How 3D Printing can Change the World

 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, may not be making headlines like it was in 2013, but rest assured, the technology’s only been spreading and advancing over the past four years. The implications of 3D printing are vast, and the technology has the potential to revolutionize our society.

Here are a few of the ways that 3D printing will change the industry, the economy, and the culture in the years to come.

1. Production Will Take A Turn Towards The Local

Since the 1980s, corporate outsourcing has been a major force driving change in the manufacturing industry. Large corporations often reduce costs by setting up factories in multiple companies to manufacture each sub-component of their end product.

With 3D printing, a company could manufacture a whole car in one place. 3D printing only requires a few employees, so labor laws will be less of a game changer than they are with traditional manufacturing and its large labor forces. As the technology improves, it’ll become cheaper and easier for companies to manufacture their product close to home.

This would mean big economic restructuring for China and other countries whose economies depend on being able to provide a cheap labor pool for manufacturing. They’ll have to find new forms of economic value-production to maintain their GDP.

2. The Medical World Will be Turned Upside-Down

From surgery to prosthetics to medications, 3D printing has the power to revolutionize the world of medicine.

3D printing is already being used for prosthetics. Research firm Not Impossible Labs is already using the technology to print prosthetics for amputees in war-torn regions, at a total cost of under $100. 3D printing could make prosthetics cheaper for everyone, changing the lives of amputees around the world. 3D printing is also being used for surgery, with replicas of hearts and organs being used to help surgeons prep.

Bioprinting, 3D printing which uses “ink” made of human cells and tissue, is making massive strides. Many tech and medical experts believe that 3D printed internal organs will be in use for surgery by the year 2025. 3D printing has already been used to repair damaged bone and cartilage, with surgeons using the technology in 2014 to repair a man’s face after a road accident.

3D printed pills are already a reality, with Spiritam, a 3D printed anti-seizure medication, having been patented in 2015. 3D printed pills could be a cheap and practical way to make lifesaving drugs available around the world.

3. 3D Printing will Spark a Creative Renaissance

As 3D printing becomes more and more common, it’ll become easier and easier for inventors and creatives to turn their ideas into realities. 3D printing already makes it far easier for inventors to produce prototypes. In the future, the manufacturing process could be carried out by 3D printing as well. In a few decades, we might see the store shelves packed with a variety of 3D printed products that today would be unimaginable.

4. 3D Printing Could Help Solve the Housing Crisis

Housing prices are skyrocketing across the West. Far fewer young people can afford to buy homes than their parents, and many people have a hard time even affording rent. 3D printing could help address that. A Chinese company called Winsun offers 3D houses built entirely out of recycled materials, which cost less than $5000 to produce. Their process uses “ink” made from fiberglass, steel, cement, binder and recycled rubble. They’ve already build housing in China, have recently expanded to Saudi Arabia, and plan on expanding to twenty other countries over the next few years. 3D printing allows home builders to save on transportation costs, building materials, and labor costs. The cities of the future may be built through 3D printing!

5. New Kinds of Crime Will Emerge

When 3D printers become a household item, digital piracy may spread from the media world to the general marketplace. Why buy an iPhone when you can buy some metal, plastic and silicone “ink” for far less and print one yourself? This level of precision is well beyond the capability of the average 3D printer today, but that may no longer be the case in ten or twenty years. The digital pirates of the future may be sharing CAD files rather than media torrents.

3D printing will complicate gun registration. 3D printed firearms are already a reality, and will only improve in performance and practicality as time goes on. How will state governments be able to regulate the sale and traffic of firearms when anybody with a modem and printer can make their own?

This could be a problem across the black market. If 3D printing medications become a reality, expect 3D printed illegal drugs to follow on their heels.

This may sound bleak, but luckily, there’s a major upside to 3D printing which could help to offset the dangers…

6. 3D Printing Could Save the Environment

3D printing will make it far easier to produce goods locally, which will dramatically reduce fuel costs. This may help curb the use of fossil fuels, perhaps even preventing the worst excesses of climate change.

With 3D printing, we’ll be able to step up our recycling game. Plastics, metals, and paper will become the “ink” used by printers, a process which uses less energy than conventional recycling.

Additionally, by its very nature, 3D printing produces less waste than conventional manufacturing. 3D printing is known as additive manufacturing, where an object is created by adding layer after layer of material to a previously empty space. Conventional manufacturing is a subtractive process, where the manufacturer starts with a block of material and carves away at it to produce the product. The latter clearly produces far more waste, which will be eliminated with the switch to 3D printing.

Finally, 3D printing can be used to help study the process of environmental degradation. Researchers at the University of Sydney have produced a 3D model of the Great Barrier Reefs to help model how these natural structures are being impacted by climate change. This could be used to help the reefs recover from bleaching and storms.

3D Printing Technologies: An Overview

3D printing is sometimes referred to as Additive Manufacturing (AM). In 3D printing, one creates a design of an object using software, and the 3D printer creates the object by adding layer upon layer of material until the shape of the object is formed.  The object can be made using a number of printing materials, including plastics, powders, filaments and paper.

There are a number of 3D printing technologies, and this article provides an overview of those technologies.

1. Stereolithography (SLA)

Stereolithography makes use of a liquid plastic as the source material and this liquid plastic is transformed into a 3D object layer by layer.  Liquid resin is placed in a vat that has a transparent bottom.   A UV (UltraViolet) laser traces a pattern on the liquid resin from the bottom of the vat to cure and solidify a layer of the resin.  The solidified structure is progressively dragged up by a lifting platform while the laser forms a different pattern for each layer to create the desired shape of the 3D object.

2. Digital Light Processing (DLP)

3D printing DLP technology is very similar to Stereolithography but differs in that it uses a different light source and makes use of a liquid crystal display panel.  This technology makes use of more conventional light sources and the light is controlled using micro mirrors to control the light incident on the surface of the object being printed. The liquid crystal display panel works as a photomask.  This mechanism allows for a large amount of light to be projected onto the surface to be cured, thereby allowing the resin to harden quickly.

3. Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)

With this technology, objects can be built with production-grade thermoplastics.   Objects are built by heating a thermoplastic filament to its melting point and extruding the thermoplastic layer by layer.   Special techniques can be used to create complex structures.  For example, the printer can extrude a second material that will serve as support material for the object being formed during the printing process.  This support material can later be removed or dissolved.

4. Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)

SLS has some similarities with Stereolithography.  However, SLS makes use of powdered material that is placed in a vat. For each layer, a layer of powdered material is placed on top of the previous layer using a roller and then the powdered material is laser sintered according to a certain pattern for building up the object to be created.   Interestingly, the portion of the powdered material that is not sintered can be used to provide the support structure and this material can be removed after the object is formed for re-use1.

5. Selective Laser Melting (SLM)

The SLM process is very similar to the SLS process.  However, unlike the SLS process where the powdered material is sintered the SLM process involves fully melting the powdered material.

6. Electronic Beam Melting (EBM)

This technology is also much like SLM. However, it makes use of an electron beam instead of a high-powered laser1.  The electron beam fully melts a metal powder to form the desired object.   The process is slower and more expensive than for SLM with a greater limitation on the available materials.

7. Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM)

This is a rapid prototyping system. In this process, layers of material coated with adhesive are fused together with heat and pressure and then cut into shape using a laser cutter or knife. More specifically, a foil coated with adhesive is overlaid on the previous layer and a heated roller heats the adhesive for adhesion between the two layers.  Layers can be made of paper, plastic or metal laminates. The process can include post-processing steps that include machining and drilling.  This is a fast and inexpensive method of 3D printing.  With the use of an adhesion process, no chemical process is necessary and relatively large parts can be made.