Fernando Sosa has a custom 3-D printing business, in which he offers to make models, prototypes and replicas of new products. He has a few spectacular samples for sale on his website, nuPROTO.com, including a cyborg spider and a pair of Death Star Christmas tree ornaments.
But his most famous product is a Game of Thrones iPhone dock, which allows you to perch your phone on the Iron Throne, the show's infamous seat of kings, which is made entirely from the swords of vanquished enemies.
You can't buy one, though.
HBO sent Sosa a cease-and-desist letter, saying that the throne was its intellectual property and that nuPROTO did not have a license to sell it. Sosa has attempted to find out who does have the license, or to obtain one for himself, but without luck.
The Internet has turned out to be a very convenient channel for distributing products. Buyers can…
search for what they want,
find products that fit their needs,
compare prices,
read reviews on the products and sellers,
order products 24/7…
without leaving the comfort of their home or place of business.
The problem is that for products that are not in digital form, buyers have to wait for packages to be physically sent via common carriers or through the mail. Too often, shopping carts are abandoned once charges are shown. Currently, this is the bottleneck in the process. The only way to overcome this bottleneck, if you need the product quickly, is to find a local store that has it in stock. Of course, buyers still have to find a way to get to the store as they worry about time, traffic, parking, and other inconveniences (or use a pricey courier service).
There are some interesting technologies available (and on the horizon) that might provide a solution to the problems related to physically distributing products. In particular, drones and 3-D printers hold a lot of promise in the not so distant future.
Drones for delivery
Thanks to the nightly news, when most people think of drones, they picture small pilotless, plane-like devices used by the military for hunting terrorists. Drone manufacturers want to change this image and widen the target audience for their products. Physical delivery of products is one of the potential uses of drones that could excite marketers.
Different drones at different price points
Currently drones can be bought online for under $300. They can find locations via GPS, and have the capability of delivering products to their destinations. Operators can control them using a smart phone and WiFi. Of course the $300 variety is limited in terms of payload, flying distance and time. For applications that require 15 to 20 minutes of fully autonomous flight, drones are available in the $600 price range. According to the Washington Post, Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired Magazine, owns 3-D robotics. His company, founded in 2009, sold $5 million of these not very long after inception.
Sales have been growing at 100% per year ever-since. For bigger drones that can handle larger payloads, fly for hours, and “synch” with surveillance systems on the ground, the price is north of $20,000. Delivery companies such as UPS and Fedex might be the ones to use these pricier models. Whatever drone is used, technology is available now, and it is bound to get more sophisticated at lower price points as technical advances and economies of scale kick-in.
Current drone drawbacks
So if drone technology is available now, what is preventing it from being used to commercially deliver products? The answer is the law. Commercial use of drones is currently illegal. And the devices that are available are restricted to operating below 400 feet, roughly the height of a 4-story building. The one ray of good news for commercial use is that Congress has directed the FAA to develop rules for integrating drones into commercial airspace by 2015.
Exciting possibilities
Over the next two years as guidelines are being formulated for possible commercial drone use, the technology will be advancing and marketers will be sure to take advantage of the possibilities. Today, using GPS technology, drones can precisely find locations. And, at the push of a button, they can be sent back home. As the technology gets more sophisticated, marketers can envision a scenario where a buyer can order a product from a local seller. The seller can outfit the drone to deliver the product directly to the buyer – dialing in their precise location at home, work, park or elsewhere. Locations could have mailbox-sized drone ports where drones can land or hover, buyers can take their merchandise once they identify themselves via some unique codes (numeric, eye or finger print), and buyers can press a button to send the drones back to their point of origin. Think of this as an electronic version of Harry Potter’s owl, Hedwig.
Of course, marketers can also envision the promotional possibilities where sellers will drape the drones with tastefully crafted branding elements and ads to further inform those along the flight path. The recipient of the goods may also receive on-board brochures, coupons, and special promotions along with the goods they purchased. In this way, goods can be delivered quickly without the expense of paying for gas, and other escalating auto expenses. Additionally, at least at the beginning, sellers can also benefit from the cachet of having a new, hip, cool, and story-worthy way of delivering products.
3-D printers
Another technology that is here today and being rapidly advanced for delivery of products is 3-D printing. Users will be able to order products via the Internet, Smart TVs, and other smart devices. A 3-D printer at the ordering location (for those that have one) or at a 3-D printing center (operating similar to a FedEx copy center) will then make the products according to a blueprint, recipe, or software program. Where will the ingredients that are fed into the printer come from? There are many possibilities. They might be (1) already purchased in a traditional way and stored in the home, office, hospital or place of business, (2) loaded into purchased cartridges similar to ink cartridges in an inkjet printer, (3) delivered by drones, or (4) sent through a system of underground tubes similar to the way water, gas, and other utilities are delivered today. Taking this one step further, once products are used, a similar (but separate) tube system can be used to sterilize, recycle, and process any waste.
While this may sound far-fetched, the system of utilities, modes of transportation, and technologies that are commonplace today would be hard to imagine not so long ago. Perhaps the biggest hurdles are not technological. They are more likely political, legal, regulatory, and economic. Municipalities need the vision to invest resources in these delivery and recycling systems. If properly designed and executed, these systems will ultimately pay for themselves in convenience, efficiency, security, and time.
A bit further out on the technology advancement timeline is the concept of delivering physical products by quantum teleportation represented by the famous Star Trek phrase “Beam me up, Scotty.” If and when this technology is ever available, which many futurists believe it will be, products ordered from a company at point A can be delivered quickly to point B.
New forms of distribution and delivery are coming
No matter what technologies are employed, there are (and will continue to be) new ways to deliver physical products from seller to buyer. This holds tremendous promise for almost every field of endeavor from the distribution of good-tasting food to the delivery of life-saving medical procedures. Thinking about this future is exciting. Making it a reality is even more exciting. Stay tuned.
By now, 3D-printed cars are old news. Never mind the fact that few of us have ever or will ever see one in person, much less take one for a joy ride. But 3D-printed cars that can assemble themselves? Now we're talkin.
An ambitious and ingenious new concept design called "Genesis" from Royal College of Art graduate student Nir Siegel, explores the possibility of not only on-demand custom design, but also self-automated production techniques.
Siegel's concept, which was recently awarded the Pilkington Vehicle Design award, envisions a specialized 3D-printer that actually prints the car around itself, right in front of the car buyer. While current commercial-grade 3D printers are a long way off from being able to produce a design of such complexity efficiently or with sufficient structural integrity, it's a rapidly developing field that includes such strides as 3D printing entire rooms and even houses.
The all-too-common criticism against consumer 3D printers is that you "can't make anything useful with them."
While they've come down in price immensely ($400 versus tens of thousands of dollars), there's still the problem of making them appealing to the Average Joe. We have this once-exclusive technology shrunken down to fit on our kitchen counters, and we don't know what to do with them.
Three-dimensional printing was recently named by Goldman Sachs as one of eight technologies that are going to creatively destroy how we do business.
In a new note, a Credit Suisse team led by Julian Mitchell dives into the sector, coming up with some projected growth figures and pinpointing which markets will be doing most of the driving.
"Most corporate guidance defaults to the assumptions of industry consultants who estimate that the 3D printing market will grow at ~20% annually. We challenge this assumption and attempt to quantify the addressable market by investigating the opportunities within key verticals such as aerospace, automotive, health care, and consumer. We conclude that these four markets alone (which comprise ~ 50% of the AM market today) represent sufficient opportunity to sustain 20-30% annual revenue growth, bolstered by the technology’s transition from prototyping to end use parts and expansion into metals."
Here's the chart:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Credit Suisse's massive 180-page report goes into painstaking detail into how 3D printing will change the world. But here are some highlights:
Health care is already knee-deep in 3D printing. Mitchell and co. say more than 90% of all hearing-aid shells today are produced through the process.
As it turns out, dental applications probably contain the most potential within health care, thanks to the more than 14,000 dental labs in the U.S. The C.S. team envisions market penetration to improve to 18% from 12% in the sector by 2016.
Personalized hip and knee replacements could also see gains. The team projects a market of up to $1.8 billion, though they note that the niche has yet to totally catch fire.
And GE has been producing a previously expensive part of ultrasound machines can be printed on 3D machines (they can also use it to make wind and gas turbine parts).
“It’s really fundamentally changing the way we think about the company,” Mitchell and co. quote Mark Little, GE’s chief technology officer, as saying.
Projections for 3D printing's expansion into aerospace match those in health care — the team sees a 30% compound annual growth rate for each. Airplane engines will lead the way:
"Capital expenditures at aircraft engine [manufacturers] for example are generally ~4% of sales, the majority of which is allocated to manufacturing equipment. With 2016E aircraft engine industry sales of ~$50bn, this implies an addressable market for printing systems for aircraft engines of ~$1.4bn in 2016. This represents over 6x the entire 3D market for aerospace today, which is not limited to only aircraft engines, and includes sales of materials, service, software, and parts."
The most rapid expansion of 3D printing will come from personal use, the team argues:
"The consumer market is the fastest-growing portion of the 3D printing market, with expectations for 100%+ YoY growth in 2013. Makerbot [owned by Stratasys] describes its offering as intended for the 'pro-sumer' market (manufacturer's suggested retail price is $2,200-2,800), expecting many systems to be dual professional / personal use among small business owners or serious hobbyists. 3D Systems' 'Cube' (MSRP $1,200+) is marketed by DDD as a true 'consumer' printer."
Finally, they note 3D printing has been endorsed by Elon Musk, and reference the following must-watch futuristic video to bolster their argument:
Mitchell and co. conclude that 3D Systems (DDD), Stratasys and ExOne Co. are the best stocks to play the field thanks to their presence in nearly all of these markets.
Earlier this week we presented the thesis from Credit Suisse that not only is 3-D printing not a flash in the pan, existing market research reports have actually understated its potential market. 3-D printing is exactly what it sounds like: making 3-D objects from a device that's conceptually more like a printer than from a typical manufacturing process.
But we wanted to get a little bit more specific about where exactly this is going to happen.
So with the help of an excellent report from consulting firm CSC, we now present five industries that are already feeling the effects of 3-D printing's imminent dominance — for better or worse.
But we could soon start seeing whole cars (or at least their bodies) printed. That's the business model for Urbee ("urban electric"), a startup auto company that wants to make the greenest car on earth. Stratsys, one of Credit Suisse's top stocks for investing in 3-D printing, just signed on as Urbee's sponsor for digital printing.
Defense
A company called EOIR Technologies developed a way to mass produce camera gun sights for M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles using 3-D printing.
Accroding to CSC, that cut the cost of manufacturing the gear by 60%.
The Air Force is also in the initial stages of pumping out components of otherwise highly sensitive and expensive systems, like drones, in order to use them in training exercises.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Medicine
Pick almost any simple soft-tissue organ — ears, fingers, even kidneys — and it's already being printed on a 3-D machine. So are 90% of all hearing aids, as well as an increasing number of dental equipment and hip and knee replacements, according to Credit Suisse.
For instance, according to CSC, Boeing's environmental control ducting (basically specialized tubes) used to have to be assembled from 20 small parts; now it's pumped out as a single piece.
This reduces inventory and maintenace costs, and also lowers fuel costs since the part is lighter. Some aerospace manufacturers are also deploying on-site printers for certain parts, reducing shipping costs.
Brick and mortar retail
If some storefront retailers are on the brink, 3-D printing may push them over the edge.
CSC has a great, illustrative story of how at-home 3-D printing could accelerate the decline of storefronts:
"Recently, one of our researchers faced the prospect of a 14-hour flight holding an ebook reader, with no time to buy a reader stand before leaving for the flight. After a few minutes searching on Thingiverse.com [a site offering 3-D printing files], he was able to download a foldable stand design, print it in 45 minutes, and use it on the flight that night."
Here's what it looked like:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Again, Credit Suisse says 3-D printing could drive up to 30% of revenue growth for aerospace, automotive, health care, and consumer sectors.
The 3D printing hype machine is already going full steam ahead, but this is pretty awesome.
Meet Peachy Printer, a Kickstarter project aiming to bring a $100 3D printer to anyone who wants it. 3D printing is a notoriously pricey venture, with the professional-grade machines costing tens of thousands of dollars. A spate of much more affordable hobbyist-grade 3D printers emerged in the past year or two and has significantly lowered the cost of admission to somewhere between several hundred dollars and a couple thousand. Peachy Printer wants to blow this pricing out of the water, and as you might imagine, this has resulted in an impressively-conceived design that makes Peachy Printer something to keep an eye on.
The team emphasizes that they are not yet at their final model, but even the current design seems to turn out prints of respectable quality, certainly on par with some machines costing several more hundred dollars. This thing even works as a 3D scanner if you have a video camera or webcam.
The software we wrote [...] takes the data from that 3D model and translates it into an audio waveform. It then plays the audio file out to the printer through the headphone jack in your computer. This waveform drives a pair of electro magnetic mirrors. The higher the volume, the higher the voltage, the more the mirrors move. The purpose of these mirrors is to reflect and control the path of the laser beam. By using the audio waveform generated from the 3D model data to drive the mirrors, we are able to get the laser beam to draw out the shape of the object. That's takes care of the X and Y axes.
Now let's talk about the drip system that creates movement on the Z axis. The salt water in the top container syphons down to a drip feed. The rate of this drip feed is controlled by a valve. As each drip leaves the feed, it passes through two contact points creating an electrical connection that is detected by your computers microphone jack. The drip continues to fall into the bottom container where it causes the resin floating atop it to rise. The software listens to the microphone level, counting each drip that falls and calculates the resultant level of the resin. This allows the software to send the layer that corresponds with the current Z-level of the resin. This process continues until the print is complete!
First he founded a startup called Site Advisor. He sold it to McAfee for millions of dollars.
Then he cofounded Hunch, which he sold to eBay for millions and millions of dollars.
All the while, he invested in startups on the side.
Now startup investing is Dixon's full-time job. Since the Spring, he's been a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a deeply-admired venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.
There, Dixon is writing huge, multi-million dollar checks to fund startups working on truly futuristic technologies, such as drones, 3D printing, and Bitcoin.
Obviously, he is having a blast.
We asked Dixon about what he's up to. Watch, here:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.With the advent of 3D printing and 3D scanning comes a new way to brush your teeth.
Blizzident, shaped exactly like your teeth, is what Quartz has labled "the world's craziest toothbrush." If you didn't have time for the suggested three minutes to clean your chompers after meals, never fear; Blizzident completes the task in just six seconds.
To tailor the brush to a person's mouth, dentists take a digital scan of the teeth and the scan is then used to determine the optimal placement of the bristles by simulating biting and chewing movements. The bristles resemble normal toothbrush bristles. Then3D printing is used to create the brush itself.
What do you get when you combine a background in visual art, 3D printing technology, and a desire for highly customized chocolate? Just ask Brian Begun, the visual effects artist turned chocolate maker who invented a patent-pending process for replicating three-dimensional objects in chocolate.
Begun has been "making the impossible look possible" for more than 20 years as a visual effects artist for television and films like "Pacific Rim" and "Star Trek Into Darkness." With a career built on artistic and technical expertise under his belt, he recently took a step away from the entertainment industry and founded his company, Everything's Made of Chocolate.
"It all started with my wedding," Begun said. "My wife and I wanted to have custom-designed chocolate pieces for our guests. After finding that custom chocolate work was either too expensive or wasn't what we were looking for, we ended up doing the work ourselves. After much thought and research, I realized there had to be a better way to approach chocolate design."
Creating chocolate molds has traditionally been a complicated process, involving techniques such as heat-treated plastic, metal stamping or covering an object in food-safe silicone. By using 3D printing technology, Begun's method allows for the replication of an object without heavy machinery, heat, pressure or chemicals that can damage or destroy the original item. Printing the molds from computer scans of the object means that size and details can easily be changed, which can't be said of traditional chocolate molds.
According to Begun, his process will "stretch the boundaries of what you would normally find shaped in chocolate." The Indiegogo page for the company says that Everything's Made of Chocolate will be able to create molds based on actual objects like heirlooms, personal items and corporate logos. Because of the flexibility in mold material and easy replication process, Begun also believes his invention will make custom chocolate design more accessible and affordable for consumers.
If there's one man who knows his way around the kitchen and knows where the intersection of cooking and technology lies, it's Alton Brown. The Food Network star is launching a tech-y, messy live food show tour this week.
Brown, and his show "Good Eats," is known for bringing more of a scientific and tech perspective to cooking. At his test kitchen in Atlanta, he says he is looking at ultrasonics, room-temperature distillations to make brandy and concentrate flavor. He says he's applying technology used in the perfume industry to cooking.
He says he believes 3-D printing could revolutionize cooking.
The outspoken chef also will talk smack about his fellow television personalities.
"I don't have Gordon Ramsay on speed dial," he says.
We also asked him what he thought the most important inventions in the history of cooking have been.
Here are the four most important tech innovations of culinary history, according to Alton Brown:
1. Fire. "It's hard to play down fire." Learning to use fire, pretty big. Pretty much the birth of cooking.
2. The oven. "The development of modern ovens, which is relatively recent." In 18th-century France it was still pretty much a charcoal-driven system. But then we got into real ovens -- actual ovens -- in the 19th century. And the development of the wood-burning or free-standing oven was a pretty big deal. Or stove. 'Modern,' meaning that it stood on legs, it was made of iron, it had a flue. It was relatively controllable by using dampers. Once we got into using a natural gas oven, then we were really in the modern age. Because now we could control. You would say, 'Okay, I would like for this oven cavity to be somewhere in the range of 300 degrees' ... If you look back in the history of the oven -- which is a project I'm actually doing right now -- there wasn't one big advance. There are several big advances that built on each other, especially during the Industrial Revolution.
3. The Fridge. "The invention of refrigeration." Moving from ice-based refrigeration to mechanical refrigeration. The invention of the condenser-refrigerant system that we have now, which is really less than 100 years old. Not having to harvest ice -- now we can actually make ice. My mother, who is 75-years-old, very much remembers deliveries from the ice man. Ice was harvested as an agricultural product up until fairly recently and then it became a manufactured product but we were still dependent on receiving that into our house and putting it into an ice box. Then with the kind of big boom of electrical appliances that took off in the beginning of the 20th century we got electric refrigerators. The invention of electric refrigeration -- that made the safe, modern food system that we enjoy today possible.
4. Microwave. "It's really difficult to overstate the importance of the microwave oven." The invention of the microwave was really the first new heat that we invented. We invented a kind of heat. This idea that you could oscillate a polar molecule with the correct frequency of microwaves, and create heat through that movement. That was new. Microwaves take advantage of the fact that water is an incredibly polar molecule. Water is the most abundant compound in food. And that's what allows us to microwave food. But we still have not even begun to touch on what microwaves can actually do. And the reason for that is -- especially in America -- we have all the frickin' natural gas we want. And one of the things that prevents us from moving forward with kitchen technologies like induction cook tops -- which I'm a huge fan of -- is that gas is cheap.
HP CEO Meg Whitman told attendees at a tech conference in Bangkok that HP is working on a 3D printer and will be showing it off by mid-2014, reports The Register's Simon Sharwood.
"3D printing is in its infancy" she said on Wednesday. "It's a big opportunity and we are all over it. We will have something by the middle of next year."
HP Labs is already working on 3D printers, trying to produce a variant that costs less and works faster than today's models, she said. "To print a bottle can take eight to ten hours. That's all very interesting, but it is like watching ice melt," she said.
Fabes says using 3D printers on-site would allow staff to print the toy of the child's choice, should the kid not like the toy McDonalds is offering at the time.
"Countless families have had their enjoyment of a nutritious McD’s ruined because they turned up the week that the starring character in that season's kiddie-sized blockbuster had been replaced by an earnest but boring supporting character as the toy of choice,"the UK's Register reports.
Having the ability to create toys on demand could potentially become an even bigger draw for families to visit the establishment. But the somewhat egregious idea is just that; an idea.
Apart from cost considerations, there is the issue of whether plastic smelting machines were appropriate for use in food outlets.
But 3D printing is making its way into everyday life more and more.
Aside from the Duke's classic colt six-shooter, no pistol has such a place in American history than the 1911 .45 caliber handgun.
Now the folks at Solid Concepts have successfully produced one of these handguns, all steel, all 3D printed.
Fabricating 3D weapons has come a long way in a short period of time.
Just within the last year, it was a Texas-based company called Defense Distributed making headlines about 3D-printed weapons parts. But they had problems producing composite pieces that could stand the heat and pressure without failing.
From the Solid Concepts press release:
It is composed of 33 17-4 Stainless Steel and Inconel 625 components, and decked with a Selective Laser Sintered (SLS) carbon-fiber filled nylon hand grip. The successful production and functionality of the 1911 3D Printed metal gun proves the viability of 3D Printing for commercial applications.
Already Special Operations teams out in the middle of who-knows-where have support from "expeditionary labs" which draw up and print out custom pieces of gear, based entirely on the military operator's specifications.
Certainly, the fabrication of stainless steel pieces is a revolution of sorts, and planners in the military are probably watching closely for what happens next.
As for the 1911, Solid Concepts maintains that the pieces are not "machined," but entirely "grown" in their 3D-printers.
Laser sintering is one of the most accurate manufacturing processes available, and more than accurate enough to build the 3D Metal Printed interchangeable and interfacing parts within our 1911 series gun. The gun proves laser sintering can meet tight tolerances.
3D Metal Printing has less porosity issues than an investment cast part and better complexities than a machined part. The barrel sees chamber pressure above 20,000 psi every time the gun is fired.
“We’re proving this is possible, the technology is at a place now where we can manufacture a gun with 3D Printing,” says Solid Concepts’ Vice President of Additive Manufacturing Kent Firestone in the release. “As far as we know, we’re the only 3D Printing Service Provider with a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Now, if a qualifying customer needs a unique gun part in five days, we can deliver.”
Mentioning their FFL License is no mistake. Certainly the idea of 3D printing of small arms has caused a bit of a stir in the weapons control community. Cody Wilson, owner of Defense Distributed, ran into this problem — but at the time of his troubles, last summer and late last year, he did not yet hold a Federal Firearms License.
Certainly the implications of this new technology, both for domestic and for federal use, and for military as well as humanitarian use, are nothing short of staggering.
The 3D-printed firearms controversy is an important one. How do you effectively keep people safe when it's possible to manufacture an untraceable plastic gun that can effortlessly get through metal detectors? How do you placate the Second Amendment devotees at the same time?
It's an issue that the Feds are looking at closely. They even printed a gun of their own to familiarize themselves with it, and a slow-motion video that you can watch at Huffington Post (pivotal moment screenshotted above) shows what happens when a 3D-printed gun experiences catastrophic failure.
Last week, Philadelphia became the first city in the United States to pass a 3D-Printer gun ban. Some critics feel that the city was premature given the state of 3D printing technology. Others believe that this preemptive measure will help that city get ahead of creative criminals. Many lawmakers are asking themselves: how real is the threat and how realistic is it to restrict the printing of 3D guns?
Consumer 3D printing has recently been enabled as a feasible activity, with the arrival of printers ranging in price from $300-$4,000 from companies such as Makerbot, Cubify, Flashforge, TypeA Machines, and Solidoodle. But the current generation of machines are still not reliable nor easy to use and they have very little embedded systems support from computers and software. It is still considered a hobby activity, much as personal computers were in 1978 when Apple, Commodore, and Radio Shack introduced the first consumer computers.
A debate is raging in the technology industry about how important and impactful the idea of consumers using their own 3D printers will be in society. Some dismiss the idea as a fad. Other than printing throwaway trinkets, what good are these consumer devices? Almost no one disagrees that the commercial and industrial use of 3D printers will change manufacturing systems forever and lead to a remarkable revolution in custom and even high-volume manufacturing. The touchstone for the debate about consumer use of 3D printers is the idea that an individual can print a functional gun in the privacy of their home and then use it without ever coming under the scrutiny of law enforcement.
It would be easy to get lost in the intricate framework of federal and state regulations covering the manufacture, distribution, sale and use of firearms, because the framework is incredibly intricate. For instance, a congressionally approved law that prohibits the printing of undetectable plastic firearms just got extended.
There are regular reports of individuals using professional grade 3D printers to print plastic parts to produce small arms. Recently, one company, Solid Concepts, using a 3D printer that can print metals, reproduced a clone of a military 1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, which successfully fired 50 rounds. Defense Distributed, a non-profit digital publisher and 3D R&D firm, developed an all-plastic handgun based on a WWII design called the Liberator.
The question then is how difficult would it be to construct a legal, unregistered, and reliable semi-automatic rifle using widely available components, software, tools, materials, designs and 3D printers? I decided to put that question to the test by constructing a rifle based on the popular AR-15 platform, a semiautomatic version of the automatic rifle used by the military called the M4.
On a recent weekend, I printed the key part (called the lower receiver, shown in blue in the photo) of an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle on a consumer 3D printer made by Makerbot. The next weekend I took the assembled firearm and succeeded in firing more than 50 rounds into a target from 50 feet away. I am licensed and trained in small arms handling, but I was able to print this part without asking permission or breaking any Federal or State laws in California (it should be noted that firearm laws vary from state to state and from city to city).
Trouble ahead! We haven’t been able to effectively control the distribution and use of guns in our society when you couldn’t make your own. We haven’t even been able to agree on whether we should even try, given the Constitution’s Second Amendment “Right to Bear Arms.” But now, 3D printers are being sold to individuals who are experimenting with building all kinds of objects. The single most controversial 3D objects being printed are firearms. The continued development of 3D printing technology will undermine any notion of regulating firearms, and controlling their distribution as has been done in the past, will lead to a remarkable re-evaluation of our policies regarding gun rights and gun control.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The most difficult constraint in this exercise was to be able to construct a legally compliant firearm. Federal law allows individuals to construct an unregistered firearm for personal use as long as the user starts out with the regulated part being less than 80% completed. On an AR-15, the only regulated part is called the lower receiver (the part that connects the trigger, magazine loader, stock and barrel into a single unit). A stripped lower is just the bare housing without any of the other components of the rifle. The lower is typically made out of aircraft aluminum, used to house the trigger and hammer assembly, and holds in place the magazine, rifle stock and the upper. The upper contains the bolt, firing pin, and barrel.
In California, you must use a design that has already been approved by the state to avoid running afoul of anti-zip gun laws. California also requires the use of a bullet button so that the magazine requires a tool to remove it. By federal law, the assembled firearm must also be detectable by metal detectors (until December 9th). There are set of other rules and laws that control different aspects of how you design the gun.
I began by purchasing a book on how to build your own AR-15. The book I bought is intended to help gun enthusiasts assemble an AR-15 from parts, not to print the parts. Other than the lower receiver, I was able to order the book and all of the assembly parts online. I anticipated that I wanted to use a small caliber to ensure that the rifle fired reliably and did not break due to high-pressure recoil. I was able to order on-line a complete AR-15 upper receiver (mostly the barrel) that used a rim fired .22 long rifle caliber round rather than the standard center fired .223 round. I found and purchased online widely available software tools: 3D CAD software that is needed to design, modify and view 3D objects, as well as software that converts 3D object files into 3D printable files.
The only part that needed to be printed was a stripped-down version of the lower receiver. All of theother components of the rifle can be easily and legally bought on Amazon, eBay or gun-enthusiast sites. Just using Google search on a web browser, I found plenty of 3D CAD files for the lower, as well as detailed blueprints of an AR-15 lower. The State Department, citing International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), restricts the posting of 3D files designed for the express use in weapons manufacturing. To avoid using a restricted file, I downloaded a generic 3D model, used the blueprints to get the exact measurements, and the 3D CAD software to clean up the model to make it printer ready. (I am trained and competent in using 3D CAD software, so I have an advantage over the general consumer.) It took me less than 30 minutes to turn the generic 3D object file into a 3D printer file.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
I had previously bought a 3D printer called Makerbot Replicator 2 on Amazon.com, as well as a spool of blue Polylactic Acid (PLA) bio plastic that the Replicator 2 uses to create its 3D prints. I have been using the Makerbot printer for a couple of months, learning how to use it and what issues affected the quality of printing, so a new user would take longer to get the same result. I printed the lower receiver in a little over 12 hours.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. I cleaned up the print using a power drill, Dremel-brand rotary tool and a small amount of Plasticweld to correct a few imperfections in the printing process.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
To turn a stripped lower to a complete AR-15 lower assembly, you need to acquire the following: a lower AR-15 parts kit, an AR-15 rifle butt-stock kit and a bullet button (for California). Using a punch kit, screwdriver and vise grip, I followed the instructions provided in the book to assemble the complete functional lower in under an hour. Other than bullets, all of the necessary parts and tools needed to assemble a 3D printed rifle can be purchase on Amazon.
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Once the lower was completed, I attached the lower to the upper using two pins and added a sight. I now had a legal, usable rifle ready for testing.
At a local range, I loaded the magazine with .22 caliber ammo I purchased at the range. I inserted a magazine into the rifle, chambered a round, and squeezed the trigger . . . nothing. I had to experiment, but when I switched magazines, the gun worked. I fired off 10 rounds. At 50 feet, using a red dot sight, it was easy to place all of the hits into a quarter-size group at the center of the target. I shot another 50 rounds down range. Results of the test: The rifle is reliable, accurate and did not suffer any cracks or mechanical failures.
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The online 3D printing community has a tradition of “modding” (modifying) designs iteratively. Users post their work in progress online. Other users print and modify the original designs, and repost the improved design. High-demand designs are iterated quickly and go viral to the community. If I was not worried about breaking the law, I could have downloaded a modified design for an AR-15 lower that would have fired 5.56 military rounds more reliably than the lower I printed. These modified designs have been used to fire up to 80 military round before failing. Remember, I chose a lower caliber (.22LR) upper to increase reliability and to make it more compliant with other states’ laws. I could have easily chosen a .223 or 5.56 upper (although it might have generated enough recoil to crack the plastic lower); I wasn’t interested in putting my personal safety at risk to make a point!
Control over printing guns and gun parts is becoming a hotly debated topic between gun-control and gun-rights groups. Besides disrupting existing domestic firearm laws, 3D printable firearms will make sections of the current UN Arms Treaty ineffective. Policies are being debated at every level of government: state & local, federal and international. Regardless of the outcome of the debate, my experiment demonstrates that this particular genie is already out of the bottle. As with all things digital, it is now impossible to stop the sharing and use of digital content even if sharing is illegal. It is true with music, it is true with movies, and it is true with 3D printing.
The ability to print metals, conductive organics and biological tissue has already been demonstrated and costs are falling quickly. Just about anything that can be powderized or liquefied can be printed. While consumer 3D printers are based on plastic-based processes, there are multiple competing technologies that have significant advantages. The costs of these technologies are also falling quickly. I believe 3D printing will follow a similar performance curve to Moore’s Law, which a cofounder of Intel, Gordon Moore, observed five decades ago for semiconductors: performance doubles every two years.
It isn’t difficult to imagine how disruptive this technology will be once anyone can print metals, biologicals, organics, chemicals and other exotic materials using low-cost printers. If you can print small arms, you might be able to print IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) or other DIY (Do It Yourself) weapons, instead of being restricted to assembling from whatever is at hand.
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I’m often asked how mature is the current state of the 3D printing. The closest comparison I have is that we are in a similar place where personal computers were in 1977. The Makerbot Replicator 2 is the equivalent of the Apple II. The Apple II had limited capability and was widely dismissed by many experts as a toy. By the end of 1977, 50,000 microcomputers had been sold to consumers. In 2013, 50,000 3D printers were sold to consumers. Now the personal computer is a part of a history that has lead directly to tablets and smartphones and wearable computers for billions of consumers. We are at the dawn of a new revolution that will be as profound and disruptive as the personal computing revolution.
Gilman Louie is a partner at Alsop Louie Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm in San Francisco. He is the chairman of the Federation of American Scientists, recently served as a commissioner on the National Commission for Review of Research and Development Programs of the U.S. Intelligence Community and chaired the committee on Forecasting Future Disruptive Technologies for the U.S. National Academies. He is the founding CEO of In-Q-Tel, formed in 1999 to provide access to new technologies for the CIA. And he is the founder of Spectrum HoloByte, developer and publisher of hit video games such as Falcon F-16 and Tetris.
The tech industry is all about finding that Next Big Thing, the idea that launches a new company or industry and changes the world.
Most people look at successful innovators, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, and think they were born with something extra special. It's true, they were. But everyone has it in them to be creative. Jobs said the true secret to success is to realize that "Everything around you that you call 'life' was made up by people who were no smarter than you."
But there's another secret in there. Once you've come up with the great, bold idea, how do you bring it to life?
Innovative people often to use some cutting-edge tech tools to do that, according to information emailed to Business Insider from Booz & Company, which recently completed an annual study about innovation at 1,000 companies including Apple, Samsung, Google, Amazon, Tesla.
Booz & Company told Business Insider that many executives use tools that might you expect, like project management software or collabortation tools. But, it turns out, some tools are more effective at triggering innovation than others, the Booz survey found:
1. 3D printing. 3-D printing allows teams to create quick prototypes, make changes and print another prototype, in as little as an hour.
2. Customer immersion labs. Some teams build detailed virtual worlds complete with a virtual mock up of the new product. They use that for customer feedback, almost like a video game experience. For instance, a tractor maker creates a virtual 3D mockup to get customer feedback before it builds a prototype.
3. Usage sensors. When it comes to software, it's easy for a developer to track what features a customer uses. All they have to do is track what users click on. These days, that same sort of instant feedback can be applied to any kind of product, thanks to low-powered sensors. Wire up the product and then record how a customer uses it.
On a cold, gray day in central London, Alastair Parvin is staring at a coffeepot, or what used to be one before he took it apart to clean it. The appliance lies strewn across an office table, a wreck of wet steel and springs. Parvin co-founded WikiHouse, an open-source construction system that could transform how people design and construct buildings. But rebuilding a percolator seems to have him stumped.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.After a few failed attempts, Parvin reconstructs the machine, produces coffee, and shows me around the maker space he shares on one floor of a mid-20th-century skyscraper. It's a sprawling landscape of desks, sofas, and bulletin boards with a plywood house frame rising from within the common area. It's also an apt manifestation of WikiHouse itself: occupants taking back architecture on their own terms.
The 30-year-old Parvin, a member of the design collective 00 (pronounced zero zero), started WikiHouse with fellow architect Nick Ierodiaconou in 2011.
In effect, the two set out to subvert their profession just as they were entering the workforce. Architecture, Parvin argued at an attention-grabbing TED talk in 2013, has become a rarefied service for only the very rich.
WikiHouse aims to put home design and construction in the hands of all people, regardless of training or economic status. It has established a free library of building plans that anyone can download, adapt, print, and construct.
"WikiHouse is an open production system," Parvin says. "Using a 3-D–modeling program like Google SketchUp, you can build your plans from scratch, import some from the WikiHouse site, or mix the two approaches. Then, send the plans to a CNC machine, which cuts the pieces from plywood. It's like printing an Ikea flat-pack house."
As with ready-to-assemble furniture, the plans clearly match the cut pieces, so construction is straightforward. Moreover, many of the pieces fit together with wedges and pegs that are also cut from plywood, simplifying the tools and reducing, if not eliminating, the number of metal fasteners required. Cover the finished frame with cladding, pack it with insulation, and you have a structure you can live in.
So far, there are a handful of prototype WikiHouses and one completed construction — a walkers' shelter in Fridaythorpe, England, a moorland village of 300 people previously noted for hosting the World Championship Flat Cap Throwing Competition. "There's no inhabited WikiHouse yet," Parvin says. "But we've got several on the board."
Meanwhile, the number of WikiHouse users is growing. What began as a small project has developed into a global community of individuals and teams who experiment with designs, share their experiences, and collectively troubleshoot.
But even if thousands of forward-thinking landowners choose to erect their houses themselves, WikiHouse doesn't yet replace an essential role of architects and contractors: navigating the maze of laws, approvals, and materials needed to keep an abode safe, legal, warm, and plumbed-in. Parvin acknowledges that limitation, and to address it, he says he plans to expand the site to provide designs suited to a user's location and needs.
"Our dream is to make WikiHouse simple to use, with parametric software that lets you say how big you want things, what material you're using, and then generates everything," Parvin says. "It will know about all sorts of things, like the way plywood behaves in different humidities, your climate, your electricity, even your zoning laws."
Parvin grew up as Wikipedia began to mortally gore the Encyclopaedia Britannica—he was 17 when the crowdsourced reference site launched—and he wants the Internet to likewise force the evolution of his field. An open system makes it possible to scale and test ideas quickly, so WikiHouse could become a launching pad for new building technology. It could also destabilize the established role of architects and construction firms: Why pay them to design and build something that's already been perfected and put together thousands of times? Parvin has not only spotted the technological shift that makes his training as an architect redundant; he's actively trying to bring that shift about.
At the end of the interview, we pick up our respective digital tablets. Parvin takes the opportunity to talk about the Claude glass, a tablet-size 18th-century black mirror used by landscape painters to view a scene with heightened contrast and color. It's credited with reviving the popular art of the landscape. "Technology isn't about higher, faster, bigger," he says, staring into the black mirror of his iPad mini. "It's about reducing thresholds, enabling ordinary people. That's when it changes cultures."
Harmony was born with "limb differences", which caused the fingers on her right hand to never develop.
Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Center in Michigan also played a role in the creation of the hand, Monica Scott of MLive reports, helping the family connect with the school when insurance wouldn't cover all of Harmony's needs.
West Catholic students Tim Liu, 18, and Aimee Kalczuk, 17, presented the device to little Harmony and her family yesterday. The device is a plastic cuff that fits snugly on the girl's hand, with prosthetic fingers attached.
Harmony's mother, Michelle Peterman, said that along with the robotic hand, the high school students presented Harmony with a gift bag that included pink nail polish.
The little girl was elated.
"I'm going to paint [my nails] pink!" Harmony exclaimed.
