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So in this video, we look at some of leading edge applications of 3D printing.
First off, I think most of you would have seen this in
the first course with Professor Ali Kranfridge, as well.
He talks about 3D printing a wrench in space.
The firm made in space incorporated put up a 3D printer on the space station,
you have to be careful about the lack of gravity and how the filament or
the excursion material will work with zero gravity.
They're printing some replacement parts in space, but
there's an interesting project called Archinot.
Which involves building a robotic 3D printer
that can autonomously 3D print a portion of a structure in orbit.
Grab on to non-3D printed parts from orbit, and
assemble all of them to construct large and complex space structures.
This is still in planning, so this is about four or
five years out into actually getting any results from this project.
But that's an interesting vision, and you can think of potentially creating
structures to inhabit the moon, and maybe one day, go to Mars, as well.
Another interesting trend that's sort of highlights what is possible,
is 3D printing completely functional objects.
Now, one of the developments, which is a desktop printer currently priced at about
$8,000, is called the Voxel.
It's a multi-material 3D printer, and
it can print plastic as traditional FDM machine, and
conduct them in together to create circuits while the part is being printed.
At the end of the print, you'll have a fully functional product.
All you need is a chip in there to make the parts work with some
cord that you put in it.
Another interesting example is developed by a team at MIT,
were they hacked a commercially available 3D printer to print it.
A robot body with both solids and liquids.
And they created a hydraulic robot.
Of course, they still did need to put in a battery sensor and a computing unit,
but we already have technology being developed to 3D print batteries.
And there are firms in the space who are now printing, for example, the antenna for
your iPhone is being printed on the board itself with liquid conductive inks.
The time is not far, well,
maybe we will be printing robots that are functional off the printer itself.
So, a revolutionary concept in navigation is one of digital materials.
A term coined by Neil Gershenfeld in 2005.
And you heard about this in the discussion with Professor Hard Libson
in the previous course with Professor Alex Rindfish.
And the vision for digital materials is to allow for the creation of a 3D
assembler, which can work at a very tiny scale in our molecular,
or at the nano scale and assemble products in three dimensions.
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Think of these as three dimensional pixels or voxels, as Dr. Hard Libson calls it,
which are used to create objects, and then perhaps disassemble them as well.
The assembly is from discrete units and is digital, rather than the analog
mode compared to the other 3D printing technology we see today, provides for
a lot more flexibility and accuracy in what you create and
then potentially disassemble those products, as well.
Another interesting trend that is quite tasty,
quite frankly, is that of 3D printed food.
And rapid prototyping really is a requirement in trying out any recipe
until you get it right.
Now, it's only natural to consider applications for 3D printing in food.
And here are some examples.
Now, two firms, Foodini and CocoJet are looking at printing food and
different structures using liquefied ingredients.
The structure and the texture can be varied to give innovative shapes, and
the structure, of course, also impacts the eating experience and the taste as well.
The developments right now are focusing on making this repeatable,
making it more accurate.
So, these are incremental improvements in printing food.
Not really revolutionary.
Many of the desktop 3D printers can be hacked to work with liquefied food.
In fact, a group of students at the university modified one of the auto makers
to 3D print chocolate as part of a programming workshop,
where kids will learn programming, and their reward at the end would be
they get to print out a cookie for themselves with some chocolate on it.
Of course,
an advancement for food printing is really when you start re-engineering food and
create synthetic food essentially with proteins, 3D printed into meat.
It may not sound like a good idea to many of us, but
it's increasingly become possible with advancements in technology.
Let's look at another application where
we might now be able to download and print our medicine.
A company recently got approval from the FDA for a drug for
epilepsy, where the firm uses 3D printing to create a more porospil.
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The structure means the pill dissolves more quickly in contact with liquid,
making it much easier to swallow high doses compared to a conventional tablet.
It also allows layers of medication to be packaged more tightly In precise dosages,
and the day of customized medicine may not be too far.
So, we close this discussion with a lead into bioprinting, and
you will hear more about this in the video with an expert on the field, Dr.
Tolou Shokuhfar, at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
[MUSIC]
Vishal SachdevClinical Assistant Professor , Director, Illinois MakerLab
