. Yeah, and we find
this an ice cores. Right, there's data retreat from glacial
ice cores that show the beginning of a growth in
atmospheric concentrations of several greenhouse gases, in particular CEO two
and c H four. And the starting date actual actually
coincides with James Watt's invention of a steam engine in
(20:31):
four So you begin to see this layer of sediment.
So the question is, you know if a human or
some other intelligent being were to look at the soil
a thousand years from now, um, and would they look
at the soil and say, ah, this is this is
the year that they really began to use a three
D printer, because now we have this huge polymer sediment. Yeah,
this is the age in which they took all available
(20:53):
mass and used it to print a whole bunch of nonsense.
So you just have to and just drown themselves. And
again a come back to the idea of the Internet
vomiting into the physical world as it is as three
D printing is this gateway way by which the Internet
and all of its nonsense and all of its beauty
and all of its horror can actually take physical form well,
(21:14):
and you kind of think about this is another prong
in the Internet of things. We talked about the Internet
of things being that that data is alive around us
at all times. In other words, you know, you could
have a refrigerator that could tell you if you needed
eggs or your eggs were expired. And you know, this
is just another idea of how objects play into this.
(21:34):
I like to think of it in terms two of
our work print printer, Like, think of all the things
that you find printed out that people have forgotten about.
You find like say, um, detailed tax information, legal information,
personal information, private correspondences, recipes, work Once I found that
somebody had written and it wasn't me, somebody else in
(21:56):
the office had written um, like a large portion of
like a sci fi novel. So things just sitting there
on the on the on the printer. If we had
three D printers, what kind of stuff would you find
they're just sitting sitting there on the desk or clogged
up in the printer. Would you find like, by the way,
we're not giving anything away when we say that someone
wrote a chunk of sci fi novel here because there
there's a good many people here. I can't even narrow
(22:19):
down who it might have been at the time, but
the manifesto on popcorn there's only one person. But but
just think, you know, you would go to the printer
and then there's somebody has printed out, you know, a
size perfect dress for themselves that they were going to
wear that night and left early and forgot to pick up.
Someone printed out some sort of rather personal, um adult
(22:41):
device that you know, they could be fired for. Someone
else printed out just a toy that that that was interesting. Oh,
they needed to know the action figure to go on
their death, so they printed out eight of them by
accident by accidentally hitting the button eight times. I mean,
you can just go on and on. I know, I'm
just trying to figure out if this is glorious? Are awful?
I know that's a little but that's the question we
always ask the technology and and probably yeah, it's a
(23:03):
little column may, a little column B. Yeah. All right,
Well there you go a little more stuff to blow
your mind there with three D printing and for D printing.
And we would love to hear from everyone, what are
your thoughts on on the future of three D and
fort D printing. How do you think it's going to
change our lives? How would it change your life? How
do you think it's going to change manufacturing? How do
you think it's going to change the business. How do
(23:24):
you think it's gonna weigh the change the way we
interact with objects and to what extent are personalized like
handcrafted objects. I mean, I can't imagine it would go away.
There's still gonna be a value for things that are
created in the old ways that things are complete, that
are created by hand. You know, it'll be the same
way that people are willing into craft beers. People will
still be into the idea of of, say a miniature
(23:45):
that was created with mold rather than a three D printer.
But at the same time, will intellectually intellectual property Will
that become a really archaic term? Yeah, The legal ramifications
are are crazy enough themselves. So hey, let us know
what you think. You can find us on face Book,
you can find us on tumbler. We are stuff to
blow your mind on both of those, and also check
us out on Twitter, where our handle is is blow
(24:08):
the mind, and we there's different content on all three
of those so so they don't think that they're all
just replications with the same material. And you can always
drop us a line at blow the Mind at Discovery
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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