A small recap until now !

I focused my blog around one specific subject, Additive Manufacturing in other words 3D printers. The last two decades this breakthrough technology had changed the lives of many people in many different sectors, from the medical and dental sector, to the food, fashion and even art sector. 

The several articles I wrote, demonstrate how this technology, can be used in our daily life and how affordable it became especially the last 5 years. We must not forget though the adverse effect of this technology through the possibility of building guns so easily as exposed in the last article. Moreover except the price of the printers that has been decreasing more and more, the accessibility has increased too for another reason. Thanks to the internet, many open sources files exist and therefore any individual that has not a 3D scanner and has access to internet, can for instance download them and use them to build any item he desires. 

I really believe that 3D printers will continue to expand and offer more and more features and help to improve our life on a daily basis. This blog helped me to follow regularly new achievements that were made particularly in the medical sector, such as the personalized hand and foot prosthesis. This technology continues and will continue to impress me day after day.

The adverse effect of 3D printers

It is no secret that this technology has been used by individuals to build guns. The first 3D printed gun was unveiled publicly in May 2013. 

In only one year and a half, 5 different models of guns have been manufactured with a 3D printer. As the designs are open source it is very easy to get the file and to use it in order to manufacture a gun. In our decade access to Internet has become so easy for the most of the human beings thus the access to the open source files is even easier. The first gun was the Liberator, a single shot handgun. The open source company Defense Distributed has designed the gun and released the files on the internet on May 2013. The open source plan was downloaded 100,000 times before the US Depart of State asked to retract them but it was too late as it already circulated madly though the internet and thus was hosted on file sharing websites like Pirate Bay or Kickasstorrent.

Even if we have noticed the incredible life-changing applications for 3D printing, indeed there are some dangers generated from this breakthrough technology that arise some important concerns and limits.

Sources

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2630473/The-terrifying-reality-3D-printed-guns-Devices-ANYONE-make-quickly-evolving-deadly-weapons.html

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/3d-printed-guns/

http://3dprint.com/14636/3d-prnted-guns/

Build your food with a 3D Printer

This week lets talk about a different use of 3D printers. Even if when we hear about it, it is difficult to imagine it and to visualize it, but 3D printers have entered also the food sector, the printers are used to design edible products. 

For instance Structure3D, a Canadian startup, has created a printer that enables the user to build a paste using Nutella and icing sugar. Moreover an Italian 3D printer manufacturer company, Sharebot, successfully created items from sugar using a laser sintering (LS). The LS is an additive manufacturing technique that uses a laser as the power source to sinter powdered material, aiming the laser automatically at points in space defined by a 3D model, binding the material together to create a solid structure. The company used the inkjet printing technology to sugar to make solid sugar structures. A last example is the 3D printed pasta from Barilla, the Italian food company. It launched a contest to Barillas pastas consumers to build their own pasta designs in CAD files. The winner would be able to see its design 3D printed by Barilla.

We observe clearly that the possibilities that 3D printers offer are very vast and could fulfill the imagination of any human being.

Sources

http://www.businessinsider.com/3d-printed-foods-2014-9?op=1

http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/09/26/sharebot-used-snowwhite-laser-sinter-sugar-worked-perfectly/

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/03/27/food-is-the-next-frontier-of-3d-printing-janne-kytannen/ 

14 years old boy from Greece creates his own 3D printer

This week I will talk about another impressive achievement of a 14 years old boy, from Kavala, a small town in the North of Greece.

At the age of 11, Dimitri accorded many of his time on studying robotics. He got some hands-on experience and three years later he succeed to build his first 3D printer. The project itself took him one year in order to gather information, to study them, and then to draw and build it. He drew and created each part of the machine. As a beginning he created a 3D printer for domestically purposes.

He fell into this technology quite accidentally, as he actually wanted to create a bionic hand. Therefore he found that he could build this hand by creating a 3D printer for a very affordable price,

and thus without making big expenses. The materials he used to build the printer had a cost of on overall price of 500 €. For the moment he prints using polymer materials.

He participated in a festival of Industrial Information Technology in his town where he received the 2^nd prize.  This little scientist has shown that persistence and patience and an incredible will can lead you very far.

Sources: http://gr.euronews.com/2014/10/20/dimitris-xatzis-14xronos-ellinas-eftiakse-ton-diko-tou-oikiako-ektypwti-3d/