Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Heath and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and today I'm joined by Joe McCormick, head
Speaker 1: writer of Forward Thinking. Hi everybody. Joe is a guest
Speaker 1: hosting while Laurence out. She will be back soon, so
Speaker 1: no where he's there. Joe and I have worked extensively
Speaker 1: together on Forward Thinking, which is the show all about
Speaker 1: future technology, feature science, what the world is just gonna
Speaker 1: be like in twenty to fifty years or beyond in
Speaker 1: some cases. And so one of the things we've talked
Speaker 1: about at length on that show is three D printing.
Speaker 1: So I thought we would have a little full discussion
Speaker 1: called three D Printers. I'm excited to talk about this
Speaker 1: because the only other time I've been a guest host
Speaker 1: on tech Stuff, we talked about the anti Kither mechanism,
Speaker 1: one of the oldest machines on Earth yea, or what
Speaker 1: some would call probably the oldest computer. And so that
Speaker 1: was the ancient past of technology. Now I want to
Speaker 1: talk about what's big in the future, and I think
Speaker 1: what's big is three D printing. Yeah, it's it's undoubtedly
Speaker 1: going to be huge and in fact, Joe has some
Speaker 1: interesting firsthand experience he can relate because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: we here at the office have a new three D printer,
Speaker 1: and Joe has sort of become the the overseer of it.
Speaker 1: By default, he was the one who sees the opportunity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody told me to. We we came in one day
Speaker 1: for a Monday morning meeting and they just wheeled this
Speaker 1: three D printer in and I was very excited, and
Speaker 1: they said, well, start playing with it, and nobody else
Speaker 1: started playing with it. So I seized the day. Yep,
Speaker 1: sees the moment he sees the opportunism, sees the three
Speaker 1: D printer, Yeah, and grabbed hold of it, got the instructions,
Speaker 1: installed all the software, and I started printing plastic death,
Speaker 1: just monstrosities and Asian failures, rolling up big balls. That
Speaker 1: turns out there's a curve to using this this device,
Speaker 1: and Joe has done a lot of trial and even
Speaker 1: more error to figure out exactly how to use it.
Speaker 1: And I wish you could see the just the beautiful
Speaker 1: plastic graveyard. There's some things that like some sort of
Speaker 1: plastic spaghetti that has I call them plastic hairballs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably a better better description. Anyway, this thing looks
Speaker 1: like it's about the size of a large microwave. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit taller. Yeah, and it uh, it
Speaker 1: actually can print in two different colors of plastic at
Speaker 1: the same time, which is pretty awesome. But anyway, we
Speaker 1: should probably talk about what a three D printer actually is.
Speaker 1: Kind of give a quick rundown for any of you
Speaker 1: who have not listened to the previous Tech Stuff episodes
Speaker 1: where we talked about three D printing and you maybe
Speaker 1: have heard the term, but you don't really know what
Speaker 1: it is. It's a type of additive manufacturing. Additive as
Speaker 1: in the opposite of subtraction, and the same thing as addition,
Speaker 1: you're putting on layers. Yes, you are building an object
Speaker 1: layer by layer in some way. Uh, you're topical consumer model.
Speaker 1: Will be using a type of plastic with a binder
Speaker 1: material so that it binds to itself, and the layers
Speaker 1: can be very thin, maybe just a couple of microns
Speaker 1: thick or even less, depending upon Like if you're using
Speaker 1: a state of the art nano three D printer, you're
Speaker 1: talking about layers so thin that they are like it
Speaker 1: might as well be one dimensional ours is not our consumer, right,
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you could, like an actual
Speaker 1: person could buy, yes, yes, as opposed to those those
Speaker 1: non real people who are able to get those nano printers. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's exactly. It's the kind of a consumer could purchase
Speaker 1: straight online. In fact, that is the model that we have,
Speaker 1: is one that you can buy right now, right. The
Speaker 1: idea of additive manufacturing is a cool paradigm. It's different
Speaker 1: than what we're usually used to. When you want to
Speaker 1: create a very specifically tailored three D object, usually you're
Speaker 1: gonna carve, right, You're gonna take some the external material
Speaker 1: until you've got what you need exactly. Um. We talked, uh,
Speaker 1: we were talking about this in terms of like Michelangelo's
Speaker 1: The David. Yes, you would have a giant slab of marble,
Speaker 1: and then you carve away all the stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: look like David until you're left with David. Right. It's
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a cool metaphor there, because there's
Speaker 1: this idea in the history of art about the sculpture
Speaker 1: emerging from the stone and it exists within the stone
Speaker 1: and you've just unleashed it. I guess this would be
Speaker 1: more like if you were to create the David by
Speaker 1: dripping and creating a David stalagmite in a cave right
Speaker 1: until it was fully formed as David. Now that hopefully
Speaker 1: faster than that the right. The additive approach does mean
Speaker 1: that you are not wasting as much material, right because
Speaker 1: you're not taking a large block of something and then
Speaker 1: carving it down until you have the object you want.
Speaker 1: You are instead using pretty much the stuff you need
Speaker 1: to build the thing you want, and and very little
Speaker 1: goes to waste, with the exception of the whatever you
Speaker 1: use making all these dead prototypes that get to work. Right,
Speaker 1: But assuming you get your printer working in chip shape,
Speaker 1: then basically no ways. And uh, typically the consumer models
Speaker 1: are printing in plastic, right, So uh, what is ours
Speaker 1: printing right now? Well, ours can do a B S
Speaker 1: or p l A right now, We've got it loaded
Speaker 1: up with p l A. That's sort of a nice
Speaker 1: friendly bioplastic polylactic acid. Jonathan A B S. What does
Speaker 1: that stand for? All right, Let's let's see rillo nitrial
Speaker 1: beauta dein styrene. I say that without looking it up,
Speaker 1: so I could be wrong, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: krylo nitrial beautadeene Styrene. I did a video where I
Speaker 1: was talking about this stuff for something else, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I finally got it. I'll forget it by
Speaker 1: next week for sure. But the thing about these plastics
Speaker 1: is when they are heated to a certain temperature, they
Speaker 1: become pliable. And that's when you put them through what's
Speaker 1: called extruder. It's what ends up printing these in these
Speaker 1: tiny layers, these thin streams of plastic that can be
Speaker 1: layered on top of one another, and then when it
Speaker 1: cools down, it will set into whatever shape it's been
Speaker 1: put into. So you heat it up, you shape it,
Speaker 1: you let it cool, and then it's set that way.
Speaker 1: This is the stuff a b s, by the way,
Speaker 1: is the stuff that lego bricks are made up of.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so um yeah, if you are able to
Speaker 1: heat it up properly, you put it through this extruder.
Speaker 1: The extruder lays down the layers, the binding agent helps
Speaker 1: it bind to itself, preferably only to itself and not
Speaker 1: to anything else, and then once it cools down, you're
Speaker 1: good to go. You've got your object. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: the basic idea, and uh, we already talked about how
Speaker 1: it's less wasteful than other approaches. But one of the
Speaker 1: other big advantages is that you can make prototypes really
Speaker 1: really fast. Right, So this would be, for example, if
Speaker 1: you are some kind of inventor engineer maker. You're the
Speaker 1: person who's trying to put something together in your garage
Speaker 1: and in a lot of cases you're going to need
Speaker 1: a custom made part. Yeah, but how do you get
Speaker 1: that part? How do you get a custom made part? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you could come up with the design specs
Speaker 1: and you could mail those off to you maybe email
Speaker 1: these days, and send them off to a company that
Speaker 1: does their own fabrication and they'll make it and then
Speaker 1: they'll send it back to you. Man, that is a
Speaker 1: long time to wait, especially if you messed up and
Speaker 1: you need to redesign. There could be there could be
Speaker 1: so many points of failure along that pathway. Right. First
Speaker 1: of all, your design might turn out not to work. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the manufacturing company might end up making it but not
Speaker 1: quite make it to your specifications, which means it still
Speaker 1: doesn't work. Even if you send in the correct stuff,
Speaker 1: you might get something back that's wrong. And either way,
Speaker 1: once you figure out it doesn't work, you have to
Speaker 1: go through that whole process again, and this takes a
Speaker 1: lot of time. With a three D printer, you could
Speaker 1: print up your design idea, you know, design it in
Speaker 1: a computer assisted design program a CAD program, print it out,
Speaker 1: and then test it to see if it actually works.
Speaker 1: Assuming that everything printed properly, then you're you can test
Speaker 1: it and see if it works. If it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: you can go tweak the design and print a new one,
Speaker 1: which means you go from design to prototype much more quickly.
Speaker 1: Of course, i'd imagine in a lot of cases that
Speaker 1: you're not going to be necessarily printing your final version.
Speaker 1: It might be more useful for producing just the prototype
Speaker 1: than for the actual final product, because maybe you're you're
Speaker 1: printing in p L A or A B S or
Speaker 1: some kind of plastic that's not really ideal for what
Speaker 1: it is, but you can you can see if it
Speaker 1: fits right. You can have this part well, especially if
Speaker 1: you're doing something like imagine that you're you're designing a
Speaker 1: new type of car and you want to test it
Speaker 1: to find out what kind of drag it's going to
Speaker 1: have when it's at speed, So you're going to put
Speaker 1: it through the model. You're gonna put through a wind tunnel. Well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter what it's made out of, assuming
Speaker 1: that the material itself is is nice and smooth. You
Speaker 1: want a high resolution three D printer, that means those
Speaker 1: layers have to be really, really thin. But you can
Speaker 1: put that through a wind tunnel and see if it's
Speaker 1: behaving the way you anticipated, and if it's not, then
Speaker 1: you can go back to the design process, change some things,
Speaker 1: and test it out again without going through this whole
Speaker 1: process of sending it out to a fabricator to build
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Of course, then there's another thing, which
Speaker 1: is customization, customization of designs that already exists, and this
Speaker 1: comes in when you couple the power of a three
Speaker 1: D printer with the power of a three D scanner,
Speaker 1: a three D scanner, or or even just a three
Speaker 1: D design program, right, because you can customize whatever you like,
Speaker 1: however you like it. But yes, exactly, yeah, yeah, what
Speaker 1: I had in mind is so you've got a part,
Speaker 1: but you want to change it a little bit so
Speaker 1: you can scan it with the three D scanner. Things
Speaker 1: like this exist where you can use like lasers or
Speaker 1: even just camera based technology. I've read about ideas on
Speaker 1: how to create three D scanners with a Microsoft connect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the three six D connect, we should say, just because
Speaker 1: the Xbox one is much more locked down. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: so you can scan a physical object, turn that into
Speaker 1: a virtual object, make changes to the virtual object, send
Speaker 1: it to the three D printer, and then you've got
Speaker 1: an new real object, new physical object, right right. So,
Speaker 1: if you end up seeing an idea that you think
Speaker 1: is good but you want to improve upon it, which
Speaker 1: is something that is common in say the open source community,
Speaker 1: you know, this idea of people who have ways of
Speaker 1: improving something should be allowed the chance to do so,
Speaker 1: that kind of appeals to that type of person. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's a whole range of intellectual property issues when it
Speaker 1: comes down to three D printing. We're not really going
Speaker 1: to touch on that. We talked about that in previous
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, but it is one of those
Speaker 1: things where suddenly we have to worry about how do
Speaker 1: we protect the design of a physical object. Now that
Speaker 1: it's possible, at least depending upon the object, to make
Speaker 1: a duplicate of that, you know, without going to the
Speaker 1: original source, which is that's kind of interesting that we
Speaker 1: live in that world now. But Anyway, the three D
Speaker 1: printing as a whole got started in industries like automotive
Speaker 1: and aerospace, where it was used in prototyping. It wasn't
Speaker 1: even called three D printing originally and had lots of
Speaker 1: different names depending upon the specif offic approach, But now
Speaker 1: we kind of use three D printing as an overall
Speaker 1: term for anything that's using this kind of additive manufacturing
Speaker 1: approach where you're laying down layer by layer. They have
Speaker 1: different implementations, but they're all based on a similar process.
Speaker 1: Of course, i'd imagine once we're talking about industrial uses,
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about plastic. I mean, the consumer
Speaker 1: models are probably going to be printing in plastic, but
Speaker 1: really you can print in pretty much anything that can
Speaker 1: be melted and then resolidify in a way that is useful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can even do things like, uh, you're not really
Speaker 1: printing in wood, but you can print a material that
Speaker 1: simulates would. So there's all sorts of things that you
Speaker 1: can find in the industrial world. Now, granted, those printers
Speaker 1: are a little pricing. We're talking like thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: That's why it's out of the consumer range. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: consumer models tend to be between about a thousand and
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars these days. Well, there there are actually
Speaker 1: some really cheap ones. Don't know how much you can
Speaker 1: do with them, but you can get a three D
Speaker 1: printer for a few hundred bucks. Yes, I don't know
Speaker 1: how capable it is. But the one we have in
Speaker 1: the office, the dual extruder that can print in two
Speaker 1: different it was which you know, it's not like that's
Speaker 1: an insignificant amount of money, but it does put it
Speaker 1: within the realm of the consumer market, which is interesting,
Speaker 1: and I think that's pretty cheap for its size. Yes, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it really is. Because I've seen maker bots, which maker
Speaker 1: Bot three D printers are great to the one we
Speaker 1: have is as a mono price three D printer. Uh.
Speaker 1: The maker bot ones are really good too, but they
Speaker 1: are um they also tend to be a little more expensive.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that we're now getting to this point
Speaker 1: where consumers can have this uh this access themselves. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about the experience of using those in
Speaker 1: a minute, but first I want to kind of look
Speaker 1: ahead and say, what are some of the crazy ways
Speaker 1: that three D printers are being used right now? Like,
Speaker 1: what are or being proposed for the future. Um and
Speaker 1: actually the ones we're talking about now, they've all been
Speaker 1: used in some form or another. Uh, maybe not to
Speaker 1: a point where we can all get our hands on
Speaker 1: the stuff, but it's it's these are actual projects that
Speaker 1: are happening now. Yeah. How about three D printing of buildings? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this actually is not that new of an idea, the
Speaker 1: one that the contour crafting one, which I have actually
Speaker 1: listed second in my notes. Contour Crafting started back in
Speaker 1: the mid two thousand's, but the idea has really taken
Speaker 1: off since there's been a you know, this whole slew
Speaker 1: of information about three D printing in general. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: depending on how weird you want to get. Didn't like
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison have this idea about pouring concrete into these
Speaker 1: molds to create houses. He may have that rings about
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm just maybe that's not true. Well, this kind
Speaker 1: of gun in the news again not too long ago
Speaker 1: when a company called win Soon, a Chinese company, began
Speaker 1: to demonstrate three D printers printing houses. They said they
Speaker 1: could print ten houses in a day using four massive
Speaker 1: three D printers. When I say massive, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: ten ms wide. That's about thirty three ft by six
Speaker 1: point six meters tall, that's twenty two ft. These are
Speaker 1: big printers, and they were using four of them. Now
Speaker 1: they printed the houses and pieces and then they had
Speaker 1: to be put together. Now, these aren't These aren't design
Speaker 1: necessarily like the three D printers you'll see sitting on
Speaker 1: a table somewhere, usually where there's an external rigid structure
Speaker 1: and then you print within it. Right, that doesn't work
Speaker 1: so well with houses. Now these look like giant arms. Now,
Speaker 1: grant again, since these were printing in in pieces, they
Speaker 1: were just sort of printing walls or roofs, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing um, and they would lay down the the
Speaker 1: geometric pattern to kind of give stability for things like
Speaker 1: corners stuff like that. And they're using concrete and other
Speaker 1: recycled construction waste material to try and cut down on
Speaker 1: on on materials that need to be used in the
Speaker 1: actual three D process. And if you look at it,
Speaker 1: if you watch the videos, it certainly doesn't look like
Speaker 1: a three D printer of the way I had described earlier,
Speaker 1: where you're adding thin layer to thin layer. It looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a frosting pipe. It like if you're
Speaker 1: piping frosting onto a cake at the big blobs of
Speaker 1: concrete being laid down one after the other, which makes
Speaker 1: sense because if you're building something as large as that
Speaker 1: as a house, you can't be laying down micron thick layers.
Speaker 1: You would take forever to finish a project, um, and
Speaker 1: you certainly wouldn't be able to build ten in a
Speaker 1: day even using four of these things. So it's the
Speaker 1: layers are much thicker. But it was really interesting to
Speaker 1: see this approach. The houses are pretty modest. They could
Speaker 1: do two stories, but again it was all printed in
Speaker 1: separate pieces that would have to be as symboled later
Speaker 1: by by a crew, so it's not like it was
Speaker 1: printing it from the floor to the ceiling and one piece.
Speaker 1: But it was still pretty interesting, very very simple, like
Speaker 1: you know, front door, back door, no rooms type of thing.
Speaker 1: It was more of a kind of proof of concept,
Speaker 1: the idea that this could be a way to to
Speaker 1: provide housing, either in emergency situations or even as a
Speaker 1: way of you know, if if we're given more funding
Speaker 1: than we can build actual you know, nice houses and
Speaker 1: not just a glorified room with a couple of doors. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's not the only one the Contour Crafting company
Speaker 1: I mentioned before that came out of a project from
Speaker 1: the University of Southern California, and it's an even larger
Speaker 1: UH proposed three D printer. There, they've built some that
Speaker 1: were able to build walls very similar to the one
Speaker 1: from wind Soon, but the big Daddy would be mounted
Speaker 1: on a rail system, so it could actually roll up
Speaker 1: and down this rail system. You have rails that would
Speaker 1: be on either side of the print site, right, and
Speaker 1: you would be printing in between the rails. The printer
Speaker 1: itself would be kind of like a U shaped and
Speaker 1: upside down you shape on top of this rail system,
Speaker 1: and the print head would be able to move all
Speaker 1: uh left and right and and up and down the
Speaker 1: whole build site. You can build an entire house in
Speaker 1: one piece, so with multiple rooms and multiple floors. So
Speaker 1: it was really an interesting approach. And Hi, Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about adhesion failures at length later, but the it
Speaker 1: was really cool seeing how this this would work. And
Speaker 1: again it was one of those things proposed for things
Speaker 1: like a people are displaced after a disaster, like imagine
Speaker 1: something like this after the Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans,
Speaker 1: being able to print housing for people so that they're
Speaker 1: not all having to stay in a giant stadium in
Speaker 1: decreasing conditions, rapidly decreasing conditions. Um, you know, it could
Speaker 1: definitely be really useful, and it really brings down the
Speaker 1: cost of fabricating something like that, and also the time,
Speaker 1: Like if you can print a house in twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you've noticed any housing
Speaker 1: projects going up anywhere, but they tend to take some
Speaker 1: time start to finish. If you're able to do that
Speaker 1: in a span of twenty four hours, that's incredible. So
Speaker 1: certainly has its place, So that that was one of
Speaker 1: the the uses we wanted to talk about. So I
Speaker 1: got one that we came across actually when Lauren and
Speaker 1: I were doing Forward Thinking episode without you about food replicators.
Speaker 1: You know this, this is interesting to me. So food
Speaker 1: replicators of course, the dream technology from Star Trek where
Speaker 1: it's just pulling atoms from anywhere and then building dream
Speaker 1: food on it. Essentially that's sort of the same thing
Speaker 1: as the molecular assembler you've heard about from the Gray
Speaker 1: Goose scenario. And we concluded that we don't think that
Speaker 1: this is very likely anytime soon. Um, if it's ever
Speaker 1: going to happen at all. But we also talked about, well,
Speaker 1: what are the things that that are sort of in
Speaker 1: that realm, and a lot of people when they saw
Speaker 1: that people were using three D printers to create food,
Speaker 1: they said, Okay, it's the Star Trek replicator. It's not,
Speaker 1: but it is very interesting. I don't know if I'd
Speaker 1: want to eat any of this food. But who's looking
Speaker 1: into it? Well, actually a NASA was looking into it,
Speaker 1: and there's so there's more than one group. There are
Speaker 1: some private companies that are making just consumer food three
Speaker 1: D printers for your home to make the you know,
Speaker 1: little desserts and tortellinis and strange things like that in UM.
Speaker 1: But the big one was NASA. So NASA was working
Speaker 1: with this company to create three D printing technologies for space.
Speaker 1: And I guess the idea is that it can sort
Speaker 1: of help give astronauts some of the comforts of home.
Speaker 1: So instead of having all of your food decided upon
Speaker 1: in advance, and you may or may not have much
Speaker 1: of us say in it, so you know, in space
Speaker 1: you typically are eating from these prepackaged food things little
Speaker 1: bags since be kind of pasteish. Yeah, that they want
Speaker 1: to minimize crumbs and things like that that could float
Speaker 1: away and get clogged in instruments, she needs to be
Speaker 1: things that are very easy to glob together and eat
Speaker 1: quickly out of the package. I've read reports that the
Speaker 1: astronauts really like the shrimp cocktail, which sounds do I'm suspicious,
Speaker 1: but I'd be willing to try it after after my
Speaker 1: MRI experience, I'm I'm pretty much ready for any of those,
Speaker 1: so I'd give it a go. Well, anyway, so you
Speaker 1: can actually go online and watch videos of this prototype
Speaker 1: right now. They they've filmed early versions of the three
Speaker 1: D printed pizza. And the way this sort of works
Speaker 1: is that it works because you're using foods that can
Speaker 1: be easily sort of put into a homogeneous container and
Speaker 1: then extruded in different layers. So if your ingredients are
Speaker 1: some kind of starchy dope paste, some kind of tomato
Speaker 1: based paste, and some kind of cheese paste, right, you
Speaker 1: can make you can print a pizza, you know. So
Speaker 1: the idea being that if you could get enough basic
Speaker 1: ingredients and then combine them in different ways, you could
Speaker 1: theoretically make a lot of different types of food, or
Speaker 1: at least food that tastes and has different textures from
Speaker 1: each other, which would be important for deep space missions. Right.
Speaker 1: The whole idea here is that the astronauts would have
Speaker 1: more choices so they wouldn't end up eating the same
Speaker 1: thing day after day after day and then risk space madness. Um,
Speaker 1: that's certainly what would happen to me. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: am not having this terrible reconstituted imitation crab paste again.
Speaker 1: I gotta have something else. Um. And also still be
Speaker 1: able to provide the nutritional value necessary to maintain your
Speaker 1: health in space, which we've talked about and forward thinking.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to do that. Keeping keeping healthy in
Speaker 1: space really hard because space is trying to kill you
Speaker 1: in multiple ways. So um, it's you know, it needs
Speaker 1: to be nutritious. It needs to be tasty, because you
Speaker 1: don't want it to be unpleasant, especially for a deep
Speaker 1: space kind of thing, where again space madness. And and
Speaker 1: have that variety, at least the illusion of variety. Even
Speaker 1: if the basic ingredients are all like maybe it's limited
Speaker 1: to something like twenty different basic ingredients, you could put
Speaker 1: up a great variety of things just by playing with
Speaker 1: how much of each ingredient goes into a particular dish,
Speaker 1: and the description I read even had it where they
Speaker 1: were printing essentially the taste and smell and the nutrients
Speaker 1: on top of the finished product. Anyway, so you could
Speaker 1: play with all the sort of stuff and create all
Speaker 1: these different textures and tastes and uh and again you're
Speaker 1: just using that basic stuff, which it's it's an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: I'd I'd be willing to try it just to see
Speaker 1: how uh how different to quote unquote different dishes would
Speaker 1: actually taste and feel. I'd want to I'd want to
Speaker 1: see imagining the glitch where it prints you a pizza,
Speaker 1: but it makes it smell like cherry pie, right and
Speaker 1: it ends up tasting like tasting like duck lange, and
Speaker 1: what is going on? My brain is broken? Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's not so great at averting space madness then,
Speaker 1: But let's let's stay on the topic of space. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but not in space madness kind of way. Uh So,
Speaker 1: three D printers are starting to take a larger role
Speaker 1: in space industry in general, not just in the food
Speaker 1: but in building stuff that allows us to get into space. Sure. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean we're back to the old thing we were
Speaker 1: talking about the prototyping, right, except making actual parts we're
Speaker 1: going to use. To the point, right, we're no longer
Speaker 1: just talking about printing a prototype that we test and
Speaker 1: then we end up making the final product based upon
Speaker 1: that prototype. We're actually talking about using three D printers
Speaker 1: to build the parts themselves. So space X is Dragon
Speaker 1: V two space capsule is amazing, it's super cool. There
Speaker 1: was a big veiling event where Elon Musk came out
Speaker 1: and said, take a look at this beauty here, and
Speaker 1: it it's probably the first, uh space capsule I've seen
Speaker 1: where it's supposed to be an actual working space capsule
Speaker 1: and it looks like something from science fiction. So instead
Speaker 1: of having that those massive control panels that have just
Speaker 1: tons of switches and buttons and things that are completely
Speaker 1: unidentifiable to me, as like like trying to fly the
Speaker 1: Millennium Falcon where you just have all these switches and
Speaker 1: you're like, how does this actually an iPad? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what the new one looks like. It's got these giant
Speaker 1: screens and a lot of it looks more intuitive and sleek,
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. But beyond that, it's also got
Speaker 1: these super Draco sixteen thousand pound thrust engines four of them,
Speaker 1: and those have engine chambers that were made by three
Speaker 1: D printers. It did not use plastic, which you would
Speaker 1: I hope not because you imagine that the temperatures would
Speaker 1: probably be a of that melting point. Instead, it used
Speaker 1: direct metal laser centering UH centering s I n T
Speaker 1: E R I n G. So this is where you
Speaker 1: take a powder in this case of metal powder, and
Speaker 1: you center you turn it into solid material through heat
Speaker 1: or pressure. In this case, we're talking about heat which
Speaker 1: is provided by a laser. So you shoot this laser
Speaker 1: at the metal powder and you lay the metal powder
Speaker 1: down layer by layer, and through this process, which is
Speaker 1: very similar to the three D partwers we see in
Speaker 1: the consumer market, is just using a different implementation, you
Speaker 1: build the object you need, in this case, the engine chambers.
Speaker 1: So it's really cool to me that three D printerers
Speaker 1: could help us actually get into space, and beyond that,
Speaker 1: we're talking about eventually having three D printers in space
Speaker 1: where you can print things like tools that you might
Speaker 1: need or even replacement parts for the spacecraft you're in.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're your order back to the replicator, except
Speaker 1: obviously it can't make it from atoms and you probably
Speaker 1: can't make anything, no, you would, You would be limited
Speaker 1: by both materials, materials and whatever your printers dimensions are. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: this could be really, really useful in space. I mean,
Speaker 1: just one example I thought of is obviously they didn't
Speaker 1: have kind of sophisticated three D printers back then. To
Speaker 1: think about Apollo thirteen when they had to on the
Speaker 1: fly build a I believe it was a CEO to scrubber.
Speaker 1: It was some kind of it was a ventilation tool
Speaker 1: that they needed, but they didn't have an extra one aboard,
Speaker 1: and so they were having a deadly build up of
Speaker 1: CEO two in the capsule and they had to improvise one. Basically,
Speaker 1: they had some guys trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: put one together based on the stuff they had lying around,
Speaker 1: and they sort of did get it working. But I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine if they could have just loaded up the virtual
Speaker 1: CEO too scrubber on the computer and pressed print to
Speaker 1: get a new one. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great ex ample.
Speaker 1: That could very well be the sort of thing we
Speaker 1: see in the future. Um. It also helps because it's
Speaker 1: expensive to launch stuff into space. I mean, it's incredibly
Speaker 1: expensive because of the fuel and and you know, SpaceX
Speaker 1: it's looking to try and bring those costs down by
Speaker 1: using as many reusable features as possible, so that way
Speaker 1: you don't have to build a brand new vehicle every
Speaker 1: single time you want to launch something up into space.
Speaker 1: But even so, you still have a lot of expenses,
Speaker 1: and it's it costs a huge amount of money just
Speaker 1: just send a couple of pounds of stuff up into space. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: add on to that that, if you're having actual parts
Speaker 1: that you need to send up that takes up physical space,
Speaker 1: it's not just the weight that actually takes up room.
Speaker 1: If you were able to send just the raw material
Speaker 1: up the toner in this case to a three D printer,
Speaker 1: you could conserve at least the space part. The weight
Speaker 1: would still be ultimately the same, but one way it
Speaker 1: might affect the way. I don't know how often astronauts
Speaker 1: use all the tools they take. I mean, what if
Speaker 1: it is the case that you you take up more
Speaker 1: than you need just in case, um, maybe all you
Speaker 1: need to take in this case would be again the
Speaker 1: raw materials and the virtual objects, and then so you
Speaker 1: don't have to take all these tools that you never
Speaker 1: end up using. I need to use this one. In
Speaker 1: a few minutes, I'm going to print one, Like, seriously,
Speaker 1: I can't find the nail clippers again, where do these
Speaker 1: things go off? To just print me a new one.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of my own self here, all right,
Speaker 1: And then moving on from space, there's also the use
Speaker 1: of three D printers in medicine. One of the stories
Speaker 1: that I looked at was a student by the name
Speaker 1: of Deniz Karashian who built a new kind of cast
Speaker 1: for broken bones using a three D printer. And it
Speaker 1: looks kind of like you're wearing super heavy fish nets
Speaker 1: on whatever limb you have to have. It's got this
Speaker 1: kind of web pattern, so there's parts of your skin
Speaker 1: are left open to the air, but it is there
Speaker 1: to stabilize the limb. So it's doing the same thing
Speaker 1: as a plaster cast. But because you're skin is still
Speaker 1: left open to the air, you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about one. You don't have to worry about it getting
Speaker 1: wet and then suddenly getting all stinky and nasty and stuff. Oh,
Speaker 1: you could probably scratch and yeah. And also on a
Speaker 1: slightly more therapeutic note, besides just you know, relieving an itch,
Speaker 1: you could use a technique called low intensity pulsed ultrasound
Speaker 1: or lipus, which can possibly help broken bones heal by
Speaker 1: stimulating UH the healing by you actually beam ultrasonic frequencies
Speaker 1: through the skin into the bone. But the problem with
Speaker 1: that is that you usually have to have contact with
Speaker 1: the skin in order to get an effective UM beam
Speaker 1: to the bone itself, and if you're wearing a plaster cast,
Speaker 1: then that will block the ultrasonic frequencies. UM. There's still
Speaker 1: some controversy or at least some debate about how effective
Speaker 1: lipus is in this particular approach. I've never even heard
Speaker 1: of that was. So does it stimulate the osteoblasts to
Speaker 1: make new It's it's actually pretty complex, and the hypotheses
Speaker 1: about what the mechanism is that there's some disagreement with
Speaker 1: that as well. So it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: still depending upon the study you read, is really promising
Speaker 1: or it's negligible. So it depends upon what you're looking at.
Speaker 1: I think that's one going to be one of those
Speaker 1: things where we still need to see a lot more
Speaker 1: work done in that field and research to make sure
Speaker 1: that it's UH, that it's actually efficacious, But UH it's promising.
Speaker 1: So and at any rate, even if even if that
Speaker 1: turns out to not work, the ultrasonic approach and still scratch, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can still scratch. Yeah. So if you've ever had
Speaker 1: a broken bone, like a broken leg or a broken
Speaker 1: arm where you had to wear that plaster cast and
Speaker 1: you know how irritating that could be, just imagine if
Speaker 1: that was just a plastic webli case and they could
Speaker 1: print these into two pieces and it just snaps onto
Speaker 1: your limb. So also means that it's pretty easy to
Speaker 1: take it off too, so it's not like, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: as as big a deal as it would be with plaster.
Speaker 1: But you can also print body parts like a prosthesis.
Speaker 1: We've seen that in the past as well, people getting
Speaker 1: prosthetic hands or prosthetic arms or prosthetic legs and printing them. Uh. There,
Speaker 1: I guess here's where the sort of endless customization sort
Speaker 1: of helps certain exactly to what your need is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there are open source projects where it's the attempt
Speaker 1: is to bring down the cost of developing a prosthetic
Speaker 1: because they are very expensive and so it puts it
Speaker 1: out of out of the range of a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Who need it, And there's the hope that through three
Speaker 1: D printers and by creating models that are very effective,
Speaker 1: even if they are rudimentary compared to state of the
Speaker 1: art robotic prostheses, they can help people who otherwise would
Speaker 1: go without. So that's really cool. And then there's also
Speaker 1: just printing things like a replacement joint. Um. That's something
Speaker 1: that I'm seeing three D printers used for to print
Speaker 1: something like a hip replacement, so that you get something
Speaker 1: specifically tailored to the person the patient, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about, you know, being approximately what the
Speaker 1: patient needs. You could you can make it precisely to
Speaker 1: what the patient needs, So that's definitely useful. And then
Speaker 1: if that's not cool enough, how about printing a new
Speaker 1: organ like yeah, like a liver, not not like the
Speaker 1: musical instrument, I mean like a human organ like box. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about printing something like box liver, box liver,
Speaker 1: box lungs or box heart. Um. So yeah, there's been
Speaker 1: some early work with this and it's very promising. The
Speaker 1: basic idea would be to take stem cells from the
Speaker 1: transplant patient. This is under an ideal implementation, you take
Speaker 1: stem cells from the transplant patient use those stem cells
Speaker 1: to develop into whatever tissue is needed. So let's say
Speaker 1: a patient who wants to have a who needs to
Speaker 1: have a heart transplant. So you do it to print
Speaker 1: a new heart, and you use essentially biological scaffold to
Speaker 1: build to print the tissue on top of until you
Speaker 1: have a working heart that you then can uh give
Speaker 1: to the patient. You can you can surgically remove their
Speaker 1: heart and replace it with the printed heart. And because
Speaker 1: it comes from the patient's own stem cells, one, the
Speaker 1: patient doesn't have to work wait for a suitable donor
Speaker 1: because they are effectively their own donor. And two they
Speaker 1: are less likely to have their body reject that organ
Speaker 1: because it's based off their own biology. Now, there are
Speaker 1: some big, big challenges with this because it's not just
Speaker 1: printing the tissue that you need to do. You have
Speaker 1: to print the tissue exactly correctly. You have to have
Speaker 1: the the vasculization is what they call it. That's the
Speaker 1: printing out the blood vessels so that the organs will
Speaker 1: get the nutrients they need so they don't die, and
Speaker 1: also have the pathway for uh anything that the organ's excrete,
Speaker 1: so that they don't build up to Xin's that's really
Speaker 1: complicated stuff. But I just read a report that said
Speaker 1: scientists at the universities of Harvard, Stanford, m I T,
Speaker 1: and Sydney have kind of reached a breakthrough with this,
Speaker 1: and so it looks like the vascualization problem is a
Speaker 1: little closer to being solved. It's not that we're going
Speaker 1: to be seeing this technique used in the next year
Speaker 1: or two years. This might be ten or fifteen years
Speaker 1: down the line. But it's incredibly promising, which is really cool.
Speaker 1: This idea of being able to take away one of
Speaker 1: the big problems when it comes to transplant patients, which
Speaker 1: is finding a suitable donor. I mean that's that there
Speaker 1: are there are people who are having to wait for
Speaker 1: years for that kind of thing, and and uh, this
Speaker 1: has the potential to completely eliminate that. So anyway, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: phenomenal stuff. And there are other really cool uses of
Speaker 1: three D printers out there. But now that we talked
Speaker 1: about the bleeding edge best of the best, that the
Speaker 1: stuff we're gonna see in the future, let's talk about
Speaker 1: a comedy of errors your experience using our three D printer.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind this is not to say that
Speaker 1: the three D printer we have is a bad one.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's just very particular. Well, there's sort of
Speaker 1: this is sort of a comment. I've learned a lot
Speaker 1: about the state of consumer three D printers lately. So
Speaker 1: what have we made here in the office. Well, I
Speaker 1: printed a little castle that's successfully printed all the way
Speaker 1: up until um the little flagpole at the top of
Speaker 1: the castle was supposed to come to a point, but
Speaker 1: instead it comes to a globuler blah blah kind of
Speaker 1: jab of the hut thing at the top of the flagpole.
Speaker 1: I haven't quite figured out how to do points yet. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've printed some Illuminati pyramids for the guys that stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. So I just did
Speaker 1: that by combining a pyramid with an eye and and
Speaker 1: they have them yeah, and also with the initials I think,
Speaker 1: didn't you Yeah, yeah, So along the bottom of the
Speaker 1: pyramid is uh S T d W. However you pronum
Speaker 1: eze stuff they don't want you to know. Um. I
Speaker 1: designed a how stuff works logo Yeah that has a
Speaker 1: big has a little question mark. Made a bunch of those,
Speaker 1: and I put that together in an online cat I
Speaker 1: can talk about in a minute, A couple of actually
Speaker 1: functional whistles that at least fourteen people put their mouths on. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people. I expect to have some
Speaker 1: sort of crazy you'll contract mono anytime, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I certainly have started to lose interest in and uh
Speaker 1: things like, um, you know work. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's mono or just that we have a holiday weekend
Speaker 1: coming up after we finished this a podcast. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of malformed half whistles that are
Speaker 1: or maybe more like one eighth of a whistle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like what what whistles would look like
Speaker 1: if they came from HP Lovecraft's mythology. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: I just massive, massive l graveyard of plastic hairballs and
Speaker 1: plastic tumbleweeds. So for one thing we are, we are
Speaker 1: printing with p l A. That's right, not not a BS.
Speaker 1: So the different plastics have different strengths and weaknesses. I
Speaker 1: learned p l A is I think a good thing
Speaker 1: if you're just doing what we're doing, which is experimenting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't give off fumes like a BS does. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was just reading because someone in our office was
Speaker 1: I'd say, with perfectly good reason concerned, Um, should we
Speaker 1: have that thing out printing while we're all sing around
Speaker 1: and creating toxic fumes? That's going to make us all sick.
Speaker 1: I read about it there. So apparently three D printing
Speaker 1: has been measured to produce these tiny particles, you know,
Speaker 1: these these little, very very small particles that when you
Speaker 1: breathe in a whole lot of these particles, it may
Speaker 1: be dangerous. Um, it doesn't seem to me. Now, this
Speaker 1: doesn't mean please go huff your three D printers. From
Speaker 1: what I can just tell on the reading I've done,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to me like p L A has
Speaker 1: got a lot to worry about. A B. S might
Speaker 1: be a different question, and that that might be a
Speaker 1: case where you really need some good ventilation. Um. And
Speaker 1: and p l A, it said, had a lot fewer
Speaker 1: of these particle emissions than maybe S did. So we've
Speaker 1: been using p L A on a fast action dual
Speaker 1: extruder three D printers. So dual extruder means you can
Speaker 1: load two filaments up, you put two rollers of plastic
Speaker 1: wire on the back of it, and this is what Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it pulls these filaments up through the top and
Speaker 1: these little tubes down to the extruders. The extruders heat
Speaker 1: up the filament so that it becomes malten and it
Speaker 1: drips out the end as the extruder moves along in
Speaker 1: a preset pattern until the whole thing is laid down
Speaker 1: and it's created. Um So, from what I've heard, this
Speaker 1: printer is much faster than the one we used to
Speaker 1: have in the AFIS. I never got to use that printer.
Speaker 1: I have heard Annie and Video used it a lot,
Speaker 1: but they said that it took that printer like all
Speaker 1: day to print a little chess piece that we still have,
Speaker 1: and this one can print pretty quickly. I think the
Speaker 1: whistles we made took like thirty or forty minutes, so
Speaker 1: that's fast. There's a lot I really like about three
Speaker 1: D printing. Yeah, I really like how it gets you
Speaker 1: from idea to object. It's um it's very cool to
Speaker 1: design something in a virtual environment and then see it
Speaker 1: become a real object that you hold in your hand,
Speaker 1: to go from conceptual to physical. Right. Obviously, we've been
Speaker 1: doing stuff like this with two D documents for years
Speaker 1: and that's just not very impressive to us anymore. For
Speaker 1: some reason, it seems like it should be. I means,
Speaker 1: the same thing, you're taking a virtual document and suddenly
Speaker 1: it becomes physical. But I don't know, that just doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be a big deal. But it is pleasing
Speaker 1: to me to print a three D object in the
Speaker 1: same way that it's pleasing to me to like find
Speaker 1: a place based on a map. There's some kind of
Speaker 1: deep comfort caused by the connect shin between your imagination
Speaker 1: and material reality. I don't know is the thing that's
Speaker 1: always been true for me. Um. Another thing about it
Speaker 1: that's cool is also the reason it's kind of frustrating,
Speaker 1: which is that three D printing is much more widespread
Speaker 1: than it used to be on one hand, but on
Speaker 1: the other hand, it's still sort of in the geek space.
Speaker 1: We're still working it out. Uh. And I think that
Speaker 1: most three D printers, certainly the one I've been working
Speaker 1: with and all the different ones I've been reading about
Speaker 1: online and these forums have been consulting for pointers on
Speaker 1: how to fix the problems I've been having. It's not
Speaker 1: three D printers these days aren't like buying a new iPad.
Speaker 1: You know what, what is it? Apple hardware? They've always
Speaker 1: said about it it just works, right, that's sort of
Speaker 1: the slogan. Yeah, it's not even like printing, like getting
Speaker 1: a regular printer, that's just plug and play, right, Because
Speaker 1: a regular printer these days, you can get a printer
Speaker 1: that hooks up via USB to your computer. You don't
Speaker 1: even have to install any drivers or anything. It all
Speaker 1: looks for everything for you, automatically installs the next thing
Speaker 1: you know, you can print. Uh that's you know, we've
Speaker 1: that that technology has reached maturity, right, but we're so
Speaker 1: we're living in this world now that is dominated by
Speaker 1: the philosophy of it just works. That's what technology should be.
Speaker 1: So when you get a new iPad, you pull it
Speaker 1: out of the box and it's ready to go. It's
Speaker 1: got built in interfaces for pretty much everything you might
Speaker 1: want to do. It's all there, and it's very obvious
Speaker 1: and it's very easy. Uh, you don't have to open
Speaker 1: up the hood customized and configure the settings. But from
Speaker 1: my experience and from what I've read online, most or
Speaker 1: all of the consumer three D printers these days, it
Speaker 1: does not just work. You have to do a lot
Speaker 1: of reconfiguration and fiddling with the machine and and messing
Speaker 1: with the code to try to get things to come
Speaker 1: out right. You've got to change the platform temperature, change
Speaker 1: the extruder temperature. Maybe that's not right, Maybe change a
Speaker 1: few more degrees level to build plate covering the platform with,
Speaker 1: you know, just whatever you think can make it stick.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting. So I had a lot of fun
Speaker 1: doing this kind of trouble shooting, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the people who have three D printers these
Speaker 1: days are the kind of people who have fun trouble
Speaker 1: shooting machines like that. It kind of reminds me of
Speaker 1: the difference between Android and iOS. Android users tend or
Speaker 1: at least they used to. It's got a lot closer.
Speaker 1: The field is really narrowed quite a bit. But when
Speaker 1: Android first came out, it was an operating system that
Speaker 1: appealed to people who were willing to put in some
Speaker 1: work to get the most out of their operating system.
Speaker 1: Now iOS is a fantastic operating system and it does
Speaker 1: really just work. Yeah. It's one of those you hear
Speaker 1: stories all the time about how kids pick up an
Speaker 1: iPhone and within seconds have figured out how to how
Speaker 1: to navigate through it. They figured out how to zoom
Speaker 1: and get out of that and and no one's told
Speaker 1: them how it works. It just works because that's the
Speaker 1: way it was designed from the ground up. It does
Speaker 1: mean that you're limited in what you can do, but
Speaker 1: what you can do is so there's so many, so
Speaker 1: much varie and what you can do that it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like you're limited. Android os, you were less limited
Speaker 1: in what you could do. But it also wasn't as intuitive,
Speaker 1: and that seems to be where the three D printing
Speaker 1: world is right now. It's not necessarily intuitive to work
Speaker 1: with these things. You have to put in some work
Speaker 1: to get the best results out of it. But if
Speaker 1: you're willing to do that, you can get some pretty
Speaker 1: incredible results. Right. And I also like how that has
Speaker 1: created this cool community people online who use three D printers.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I've been looking at a lot of
Speaker 1: forums and stuff to try to figure out how to
Speaker 1: fix the problems I've had. There there are online communities.
Speaker 1: It is a tech community that people figuring out. Okay,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have had this problem. Here's one
Speaker 1: way that they often solved it. It doesn't make you
Speaker 1: wonder who was the first person to attempt some of
Speaker 1: the solutions, right right? Oh yeah, I mean people like
Speaker 1: risk damaging their machines because yeah, because some of these cases,
Speaker 1: like when you talking about the platform, that's the surface
Speaker 1: upon which the three D printer lays down the plastic, right,
Speaker 1: So and so some people have these crazy solutions like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you can't get your p l A to stick to
Speaker 1: the platform, try spraying it with hair spray. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean who figured that out for the first time? Who
Speaker 1: who risked putting that on there and then having it
Speaker 1: baked onto it because because this platform does heat up.
Speaker 1: He did, But I think not all platforms these things
Speaker 1: that he did, but this one is um And So
Speaker 1: this whole thing about the sort of the troubleshooting, open
Speaker 1: up the hood, the techie side of the people who
Speaker 1: use three D printers today, and how it seems to
Speaker 1: me most or all consumer models are it makes me think, Wow,
Speaker 1: what's it gonna be like when there is the first
Speaker 1: three D printer that is like an Apple product, it's
Speaker 1: the first three D printer that's just for people who
Speaker 1: aren't interested in doing all this customization and troubleshooting and
Speaker 1: kind of tech fun. They don't want to go on
Speaker 1: an adventure. They just want something that works. And I
Speaker 1: I kind of predict that whoever creates that first thing
Speaker 1: and an affordable price range, obviously something that's plug and play.
Speaker 1: It's intuitive, it's totally easy. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: techie to get it. That's gonna be a gold mine,
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be huge. It'll be
Speaker 1: one of those things where just like a printer used
Speaker 1: to be outside the realm of everyone, but the early
Speaker 1: adopters who had a lot of money to spend on stuff.
Speaker 1: Now it's you know, now it's commonplace, to the point
Speaker 1: where the printers are less expensive than the toner is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's totally true. That's how they get you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also how I love electronic waste gets generated. Where
Speaker 1: you're like, I'm just gonna go buy a new printer,
Speaker 1: just use the toner that comes with the new printer,
Speaker 1: and when it runs out, I'll go out and buy
Speaker 1: a new printer. Um that's not not not good uh
Speaker 1: environmental practice there, but at any rate, Yeah, when we
Speaker 1: reach that, you're really we're already seeing this this explode
Speaker 1: in the hobbyist market. When it goes beyond the hobbyist market,
Speaker 1: it's really gonna shake things up. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the actual process of building something you meant and that
Speaker 1: you built pyramids. Now, I'm I'm going to imagine here
Speaker 1: that since you built pyramids with specific design and specific
Speaker 1: uh logo type, or at least initialism at the base
Speaker 1: of it, I had to be helped by UFOs. That's
Speaker 1: the only way that it could be explained. Either that
Speaker 1: or you had to make it yourself, because I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that this design just naturally existed somewhere out there
Speaker 1: already and you just uh pulled it, pulled down a
Speaker 1: virtual model and sent it to the printer. You had
Speaker 1: to build this, right, No, of course, Well, I so
Speaker 1: I have built some things, and I have imported some
Speaker 1: other things. So I'm using a couple of different programs
Speaker 1: or cads computer aided design programs. You can design virtual
Speaker 1: objects with a lot of different kinds of CAD software,
Speaker 1: And primarily I've been using a free online program called
Speaker 1: Tinker CAD, which is pretty basic. It's not gonna get
Speaker 1: you know, you're not gonna have a lot of really
Speaker 1: complex options, but it's just simple. It's fun, it's easy
Speaker 1: to use, and it's a great resource. You can design
Speaker 1: an object on a virtual work surface. You can import shapes,
Speaker 1: so you can just go over to the toolbar and say,
Speaker 1: I'd like to bring in a pyramid, and you can
Speaker 1: move it over and change its dimensions and add things
Speaker 1: to it, and you can group it with other shapes
Speaker 1: and un group it so that you can, like you
Speaker 1: can create more complex objects. By this grouping process. You
Speaker 1: can import letters and symbols. You can even load designs
Speaker 1: that other users have made and made public. So after that,
Speaker 1: you you've finished with your design, you're saying, okay, here
Speaker 1: it is on my virtual workspace. I want to make this.
Speaker 1: Then you export it to a file that you can
Speaker 1: send to your three D printer, like an STL file
Speaker 1: that I think that stands for stereolithography, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: and you export it to that file, download it to
Speaker 1: your computer. Next thing. Next thing we do with our version,
Speaker 1: at least you take it to an interface program. So
Speaker 1: the printer we have connects to my computer with the
Speaker 1: USB cable, just standard plug in USB. I had. I
Speaker 1: had to get some drivers for it, um, but you
Speaker 1: just put it right in. You can all so takes
Speaker 1: stuff to the printer on an SD card, but I
Speaker 1: haven't done that yet, and it interfaces through a program
Speaker 1: called Replicator G. So this program takes your design and
Speaker 1: it interprets it for the printer. So it looks at
Speaker 1: what you've designed, and then it generates a segment of
Speaker 1: what's called G code. It's a series of instructions that
Speaker 1: tell the printer, one step at a time, how to
Speaker 1: build the object you've designed. So it's sort of like
Speaker 1: it takes the whole picture and then it breaks it
Speaker 1: down into ten thousand steps. Yeah, it makes perfect sense, right,
Speaker 1: And so then you can automatically generate the g code
Speaker 1: and just click print, or you can manually edit the
Speaker 1: g code if you want. So you can go in
Speaker 1: and you can change individual lines to the G code.
Speaker 1: I I ended up doing this when I wanted to change, uh,
Speaker 1: like certain temperature parameters. I was having a lot of
Speaker 1: trouble getting the things to stick to the platform, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh man, what could I do? So
Speaker 1: I tried making the platform hotter. I tried making the
Speaker 1: extruders hotter, and then low wearing the temperature. So just
Speaker 1: going in and changing things like that, changing the different
Speaker 1: parameters to see if there's one particular or maybe two
Speaker 1: particular things that are are the source of the problem.
Speaker 1: This is where we were talking about the adhesion failures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we I have had so many adhesion failures, and I
Speaker 1: know I'm not alone. This is the thing people all
Speaker 1: over the internet are talking about. You know, I think
Speaker 1: it's just it's it depends on what what type of
Speaker 1: material you're using, what printer you're using. But they're different
Speaker 1: problems that come up all the time, and one of
Speaker 1: them is the adhesion failure. That's where you start a
Speaker 1: print and lays down an initial layer and then it
Speaker 1: starts trying to build up from that layer. But the
Speaker 1: problem is, say, imagine the plastic instead of laying flat
Speaker 1: on the platform while you print a new layer on top,
Speaker 1: the new layers starts sticking to the extruder, and the
Speaker 1: extruder starts pulling the entire thing around. It peels up
Speaker 1: from the platform and just follows the extruder around as
Speaker 1: the extruders continues on its way. I'm laying a new
Speaker 1: layer on but in fact, what it's doing is rolling
Speaker 1: around a ball of plastic that gets bigger and bigger, right,
Speaker 1: and it's like plastic strands. Yeah, but so it's not
Speaker 1: a solid ball of plastics. No, it looks like a
Speaker 1: hair ball made of plastic or a tumble weed made
Speaker 1: of plastic, and uh so we've got a bunch of those.
Speaker 1: They're very funny. Yeah, And it was one of those
Speaker 1: things where you had to do the research to find
Speaker 1: out the different things that other people had tried, and
Speaker 1: you found that some of them really work really well,
Speaker 1: some of the really some that were counterintuitive, one that
Speaker 1: that blew my mind. But this was one I saw
Speaker 1: very often. It was just, um, if you're using p
Speaker 1: l A, I think this is not so much a
Speaker 1: tip for a BS, but with p l A specifically
Speaker 1: the kind of plastic we're using. Put blue painters tape
Speaker 1: on the platform. Yep, and it worked, and I mean, here,
Speaker 1: it's great. Another problem was just that I had to
Speaker 1: watch some videos to try to see, Okay, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm not leveling the build platform correctly because that's
Speaker 1: not the right just sense between the build platform and
Speaker 1: the extruder. Yeah. So that's the thing that you've got
Speaker 1: to do pretty frequently with a three D printer. And
Speaker 1: I was getting frustrated because I kept having these failures,
Speaker 1: and finally I was like, Okay, I just gotta go
Speaker 1: check it out online. I watched some videos of other
Speaker 1: people leveling the build platform. They were doing it a
Speaker 1: little differently than I was. They were moving the platform
Speaker 1: closer to the extruder, actually raising it up higher. And
Speaker 1: this was counterintuitive to me. You know. I was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: it seems like you need to give it more room
Speaker 1: to lay down the plastics, so the extruder isn't touching
Speaker 1: the plastic and peeling it up. Totally the opposite. It
Speaker 1: needed to be closer so that it could press down
Speaker 1: the initial layers and that was what would prevent it
Speaker 1: from peeling up like that. Interesting. So I was just
Speaker 1: configuring the device wrong. Um, But it was very interesting
Speaker 1: to find this out, to see how people have figured
Speaker 1: out this problem before. And there are tons of threads
Speaker 1: on it, you know. So obviously you were not the
Speaker 1: only person and to encounter this issue. No, no, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: But that that again is a great example of how
Speaker 1: there's a community that's risen up around this particular technology
Speaker 1: and it's one that is supportive. Yeah, And I get
Speaker 1: the feeling, as I was just saying earlier that a
Speaker 1: lot of the people in this community, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of them today are not the people who want
Speaker 1: it to just work necessarily, they kind of enjoy they
Speaker 1: like getting under the hood. Yeah, and I have to
Speaker 1: say it's been frustrating when it doesn't work, but it's
Speaker 1: also a lot of fun when you make something that
Speaker 1: didn't work finally work. Sure. Sure. So anyway, I sort
Speaker 1: of to back up and give the broad perspective on
Speaker 1: three D printing today. I think consumer three D printing
Speaker 1: it has come a long way, and it's in a
Speaker 1: really cool place right now, but there is one more step,
Speaker 1: and after it makes that step, I think it will explode. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean in a good way, right, not explode into
Speaker 1: a million pieces, but explode into a very lucrative consumer market.
Speaker 1: And you're going to see just an equal explosion and
Speaker 1: creativity as people start to make designs of things that
Speaker 1: when you print them, are really creative. I had talked
Speaker 1: about jokingly that we should print our own duchess and
Speaker 1: dragons dice with this thing, and uh, yeah, I printed
Speaker 1: earlier today I printed a dual color Hilbert cube, which
Speaker 1: was this cube of interlocking color designs. Because we have
Speaker 1: a dual extrud or, it can actually print in two
Speaker 1: colors at once, which is pretty cool. Yeah, but of
Speaker 1: course Jonathan ce is a six sided object and things dice.
Speaker 1: That's you can take the geek out of the game,
Speaker 1: but you can't take the game out of the geek. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's it's really interesting that we have this to play
Speaker 1: with now, and we expect will continue to experiment with it.
Speaker 1: Joe is going to become a three D printing guru
Speaker 1: before too long, and well we'll send him all these Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll just be like, hey, hey, Joe, my my, this
Speaker 1: table is a little wobbly. Can you print like a
Speaker 1: little stopper for this table? And that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's funny like you could think of
Speaker 1: the the seemingly minor meaningless sort of stuff you can
Speaker 1: use a three D printer for. But as we already
Speaker 1: covered the first part of this podcast, there's some really
Speaker 1: you know, like life altering potential to this technology as well,
Speaker 1: and and even stuff that you might be able to
Speaker 1: do with just a consumer printer that could be that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. You could print something that you you know,
Speaker 1: you've always needed around the house but didn't even know
Speaker 1: you could find out there. Or the example I always
Speaker 1: like to use is imagine that you've got a piece
Speaker 1: of furniture like I've had shelving units, for example, where
Speaker 1: a particular part that joined two pipes together broke, and
Speaker 1: I think, well, where the heck am I going to
Speaker 1: find this specific thing that I need? Because otherwise this
Speaker 1: is still a perfectly working shelf. But because this one
Speaker 1: little plastic piece that joined two other metal pieces together
Speaker 1: is broken, I can't use it anymore because it's no
Speaker 1: longer sturdy. I could go and print a replacement for
Speaker 1: it instead of having to sit there and try and
Speaker 1: find something else that would work in its place. So
Speaker 1: that's really it's you know, it's it's I've really got
Speaker 1: a lot of practical applications as well as just all
Speaker 1: the super cool stuff that you can do with it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so my bottom line is, if you're out there and
Speaker 1: you want to make yourself a fortune, I would say,
Speaker 1: become the person who makes that consumer affordable three D
Speaker 1: printer that just works. So you heard to hear her first, folks,
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be either of us, as it turns out.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's been a great discussion about three
Speaker 1: D printers, a good update and description about what it's
Speaker 1: like working with one. If any of you out there
Speaker 1: have experiences working with three D printers, I want to
Speaker 1: hear all about it. Let me know. Send me an
Speaker 1: email the address you can send it to his tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: drop us a line on Twitter, Tumbler, or Facebook or
Speaker 1: handle it. All three is tech Stuff h s W.
Speaker 1: You can hear Joe regularly on the Forward Thinking podcast,
Speaker 1: so if you haven't subscribed to that, go check that out.
Speaker 1: We cover all sorts of stuff. We like to really
Speaker 1: get into some crazy ideas about the future. We all
Speaker 1: have a great series about stuff you never see in
Speaker 1: science fiction films, but you totally have to wonder what
Speaker 1: it's going to be like in the future. Um. We
Speaker 1: also occasionally just talk about Nick Cage at length as
Speaker 1: must be done. Yeah. Yeah, in no way at all
Speaker 1: necessarily related to the future. It just happens. So if
Speaker 1: that sounds appealing, you should definitely check it out and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and bath into other topics because it has
Speaker 1: to have works dot Com