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MIT Professor Pushes the Envelope of 3D Art and Manufacturing
kkleiner writes "Professor at MIT Neri Oxman's creations are demonstrating the powerful combination of 3D printing and new design algorithms inspired from nature. Just as a computer printer makes copies of 2D images, 3D printers have copied an impressive variety of objects, such as robots, chairs, prosthetics, kidneys, and jaw bones, to mention a few. But Oxman and her colleagues are discovering new design and engineering principles that will help to mature 3D printing into a technology capable of producing complex and beautiful structures impossible by other manufacturing techniques."
I refuse to read TFA
It's like Playboy. You don't read the articles, you just look at the pictures. And say you just read the articles.
And the pictures in this article are awesome looking.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
What's the algorithm for a cat?
"Collaborating with materials science professor W. Craig Carter, theyâ(TM)ve developed algorithms that mimic patterns and processes in nature to create unique sculptures possible only through 3D printing."
I guess it's a mystery.
Fractals perhaps?
"Most patterns in natureâ"whether scales or spiderwebsâ"have some kind of logic that can be computationally modeled. Armour is bioinspired to protect by being designed specifically to a personâ(TM)s body. Carpal Skin is a prototype of a glove aimed at protecting against carpal tunnel syndrome."
Try this article from Tech Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/39437/
FREE magazine : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/
Apparently you haven't read about the difference between subtractive and additive printing. One as you say make a mold for injection. The other uses one OR MORE substances additively to create a structure. In the case of printing kidneys, hearts, or jaw bones. A solution containing cells is printed into a 3D mass to create tissues. By adding layer entire organic structures can be printed and in the near future entire organs will be printed from your own stem cells. The bones are even easier, because you only have to use organic cements that spur true bone growth as the primary structure while printing channels for blood vessels and open spaces for bone marrow. The day may come, that they can print you a whole new body.
Maybe you are right and this will happen, but if it does, nothing about the current advances in 3D printing is advancing us anywhere towards that kind of technology. Everything that's being developed right now is about sticking voxels of material together by making them hot. I don't know how cells are held together in normal biological tissue but I'm pretty sure you don't stack them together like Legos and you definitely don't melt them. The bit which crosses over, controlling where cells are positioned, is the easy bit. We've been positioning things in 3D space for decades. The current craze for making the deposition resolution smaller and the fusion process faster has no relevance to printing organs.