Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
"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
Actually, a good part of the chemistry occurs in or around oil based membranes.
And biological toxins are all around us. I am not talking just about toxic fungi, pathogenic bacteria or poisonous animals. The very potato chips she mentions are toxic if eaten uncooked, as well as soya beans and many others. Those compounds prevent the plants from being eaten. So we cook our foods to inactivate toxic compounds (and kill pathogens). There exists an arms race out there in the wild, and she's a biologist, she knows how it works.
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.
Janine Benyus has a BS in Natural Resource Management and english lit from Rutgers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_Benyus