3D Printing: A Bridge Between 3D Printing: A Bridge Between Engineers, Designers and Innovation?Engineers, Designers and Innovation?

Olaf Diegel

From A to Z

Life before academia

Subtractive Manufacturing 101

The really old way: Take a block of material and carve it out

You want to make a bust of yourself...

The more modern way •Generate 3D model•Generate CNC program•Machine away unwanted material•If possible, recycle waste

Additive Manufacturing 101

• Generate a 3D CAD model• Software slices the 3D

model into thin slices• Machine builds it layer by

layer• The thinner the slices, the

better the quality of the model

The Past For most of the 90s, Additive Manufacturing was

known as Rapid Prototyping, and mostly used for prototyping engineering parts.

In the last decade AM has begun to make appearances in real, commercially available, products, ie. moved beyond prototypes.

Why Additive Manufacturing?

1. Complexity for Free2. Mass-Customisation3. Complete products in one print4. Trying Ideas with minimal risk5. Encourages Innovation6. Supply-Chain Reduction / On-demand

manufacturing

Advantage 1: Complexity for Free

• The more complex the part, the better it is suited to Additive Manufacturing (AM).

• If a part is relatively simple, there are, generally, more cost-effective ways of manufacturing it than AM.

• Many simple parts can often be consolidated into one much more complex parts as no assembly is required (so less assembly labour).

Art & Design Objects

Freedom of Creation

Joshua Harker

Jewellery

Marketing

Advantage 2: Mass customisation

• A small production run of parts can be undertaken in which each part is uniquely customized to suit the user

• It costs no more to do 100 different components than 100 of the same component

• This opens up a whole new area of business for products that are mass-custom-made for the user

Medical Applications

Knee replacement, EOS

Hip socket, Ala Ortho, Italy, made on Arcam machine

Laser Sintered Hearing Aids, EOS/Materialise

Dental Crowns and Bridges, EOS

Lighting

MGX Design

Printing People

Know your baby before its born…

Tomohiro Kinoshita , of FASOTEC, the company offering the 'Shape of an Angel' model, even offers parents a miniature version which could be a 'nice adornment to a mobile phone strap or key chain.'

Advantage 3: Complete Products

• AM allows the production of complete products with moving parts. This can greatly reduce the amount of assembly (ergo labour) required to make products.

Textile & Fashion Applications

Continuum Design

Freedom of Creation

Francis Bitonti & Michael Schmidt Studios

Joshua DeMonte

3D printed airplane

University of South Hampton

Advantage 4: Try Ideas at No Risk

• Testing the market with an idea, using traditional manufacturing methods, can often be extremely expensive. AM allows small production runs of product to be taken to market with very little capital risk.

• This allows many more inventors to realize their inventions and test their market validity.

Galantai Soap Dispenser

Short production run of 100 units undertaken for Australian market. Cost ~US$2000

Adding Aesthetics to Utility

People who feel good about how they look are likely to be happier than people who are uncomfortable. Bespoke Innovations has taken this to heart and, through the power of AM, has created what they call prosthetic Fairings.

3D Printed Musical Instruments

Challenges

• Body configuration without flex• CAD files suited for mass-customisations,

aesthetics, neck scale/style, pickups, bridge, electronics, tremolo, etc.

• Colour on SLS

Where to from here?

• Have sold around 30 instruments since July 2012

• Americana won Best in Show at NAMM 2013• Licensed designs to 3D Systems in November

2012. They are now working to take over sales and manufacturing.

• Working on app that allows customer to design their own 3D printed guitars in an intuitive ‘gaming’ style

The Goal“Spore” Guitar Creator online customer co-creation software

Advantage 5: Encouraging Innovation

• The relatively low-cost ability to easily try out ideas generates many innovations that would just not have seen the light of day with conventional manufacturing.

• AM has seen children returning to making things. Where, over the past 20 years, they have slowly drifted into a digital entertainment age, 3D printing is now allowing them to move back from digital into reality.

Beauty and the beak

Miles Lightwood

Innovative Applications

FabCafe in the Shibuya, Tokyo offers custom-printed chocolate, that resemble a customer’s face. It’s done with 3D printing technology

“Eat Your Face Machine” (EYFM) is a 3D printer developed by David Carr and the MIT Media Lab

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May 2013: 3-D Printer Makes A Bionic Ear

The “inks” consisted of hydrogels mixed with calf cells and silver nanoparticles.Michael McAlpine, Princeton University

Baby's Life Saved with 3D Printing

Researchers built a 3D printed device that saved the life of Kaiba Gionfriddo, born with a rare condition, tracheobronchomalacia, that caused life-threatening breathing problems.

polycaprolactone splint, Dr. Glenn Green and Scott Hollister, PhD,

University of Michigan

Prototype engagement ring, in case she says “No”

Innovative use of power sources

Markus Kayser’s “Solar Sinter” 3D printer

And, of course, it was only a matter of time…

The Justin Bieber

Virginia tech’s 3D printing vending machine

The DreamVendor is an interactive 3D printing vending machine for Virginia Tech students to enable them to quickly make prototypes for their academic, or personal, design projects. Insert an SD card with the 3D model into the machine; the DreamVendor then prints your 3D part and dispenses it into a bin when it's finished.

The Challenge: Innovation vs Engineering vs Design

Don’t be stupid! You cant do that…

What do you mean you can’t make it like

this?

Engineer

Designer/Artist

Additive Manufacturing missionary

AM Reporter

Innovation and AM

• Yes! We absolutely need more engineering research into the technical aspects of AM

• Design for AM is fantastic!• But let’s not forget about the innovations

that are often brought about by those who know nothing of the engineering constraints of AM.

• So avoid telling people what cannot be done with AM!

The Catch-22

How do you avoid telling people what cannot be done with AM while, at the same time, dispelling the many myths created by bad reporting, and by us giving people bad advice by telling them that anything can, and should, be made with AM?In other words, Is it time that we now start a much more effective and responsible education program around AM and it’s uses?

The opportunity

Because it crosses all disciplines, from hard-core engineering, to art & design, to social sciences, to business, additive manufacturing gives us an unprecedented opportunity for all disciplines to work in much closer synergy than ever before, and to innovate in an extraordinary manner.

USE IT!