443D PRINTING: MAGIC OR MASSACRE?Tucked in next to the Albany Public Library lies the domain of a revolutionary. Hemay not be Che Guevara, but he just may be Massey’s own James Watt or Henry Ford.This is Olaf Diegel, Professor of Mechatronics and resident guru of 3D printing, thetechnology behind the next industrial revolution. Nathan Palairet spoke to Olaf inhis office – an Aladdin’s cave of assorted bits and pieces.I carefully step around the half-disassembled robots littering the floor of Olaf Diegel’soffice and ask him what all this fuss is about.With 3D printing, he tells me, you’re creating physical objects out of computermodels and raw material. And you’re not restricted by how elaborate your objectis. With normal injection molding, the process that nearly anything plastic you canimagine is currently made by, you’re limited by the molds themselves. As your objectbecomes more intricate and complex, the molds get much, much more expensive. Byprinting in 3D, you don’t need molds at all – and you can make these highly detailedobjects for zero-added cost.The technology’s been around since the 90s, when it was mainly used for rapidprototypingby big engineering companies. The machines were expensive. To pick oneup would have set you back a cool $50,000 for a bog-standard model, so it was hardlyfor the common man. Now, as the technology has improved and with the originalpatents expiring, you can get consumer-grade machines for about $1000.These machines work by squeezing molten plastic out of an extrusion head muchlike toothpaste, but a fraction of a millimetre thick. Over time, the object is built uplayer-by-layer. Of course, what they can do isn’t a patch on the higher-end machines,and that’s where the fun starts.Diegel pulls out a guitar body from among the debris on his desk. It’s amazinglycomplex, with an organic filigree shell hiding a cloud of orbiting electrons in the centre.“About a year and a half ago, I asked myself if the technology had improved to thepoint where I could print myself a working guitar” he says. “Of course, you couldn’thave made this any other way, and as it turns out you can print guitars!”Diegel didn’t stop with his first guitar, the Atom. He now has six different designsavailable, and recently returned from the NAMM music convention is the US witha Best in Show award for his newest model. The Americana is based on the starsand-stripesflag with famous New York landmarks embedded inside. Look closelyand you’ll see the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, and the Statue of Libertypeeking back at you.What made these designs possible is a process called Selective Laser Sintering, wherepowdered material is melted together with precise lasers. You’re not limited to plastic.You can print nylon (which Diegel’s guitars are made out of ), stainless steel and eventitanium. The finish here is much smoother than the desktop extrusion machines, andalthough they’re more expensive at the moment, as the patents behind the technologyexpire in the next couple of years, they’ll come down to $1000 too.So with the proliferation of this technology that is becoming cheaper and morecapable by the day, what’s next?Diegel reckons that within the next five years, it’ll become a “mainstreammanufacturing process” and very widespread. He doesn’t think it’ll replace all formsof manufacturing, though – for simple things, existing methods will always be cheaperand easier. But for complicated or one-off things, we’ll be able to just get productsmade that are perfectly tailored for us.Even now, there are applications in the medical field that utilise 3D printing.Customised titanium hip-replacements and plastic skull transplants are already in use,and we’re beginning to print actual human tissue such as bladders, right now.The moniker is a bit of a red herring, though. The printer doesn’t actually print flesh– instead it assembles a scaffold out of sugar and places stem cells within, which seedthe growth of the organ. Don’t worry, though – these stem cells actually come fromyour own tissue, so there’s nothing morally ambiguous about the process.Like 3D printing in general, the method is in its infancy. But there will be a daywhere there are no transplant waiting lists. From a sample taken from your own heart,or liver, a new one can be grown on demand. Want a new-shaped nose? Ears? Whybother with a nip or a tuck, when you can be your own Mr Potato Head! And perhapsa few years later on, whole new limbs for amputees will be able to be made. Of course,this is all blue-sky thinking. But think back to Silicon Valley in the 1970s – who wouldhave predicted that from those garages would emerge the smartphone mere decadeslater?However, just as those early pioneers didn’t foresee cyber-bullying on Facebookor hacking into nuclear power plants, all is not rosy in the world of 3D printing.Whenever a new technology is introduced, people will always find a way to twist itinto a way to skirt around the law.Enter Cody Wilson, the self-described “crypto-anarchist” who is a firm believerin the fact that all information should be shared and censorship be eschewed.Unfortunately, his ethos also extends to gun blueprints. Defense Distributed is anopen-source arms organisation with Wilson at the head. Their self-described aim is toproduce a “wiki-weapon”, released open-source and available to anyone to print theirown firearm. Already they have released free CAD files for rifle parts, including thelower receiver for an AR-15, the same assault rifle used in the Sandy Hook and Aurorashootings in the US last year. The lower receiver is the part that’s legally the firearm –the bit with a serial number. And once you’ve got what is essentially just a box, you canlegally buy the rest of the rifle parts with no background or age checks, no questionsasked. After this single part is printed, you have the base of an untraceable assault rifle.It works, too. Their latest version (yes, they update them) lasted for more than 600<strong>Massive</strong>magazine.org.nz
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