Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot coming. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome with tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting next to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, alrighty then, yeah, so what do you wanna
Speaker 1: talking about? Well, before we start talking, this is going
Speaker 1: to be one of those special podcasts, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind that always start with listener me. Dude, I was
Speaker 1: hoping I was ice cream and cake. You got me
Speaker 1: all excited. Yeah, No, punch and pie will be later.
Speaker 1: So this listener mail comes from Amy, and Amy says, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys love the show and I have learned a lot.
Speaker 1: Here is a tech thing I have no clue about.
Speaker 1: How does three D printing work? Thanks? Amy? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean we thought we would tackle three D printing for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, it's a complex thing. It's it's super cool though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can you know, you can do a very rudimentary
Speaker 1: version of this by you know, printing something out on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. And folding it into oregamy. But
Speaker 1: I don't think, oh, that's printing on two D and
Speaker 1: then you make a three D dimensions that's it. Get
Speaker 1: josh in here. So no, no, no, So three D printing, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, let's talk about why you would need
Speaker 1: three D printing in the first place. And really, the
Speaker 1: main purpose is to create prototypes for products. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: not we're not talking about printing out stuff that you
Speaker 1: would read later. This is printing out things in relief
Speaker 1: so that you could see how they're put together and
Speaker 1: what they look like when they're done. The question is
Speaker 1: how do you make that possible? Right, Because think about
Speaker 1: it this way. If you are let's let's say that
Speaker 1: you have come up with a product idea. You work
Speaker 1: with this big company. You've come up with an idea
Speaker 1: of our new product, and you want to make a
Speaker 1: mock up of it. But because there it's it's the
Speaker 1: first of its type, there's nothing in place for you
Speaker 1: to be able to manufacture this easily. You can't just
Speaker 1: go to the plant and say, hey, you know, produce
Speaker 1: one of these for me, because no one's made one before.
Speaker 1: So before three D printing, you pretty much had to
Speaker 1: use other methods, like if you want to go way back,
Speaker 1: we're talking about things like you take a block of
Speaker 1: wood and you carve it into the shape that it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be in, and then you're you take another
Speaker 1: block of wood and carve that away until you get
Speaker 1: all the different pieces together. Then you put all the
Speaker 1: pieces together, and then you show it off to whomever
Speaker 1: and say, this is what this is the way it's
Speaker 1: supposed to go together. Please find a way to mass
Speaker 1: produce this. It's rather time consuming. It's carve away all
Speaker 1: the bits that don't look like whatever, right exactly, you
Speaker 1: carve away all the bits that don't look like whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you're trying to produce. Or another example
Speaker 1: is uh, actually group of uses three D printing a
Speaker 1: lot architects. Everybody's seen name one of those models of
Speaker 1: your town or your school after renovation or whatever where
Speaker 1: they have little blocks and you look at them and
Speaker 1: you go, well, that's that's pretty neat to put all
Speaker 1: the little trees in there, and that well, you can
Speaker 1: use three D printing to create models like that, right,
Speaker 1: So obviously there's a need for creating prototypes. There's need
Speaker 1: for creating these models and there's a need for doing
Speaker 1: it in a way that's not going to take you
Speaker 1: so much time that by the time you're done with it,
Speaker 1: the opportunity to create whatever was you're going to create
Speaker 1: in its past. So that's where we get in with
Speaker 1: this whole rapid prototype approach. And three D printing is
Speaker 1: really just a way of creating the various bits and
Speaker 1: pieces you need for some three D object three dimensional object.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh you do it without having to you know,
Speaker 1: get other materials and carve it out yourself. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's an additive process, which means that it's adding the
Speaker 1: material as it goes to build the ultimate object or
Speaker 1: series of objects. It's kind of ironic because really to
Speaker 1: print in three D, you're printing in two D just
Speaker 1: lots and lots and lots of layers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird because you think of it in
Speaker 1: I guess in my head, I was thinking sort of
Speaker 1: a sci fi thing where you know, you had this
Speaker 1: big open door with the flaps on it, and you
Speaker 1: tell it to print the thing and it just sort
Speaker 1: of comes out in the conveyor belt. Well that's not
Speaker 1: exactly how kind of like the gob stoppers and will
Speaker 1: want Yeah, no, I was right there with you. Either
Speaker 1: that or either that or you think of it almost
Speaker 1: like a mold type thing, where you know, these two
Speaker 1: halves come together. When they come apart, there's the object
Speaker 1: just sitting there. It's not quite like that. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's not like that at all. Really. One it really
Speaker 1: resembles most is in jet printers. So you know, with
Speaker 1: the name jet printer, you've got a printer that has
Speaker 1: a tiny little nozzle that sprays incredibly tiny drops of
Speaker 1: ink onto the paper. Yes, an incredibly small we're talking
Speaker 1: like usually on the nano scale, really um something that
Speaker 1: or it can be that small and uh it just
Speaker 1: it the nozzle scans from one side of the paper
Speaker 1: to the other and sprays, and as it sprays, that's
Speaker 1: that's what's forming the text, you see. Well, it's the
Speaker 1: same sort of principle with three D printing, except instead
Speaker 1: of inc it's using some sort of material like a
Speaker 1: resin or some sort of uh plastic kind of material
Speaker 1: and a binding agent. It depends actually I've seen a
Speaker 1: couple of different techniques, one that uses powder and another
Speaker 1: that uses a liquid. Right, Yeah, it all depends on
Speaker 1: there there are variations. In general, the way it works
Speaker 1: is that you first create a three D model of
Speaker 1: whatever it is you want to build in a program
Speaker 1: like a like a CAD program on a computer. Um.
Speaker 1: Then what most of these three D printers do is
Speaker 1: they divide that picture that you've created, that model you've created,
Speaker 1: into lots and lots and lots of layers, hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of them really, because the thickness of each layer
Speaker 1: tends to be very very thin. It's it's really just
Speaker 1: one layer of the of the ink jets printing. I
Speaker 1: guess that's what you could call it. So interrupted ahead,
Speaker 1: think of it as an egg slicer, if you, like,
Speaker 1: you know, put the egg down and you slice it up.
Speaker 1: It only very very fine slices. It's the computer is
Speaker 1: doing that in order to print it on this three
Speaker 1: D printer, right the cross sections exactly. Yeah. So it
Speaker 1: does this layer by layer and it prints and until
Speaker 1: it's finished with the object that you're creating. And because
Speaker 1: there's the binding agent or the material itself is binding
Speaker 1: in nature, um, it actually clings together and eventually creates
Speaker 1: this three dimensional object. You might think, well, how long
Speaker 1: does that take? Turns out not very long at all. Really, um,
Speaker 1: Even back in the early days of three D printing,
Speaker 1: it was much faster to use this method than other
Speaker 1: comparable methods. Uh. And I've seen figures of depending on
Speaker 1: the complexity of the objects you're creating in the size
Speaker 1: of it tends to be between half an hour to
Speaker 1: two hours, depending on the again the size and complexity.
Speaker 1: M M. Do you want to talk about the different
Speaker 1: types the powder and the liquid thing? Yeah, go ahead, okay, UM, Well,
Speaker 1: the one that I first saw when I was starting
Speaker 1: to do my research for the podcast was this stereolithographic technique,
Speaker 1: which is basically it's the liquid that they pour into
Speaker 1: a big I think of it as a big tub,
Speaker 1: I guess, although I guess it wouldn't have to necessarily
Speaker 1: be large, It just has to be big enough to
Speaker 1: contain the liquid. The laser is shown onto the resin,
Speaker 1: and every place that the laser touches hardens, so that's
Speaker 1: how it forms the pattern. And then it that that
Speaker 1: becomes a layer and one of the layers that eventually
Speaker 1: makes up the three D So it starts as a
Speaker 1: liquid resin which is hardened by a laser into one
Speaker 1: of the layers that eventually becomes up at the model
Speaker 1: right right, So what you do is you you scan
Speaker 1: the laser across and it traces whatever the shape is
Speaker 1: of the that layer. Then usually there is a process
Speaker 1: where I think of it like a squeegee. Uh, something
Speaker 1: comes across and wipes off the excess resin at that
Speaker 1: point so that the next layer can be built up.
Speaker 1: The laser goes across again, it binds with the first layer.
Speaker 1: You've now got a second layer. You do this hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of times until you've finished the object that
Speaker 1: you're trying to create. Now, I should also point out
Speaker 1: that stereo lithography is not the same thing as the
Speaker 1: ink jet method we were talking about earlier. It's a
Speaker 1: totally different kind of three D printing. Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: some people would argue that it shouldn't be called three
Speaker 1: D printing at all. It's still a form of rapid prototype.
Speaker 1: But but yes, it is a very popular way of
Speaker 1: creating a simple three D objects UM. And it is
Speaker 1: pretty neat. I mean, it's just it's a laser that
Speaker 1: once it comes into contact with the stuff, the stuff
Speaker 1: goes from liquid to solids. That's just cool. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so so yes, that's the liquid one you were talking about, right,
Speaker 1: and then the the other uses a self adhesive powder
Speaker 1: and you know it's um. Actually I had less on
Speaker 1: So the powder, the powder. What happens is it gets
Speaker 1: it gets put into the same sort of pattern and
Speaker 1: it adheres to itself. It binds to itself. There's some
Speaker 1: methods here where you will actually have to have a
Speaker 1: base of some sort before you can start printing the shape.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you can't just turn the printer
Speaker 1: on and tell it to go. You have to have
Speaker 1: some sort of foundation for the dust or liquid to
Speaker 1: adhere to um. So you might have a very basic cylinder,
Speaker 1: for example, and the object itself is as much more
Speaker 1: complex than that, with lots of curves or edges or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it still has to have that that foundation to
Speaker 1: cling onto before you can get started. That's some of
Speaker 1: the printers require that. And uh, from what I understand
Speaker 1: that that term is selective laser centering or s l S,
Speaker 1: which is the name for that powder method. And then
Speaker 1: something else it's kind of interesting, at least to me,
Speaker 1: is that the three D models, when they have a
Speaker 1: continuous surface like this, they're called watertight. That's sort of
Speaker 1: I guess industry slang for you know the fact that
Speaker 1: it's seamless how the model is made, rather than being
Speaker 1: made into pieces. So yeah, you're not gonna find you're
Speaker 1: not going to find that little line where two different
Speaker 1: pieces come together and are glued that way what you
Speaker 1: might have found with with old handmade versions where you
Speaker 1: had to put together a lot of different sections by yourself.
Speaker 1: And we're starting to see this more and more in
Speaker 1: applications beyond just the prototype production. Um it's not just
Speaker 1: something that's being used by gigantic companies like you. You
Speaker 1: would see this normally in things like let's say you're
Speaker 1: at a car manufacturer and you've come up with a
Speaker 1: really cool design for a car, and you might want
Speaker 1: a model of that of your design when you're showing
Speaker 1: that to executives. So you would use this method in
Speaker 1: order to create a model of the car design you
Speaker 1: had created, so they're not just looking at a you know,
Speaker 1: a three D image on a computer that can actually
Speaker 1: see an object and and look at it from all
Speaker 1: angles that way. Um. Well, now these three D printers
Speaker 1: have gone into the realm of affordability for a lot
Speaker 1: of smaller businesses. Now, when I say affordable. This is
Speaker 1: a relative term, right, It's not something that is affordable
Speaker 1: to the general consumer. Uh. You know, Joe Schmo with
Speaker 1: his MacBook is not going to go out and get
Speaker 1: a three D printer to sit next to his computer
Speaker 1: at home. Uh, because Joe Schmo probably can't shell out
Speaker 1: grand for a three D printer, and that's for a
Speaker 1: cheap one. Yeah. The the average now is about somewhere
Speaker 1: between fifteen thousand and two d and fifty dollars for
Speaker 1: a three D printer range. Although there are some desktop
Speaker 1: ish printers that are starting to come down below five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, it's still not the kind of money that
Speaker 1: you're gonna, you know, fork over for your kids science
Speaker 1: fair projects so that you can the three cool three
Speaker 1: D printed thing. It's still a little You might be
Speaker 1: a you might be a model train enthusiast, but I
Speaker 1: doubt that you are an enthusiast at the point where
Speaker 1: you're gonna drop grand on a printer that can print
Speaker 1: a tree that you want. Although I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: you're Michael Jackson quality. He had a lot of model trains.
Speaker 1: That's true anyway. Yeah, you know they used these in
Speaker 1: a lot of different processes UM, some of which made
Speaker 1: complete sense to me, like manufacturing and aerospace and motive UM.
Speaker 1: One that I was a little surprised to see was footwear,
Speaker 1: but I guess people like to see what the shoe
Speaker 1: is gonna look like before the consumers get hold of it.
Speaker 1: And uh in the arts uh. In fact, some of
Speaker 1: them models for Cora line were built uh for him.
Speaker 1: Nike founder Phil Knights company has uh. He had a
Speaker 1: company called Laka and uh. Apparently that company was involved
Speaker 1: with making some of the models for Coraline printed on
Speaker 1: you know, three D printing technology, and the medical industry
Speaker 1: is using them to print prosthetics, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And I remember reading at some point. I didn't find
Speaker 1: it for this podcast, but I do remember reading an
Speaker 1: article at one point about a former UM Microsoft executive,
Speaker 1: someone who worked on Microsoft's video game division actually who
Speaker 1: left the company and formed his own company UM that
Speaker 1: was the partnered with World of Warcraft so that players
Speaker 1: of World War Warcraft could send in pictures of their
Speaker 1: character the essentially their character model, and have a figuring
Speaker 1: created through three D printing of their their character. So
Speaker 1: and it was using this method. It was using three
Speaker 1: D printing to create models that were very specific to
Speaker 1: the look of each individual World Warcraft character. So if you,
Speaker 1: you know, had one of those busty elf chicks, you
Speaker 1: could get a three D figuring of your bust yelf check.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, not life size. Sorry to disappoint you, fellas.
Speaker 1: Um it was actually like maybe three inches tall. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't have everything. If there were two
Speaker 1: apples taller than they'd be smurf size Smurf size two
Speaker 1: or three, And no, I think you're right at there's
Speaker 1: three three apples tall. So anyway, yes, that was a
Speaker 1: childhood well spent. So you know, uh, somebody there there
Speaker 1: is the three D printing, the rapid prototyping technology has fans.
Speaker 1: But you know, I was a little surprised to see
Speaker 1: somebody who who's very popular in the world of design
Speaker 1: right now, who isn't necessarily a fan. Yeah, Jonathan, I've
Speaker 1: of apples saying that it's distancing designers from you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of their physical artwork of you know, actually
Speaker 1: doing it by hand. And so he, uh, he's apparently
Speaker 1: not such a big fan. I can sort of see that,
Speaker 1: I guess, I mean, I see that in the same
Speaker 1: way that I see some animators who specialize in hand
Speaker 1: drawn animation how they look down on computer generated animation. Uh,
Speaker 1: not all of them do. I don't mean to say that,
Speaker 1: And it's a very small number who who have voiced
Speaker 1: any sort of negative opinion about the thing. But my
Speaker 1: view is that it's really it's not so much the technique,
Speaker 1: it's you know, how you how you put to use.
Speaker 1: So as far as I'm concerned, it's just another tool,
Speaker 1: and if someone is able to use that tool in
Speaker 1: a creative way, then I see no real problem with it.
Speaker 1: But then I'm not a designer, so I am not
Speaker 1: an artiste. So perhaps that's uh, that's maybe it's because
Speaker 1: I'm more of a you know, practical kind of guy
Speaker 1: as opposed to a artistic kind of guy. I understand.
Speaker 1: But I was also going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about vic Oliver. I don't know, did you come across
Speaker 1: vic Oliver when you were researching three D printing? I
Speaker 1: did not. Okay, So vic Oliver he's heading this this
Speaker 1: open source self copying three D printer project self Copying. Yes.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that to create a three
Speaker 1: D printer that is capable of printing all of the
Speaker 1: components that go into that three D printer, so that
Speaker 1: in theory, you could create a machine that can replicate itself. Now,
Speaker 1: granted it's going to replicate itself in various bits and pieces.
Speaker 1: It'll still have to be assembled and wired and all that.
Speaker 1: But in theory, with the methods that he's working on,
Speaker 1: you would be able to create another printer, and that
Speaker 1: would remove this barrier of price. Think about it, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you, let's say like for the purchase price
Speaker 1: of one printer and whatever materials you needed to feed
Speaker 1: it through, like the plastic in the metal that you
Speaker 1: would need to create more, you could then create another
Speaker 1: printer and give that to your friend, and then the
Speaker 1: two of you could each create a printer and give
Speaker 1: that to two other friends, and they could give it
Speaker 1: to two friends, and they two friends and so on
Speaker 1: and so on. I'm really figured you were going to
Speaker 1: go to that. Uh you That's the problem with that
Speaker 1: is that there's no three D metal printing technology. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what they're working on. They're working on
Speaker 1: this methodology that would allow you to use low metals
Speaker 1: that have a low melting point, so you would have
Speaker 1: a metal that could melt at a temperature that is
Speaker 1: lower than the temperature required for the plastic to stay hard.
Speaker 1: So you could actually line the plastic with metal and
Speaker 1: it would all work fine. It wouldn't intermix, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have this hot metal melting the plastic you just generated.
Speaker 1: And and granted now they're still working on it. They've
Speaker 1: developed the nozzle metal system, but it's still a little
Speaker 1: ways away from a full self replicable model. But I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that is a pretty neat thing, because you think
Speaker 1: about then, all right, well, how far away are we
Speaker 1: to the point where we get to the Star Trek
Speaker 1: world where you've got the replicators. I could use a
Speaker 1: hot earl gray this afternoon. Yeah, I could have used
Speaker 1: a an alternator for my wife's car. So you know,
Speaker 1: we all have our our needs. But on the day
Speaker 1: that we recorded this, the waterman busted outside and there's
Speaker 1: a boil water order. And I really wanted a cup
Speaker 1: of tea, I think because I couldn't. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee before I found out about the
Speaker 1: boil water order. So I'm expecting to either die or
Speaker 1: develop superpowers before the end of this podcast. Sad thing
Speaker 1: is he won't let me vote. No, No, it's pretty
Speaker 1: much a coin flip situation here. It's not a democracy.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, I'm pretty much done with a three
Speaker 1: D printing. What about you? I am too, and thanks
Speaker 1: to me for right now, because that's that was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to research. It was a really cool
Speaker 1: topic and it was something I've been wondering about for ages.
Speaker 1: In fact, as I a call that might have been
Speaker 1: one of the first articles I pitched at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works when I started working here, although I never did
Speaker 1: get the chance to actually write that one. So it
Speaker 1: was cool to finally do the research so very much.
Speaker 1: So y'all continue to write in about stuff that we
Speaker 1: want to write about and read about. Right But this does, however,
Speaker 1: bring me to something else we need to talk about.
Speaker 1: But that would be listener me sabotage. Yeah yeah, listen
Speaker 1: all y'all. So this listener mail comes from Jacob from Cleveland,
Speaker 1: and it's actually a dual listener mail because it's not
Speaker 1: just us, it's to our our bigger sister podcast stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know it as well. So I thought it
Speaker 1: was going to involve Aaron Burrn, No, not this time.
Speaker 1: You Now you may recall several episodes ago, I laid
Speaker 1: out a challenge to our listeners to create a spins
Speaker 1: arian sonnet in our honor, and more than a few responded,
Speaker 1: but Jacob's was the first. So here is Jacob's spins
Speaker 1: Arian sonnet. Dear text stuff and stuff you should know
Speaker 1: of request for sonnets. Not everyone forgets to Chris, John,
Speaker 1: Josh or Chuck. These words should flow or anyone whom
Speaker 1: this poem gets. I love the podcast for their humor
Speaker 1: and wits, from bit Torrent to Einstein's brain, from listener
Speaker 1: mail and corrections someone admits to make me laugh. You
Speaker 1: all never refrain. In fact, you keep me from going insane.
Speaker 1: All fans of stuff podcasts, you guys should impress from
Speaker 1: all your episodes. There is knowledge to gain. How much
Speaker 1: one can only guess a year of tech stuff, which
Speaker 1: I adore, and from stuff you should know just a
Speaker 1: little bit of time more ps tech stuff. I recommend
Speaker 1: a Linux podcast. Well, Jacob, we've got all the next
Speaker 1: podcast in the works for you. Uh, it's one of
Speaker 1: those many others. Yes, there's actually quite a quite a
Speaker 1: long list of topics that that is accumulating. You guys
Speaker 1: are sending in requests faster than we can do podcasts,
Speaker 1: which is awesome because we don't have to think about them.
Speaker 1: But we've had a lot of requests for Linux, so
Speaker 1: that will be coming in the near future. So keep
Speaker 1: your ears peeled, I suppose or open yes, because you
Speaker 1: would keep your eyes peeled. I don't even want to
Speaker 1: think about that. What peeling your eyes or your ears either? Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you have any requests or corrections or any
Speaker 1: other comments, you can send those to our email address,
Speaker 1: which is text stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And remember you can read all about printers and computers
Speaker 1: and everything in between at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again unless Chris has
Speaker 1: something bad new pretty soon for moralness and thousands of
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