Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital model. The technology is used in jewelry, footwear, industrial design, architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), automotive, aerospace, dental and medical industries, education, geographic information systems, civil engineering, and many other fields.
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel's (pay-pal co-founder) philanthropic foundation plans to announce today a six-figure grant for bioprinted meat, part of an ambitious plan to bring to the world's dinner tables a set of technologies originally developed for creating medical-grade tissues.
The recipient of the Thiel Foundation's grant, a Columbia, Mo.-based startup named Modern Meadow, is pitching bioprinted meat as a more environmentally-friendly way to satisfy a natural human craving for animal protein. Co-founder Andras Forgacs has sharply criticized the overall cost of traditional livestock practices, saying "if you look at the resource intensity of everything that goes into a hamburger, it is an environmental train wreak".
"Modern Meadow is combining regenerative medicine with 3D printing to imagine an economic and compassionate solution to a global problem," said Lindy Fishburne, executive director of Breakout Labs, a project of the Thiel Foundation. "We hope our support will help propel them through the early stage of their development, so they can turn their inspired vision into reality."
Breakout Labs is also giving grants to Bell Biosystems and Entopsis, both medical startups. A Breakout Labs representative declined to give exact figures, saying that each grant was for a sum between $250,000 and $350,000.
Tissue engineering in the traditional method was the use of a combination of cells, engineering and materials methods, and suitable biochemical and physio-chemical factors to improve or replace biological functions. While it was once categorized as a sub-field of bio materials, having grown in scope and importance it can be considered as a field in its own right.
In practice the term is closely associated with applications that repair or replace portions of or whole tissues (i.e., bone, cartilage, blood vessels, bladder, skin, muscle etc.). Often, the tissues involved require certain mechanical and structural properties for proper functioning. The term regenerative medicine is often used synonymously with tissue engineering, although those involved in regenerative medicine place more emphasis on the use of stem cells to produce tissues.
Mean while in 2002 Professor Makoto Nakamura realized that the droplets of ink in a standard inkjet printer are about the same size as human cells. The theory is that as ink jet technology continues to grow it would be conceivable to print cells in order to create human organs. The tissue is created by printing layer upon layer of living cells.
Typically a dissolvable gel which has been coined bio-paper is also printed to protect the cells. The cells printed have been termed bioink, made of anywhere between 10,000 to 80,000 aggregated cells. The bioink is circular and is printed from a bioprint head which moves left to right, back and forth and up and down in order for the cell to be placed exactly where needed.The process takes several hours of printing layer upon layer of cells to create the organic object. The bio-paper is printed first from part of the print head and then cells are printed after from another part of the print head. The bio-paper is made from collagen, gelatin, or other hydrogels. Once the bioink is in place the individual droplets or circles merge on their own with the others to form the organic structure. At this point the biopaper evaporates.
Recently Julie Phillippi at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, US, and colleagues have demonstrated a novel bio-ink printer that directs a population of muscle-derived stem cells from adult mice to differentiate into both muscle and bone tissue. It is the first such system to grow multiple tissues from a single population of adult stem cells, the researchers say.
The technique works by firing various patterns of different growth factor proteins onto the stem cells. By tweaking the spatial patterning of the doses, using different print-heads to deliver various concentrations of the protein "bio-ink", the cells can be directed to differentiate into different tissue types, says Phillippi. The team has already grown muscle and bone tissue in the same dish. Their next step is to investigate "patterns" for other tissue types that occur naturally in the body.
By 2010, other research by Organovo had created blood vessels bioprinted from cells cultured from a single person. In a few years it is hoped that medical researchers would be able to test drugs on bioprinted models of liver and other organs and reduce the need for animals in testing. Organovo has become quite good at producing bio-printed blood vessels and hopes that one day these blood vessel grafts could be used in heart bypass surgery. The kidneys being one of the most straight forward body parts could very well be the first artificial human organ created.
And Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are in the process of creating a bioprinter that would be used to print new skin cells for burn victims. They are being funded by the U.S. Department of Defense as 5 to 20% of combat related injuries are burns. A piece of skin half the size of a postage stamp is taken from a patient using a chemical solution. Those cells are then separated and replicated on their own in a specialized environment.
Once the new cells have been expanded into large quantities they are put into a bio-printer cartridge and printed onto the patient. The printer is placed over the wound of the patient at a fair distance and once the cells have been printed onto the wound they mature and form new skin. Depending on the size of the burn, the process could take anywhere from minutes to many hours. The size of the wound is scanned and recorded on a computer so the cells would only be printed where necessary. It is unclear at this time when the printer could pass federal regulations and make its way to the battlefields, although the Institute estimates an approximate five year period before the printer would be ready for human patients. The trial tests done on mice have yielded positive results. New skin printed onto the wounded areas of mice healed in 3 weeks, half the time of the mice in the non treated group.
Ultimately Craig Venter, the geneticist who made headlines in 2010 when he and colleagues created the first self-replicating cell with a synthetic genome, is on to his next big idea of a 3D printer for DNA, which could one day allow people to download, print, and inject vaccines at home.
Speaking at the inaugural Wired Health Conference in New York City, Venter said that his team of scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, are already testing a version of his digital biological converter designed for what Venter calls “biological teleportation”.
Biological printers could be used to plausibly shuttle vaccines around the globe, but their use could be problematic as vaccines could easily be used as bio-weapons.
If it’s possible to email troops the 3D instructions for printing a replacement gun part, then it should be possible to email macromolecules, as long as the printer can deposit an array of nucleotides, sugars, and amino acids where they belong, then link the whole molecule up chemically. Modern vaccines are made up partially of key molecules. DNA vaccines, which work well in experiments but haven’t been commercialized due to safety concerns, could be synthesized. Venter’s bio-printer could theoretically distribute macromolecular vaccines quickly. However, these instructions could be used in bio-terrorism, especially if these emails are as vulnerable to hackers as current electronic mail protocols. The additive synthesis of organic life told by optimists explains the radical change that possibly allow interchangeable parts for the human body.
The current technology is as good as its print resolution, I am left wondering is nano sized cells built from the ground up layer by layer could produced a organ in a short space of time. The fact is that 3d printers would take a long time to construct a simple organ in 3D, considering that a few billion cells is needed and each one is placed carefully. While the use of DNA printers can be a possibility, as a few strands of DNA can be grown organically for the beneficial reasons of vaccine transportation. The real commercial potential is the simple idea of synthetic meat which needs to scale up its raw material or laboratory grown meat and placed in a clean 3D printer for construction. While the mechanics of food related printing maybe simple, the future of organ printing still remains a vague optimistic picture. The human body normally contains 10 trillion different cells, reconstruction of each cell layer by layer will need a lighting fast printer. With the current speeds of todays 3d printer, it might take more then 20 years to perfect this type of technology...
When everyone is talking abut the latest 3D news if its something about the legalities of copyright laws or the fact some new company are making 3D guns and hit a bump in the road because their hired machine is not being used responsibly. The fact remains that 3D manufacture technology will be steadily growing in all directions from a moral point as well as a technology point. The last development I looked at was a liquid polymer system with a laser light scanner to harden the liquid to the desired shape, which is a a great system which allows the printmaker to use fine detail and make delicate models. Comparing the old style hot glue gun adding layer after layer to eventually make your piece with the telltale stripy patten in the final product.
The open sourced rewrap system seems much more economical then the store brought system which are essentially the reprap system packed and presented well enough to add to a office or gadget guru. The main thing is that such devices seem useless without content, and the printer without a pint design is no more then a door stop. Granted there are now web forums or communities that have on sale printed designs for the consumer but by the look of things these are no more then little christmas cracker toys and novelty items which may leave most people cold i the thought of desiring them. The best solution is a system which not only allows the printing of a 3d object but the ability to make your own. Much in the way of Polaroid which allows the consumer to photo his or her own private pictures but also develop the end result. This highly personalized piece of technology, grew in popularity. Despite science moving forward for the family photos, it is likely that digitized versions of pictures are still popular for online and social websites.
The 3D print industry is still a industry and the manufacture and creating process is still in the arms of a prototype and design companies. My personnel preference to buy a 3D printer wasn't halted by the complex build kits for a reprap system. I halted simply because the equation was not complete, in order to own a printer you must of course have a scanner or a means to draw in 3D to allow your own personnel designs to be manufactured. Next engine is the first 3D scanner I researched, which seems like an expensive system which cost $3000 for laser based scanner and rotating platform. This was mostly for professionals who need to scan quickly and have a virtual render for animation or for items in simulators like 2nd life.
A cheap version for a scanner is to use a webcam white foam board and scan software which crudely works but technology has moved one since the how to scan video of 2010. Kinetic camera connected to computer software Reconstruct me, has a convenient way of scanning. Also free software Skanect, which takes your kinetic and scans relevant information for 3D construction. The whole idea of video camera to scam 3D information allows a better interface for the general public to use. Having no skills in 3D drawing software packages or Computer aided design.
The notion of reconstructing complex 3D patterns and editing the virtual image for 3D printing seems to be beyond of what the modern consumer can do. In terms of the polaroid analogy, people are not prepared to develop their own film to own family photos. Bringing the cost and complexity to the bare minimum seems like a challenge. Until you rethink of the idea similar to way a kinect hack and web cam scanners work.
In three years 3D scanners have gone from $30,000 to $3,000 to—$0.00?! AutoDesk’s free 123D Catch app is now available for the iPhone and iPad. Users can take up to 40 pictures, upload them to the cloud, and receive a digital 3D model. Simply, 123D Catch is a free handheld 3D scanner as mobile as you are. Coupled with 3D modeling software and 3D printing services, Autodesk aims to bring 3D fabrication to the masses.
The 123D Catch app was first released on the iPad in May 2012 and more recently adapted for the iPhone in early September. Added to 123D, 123D Catch (web), 123D Sculpt (iPad), and 123D Make, Autodesk has made 3D scanning, modeling, and printing as easy as 1-2-3. How does it work? Grab something you want to digitize—a statue or household item. Now, take 20 to 40 photos of the object from as many different angles as you can. Review your photos and replace any errant shots.
When satisfied, upload the images to Autodesk’s cloud service. Autodesk’s proprietary software will find common points between photos, extrapolate the angle each photo was taken from, and stitch them into a 3D model. 123D Catch models made from the iPad or iPhone are compatible with Autodesk’s 123D Catch web app. Users can perfect their models and then 3D print them either at home or through a third party, like Sculpteo or Shapeways Turing 3D scanning into a free phone Application is definitely the way forward to completing the full 3D equation. It can allow consumers to scan develop and print psychical representations of them selves much in the way of the polaroid camera. Though back in the past, a dark alternative for the Polaroid was used to take nude photos capturing adult situations. I can image with this kind of technology would point at the similar uses of the polaroid camera...
I am no stranger to home made things, or do it yourself projects. I like making DIY electronic circuits and placing them in a box which I either crafted my self or using rotary tools to craft holes into a pre-made project boxe. My last blog was the exciting world of molds and trying to come up with a design for a iphone bracelet holder thing to test my limits on home manufacture. It's a unfinished project as I am looking to find a right flexible material similar to silicone to replace the size and form of a Pip-boy 3000 limit edition clock.
As I dabble into mold making I find myself looking into other areas. We are certainly not at a stage of technology, to clone everything to get a spare copy of something. If we was, I would of borrowed a Mac book pro and returned it the same day. Knowing I have a unlimited supply of disposable laptops, I would have less sentiment for the machine.
Instead we are at a point where we can replicate solid forms and produce complex forms with or without the use of mold technology. I must admit I find the wonderful world of 3D printing a fascinating and exciting subject.
The idea of 3D printers have been around about 30 years, a industrial commercial printer would typically cost more then £16,000. The Rep-Rap Project created by Adrian Bowyer of Bath University, was an initiative that started in the summer of 2005. Rep-Rap short for replicating rapid prototyper fuses molten plastic to a fixed base. In the same principle of a 2D laster printer, a Rep-Rap machine would draw the cross section and add layer upon layer until all 3 dimensions are complete. To date the rep rap project has released 3d printing machines Darwin in March 2007, Prusa Mendal, in October 2009 and Huxley in 2010.
As an open source project it was to share designs and free to make copies, it was to hoped that each machine would make plastic parts of the 3D printer itself which would self replicate most of the parts need for a complete copy.
The use of 3D designs would allow the use of virtual drawing forms Computer Aided designs (C.A.D.) or animation modeling software to be constructed by printer. This would allow complex designs and intricate work or even miniaturization of image file. there are two possibilities of having a design ready for printing.
The first is to draw your design with the use of CAD software which might be too complex for the average consumer. The second is to use a 3D scanner, this uses a laser and camera configuration which triangulates the object and builds up a picture through special software.
Most 3D scanner products use a this method along with sophisticated software to filter out unwanted noise and object. Though not widely used by the general public, it has been used for scanning objects into the virtual world for second life. A good fast way of making money by selling objects of desire in a virtual world for those people who built them selves a home.
Despite scanners costing thousands of pounds there are ways around by using a web cam and demo software which would work in the same way. lasers can be brought cheaply from Ebay and webcams and software can be obtain online too. Though more effort is needed to clean up the image, A STL file (Standard Tessellation Language file) can still be obtained for a Printer to make. A STL file describes a raw unstructured triangulated surface, it specifies both ASCII and Binary representations. There is also a Kinect hack where by a camera end of a kinect device connected to a computer, can scan and collect 3D data in real time.
The consumer electronics show in 2012 showcased a new product from Cubify, which is a user friendly 3D printer along with a kinect device to scan 3D images of people. The printer has a cartridge that can be easily changed and a overall design much more pleasing to the eye the a Rep-Rap machine.
It would seem the next step is to have a user friendly machine, Cubifys web site has a design section for people to upload their own design and sell their product Visitors have the option to buy pre-made items or the print files to use on their own machines they have brought from the website. Consumables are available for the printer itself and comes in many colors. The designs included are from simple Iphone coves, to shoes, to flexible material used for gloves and clothes. the possibilities are endless, though it is still early from CES. It looks like a possible that 3D printing will be a popular as this user friendly device hits the markets. The printer has a limited build dimensions of 5 by 5 by 5 inches a single cartridge is $50 and a printer is $1.299.
It's not cheap to buy but if success carries on it might come down in price, considering early models have cost thousands of pounds.
Personally I would like to like to see if prices will fall, or if the company will develop a 3D scanning technology that will go hand in hand with the printer. It is still too early but with features like a design library to pick and choose items to print. This community based idea to sell 3D designs similar to the app store from Apple, will help push open the doors for designers and for the printers itself. Printing times might take a while to manufacture depending on print size, though it might improve in the future. I am hoping future machines will allow a mix of colors, or that flexible material can be used instead of plastics.
