Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing • Hacker News Board

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#11

Post by kanzure » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:22 AM UTC

paged90 wrote: post #3

DVassallo wrote: post #2

> Extreme future 3D printers will print entire planets or create new suns for new colonies. I can understand the printing of rockets and jet engines, but can someone give me a hint into understanding the printing of planets and suns?

There's more than a couple of things here I disagree with. I suppose the DNA origami is one. The leap from "folding DNA into shapes" to "making trees grow into a chair" is astounding in it's oversimplification.

> The leap from "folding DNA into shapes" to "making trees grow into a chair" is astounding in it's oversimplification.

Yep, agreed. Besides, you don't need to invoke DNA origami (nor the actual techniques you would use to achieve that, like typical genome manipulation) to get trees to grow into chairs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_shaping

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#12

Post by evoxed » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:26 AM UTC

jayfuerstenberg wrote: post #5

I wonder if LEGO can stave off the doom 3D printing presents since blocks are the easiest the things to replicate. They do a lot of tie-in based LEGO sets that I believe are protected by copyright. However, their basic blocks lost their patent last year so it's open season for those! http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-day-l...

Here's to hoping that Lego pivots into a foundation for educational, manufacturing, structural, (etc)... research while investing in 3d printing and bringing the tech up to and beyond their current spec. Optimism!

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#13

Post by yardie » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:34 AM UTC

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #7

I see the same breathless optimism here as in the dawn of the WWW in the laste nineties. People with little to no understanding of what 3d printing is or its limitations, making wild extrapolations that don't take much reality (especially the social, legal, and political implications) into account. The fact is, we do not have any idea where 3d printing will take us. The idea that we'll all have 3d printers in our hom…

Yeah reminds me a bit of Back to the Future II. There was a fax machine in every room of the house.

Also a lot of people barely know how to work with wood. I'd expect even fewer to understand the basics of material science to work with polymers and other compounds.

If anything we're at the ImageWriter phase of 3D printing. You could print from home but to have anything worthwhile you'll probably want to take it to a shop who'll have better materials and someone knowledgable. That expert will tell you why you shouldn't use your creation to serve food on or that it dissolves when exposed to solvents.

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#14

Post by evoxed » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:38 AM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #4

DVassallo wrote: post #2

> Extreme future 3D printers will print entire planets or create new suns for new colonies. I can understand the printing of rockets and jet engines, but can someone give me a hint into understanding the printing of planets and suns?

I presume after the economy of scale kicks in, we'll be able to buy our own planets and suns from Walmart for next to nothing. A sun in every home. In all seriousness though, being able to print planets and suns, that is one of the craziest things I have ever heard.

It's a silly idea but at the same time not totally unrealistic if you assume that one, it's not something we could necessarily start today, two, it isn't a task that could be completed in any 'worthwhile' timeframe, and three, that the raw material for such a venture existed and could be harvested in some at-least-minimally efficient way.

Once we have some sort of solution to the materials problem, it sure would be fun to throw out a couple of linked, self-replicating devices into space and check up on them in, oh, a thousand years or so. Hell, bury our best AI somewhere in the core and maybe by the time it's discovered we'll have a created the next Big Thing. I wonder how long it will be before machines can 'meditate' (usefully of course, hibernate doesn't count)...

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#15

Post by evoxed » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:40 AM UTC

yardie wrote: post #13

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #7

I see the same breathless optimism here as in the dawn of the WWW in the laste nineties. People with little to no understanding of what 3d printing is or its limitations, making wild extrapolations that don't take much reality (especially the social, legal, and political implications) into account. The fact is, we do not have any idea where 3d printing will take us. The idea that we'll all have 3d printers in our hom…

Yeah reminds me a bit of Back to the Future II. There was a fax machine in every room of the house. Also a lot of people barely know how to work with wood. I'd expect even fewer to understand the basics of material science to work with polymers and other compounds. If anything we're at the ImageWriter phase of 3D printing. You could print from home but to have anything worthwhile you'll probably want to take it to a…

> There was a fax machine in every room of the house.

/house/office and they predicted the future of Japan pretty darn well!

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#16

Post by wdrevno » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:51 AM UTC

IMO, we are still a ways away from 3D printing being as disruptive as a lot of people think (at least for home use).

From owning a 3D printer and doing prints for friends in my engineering classes, I think people still greatly underestimate how high touch 3D printing is today.

For example, look at the makerbot google group: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/makerbot

Even looking at Shapeways (an online 3D printing company with really expensive machines), they still deal with quality control problems for the average model someone uploads.

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#17

Post by hugi » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 9:00 AM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #4

DVassallo wrote: post #2

> Extreme future 3D printers will print entire planets or create new suns for new colonies. I can understand the printing of rockets and jet engines, but can someone give me a hint into understanding the printing of planets and suns?

I presume after the economy of scale kicks in, we'll be able to buy our own planets and suns from Walmart for next to nothing. A sun in every home. In all seriousness though, being able to print planets and suns, that is one of the craziest things I have ever heard.

You don't think the Magratheans build their planets by hand, do you?

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#18

Post by nickpinkston » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 9:17 AM UTC

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #7

I see the same breathless optimism here as in the dawn of the WWW in the laste nineties. People with little to no understanding of what 3d printing is or its limitations, making wild extrapolations that don't take much reality (especially the social, legal, and political implications) into account. The fact is, we do not have any idea where 3d printing will take us. The idea that we'll all have 3d printers in our hom…

The point needs to be made that 3D printing as "StarTrek replicator" is going to take many many decades. The real big deal is that 3D printing is leading the acceleration of digital manufacturing methods in general (CNC milling, etc.). 3DP is just a good gateway drug for a far larger movement that's beginning to take shape in non-SciFi ways.

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#19

Post by yk » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 9:38 AM UTC

DVassallo wrote: post #2

> Extreme future 3D printers will print entire planets or create new suns for new colonies. I can understand the printing of rockets and jet engines, but can someone give me a hint into understanding the printing of planets and suns?

Printing a star is quite simple. Just dump roughly 10^30 kg hydrogen into empty space. It will assemble itself into a spherical shape and start fusion. ( For best results, add a little bit of He and CNO into hydrogen.)

Re: Manufacturing a Renaissance with 3D Printing

#20

Post by yk » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 9:49 AM UTC

There are three interesting blog posts in this one. I would suggest the titles

3D Printing @ home

3D Printing @ labs

3D Printing @ Star Trek

( Furthermore I think a symbol for 3D printing should be invented. The @ is slightly too 90s.)