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Improving 3-D Printing By Copying Nature
An anonymous reader writes "Biologist Janine Benyus is excited about the 3-D printer revolution and she thinks it can be improved by modeling natural processes. 'Benyus, who wrote Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature and co-founded the institute Biomimicry 3.8, would like to see a transition in manufacturing—from big, smoke-belching factories to small, clean desktop printers. The key to making it truly sustainable, she said, lies in mimicking how a natural ecosystem functions. "Nature uses life-friendly chemistry, which is nontoxic and water-based, and which does not require high heat," said Benyus. In contrast, most of the products people use today have been forged in industrial-size furnaces, with a plethora of toxic solvents. A potato chip bag may seem like a simple item, but it is actually made up of several thin layers of different materials, one to make it strong, one to make it airtight, and so on.'"
"Nature uses life-friendly chemistry, which is nontoxic and water-based, and which does not require high heat." So where is the water-based oil, coal and natural gas? What a load of hooey.
Nature also takes 40 years to give me a two-by-four.
Great granddaddy left the crappy farm and came to the USA and worked in the factory. Finally, his family had enough food to eat, a roof over their heads, and people weren't trying to kill them every other week. But the factories are all going away now. No more forges, no more assmbly lines, no more smog, no more jobs. Unless you're lucky, and move to Silicon valley, and manage to strike it rich and not develop a disease, go insane, or burnout before you hit age 30. At age 30, you either reture to a beach somewhere on your IPO cash, or are shuffled off to jobs that can't keep up with inflation, as your job functions are moved overseas.
-- is ensuring that whatever we end up using for our 3D printed parts can, itself, be easily recycled. The problem with a lot of hard plastics is that they're difficult to recycle. Using softer polymers in 3D printing, and engineering their structures to create the strength (as the article discusses with the abalone shells) will allow us to create objects that can be used until they are no longer needed, then melted right back into the tank for new stuff. Having objects made from natural materials is all good and well, but the material has to be suitable for the purpose. I don't think I'd want a gear for my car made out of wood chips.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
If nature does things in a "non-toxic" manner, it's only because other life adapts to the things that were toxic.
Case in point: oxygen in the atmosphere
I don't have a problem with sustainable practices, because that will be better for all concerned, but lets steer clear of justifying it with Gaianism crap.
It's made from sugarbeet, milk waste, and current pilot plants are looking at cellulosic production piggybacking on ethanol research. Only in the US where agricultural subsidies encourage it is it made from maize. That's a political problem, not a biological problem.
I hate such noob statements ""Nature uses life-friendly chemistry, which is nontoxic and water-based, and which does not require high heat," These are essentially teleological arguments.
Nature (the environment) uses what is available. Life evolves to survive, or it ceases to exist. Simple as that. You are a biologist, quit with the Mother Nature-Goddess Gaia worshipping nonsense.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
We are in a new age of higher productivity with much less human labor of any kind needed and the rest of us go on to a life of leisure - in poverty.
Because one thing was toxic to some organisms,
...er, I mean because one thing was toxic to some organisms and they adapted to it, lots of things were toxic to some organisms and they adapted to them.
I guess volcanoes are out of the equation.
Mother Nature doesn't do much manufacturing of metals of any kind, much less ferrous alloys.
She only works with ceramics in a few limited ways.
Those giant, hot, smog-belching factories were built specifically because we can't build starships out of wood and stone, or semiconductors out of sandstone and clay. Show somebody how to plant, fertilize, water, and grow a SSTO launch vehicle or a billion-plus transistor CPU, we'll be all over that. Until then, we'll do it with steel and silicone, and those materials have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere isn't a garden.
I think there are plenty of chemicals found in nature which are not 'life-friendly'.
Which is why injesting random plants and fungi is usually a bad idea.
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In most cases mass-production will beat out distributed-production, just because the turnout and failure rate of a jack-of-all-trades printer/machine is so much worse than a specialized factory machine. For prototyping it's ideal, but for something high-quality in a hurry we're still a ways off.
Smoke any weed lately? What a bunch of warm excrement.
>> "Nature uses life-friendly chemistry, which is nontoxic and water-based, and which does not require high heat,"
Says the person who has never witnessed a volcano.
...which are themselves manufactured in big, smoke-belching factories.
"Nature uses life-friendly chemistry, which is nontoxic and water-based, and which does not require high heat,"
Nature's manufacturing processes are exothermic, just like factory processes. They're just really slow, so the heat difference at any moment is fairly low. Take plants, for example -- they take in solar energy, increase order locally, and produce heat during respiration. The law of increasing entropy requires unordered energy to be released to offset the increases in local order.
The heat produced is not as shockingly different as it seems based on casual observation; the waste heat is just being expelled over a longer period of time. According to Wikipedia, and my incomplete understanding of the entire process, photosynthetic biomass production is at most 32% efficient (see below). I would guess meatware manufacturing is not much more efficient, if at all.
Wikipedia: Photosynthetic Efficiency:
Stated another way:
100% sunlight -> non-bioavailable photons waste is 47%, leaving
53% (in the 400-700 nm range) -> 30% of photons are lost due to incomplete absorption, leaving
37% (absorbed photon energy) -> 24% is lost due to wavelength-mismatch degradation to 700 nm energy, leaving
28.2% (sunlight energy collected by chlorophyl) -> 32% efficient conversion of ATP and NADPH to d-glucose, leaving
9% (collected as sugar) -> 35-40% of sugar is recycled/consumed by the leaf in dark and photo-respiration, leaving
5.4% net leaf efficiency.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I know of a few animals and plants you'd better not mess with or risk getting sick/dying.
Why is it that the greenies always seem to equate natural things with healthy things? Nature will kill you, given half a chance.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why not build a 400,000 lb bumblebee instead of a B747? Point being that imitating nature oftentimes isn't good or even possible.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Wow, it's almost like you didn't read the last of three lines in my post.
in the process of creating a monolithic silicon cylinder from which to cut dies, they start with a crystal and grow it
Janine Benyus has a BS in Natural Resource Management and english lit from Rutgers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_Benyus
A potato chip bag may seem like a simple item, but it is actually made up of several thin layers of different materials, one to make it strong, one to make it airtight, and so on.'"
One to rule them all, one to find them all
one layer to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
A regular potato chip bag is just aluminized polyester, but the Dark Lord's potato chips are evil. The packaging is indestructible, even against dragon fire. It can only be opened by throwing it into the pit of the volcanic Mount Doom (a division of Frito-Lay North America, Inc.), where it was originally forged.
No ones ever managed to eat theese chipssses, 'cause nobody getsss them open, but we knowsss they are in the bagginss. Those wrotten, filthy little bagginsses!!! *cough* *cough*
Anonymous Coward!
-- Cheers!
Why? You had posts on here explaining why any want-a-be company is just in it for money, a lack of improvement in 3D printing. I just read on the BBC, scientists lack of understanding or effort in creating a functional liver. And the lack of actually creating a object that fully functions, this is why I do not just jump in and buy something as media driven as this stuff. Is this how we drive the economy anymore, throw out random BS and hope for the best?
Just posting anonymously so the conservative fuckups who dominate Slashdot won't ruin my karma.
Do you really care about karma you earn on a fuckup of a site dominated by conservative slashdots?
I post anonymously as I find it humourous to be ignored just because I choose not to wear a badge.
Typically 2x4 is spruce or pine. Fir is generally only used for strength-critical things like solid-wood floor joists.
"Eco-friendly nature"? Does this include a) uncontrolled nuclear reactions (that thing up in the sky called the "sun"), b) volcanos, c) crushed under the weight of a mile or two of crust?
*sigh* I'm an environmentalist, but also know science, and idiot ideas are just that.
Go ahead, find an eco-friendly way, other than using water or solar-generated electric to produce aluminum. Or steel.
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