Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, I'll see everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says our
Speaker 1: house in the middle of the street. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm Lauren bulk bomb Our other coast. Joe McCormick
Speaker 1: is out today, so we are going it alone. Yep.
Speaker 1: But you know it's all right because we've done this
Speaker 1: show without me. We've done an episode I think or
Speaker 1: maybe two without Lauren. So really, I mean, we all
Speaker 1: just take turns, and Joe knows that the future is
Speaker 1: strong in our hands. We're going to keep the future going.
Speaker 1: We're not going to break the future. Yes, we we
Speaker 1: sadly do not have the Mystical Acts in the studio,
Speaker 1: but it's presence really has imputas Yeah, the mystical Acts
Speaker 1: is really now a metaphor. It's it's the mystical Acts
Speaker 1: that's inside us all. But Joe is the caretaker of
Speaker 1: the mystical accent, and frankly we didn't want to do
Speaker 1: around his desk and find where he keeps it for
Speaker 1: fear of discovering something we cannot unlearned. But Today, we're
Speaker 1: going to learn more about something we've already talked about
Speaker 1: a couple of times on this podcast, three D printing.
Speaker 1: And the reason we're talking about again is because folks
Speaker 1: keep coming up with really cool applications for this stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've only ever seen a demo of a three
Speaker 1: D printer, or perhaps have managed to work on one
Speaker 1: in some small capacity, you're probably aware it's it's what
Speaker 1: we call additive manufacturing, right, is this process of adding
Speaker 1: layer upon layer of very thin material to build a
Speaker 1: three dimensional object from the ground up. Now, traditionally plastics
Speaker 1: are used in these things, but um, but these days
Speaker 1: lots of different materials are are being used to create
Speaker 1: all kinds of different uh end objects. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: that you and Joe talked about printing things like pizza,
Speaker 1: which which may or may not have been a success
Speaker 1: less than a total success. But but but I mean edible.
Speaker 1: I mean something that is relatively nutritious and not completely disgusting. Yeah. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, baby steps, baby steps towards the replicator, my friends.
Speaker 1: And honestly, if I can cook something that falls into
Speaker 1: those categories the traditional way, then I'm pretty proud of myself.
Speaker 1: I counted as a win myself. Yeah, same here. So
Speaker 1: the cool thing we wanted to talk about today a
Speaker 1: couple of different things. Actually, well, one was something that
Speaker 1: we talked about in this week's Forward Thinking video three
Speaker 1: D printed houses. I mean an entire entire house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And when we're talking about three D printer, this thing
Speaker 1: is enormous. If you were to look at you would
Speaker 1: just think this is some really bizarre construction machinery because
Speaker 1: it's so big. It measures ten meters wide, which is
Speaker 1: thirty three ft by six point six meters high, which
Speaker 1: is twenty two ft, so thirty three ft wide twenty
Speaker 1: two ft tall. And this thing can print a house
Speaker 1: out of recycled materials no less. Yeah. Now, specifically, it
Speaker 1: was a company in China, near Shanghai that was using
Speaker 1: this as a demonstration. They printed ten houses in a
Speaker 1: single day, and these were relatively small houses. The material
Speaker 1: looks very much like concrete is, but they were able
Speaker 1: to take runoff like the stuff that isn't used in
Speaker 1: other manufacturing processes and use that recycle that into actual
Speaker 1: construction material. So it cuts down on waste not only
Speaker 1: by taking this recycled material, but by using this additive uh,
Speaker 1: manufacturing process because, like we talked about in previous podcasts,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about subtractive, that means you take something
Speaker 1: and then you carve away all the stuff you don't want. Right.
Speaker 1: This is traditional sculpture is a subtractive process where you
Speaker 1: take a block of whatever material is, so let's say
Speaker 1: it's marble, and then you cut away all the stuff
Speaker 1: that doesn't look like David, you know. That's the ballistic
Speaker 1: way of putting it. But three D printing is additive,
Speaker 1: where you're only adding the stuff you need and you
Speaker 1: don't add anything that's that's superfluous or necessary, so you
Speaker 1: have less waste. It can also be more structurally sound,
Speaker 1: uh than than having to worry about how the corners
Speaker 1: joined up, because they're built joined up right now. The
Speaker 1: Chinese version I saw, which by the way, they bought
Speaker 1: that three D printer from the United States. But the
Speaker 1: Chinese version I saw it looked more like they were
Speaker 1: printing large segments together and then assembling them. But there's
Speaker 1: another version that was proposed and built by the University
Speaker 1: of Southern California that could print an entire house in
Speaker 1: twenty four hours, and it in fact is printed you
Speaker 1: get the whole house. It's not printed. It's not like
Speaker 1: you get four walls that you didn't have to put
Speaker 1: together and then a roof that you have to put
Speaker 1: on top. It prints the whole thing. Wow. So so
Speaker 1: it's on some kind of some kind of rail system
Speaker 1: or scaffolding. The three the three D printer itself is
Speaker 1: on rails. So imagine two arms, each of which are
Speaker 1: mounted on a rail that are separated by However, why
Speaker 1: do you want the house to be? So? These rails
Speaker 1: allow the the printer head to move up and down
Speaker 1: the entire length of where that house is going to
Speaker 1: be and laid down, layer by layer everything in this house.
Speaker 1: It's pretty phenomenal. Now, granted, this approach also means that
Speaker 1: you're really just creating the foundation, the structures, the walls,
Speaker 1: the ceiling, that kind of thing, even leaving uh spaces
Speaker 1: for things like windows and doors. But you are not
Speaker 1: printing components that will be necessary that you have to
Speaker 1: add in later, things like plumbing or electricity, that stuff
Speaker 1: we have to Yeah, we haven't quite gotten to the
Speaker 1: point yet where we can print all of that together.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, mixing materials within a single project
Speaker 1: is relatively difficult. It is something that that we're as
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about later on, people are working on. Yes,
Speaker 1: So it's really cool that this this approach is being
Speaker 1: used for multiple reasons. One is just the idea that
Speaker 1: you could you could build a house ten houses and day.
Speaker 1: That could be fine for people who have who need
Speaker 1: low income housing, because these houses are also really cheap.
Speaker 1: One the houses are since they're being uh created by
Speaker 1: a printer, mean that the labor costs are lower and
Speaker 1: to the materials cost because it's recycled, are lower. So
Speaker 1: the approximate price of one of these houses is less
Speaker 1: than five thousand dollars for a house. So you think,
Speaker 1: all right, print ten of those in a day. You've
Speaker 1: got fifty thou dollars worth of houses, which normally fifty
Speaker 1: thou dollars wouldn't even buy you much of a of
Speaker 1: a large house in most major areas in the especially
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, um if you're living in the city anyway,
Speaker 1: So it's it's pretty interesting on those levels. And they
Speaker 1: also are talking about possibly using something like this to
Speaker 1: construct the actual levels of a skyscraper, so perhaps one
Speaker 1: day being able to print floor by floor a skyscraper
Speaker 1: that then gets assembled. It's really interesting idea. I don't
Speaker 1: know how far it's going to go, but the idea
Speaker 1: of being able to do something like this, use computer
Speaker 1: assisted design to build your dream home and then print
Speaker 1: it out is pretty cool. Well, considering that that some
Speaker 1: segments of the construction industry are are already trying to
Speaker 1: to use that kind of three D modeling and um
Speaker 1: and cheaper labor through these pre designed uh customs little
Speaker 1: bit almost like modules modules right right, thank you, and
Speaker 1: out of manufacturing is is really just the next step
Speaker 1: in all of that. So, and and not having to
Speaker 1: drag giant pre built modules around on trucks is also
Speaker 1: you just have to move the giants, the giant three
Speaker 1: D printer to wherever you need to go. But I mean,
Speaker 1: even if even if this means printing something and then
Speaker 1: using a giant tractor trailer to to haul at someplace,
Speaker 1: you're still talking about building a house in a fraction
Speaker 1: of the time it would take. I mean, anyone who
Speaker 1: has seen a house being built no that that tends
Speaker 1: to be a pretty long process. So being able to
Speaker 1: do it in a day, like even the the the
Speaker 1: University of Southern California version, which was a multi room
Speaker 1: house with multiple floors. They said they could still do
Speaker 1: it in twenty four hours. So twenty four hours start
Speaker 1: to finish, you have a you have a house. It
Speaker 1: may not quite be ready to be to move into,
Speaker 1: but that all the structures are built. That is amazing.
Speaker 1: So it's it's really cool. But that's that's just one
Speaker 1: use of three D printing that we wanted to cover.
Speaker 1: There's actually a whole bunch, especially in the medical field, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, anything that's on a smaller scale is obviously
Speaker 1: going to be a little bit easier to deal with,
Speaker 1: and there are so many opportunities for for advancements in medicine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the ones that I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: is is actually a pretty simple one in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things, because some of the stuff we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about tends to be let's let's use the word
Speaker 1: invasive the in order to take advantage of it. We're
Speaker 1: talking about things some kind of surgery. Yeah, this in
Speaker 1: this case, this is just replacing the good old broken
Speaker 1: arm or broken leg cast Like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: have never had to wear one, all right, so neither
Speaker 1: of us have experienced the joy of having a plaster cast.
Speaker 1: But they but they look they look itchy and unwieldy
Speaker 1: and terrible, right, and they don't allow your skin to
Speaker 1: breathe or anything like that. I can just imagine just
Speaker 1: going crazy thinking I just I just want some air
Speaker 1: on my skin and coming out even more pasty and
Speaker 1: translucent to the neither of us, which would pretty much
Speaker 1: mean we'd be completely transparent. Yeah, we go from translucent
Speaker 1: to transparent like those little frogs at the or or
Speaker 1: the the invisible woman type uh model that you could
Speaker 1: get in school where it show all the veins, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be us. It's really not far from where
Speaker 1: we are already. But yeah, so so one way of
Speaker 1: perhaps going a different route than the plaster cast is
Speaker 1: to follow the design of Dinna's Kasan And I have
Speaker 1: no idea if I pronounced his name correctly, but he's
Speaker 1: a Turkish designer who created this super cool three D
Speaker 1: printed essentially a plastic cast. Uh. The way it works
Speaker 1: is you would first have whatever body part needed to
Speaker 1: have the cast on it completely scanned three D scanned,
Speaker 1: so you're getting all the different angles there. The cast
Speaker 1: is then built specifically to the contours of that limb,
Speaker 1: so it fits nice and snug. It prints into two
Speaker 1: segments which then snapped together, just like if you've ever
Speaker 1: put together any kind of plastic toy, you know that
Speaker 1: has a little pegs, poles, same sort of thing, And
Speaker 1: instead of being a solid piece like a plaster cast is,
Speaker 1: it looks more like a net. So it's got holes
Speaker 1: that are opened up so that your your skin can breathe.
Speaker 1: You've got that ability to if an itch hits you
Speaker 1: actually scratch it without having to stick some sort of
Speaker 1: chopstick down the cast and hope you can hit the
Speaker 1: right spot. Uh. And also an interesting idea, although it's
Speaker 1: somewhat untested or at least the tests are inconclusive, is
Speaker 1: to allow using an ultrasonic emitter to put ultrasonic signals
Speaker 1: into your your your body to help stimulate bone healing.
Speaker 1: So there's some studies that suggest this actually works. There's
Speaker 1: some studies that say that ultrasonic stimulation has a negligible,
Speaker 1: if any effect, So the jury is still out on
Speaker 1: whether or not ultrasonic stimulation is really a benefit, and
Speaker 1: if it is, if it's a measurable enough benefit to
Speaker 1: justify the cost. So there's still some debate on that,
Speaker 1: but one thing is for sure. If you have a
Speaker 1: big plaster cast on, you can't really take advantage of
Speaker 1: it anyway, because the ultrasonic frequencies are going to have
Speaker 1: trouble just penetrating that. So if you have have one
Speaker 1: that has holes in it where you can actually put
Speaker 1: the emitter right up against the skin, you get around that.
Speaker 1: I'll take the being able to scratch an itch thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even even if the ultrasonic ends up ultimately proving to
Speaker 1: not be a scientifically valid means of helping heal the bone.
Speaker 1: The comfort factor alone, plus these things look kind of
Speaker 1: kind of badass. They do, They really do. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to go sort of punk,
Speaker 1: fishnetty sort of look and hey, I'm punk, but maybe
Speaker 1: that's that's me I want. I want the fish nets
Speaker 1: and they can be printed in any color. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The ones I saw were black, but they also had
Speaker 1: them printed in white, which was nice. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: I would probably go hot pink because that's clearly what
Speaker 1: I always think of you, Yeah, because I mean I'm
Speaker 1: punk rock, but I like to feel pretty, So yeah,
Speaker 1: super cool use of it. But then we have some more.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say extreme uses of three D
Speaker 1: printing things for something beyond a broken bone. So for example, prostheses, right,
Speaker 1: which we've talked a bunch about before on the show.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I think that in the last time
Speaker 1: that we were talking about prostheses, we didn't mention the
Speaker 1: possibility of three D printing things specifically for specific people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it's become so much cheaper and more widespread,
Speaker 1: so much easier to access right now, A lot of
Speaker 1: these prostheses tend to be fairly primitive compared to say,
Speaker 1: you know, your top of the line prosthetics. Like there's
Speaker 1: some procetics out there that are fully have you know,
Speaker 1: robotic motors and everything in them so that they can
Speaker 1: respond to either muscle control or some other control mechanism.
Speaker 1: These that we're talking about here are less um less sophisticated,
Speaker 1: but they can still make a dramatic impact on the
Speaker 1: life of someone who has lost a limb or perhaps
Speaker 1: was born without, say, fingers. We're going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about a person like that. So this is
Speaker 1: really cool stuff. I love the idea of of democratizing
Speaker 1: a technology and getting it into a lot more fields.
Speaker 1: Where people would not necessarily have the means, maybe they
Speaker 1: don't have the money or they don't have accessibility of
Speaker 1: getting one of these incredible prosthetics, because seeing a doctor
Speaker 1: paying for that kind of thing exactly. Project Daniel is
Speaker 1: a really good example of that. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: came This came from Not Impossible Labs. So so Mike
Speaker 1: of Not Impossible Labs, He's actually done quite a few videos,
Speaker 1: including a ted talk about some of the work he's
Speaker 1: done with this. This group flew down to Sudan to
Speaker 1: print a prosthetic arm for a young man named Daniel,
Speaker 1: who had lost both his arms in a bomb blast.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, the Sudan is the the is a
Speaker 1: region that has just been uh plagued by war, very
Speaker 1: violent conflicts for years and years, and they're countless victims
Speaker 1: of this, lots of people who have lost one or
Speaker 1: more limbs. So he went down and worked with the
Speaker 1: people of this little town in the Sudan and brought
Speaker 1: along a three D printer, brought brought along spools of
Speaker 1: the material that the three D printer uses, and began
Speaker 1: to work on building a three D printed arm for Daniel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not just too I mean, and that alone is wonderful,
Speaker 1: of course, but also to teach the community how to
Speaker 1: use these tools so that they can continue using it
Speaker 1: after he and and the other project leaders had gone
Speaker 1: back home. Yeah, and that's exactly what has happened. That
Speaker 1: there's a follow up that talks about how they have
Speaker 1: printed I think an arm a day, they've printed limbs
Speaker 1: to help people. It gives them a new range of motion,
Speaker 1: gives them freedom. For example, with with Daniel, they talked
Speaker 1: about how this allowed him to feed himself for the
Speaker 1: first time in two years. So that is something we all,
Speaker 1: most of us, I won't say we all, most of
Speaker 1: us take for granted. We take this stuff for granted.
Speaker 1: So to think of someone regaining that kind of agency
Speaker 1: in their own lives is it's really moving. And so
Speaker 1: we're seeing that being used in places like uh, the
Speaker 1: Sedan and other places that have very little access to
Speaker 1: tap of the line kind of prosthetics. You know, that
Speaker 1: gets a lot of attention in the robotics field over
Speaker 1: in other countries like in the United States, But this
Speaker 1: is something that could dramatically change a lot of people's lives.
Speaker 1: Another example, another really heartwarming story. Yeah, there's a Kansas
Speaker 1: teenager named Mason Wilde who used a three D printer
Speaker 1: to make a prosthetic hand for a neighbor of his.
Speaker 1: So one of his neighbors is this nine year old girl. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no fingers on one hand. Um, And so Mason Wilde
Speaker 1: printed up, he designed and worked, and he had already
Speaker 1: built a computer from scratch when he was a little
Speaker 1: bit younger. So this teenager goes and builds, designs and
Speaker 1: builds a three D printed hand and uh and and
Speaker 1: the girl absolutely adores it. And it can do things
Speaker 1: like it can grip pick things up. She's able to
Speaker 1: have a lot more mobility. She was born without these fingers,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't due to an injury, but now she
Speaker 1: has um a working hand and she loves it. The
Speaker 1: neat thing about this three D printing approach is also
Speaker 1: that as a person grows, you can print new new prosthses.
Speaker 1: Yeah and you you know again, combining the three D
Speaker 1: scanning with a three D printing makes this much easier. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you don't have the three D scanner, it's a
Speaker 1: lot more trial and error. But even but but but
Speaker 1: either way, I mean the idea that a high school
Speaker 1: er went and did this for his elementary school neighbor.
Speaker 1: Is just so cute and and indicative of the way
Speaker 1: that the industry can go right. This is very clearly
Speaker 1: something that is is at a core of a large
Speaker 1: part of the three D printer community, like a three
Speaker 1: D printer enthusiasts, the folks who have been behind this
Speaker 1: technology for the better part of a decade while most
Speaker 1: of us were unaware that such a thing could even exist.
Speaker 1: This is the sort of stuff they've been championing from
Speaker 1: the very beginning, and now we're seeing the stories come
Speaker 1: out as the technology has become sophisticate enough to actually
Speaker 1: make it a reality, because clearly, you know, in the
Speaker 1: early days, you're talking about resolutions of several microns thick
Speaker 1: per layer, which means that you couldn't have a really
Speaker 1: smooth kind of object that you printed on a on
Speaker 1: a micro level, anything that had a lot of moving parts.
Speaker 1: It was a little complicated. And now we're getting to
Speaker 1: the sophisticated printers that can print on either are micron
Speaker 1: thick or even thinner, and that's that just means that
Speaker 1: you're able to make much more complex materials by by
Speaker 1: combining all the little things that you've printed out sophistication
Speaker 1: and also am inexpensiveness in this case, you know, giving
Speaker 1: that teenager access to a three D printer that that
Speaker 1: he can work with. He apparently went to a library
Speaker 1: and use the libraries three D printer. So when you
Speaker 1: think about that, you right, he was able to print
Speaker 1: a hand using a public institutions three D printer. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is something that again, a prosthetic can cost thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars depending upon the complexity and how it needs
Speaker 1: to be fitted to the person. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a process that usually takes months and months and and
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars of money that a lot of people
Speaker 1: just don't have. So it's pretty phenomenal stuff. Back on
Speaker 1: the sophistication side though. Um Over in Wales, a man
Speaker 1: who had been in a motorcycle accident that had affected
Speaker 1: half of his face has has been printed replacement skull parts. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: this is pretty phenomenal. He broke both cheekbones, a joy,
Speaker 1: lost teeth. I mean it was it was a terrible injury.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, but they but they were able to
Speaker 1: scan the healthy side of his head using CT that's
Speaker 1: that's computerized tomography in which a series of X rays
Speaker 1: from many angles are combined to create cross sections of
Speaker 1: a patient's bones and soft tissue. Um they used that
Speaker 1: to create and print a three D model of what
Speaker 1: they wanted to do, including like custom fit surgical guides,
Speaker 1: and then printed titanium implants specified for this dude's face,
Speaker 1: which is phenomenal. Yeah. It means that they were able
Speaker 1: to make his face much more symmetrical than any other
Speaker 1: means and that uh, he would end up looking more
Speaker 1: like his old self, because I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is incredible surgery. I mean, you're talking about replacing a
Speaker 1: significant portion of his skull. Yeah. The doctors also said that,
Speaker 1: you know that that specificity allowed them to take a
Speaker 1: lot of the kind of dangerous guesswork out of out
Speaker 1: of the surgical work that they were doing. Sure, because
Speaker 1: I mean, if you end up miscalculating and then you're
Speaker 1: in the process of implanting that and you realize this
Speaker 1: isn't going to work, then that means you already have
Speaker 1: to have another surgery down the line. If you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of an eight hour surgery and this is Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's terrible. So yeah, this was this is a
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal use. And then the next one makes my
Speaker 1: mind boggle. This this, it's hard for me to even
Speaker 1: imagine this idea. So, Lauren, why don't you tell me
Speaker 1: about the equivalent of a three D printed pacemaker? Okay,
Speaker 1: this one is a lot more experimental. So so researchers
Speaker 1: have printed a custom fit electronic membrane that can wrap
Speaker 1: over a heart and provide the same monitoring and an
Speaker 1: emergency stimulation that pacemakers can. Today, now, Jonathan and I
Speaker 1: did a whole episode about pacemakers over on our other
Speaker 1: show Text Stuff, and I meant to go grab the
Speaker 1: date and episode title, but I did not, So we'll
Speaker 1: throw that in with the when we publish this podcast,
Speaker 1: I'll make sure that to tweet out and everything of
Speaker 1: the link to that so you guys can listen. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so so watch for that on social guys. But um,
Speaker 1: but but so, I mean, basically, what a pacemaker does
Speaker 1: is if um, you know your your your heart runs
Speaker 1: on electrical single signals, and if something goes wrong, a
Speaker 1: sensor can tell and and give it a little bit
Speaker 1: of a of a burst to keep a little defibrillator
Speaker 1: almost to reregulate it, to get it pumping back in
Speaker 1: a normal, uh, normal beat. So what these researchers did
Speaker 1: They scanned the heart and we're talking about a rabbit
Speaker 1: heart that was x vivo so so outside the body
Speaker 1: and in laboratory conditions. And then they printed this kind
Speaker 1: of polymer glove that can be integrated with silicon and
Speaker 1: uh electronic sensors, all structured in a way that lets
Speaker 1: them stretch without breaking. This allows the sensors in the
Speaker 1: device to be in this constant easy contact with the heart.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to like staple it onto
Speaker 1: the heart or whatever you use when you're trying to
Speaker 1: attach things to the heart, probably not staples, I I imagine,
Speaker 1: which could allow the device to hypothetically be a lot
Speaker 1: more useful and less traumatic to a body than the
Speaker 1: comparable technology that's in use today. Is pretty amazing. Thinking
Speaker 1: thinking of as a heart glove that monitors the hearts activity,
Speaker 1: can respond if the activity is not is not healthy,
Speaker 1: it's and it's custom fit for you. So it's so
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't have words for how incredible this is.
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea, it's it's so science fiction e E
Speaker 1: E that I have a hard time wrapping my mind
Speaker 1: around it. The idea of scanning an organ inside my
Speaker 1: body and then printing this thing that would wrap around
Speaker 1: it and keep it healthier longer is amazing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the idea of a pacemaker alone makes me kind
Speaker 1: of sit there and marvel. But this is this is
Speaker 1: if this works out, because obviously this isn't that experimental stage,
Speaker 1: and perhaps this will never will never see this in
Speaker 1: this particular implementation, but the work that's being done will
Speaker 1: surely inform us in other ways that we can anticipate.
Speaker 1: So even if this does not ultimately work out to
Speaker 1: be the future of pacemaker technology, it's really exciting work. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any any one element of it, from the from the
Speaker 1: stretchable electronics to too Yeah. Well, I mean just the
Speaker 1: idea of a a custom made glove that fits on
Speaker 1: your heart. I mean, now, for the fashion conscious, I
Speaker 1: can see where the the desire is. But that's not
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here, obviously, And obviously it's not
Speaker 1: just for any normal human person walking around. This would
Speaker 1: be for patients who who already have some kind of
Speaker 1: some kind of trouble or are expected to have some
Speaker 1: kind of trouble. Now, it's also interesting to me this
Speaker 1: idea of printing something that has electronics worked into it.
Speaker 1: Because any again, anyone who's worked with printers, three D printers,
Speaker 1: especially the more primitive ones, they're mostly used to printing
Speaker 1: like a little uh figurine made out of this plastic stuff,
Speaker 1: and not necessarily something that has electronic parts. But we've
Speaker 1: actually found evidence of stuff people who are who are
Speaker 1: printing electronics, Like they're printing all the different components of
Speaker 1: an electronic device and then putting it together. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: even more than that, people have started creating single additive
Speaker 1: products that have some of those electronics built right in. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a speaker that has come out of Cornell Labs
Speaker 1: that using using two different printers working on on a
Speaker 1: single product at different stages, researchers have created a working
Speaker 1: consumer level speaker uh that the casing seamlessly integrated with
Speaker 1: the conductive coils made of silver ink and magnets made
Speaker 1: of a viscous, curable blend of strontium ferright, And so
Speaker 1: you hook this thing up with wires to an electronic
Speaker 1: device and you've got sound. Back in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: the same lab used a three D printer to create
Speaker 1: a working replica of the telegraph receiver and recorder that
Speaker 1: Samuel Morse and Alfred Vale used to send the very
Speaker 1: first Morse code message in What was the message the
Speaker 1: same as the first actual Morse code message? What hath
Speaker 1: god rot? Well? Oh yeah, the classics never die. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know this is really interesting. Actually, watch the video
Speaker 1: of the speaker, not not the telegraph, but the speaker
Speaker 1: being built, and then at the very end of it
Speaker 1: they actually demonstrate the speaker. They play an audio clip
Speaker 1: of President Obama talking about three D printers. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a little tenny. It's not. It's not it's not the
Speaker 1: best speaker, not the best quality. But the proof of
Speaker 1: concept again, this idea of being able to print entire
Speaker 1: electronic device. They made electromagnetic components from a three D printer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. That's that's the really cool. So and this
Speaker 1: is also where we get into the discussion about you
Speaker 1: know this this is a really cool proof of concept.
Speaker 1: It also illustrates how tricky this is because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure this the speaker approach used two different
Speaker 1: three D printers. That's correct. Yeah, I mean they used
Speaker 1: a single object and transferred it from one printer to
Speaker 1: the end, right right, It's not that, but it was
Speaker 1: in order for them to be able to print in
Speaker 1: these different materials. And that's and that's partially because these
Speaker 1: materials have, you know, extremely different melting points and different
Speaker 1: recoagulation points. They're different, they have different conductivities. Some are conductive,
Speaker 1: some are not conductive. There are a lot of different
Speaker 1: um features that these various materials have that are not
Speaker 1: necessarily compatible with one another, and you don't want to
Speaker 1: contaminate one with another. So, for example, if you want
Speaker 1: to print in a conductive material, this is something that's
Speaker 1: going to con duct electricity. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: primary component of your electronic device. You do not want
Speaker 1: that to get contaminated with non conductive material. You don't
Speaker 1: want plastic mixed in with that. It's going to inhibit
Speaker 1: any kind of electricity flow. So, you know, using the
Speaker 1: exact same device to print all the stuff on, you
Speaker 1: have to make sure you're really good about designing it
Speaker 1: so that you're not going to have any sort of
Speaker 1: waste material left over at the end of the plastic
Speaker 1: printing section before you move on to say the silver
Speaker 1: printing section, and vice versa. You wouldn't want any silver
Speaker 1: still kicking around in there when you start printing the
Speaker 1: plastics that are supposed to be insulating whatever you're doing,
Speaker 1: right exactly. So these are things that people are working on.
Speaker 1: We have we have we have top scientists to this,
Speaker 1: top people. Yeah, they're the very top. I want to
Speaker 1: say top men. Every single time it's not right. No,
Speaker 1: it's not right. It's not right. I mean it's the
Speaker 1: right quote, but it's not okay. So yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's really cool. I mean, how do you do this
Speaker 1: without having that sort of corruption involved in the actual printer.
Speaker 1: This is how these are the problems people are working
Speaker 1: on now to make these things even more precise and useful,
Speaker 1: and people are working on them. Um. There was a
Speaker 1: Kickstarter funded project that lets you print circuits in the
Speaker 1: form of layers of silver nanoparticles onto basically whatever you want, um,
Speaker 1: you know, be that plastics or ceramics or glass or
Speaker 1: wood or fabric or paper. Right, you can actually design
Speaker 1: a circuit, you know, a working circuit to do whatever
Speaker 1: it is you wanted to do, and then print it
Speaker 1: on one of these materials. There's the implications are endless.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could do anything with this Circuits are
Speaker 1: are very basic components of electronics, and once you understand
Speaker 1: how they work, then you're really only limited by how
Speaker 1: small can you make the circuit, right, because that's one
Speaker 1: thing that with a microprocessor, obviously, we're talking about stuff
Speaker 1: on the nano scale, which is something that three D
Speaker 1: printers can't do yet. They can't get down to that scale.
Speaker 1: So it's not like you're gonna print the next amazing
Speaker 1: microprocessor that's going to power the next supercomputer. But you
Speaker 1: could print some awesome circuits that lets you to do
Speaker 1: some really creative things and redefine what we think of
Speaker 1: when we say the word electronics. And you can print
Speaker 1: your own circuits at home. I mean, that's the really
Speaker 1: interesting part of this is that someone who is getting
Speaker 1: started in electronics and you know, understands a little bit
Speaker 1: about how to make a printed circuit board, or even
Speaker 1: doesn't understand that much about it, could take this equipment
Speaker 1: and use it to start playing in that arena. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to me, it really excites me in the realm of cosplay,
Speaker 1: being able to print circuits onto costume pieces. Working circuits, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to think about all the wires, you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about anymore. Like I'm thinking, like
Speaker 1: you know, daft punk style helmets where when you put
Speaker 1: the helmet on you aren't immediately bathed with wires all
Speaker 1: over your face. My my mind is blown. I'm only
Speaker 1: my entire brain is stuttering right now. Okay, even even
Speaker 1: cooler than this, and this is pretty cool. Uh There
Speaker 1: there are some people who are working on integrated circuits
Speaker 1: from three D printers. A team out of stay Aford
Speaker 1: designed a three D printer attachment that can let you
Speaker 1: integrate circuitry into a piece as you print it. It's
Speaker 1: it's like a second printer head. They're calling it the
Speaker 1: Rabbit proto Um and it's for rep wrap machines, which
Speaker 1: are already designed to work with really strong, high temperature
Speaker 1: polymers like a crylon nitrial of but two dyeing styrene
Speaker 1: or a B S, which is the stuff for example,
Speaker 1: that most of the components of that three D printed
Speaker 1: gun that made headlines a while back was made of
Speaker 1: also like lego bricks. Yeah, lego bricks. That's a BS material,
Speaker 1: as I learned on Current Geek when they quizzed me
Speaker 1: about it. Um, Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's like a
Speaker 1: primary component and a lot of different stuff, And the
Speaker 1: idea of an integrated circuit where you're printing the circuit
Speaker 1: inside the object itself so it's all incorporated together is
Speaker 1: is incredible. In an early demo, they printed out these
Speaker 1: puzzle pieces that had circuits running through them so that
Speaker 1: when you put the puzzle together, it would complete the circuit.
Speaker 1: So let's say you have a battery on one side
Speaker 1: and the light on the other, and you when you've
Speaker 1: finished putting the puzzle together, the light bulb lights up
Speaker 1: because you've completed the circuit. That's really cool. This is
Speaker 1: even cooler for cosplay than the other one. So the
Speaker 1: other one you would print a circuit on top of something,
Speaker 1: which you know, granted you could if you damage the
Speaker 1: circuit then you would break it. Possibly, So this way
Speaker 1: you could have incorporated in the costume piece itself. I'm thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: Tron costumes, I'm thinking Halo. So many choices other than costuming.
Speaker 1: It could probably have many useful applications for industry. Sure,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, sure, there there are practical applications obviously, but
Speaker 1: those aren't important to me, and and to be fair,
Speaker 1: I don't really see what is more practical than than
Speaker 1: I'm after chief suits. Yeah, so so start Spartan Armor
Speaker 1: is where it's at. But so so, this is an
Speaker 1: open source project and the students are looking to create
Speaker 1: a startup once they graduate this year. Um this is
Speaker 1: all designed by students. I don't think that I mentioned
Speaker 1: at the top of this paragraph. This is students at Stanford,
Speaker 1: like grad students. That's incredible to um. So, they're they're
Speaker 1: already accepting pre orders for the Rabbit proto, ranging from
Speaker 1: a single syringe for like three fifty fifty dollars to
Speaker 1: a replace one of your your own printer heads piece
Speaker 1: for four hundred and fifty dollars to a fully integrated
Speaker 1: printer for only two thousand, five hundred dollars. Only two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Now I know that I say, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a big chunk of change for me. That's like
Speaker 1: more than my lunch. But yeah, but still, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about three D printers, it was not that long
Speaker 1: ago that was outside the realm of any three D printer,
Speaker 1: let alone one that could print an integrate circuit. So
Speaker 1: it really just shows how far along this this technology
Speaker 1: has come. Also, when you think about it and you know,
Speaker 1: I made some jokes about cosplay and everything I am
Speaker 1: legimately is excited by that. It's actually true. No, but
Speaker 1: but one of the things that this this could potentially
Speaker 1: lead to is the idea that's been around ever since
Speaker 1: people have started talking about three D printers, which is
Speaker 1: to use a three D printer to print another three
Speaker 1: D printer, so that once you have something that is
Speaker 1: capable of printing and all the materials you need for
Speaker 1: a basic three D printer, that's it, and the rep
Speaker 1: wrap is almost there. It's it's able to print most
Speaker 1: of itself already, and so once we get to the
Speaker 1: point where we're able to do the whole thing, really
Speaker 1: all you need is for a group of friends to
Speaker 1: get together and say, all right, we're gonna pull our
Speaker 1: money by one of these we're gonna buy the raw
Speaker 1: materials we need. Then we print them out for everybody,
Speaker 1: and now we all have one. So for the price
Speaker 1: of one printer, we're able to buy unlimited number of printers,
Speaker 1: internal printers, infinity printers. Yeah, it's just that you then
Speaker 1: have to make sure you still have some money because
Speaker 1: you can have to buy the raw materials. But other
Speaker 1: than that, you're good so that's pretty cool. Okay, so
Speaker 1: all of this has been, you know, even if experimental,
Speaker 1: definitely within the realm of reality that is happening today.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the weird stuff. Okay. You sent me
Speaker 1: a link to a regenerative regenerative running shoes, so I
Speaker 1: thought I would look this thing up and uh talk
Speaker 1: about whackadoodle crazy. All right, So I know what you're thinking, right, Lauren.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm okay about shoes, but I'm a
Speaker 1: typical guy and that when I find a pair of shoes,
Speaker 1: I like, I just want to wear those shoes for forever.
Speaker 1: Don't need to ever buy a different type of shoe,
Speaker 1: except the fact that shoe manufacturers, often without any regard
Speaker 1: for my sanity, will stop producing a certain type of shoe,
Speaker 1: forcing me to go out and buy a different type
Speaker 1: of shoe once my shoes have worn out, which they do.
Speaker 1: I could show Lauren the bottom of my shoe right now.
Speaker 1: It has a hole in it. The shoe I am
Speaker 1: wearing needs to be replaced. However, I stopped making this
Speaker 1: type of shoe, so I'm already going through this existential crisis. Anyway,
Speaker 1: what if you had a shoe that was made out
Speaker 1: of a material that could actually repair itself after you
Speaker 1: had finished wearing it. You put it up at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, and it repairs itself. It heals
Speaker 1: it actually doesn't just repair, it heals itself so that
Speaker 1: you you can then wear it again the next day
Speaker 1: and just wear it until you get tired of these shoes.
Speaker 1: And not only that, it's three D printed perfectly molded
Speaker 1: to your foot, so it's a perfect fit. That's incredible, right,
Speaker 1: that that is in fact literally incredible. What if I
Speaker 1: also told you that it was made out of biosynthetic
Speaker 1: material called protocells that themselves are not living, so it's
Speaker 1: not like you're putting on a shoe life form on
Speaker 1: your feet. However, it works with your your your actual
Speaker 1: skin to create this kind of symbiotic relationship where when
Speaker 1: you're running around, it can inflate or deflate and thus
Speaker 1: cushion your foot or remove that cushioning if you don't
Speaker 1: need it, and then order Yeah, like like those little
Speaker 1: fingertoe shoes that that that my wife despises because she
Speaker 1: thinks they're creepy. Uh, sort of like that, except actually
Speaker 1: printed straight for your foot. You peel those off at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. I'm sure it makes a
Speaker 1: pleasant sound. And then you put them into a little
Speaker 1: back to container like thing like you would have seen
Speaker 1: an Empire strikes back where Luke has lost his hand.
Speaker 1: He's been put in there and he's healing up anyway,
Speaker 1: it's the same sort of thing you put it in there.
Speaker 1: It's got this living protocell type fluid inside of it
Speaker 1: which actually works to heal the shoe at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. I'm not sure they're sure whether I'm
Speaker 1: impressed or creeped out at this juncture. It sounds like
Speaker 1: it's probably the most amazingly disgusting type of shoe I
Speaker 1: would put them on. This sounds like some Cronenberg stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with with life fluid
Speaker 1: regenerating my shoes at the end of the day. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I want my shoes to be a
Speaker 1: potentially living organism. According to the article which we was
Speaker 1: in the Verge. By the way, we'll we'll link out
Speaker 1: to the article as well. Um. According to the article,
Speaker 1: the the goo that you would put these shoes in
Speaker 1: at the end of the day could be dyed in
Speaker 1: any color which would then make your shoes that color.
Speaker 1: So well, that's that's good. You choose what color. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want want living protocel organisms to you know, dye
Speaker 1: my shoes whatever color they wanted. Now you want to
Speaker 1: be strict on that kind of thing. You give them
Speaker 1: an inch, they'll walk all over you. Uh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is something that um is both incredible and creepy somehow
Speaker 1: at the same time. I mean, they're not actually living, obviously,
Speaker 1: it's not that we've created some sort of life form.
Speaker 1: And also this is not something that's going to be
Speaker 1: coming out in stores anytime soon. In fact, No, No,
Speaker 1: the projection was by twenty fifty, which who knows. By
Speaker 1: then maybe we have reached a point with the singularity
Speaker 1: where we don't need feet anymore, so it might be
Speaker 1: a moot point. Yeah. And this, this whole project was
Speaker 1: was done for the Wearable Futures conference, and so you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't an extremely serious like like top people are
Speaker 1: working on this. No, this is more of a kind
Speaker 1: of thinking outside the box, what what is in the
Speaker 1: realm of possibility? And but again it would have been
Speaker 1: a three D printed uh shoe, So really another wonderful
Speaker 1: thing about three D printing is this idea we mentioned
Speaker 1: at at the very beginning of this podcast of being
Speaker 1: able to tailor make something specifically for a person and
Speaker 1: no two people are alike. This is another thing that
Speaker 1: the prosthetic approach is very promising. If you're able to
Speaker 1: get very specific measurements incorporated into the design, you can
Speaker 1: build a prosthetic that's going to work for one person
Speaker 1: really really well, and then when the next person comes along,
Speaker 1: you tweak some things and you make one that works
Speaker 1: for them. Uh, you're not using a one size fits
Speaker 1: all kind of approach, which obviously would not work great
Speaker 1: for anybody. That's that's not that's like the worst of
Speaker 1: all worlds. This is the opposite of that. So that's
Speaker 1: really exciting stuff. And again we're just scratching the surface
Speaker 1: with the sort of things that three D printing is
Speaker 1: going to be able to do. I mean, we still
Speaker 1: have people who are genuinely concerned that three D printing
Speaker 1: is going to really disrupt a lot of businesses, like
Speaker 1: like furniture stores, where you're able to print the equivalent
Speaker 1: of something that you would find at saying whatever fancy
Speaker 1: chair you like. Yeah, we're still a ways away from that.
Speaker 1: But that's that's in a lot of minds. There's some
Speaker 1: thought of trying to make that into a virtual store
Speaker 1: where you would go to a virtual store by the
Speaker 1: plans for whatever piece of furniture you happen to like
Speaker 1: and then printed at home, uh, or you would send
Speaker 1: that to if you don't have a printer at home,
Speaker 1: you might send it to a facility near you, a
Speaker 1: local designer printer. Yeah, it could be a small business
Speaker 1: that just has a bunch of different bays of printers,
Speaker 1: and all those printers are being used to build stuff
Speaker 1: on spec from customers. Like, that's a perfectly workable business
Speaker 1: model that is probably just a few years away. And
Speaker 1: and even even if for some reason all of this
Speaker 1: is just a fad, the idea of three D printers
Speaker 1: and all of our homes making all of our stuff
Speaker 1: is never going to happen. These kind of medical capacities
Speaker 1: and and you know, skull replacement parts and and bone
Speaker 1: replacements and and or grafting new bone onto your existing
Speaker 1: bone with a three D printing bone pen. That kind
Speaker 1: of stuff is absolutely going to change our world. It's
Speaker 1: already changing lives right now. It's just going to continue
Speaker 1: to do so, so that is incredible stuff. Well, if
Speaker 1: you have any questions about what we just talked about,
Speaker 1: or maybe you've got a suggestion for a topic we
Speaker 1: should tackle in another episode of Forward Thinking, let us know.
Speaker 1: Send us a message. Our email addresses f W Thinking
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com, and then you can let us
Speaker 1: know on Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus. Our handle
Speaker 1: at all three is f W Thinking and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
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