Hausman Kirk Kalani - 3D Printing For Dummies

3D Printing For Dummies

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Copyright 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952422

ISBN 978-1-118-66075-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-66077-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-66068-3 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Chapter 1

In This Chapter

Embracing additive manufacturing

Defining additive manufacturing

Contrasting traditional manufacturing

Recycling and planned obsolescence

Exploring the application of 3D printing

A n amazing transformation is currently under way in manufacturing, across nearly all types of products a transformation that promises to remake the future into a sustainable and personally customized environment. In this fast-approaching future, everything we need from products to food, and even our bodies themselves can be replaced or reconstructed rapidly and with very minimal waste. This is not the slow change of progress from one generation of iPhone to the next, but instead a true revolution, mirroring the changes that introduced the world to the Industrial Age and then bought light and electricity to our homes and businesses.

This will not be a bloodless coup by any means; any truly fundamental change that spans all aspects of the global economy will, by its nature, be disruptive. But traditional inefficient ways of producing the next year's model will surely give way to entirely new opportunities impossible to imagine before. The technology behind this transformation is referred to as additive manufacturing, 3D printing, or direct digital manufacturing.

By whatever name, in the coming decade this technology will be used to construct everything from houses to jet engines, airplanes, food, and even replacement tissues and organs made from your own cells! Every day new applications of 3D printing are being discovered and developed all over the world. And even in space: NASA is testing designs that will function in zero gravity, on the airless moon, and even to support human exploration of other planets like Mars. (See Figure for a glimpse.) Hold on tight, because in the chapters ahead we cover a lot of incredibly new and fantastic technologies and before the end, we show you how you can get involved in this amazing transformation yourself by building and using a 3D printer at home.

Figure 1-1: A line drawing of NASA's planned 3D-printed lunar construction.

Embracing Additive Manufacturing

So, what is additive manufacturing, you might ask? Additive manufacturing is a little like the replicators in the Star Trek universe, which allow the captain to order Tea, Earl Grey, hot and have a cup filled with liquid appear fully formed and ready for consumption. We are not quite to that level, but today's 3D printers perform additive manufacturing by taking a 3D model of a object stored in a computer, translating it into a series of very thin layers, and then building the object one layer at a time, stacking up material until the object is ready for use.

3D printers are much like the familiar desktop printer you already use at work or in your home to create copies of documents transmitted electronically or created on your computer, except that a 3D printer creates a solid three-dimensional object out of a variety of materials, not just a simple paper document.

Since the time of Johannes Gutenberg, creating multiple printed documents has brought literacy to the world. Today, when you click the Print button in a word processor application, you merge the functions of writers, stenographers, editors (spellcheck), layout, illumination (coloring and adding in images), and press reproduction all into a single task, and with the click of a few more buttons, you can post the document you create onto the Internet and allow it to be shared, downloaded, and printed out by others all over the world.