by Stan Ho What is 3D printing? For a long time, people have manufactured objects by subtracting bigger materials into smaller ones by cutting or carving. This kind of process is not eco-friendly and wastes a great deal of material. However, in recent years, scientists have come up with another solution: 3D printing. 3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, is a process that builds a product by “printing” materials layer by layer and eventually forms the entire object. With this process, no materials are wasted, and objects can be customized in all kinds of sizes and shapes. How does it work?
First, you will need a blueprint of the object with the format of a CAD (computer aided design) file. There are a couple of ways to obtain a CAD file. You can either draw it yourself with a 3D modeling program or use a 3D scanner to collect data from the object. If this is still too hard for you, some CAD files are available on the internet. Next, you’ll need a 3D printer. There are different kinds of 3D printers. An amateur one will cost 15,000 NTD while a professional one will cost millions of dollars. Then, you’ll have to load your 3D printer with the raw material that is suitable for your machine. Plastic, in general, is the most common material that is applied in 3D printing. Reprap Prusa i3 is a common 3D printer found on eBay. It melts plastic wire (raw material) and extrudes tiny droplets of melted plastic with a nozzle layer by layer on the platform until the whole process is done. Plastic is just the most common material. With the development of technology, scientists have managed to print metal, concrete, and even glass. One thing to keep in mind is that different 3D printers use different techniques and consume different materials. You might need to check the manual before you start. What can we do with 3D printing? 3D printing is gaining popularity due to its various possibilities. But we don’t need to wait a couple of decades to witness this magical technology. Nowadays, it’s already altering some industries. Nike is using 3D printing for the purpose of rapid prototyping. In the past, they used to spend thousands of dollars on shoe prototypes and wait for weeks to realize their designs. With 3D printing, they can create multi-color shoe prototypes in a few hours. What’s more, it reduces 90% of the prototyping cost, and changes can be made instantly on the computer. One really exciting application of 3D printing is the generation of body parts. The complexity that this technology can produce often supersedes that of traditional methods, offering patients an outstanding fit and design, and they can be produced at an impressively low cost. Prosthetic body parts like limbs, ears, and bones made with 3D printing have already helped patients who were born with physical handicaps or soldiers who have lost body parts in battle. Besides the viable applications of 3D printing, it is also cool and fun. 3D printing technology has been around for two decades, but the price has come down in recent years, consequently becoming more available for more people. It is recently reported that a group of Dutch students printed their own bicycle that can function perfectly on the road. A man in the US printed his own 3D concrete castle. Though it was designed to be fairly simple and lacking in architectural detail, it may provide possibilities for poverty-stricken areas to build inexpensive housing. Even NASA should consider this technology in a serious manner. Perhaps they can send robots to Mars and use 3D printing to make astronaut shelters with dust. A day made of 3D printing Reading about 3D printing always triggered my curiosity about the future. Maybe one day, every family will own a 3D printer. We won’t buy shoes or clothes anymore. We may simply download a file and activate our printers. It may be possible that if there were to be a cut on our arm, we would simply put our arm in a 3D printer, and the printer would print skin tissues layer by layer to heal us immediately. On the other hand, 3D printing may pose threats to our lives. If this technology is not used in a correct way, criminals can print guns, bombs, and drugs. Our future may become more dangerous and chaotic. Therefore, it might be necessary for the government to enforce some restrictions on 3D printing. From my perspective, 3D printing is a technology that is cool and fun, but at the same time, practical. It is a solution that turns science fiction into reality. I am looking forward to the day when 3D printing will change our lives with its incredible capabilities. a
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May 2024
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