3D Printing: Impact Beyond Printing

A while back, I had written a blog explaining what 3D printing is. That blog focused on how 3D printing works; and what it can (and cannot) be used to print. What the blog did not do was to go into the potential impact of such a technology. I had assumed that it was just going to be a way to allow individuals to print one-off products and niche objects.

But what if 3D printing is going to be far more transformative than that, wonders Clive Thompson. What if it increases how well we understand things simply because we can put a 3D model in front of us that helps us visualize, and thereby understand? In other words, would 3D printing help the way 3D models help architects?
“When the visualization is physical, it has a haptic impact that screens do not. You learn new things. That’s why architects build scale models of their buildings: Only by peering around a structure do you “get” what’s going on. “You see these spatial relations and depth of field that aren’t possible onscreen.”

Turns out such usage is already happening. Ed Smith, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Boston prints “a high-resolution copy of the child’s brain, tumor and all”. This gives him a far more nuanced (and accurate) understanding before the surgery. NASA astronomers printed a model of a binary-star system which helped them visualize and understand certain aspects better. A blind kid started to understand fractions when she could touch and feel the concept, thanks to 3D printing.

As with so many things, once a technology is unleashed, you have no way of predicting its eventual uses and consequences.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJanuary 6, 2016 at 9:45 AM

    I read recently a news item on the 3D printer. It said that they have actually made an intricate ceramic piece using the 3D printer,in which ceramic method was incorporated specially. The figure of the ceramic clearly showed that it belonged altogether a new class of work in ceramics. Nothing classical at all about it. It just would not have been possible.

    Much before I had read about a drone which was made out of 3D printing, which actually flew.

    On the whole, we need to grasp something very different about the technology of 3D printers. With paper printers, the printing in color or black and white gets done on paper. In that sense, the scope was defined and limited. One word would do more or less: print. Sophistication on that are all qualifiers!

    With 3D printers, there is no simple word definition. It seems to be an emerging dimension of variable ways of 3D printing.

    The only version which may be widely used and seen visible all over may be the one for basic 3D models, a forerunner to prototypes and real product. Like architectural buildings, mechanical components for machinery not as working model but as assembly previews, even working models for simple ideas which may not require advanced materials.

    The other class may be the ones which adapt different kinds of technologies to suit different materials, such as special plastics, ceramics etc. How far it would go is difficult to predict I think.

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