3D Printed Telescope?!

Wow, what a weird co-incident! Justin, one of my anime guys and I were talking about the effects and the possibility of 3D printing and up comes this article from the Adafruit blog concerning NASA's experimenting with a complete 3D build of a telescope.

 NASA Aerospace Engineer Jason Budinoff  aims to complete the telescope by the end of the fiscal year, and afterwards, the entire assembly will undergo vigorous testing to assure that it is space worthy.

Read the rest of the very interesting addafruit article HERE

What You Need To Know About 3D Printed Organs....

The first thing to consider is "why is the idea of 3d printed objects" is so popular.

Well from a straight numbers perspective, over 78 thousand new requests for transplant organs were made while only 34 hundred donations were made.   The idea of a printer that could print the failing organ would be a significant windfall.

Printers that can print material that is suitable for residence in the human body are really not all that new.   It was the Wake Forest Institute, who 3D-printed the synthetic building blocks they needed to grow human bladders.  Not the bladders but the "building blocks" that one day could become a bladder.  Or, more recently, the company Organovo founded in  2007, can now print out liver tissue samples that can be used for drug testing and research. The company's hoping to develop a functional liver in the near future.

Read how the printers work and how they deposit material Here

The real question now is, that with all this fantastic progress, how is it that we don't HAVE printed hearts and livers on demand.   Again it comes back to sophistication and complexity.    The first problem is finding material that can be used that can go through the printing process and then be robust enough to grow outside the human body.   You just can't take freshly printed cells and place them in a human body and hope then work.

Cornell engineer Hod Lipson:

    "You can put the cells of a heart tissue in the right place together, but where's the start button? The magic happens after printing has taken place."

 Lipson also notes that there's still no software powerful enough to make very detailed organ models that researchers can consult before printing.

Surgeon Anthony Atala notes that roughly 90% of the people on the waiting list are waiting for kidneys.  Atala is looking for ways to create a kidney using 3d printing, and even showed off a non-working model during his recent TEDs talk. 



Complete Endgadget article HERE

3D Printed Plastic Skull Replacement?!

Yep, here is a first for you.  A 3d printed skull mean as a replacement for a skull that thickened so much that the patient suffered headaches and effecting her eyesight.  

The replacement of the skull was performed at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands.  Surgeons gave the woman a replacement that closely matched the original shape of her skull.

There are other replacements done with 3d, but this is the first with such an extensive replacement.

Read the complete article HERE

Rep Calls For Ban on 3D Printed Firearms

Hey, did Cory Doctorow call this one or what!  Early in Beam Me Up's run (episode 38) I ran a story call Print Crime by Cory.  It told the dark tale of copyrights that extended to 3d printers.  In most cases even the printers themselves were an arrestable offence! Not to mention many desperately needed products which copyright leaches had tired up for their own devices.  

Well here is where a scenario like Doctorow's might start.   No matter how you feel about assault weapons or their ability to be printed (they work, but are only able to fire a handful of rounds before disintegrating. ) really isn't the point.  It's the inclination to take this kind of action without fully understanding the ramifications   or for that matter implementation!

I wonder even if that covers all of the possibilities.  This is an insidiously slippery slide that once ventured upon can only, in my humble opinion, lead to disaster.  

The technology has proven itself wildly valuable in many instances, but wholesale legislation could ruin the device's potential.  

I know it's a bit of a stretch, but thoughtful consideration before wholesale legislation is, I would think, the order of the day here.

Least that is what I think... Hit the link below to read the Boing Boing article and the ban Rep Steve Israel is calling for.

Article link here

Doctorow's "Print Crime" & 3D printing. Could it Happen?

Back in 07 I asked Cory Doctorow if I could read his warning tale called "Print Crime". The gist of the story was that 3d printers had proliferated to the point that everyone had one or had printed up parts to have one. Owning a 3d was not a crime, however the insidious part of the story was that with copyrights and various other controls on digital output, it had become a serious crime to print most items. Certainly a chilling warning.

Now of course you see all forms of printing project available for these devices. Plus the fact that the technology is being accepted whole hog. Except for an article I just read an article that I first saw on Kim Kommando's site and followed the link. Here we have a company that wants to reinvigorate the nation's manufacturing by bringing designs back to the US and printing them instead of tooling up and making these products in a factory.

The military and the Obama administration have championed this initiative and even asked congress for funds to help put a framework together that would promote battlefield replacement parts, parts no longer available and to "boost competitiveness throughout America". But will it? If the present shows us anything is that once a product is found viable, every action to protect a monopoly is brought to the front. Granted the green and the do it yourself ideology is gaining ground but I am willing to speculate that they will be no more than a footnote. Which is really to bad, when you have products that don't warrant large outlays and fit best into small manufacturing frameworks, but are not utilized because of whatever patent or what have you is rigorously enforced.

Doctorow's tale took this idea and extrapolated it to the extreme where certain jail time and possibly worse was in store for those that would foolishly print parts as though it were their only way to keep some of the tech running or what have you.

Anyway, it is worth consideration.
Read the article by clicking the title then formulating a reply here if interested. Am I wrong to think Doctorow may have hit the nail on the head and not everything is coming up roses for those that are firmly behind the 3d printing tech?