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Is 3D Printing the Future of Disaster Relief?
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Advocates for the technology say that it's only a matter of time before we're shipping raw materials and 3D printers instead of medical supplies to the site of a disaster. 3D printers are already being used in the medical field to create customized tracheal valves, umbilical cord clamps, splints, and even blood vessels. A group in Haiti is already using the umbilical cord clamps to show locals the potential for the technology. And it's only a matter of time before they get deployed in a disaster scenario, according to Thomas Campbell, a Virginia Tech professor and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council."
Listen to yourselves. This is so delusional I don't even have the energy to explain it to you.
...when "3D Printer" = Star Trek replicator and we have infinite energy.
Today's 3D Printers are horribly time- and energy-inefficient for doing, well, just about anything. I can't see many scenarios where they would be useful in a disaster.
Not until it can print food, water, shelter...
Modern 3D printers are slow, fragile, expensive, and produce poorly made plastic imitations of mass-produced goods. They also need electricity, which is by no means guaranteed at a disaster site. Why waste what little electricity you have at the disaster site making plastic crap when you could use power or stockpiled goods from an unaffected region and send in high quality equipment by the ton?
To me it seems crazy to spend so much on a 3-D printing costs when there are cheaper, easier solutions. The umbilical chord clamp: Teach people they can just leave the baby attached to the placenta till it dries out, or tie it of with string or anything else they have at hand before cutting the chord.
A: "We need an umbilical cord clamp! NOW!"
B: "Okay, let me design one for you!"
A: "There's no time! Just download one from the net!"
B: "Sorry dude, we're offline. Disaster area, remember?"
A: "O yeah, that's right. Didn't you bring a DVD with designs then?"
B: "Now that you mention it, you're right, let me print one. Should be done in three hours or so."
See the problem?
You haven't been keeping up with 3d printer developments. It can already print food. It's just a matter of time before it can do so cheaply. It's the next big thing every kitchen will have. Making something for dinner will have a whole new meaning. Example 1: http://www.psfk.com/2013/10/3d-printed-bread-pasta.html Example 2: http://3dprintingindustry.com/2012/11/18/video-3d-printing-chocolate/
-Ultimate Stickman Game Developer Infinite World Puzzler
Food, clean water and shelter.
Maybe the last can be printed but tents and blankets work pretty well.
Even if food and potable water could be 3D printed, why bother? Eat the raw materials directly and save needing the printer and power.
In case of an emergency, a 3D printer might be a good thing. If you only need one. I also think that an umbilical cord clamps is the WORST example possible. Boil a clothing pin and you are done. Boil a piece of string and you are done.
With a disaster you will have different priorities. A bnit like "Hello, do you need a tracheal valves? I am sorry you will die, but Imma gonna save these 5.000 other people first."
I hate it when people mix up emergency and disaster almost as much as people mixing up heroic and courageous.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Why not? If it is disaster you just want to rip open a bag and have the item you want right there and then.
Not have to depend on a 3D printer that may or may not have been damaged, materials that may or may not have been contaminated, electricity supply that may or may not work and operator who may or may not be available. You just want to grab a sealed bag and use its contents straight away.
Furthermore, Haiti only needs to print these clamps because its entire social structure is so corrupt that money that was send to buy these clamps did not arrive and any medical supplies get stolen. How long do you think it will be before 3d printers go missing same as emergency generators have gone missing? The Haiti disaster is NOT the earth quake anymore it is the total corruption of its society and funneling in expensive toys will not fix it.
Ten to one within a month this 3d printer will have sprouted legs and walked out of the building.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Regarding your first example, it is a machine that makes bread (I guess in various shapes) out of dough, but if you have the dough, a regular bread machine would be more efficient, and a regular oven would be even more efficient as long as you have a human available to kneed the dough. And many kinds of ovens work without electricity.
Regarding the second example, it is a machine that makes shaped chocolates, which will be poorly tempered compared to molded chocolates, and once again, you have to have the chocolate as an input. Setting aside for a moment the question of weather chocolate is an appropriate thing to spend disaster resources on; if you are in a disaster area, who cares if the chocolate candies are shaped like turtles? I know this is just an example, and your argument is intended to imply that the state of the art of 3D printed food is constantly advancing, it still faces the fundamental limitation that you have to have the food already, there is no forthcoming breakthrough that will synthesize food from constituent chemical elements. You know, other than regular old agriculture.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
While the idea behind utilizing the additive manufacturing technology in helping out emergency medical cases right inside the disaster area sounds probable, the title of TFA ( " Is 3D Printing the Future of Disaster Relief? " )is totally bonker.
Whoever wrote TFA had never worked in disaster relief --- else the writer would know that the logistic requirement in association with the additive manufacturing (clean room, electricity supply, et cetera) is hard to come by in a true disaster scenario.
That is why most of the seriously injured vitims were routinely been transported OUT of the disaster area because much better conditions exists outside rather than inside the disaster area.
Plus, do not ever forget that additive manufacturing technology as what we have right now is SUPER SLOW.
To print out a simple gadget takes hours.
That is, you already have the configuration file ready.
In an emergency situation, where can you find people who can produce the base file to make an implantable medical device ?
And ...
There are a lot nano-size DUST left over in the additive manufacturing process. That in itself creates another logistical headache for the disaster relief operation.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You could burn the boxes they are shipped in for heat. You could rip out the wiring and use it for tourniquets. You could pile them up to make shelter walls.
Lots of uses.
Regarding your first example, it is a machine that makes bread (I guess in various shapes) out of dough, but if you have the dough, a regular bread machine would be more efficient, and a regular oven would be even more efficient as long as you have a human available to kneed the dough. And many kinds of ovens work without electricity.
Just to clarify, I would imagine the first example would be targeted more to specialized pasta shapes. So if you have to have your "bowtie" or "corkscrew" pasta in the middle of a disaster, you could make it, I guess.
On the other hand, most people in the world don't mind eating dried pasta (which is probably about the quality this thing will put out anyway), and dried pasta stores about as well as the flour you'd need to make the pasta dough anyway. So why not just store your bowtie pasta for the emergency?
As for fresh bread, you don't even need a human to knead the dough. Most cultures have some form of flatbread where it's possible to just mix the dough together, maybe rest it for a while, and then bake/cook (pizza, naan, tortillas, etc.). And even if you wanted risen loaves of bread, there are plenty of ways to produce passable (and even superior) bread without kneading. It really would only require someone to be able to mix the dough, wait until it rises, and throw it into an oven to bake it.
In a true disaster scenario, people aren't looking to dine on al dente tagliatelle and a crusty hearth-fired artisan bread. Making bread and pasta is just not that hard. And besides, I have sincere doubts that any 3-D printer can replicate the texture and taste of artisan bread anytime soon, since it depends so much on the changes produced in the dough as a whole during long fermentation. Wonderbread in funny shapes, maybe. Good bread? I doubt it.
I claim:
1) An additive manufacturing device to create medical equipment
2) the device in claim 1, where the medical equipment is to be used in a disaster area
3) the medical equipment in claim 1,...
Oh, you want to fabricate widgets in your hospital in non emergency conditions.. oh, I think that reads on my patent: send money.
This is like Feynman's patent on nuclear powered airplanes. Stake out the position early, "reduction to practice" these days is the fact that you can describe it in the patent application.
Then you can use that to cross license someone else's patent.
knowledge to get a good result. They are fine for doing 1-off custom parts where you can afford to wait for the result, but they don't make any sense at all in a disaster relief situation where you need many identical items quickly. Take umbilical cord clips as the example- there is no need for customization, no need to wait for a 3D printer to produce them. It is MUCH simpler to send a bunch of them in a bag.
Where is the printer going to get power in a disaster zone? Now you're talking about flying in people, printers, generators, etc.
Being the hardcore cynic I am (and by the way, I own my own 3D printer), I tend to see news like this as some politician somewhere deciding to apply a new shiny toy to a lingering problem to make it look as if technology is the answer and progress is being made, when those of us who bother to look know that this is just a bandage on a festering wound. First and foremost, it's food, water, medical supplies and shelter that are necessary (and, as a camper, I'd say fresh clothing at times goes a long way). Those things are the short-term priority. Get people in the most bare-bones survivable shape. Then, IF things are stabilized and IF some supplier can't meet the needs of the boots on the ground because whatever red tape, it'll be the boots on the ground that will come up with a solution that doesn't involve some expensive toy that some suit 20 miles back from the front line is using to make himself look like an innovator. But it won't be a 3D printer they'll use. Not given the current state of the technology or the materials: the plastics are neither sterile nor food-grade (if they are, they're not cheap enough to deploy large-scale), and the toys are not fast enough, unless you've got a months-long timeline and you can anticipate your changing needs fast enough.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Yes. 3D Printing is The Future of Disaster.
The future is Grey! and full of Goo!
...by stating the obvious. Who doesn't realize it's better to bring MREs and what have you at this date and time.. But this is being misunderstood on many levels. 1) COST. 3d printing is the future, and most of you know it. If it's as ubiquitous as the microwave, you can bet the machines themselves will be damn cheap, but that's the small point. The big point is related to : 2) SUPPLY. Do you bring a cake to a disaster site, or would it actually be CHEAPER to bring the supplies and 'bake it one site cheaply'? You bring flour and concentrated eggs. What's more expensive, set up a kitchen, or a printer? Don't tell me you bring MREs and feed people for WEEKS on these things. Does FEMA do this now? Of course not. 3) FLEXIBILITY: How many bandaids do you need? need a broken pipe fixed immediately with a special hard to find part? 3d printers will be EVERYWHERE, especially in NICHE markets where you may need anything on a moments notice, or where you can't predict supply, it'll be cheaper than overshipping, and better than not shipping enough. Since you can use, and will be able to use more, a variety of materials in multiple ways. You need pipes, pliers, medical tools? Bring a couple chunks of metal in perfect squares that stack neatly and can be printed in a million ways. 4) THE OBVIOUS IS NOT YOUR OBVIOUS: Who cares if it's the future, it's definitely not the "far" future. People are thinking about ways in which the technology will truly be beneficial. FEMA already deploys tons of it's own power.. What's wrong with a generator and solar cells? They are already shipped en masse. Do you all know anything about disaster relief? Just felt like being opinionated on it? The negative sentiment misses the points of everything entirely..
-Ultimate Stickman Game Developer Infinite World Puzzler
I spent three years working in refugee camps in Africa. I also spent a year as with the Army at a remote firebase in Afghanistan. FWIW. And I agree that this really is delusional. This is the last thing I would want to have to deal with, for all the reasons cited above.
On a more general note, this article is Exhibit A of a certain bizarre phenomenon of current tech culture. It seems that many people feel they have to justify the worth of novel innovations by showing that they are a benefit to big-H Humanity. It is not enough to be merely amazing, cool or useful. And a common and tactic is to imagine that the innovation were made available to the most destitute people on earth, and to then assume that this will save them. After all, this innovation is awesome, and the conditions of the most destitute people on earth can only go up, so this has to improve their lives, right? Well, no. These archetypical worst-case scenarios almost never exist, and there is no reason to assume that your PhD thesis is useful to anyone. Air-drops almost never happen. They certainly never happen in place where a technician is able to drive in and operate skilled machinery. Most emergencies happen not too far from cities where there are manufacturing facilities or logistics hubs, and where delivery is charged by weight. Most necessary products are common commodities; they were used before, and there is a supply chain to get them now. And intricate machines cause more problems than they solve. (Before you promise me that these products will be ruggedized in the future, you go spend a year maintaining a diesel generator in Darfur.) That may be mundane, but in disasters life turns on mundane shit.
I wish that promoters of technology would satisfy themselves with more modest and more defensible claims. It would show a better understanding of the world, and of how technology interacts with the world. This relegates technologists to something less than world-changers, but what do they expect?
Here's what I took away from the article: 3D printing is a cool educational tool for teenagers, including teenagers in Haiti; and some Americans like to travel to Haiti. There's nothing inadequate about that.
The blood in the cord pumps into the baby's body over the few minutes after birth. Docs in America foolishly clamp the cord immediately, which starves the baby of red blood cells and iron. They do this for no other reason than "that's what we've always done". The cord delivers up to 1/3 of the blood that the baby is supposed to have, and premature clamping of the cord is seriously wrong. Let's hope that these 3D printers don't bring with them incorrect delivery techniques...
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263181.php
Maybe it's just me but I get the sense that 3D printing in the near term is going to be the next dotcom crash. Why? Well, in my own research on the product offerings that are out there, they just don't live up to the hype. Sure the companies are great at showing you tiny trinkets and endless variations of cellphone bumpers. So what? I looked into this to see if printing electronics enclosures on demand would be a viable method of manufacture. Most machines couldn't print anything big enough (exceeding 8"x6"x4"). Those that could would take around 8 hours to print it. Even then, none of the companies talk about the failure rate. Imagine getting 7 hours into the print only to have the thing screw up. What hammer this point home is the fact that one company is now making a machine to chop up failed prints to be reconstituted back into new filament. This is the desktop machines of course. But the companies like Shapeways who have industrial-grade equipment are so expensive that it's not worth it for anything but a prototype.
My point is that in the late 90s, everybody was spending obscene amounts of money on the latest dotcom IPOs who had no concrete product and no revenue. Eventually, people pulled back the curtain to see that there wasn't even a guy pretending to be the wizard. Of course, once the smoke cleared, companies with realistic business plans and products emerged and that's where we are now. IMHO, the same this is going to happen to the 3D printing industry. Reality will clear the decks of the wannabes. But then some big improvements to the technology will have to emerge that will decrease printing time dramatically while dramatically reducing failure rates.
ISO containers of ready-to-use supplies won't require time to produce onsite because they are, wait for it, ready to use.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Today, the answer is no. It would be dumb. Do some statistical analysis, figure out what you're most likely to need, stock as much as possible and have a line on more in case of an emergency.
Tomorrow, for some value of tomorrow, the answer will be yes. Because 3D printers will be a proven technology and every hospital will have several on hand to make custom-sized artificial limbs and all the kinds of crap discussed in this article.
In between, the answer will be mostly no.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Interesting post. Yes, 3D Printing is very promising. But this need correction...
> What's more expensive, set up a kitchen, or a printer?
A kitchen is way cheaper to setup and run -- whether feeding a few, or a crowd. Its going to stay that way - kitchen technology is not going to stay static.
Think of kitchens as food printers that have been improved thousands of years :D If printers *will* be everywhere, kitchens *are* everywhere - they are way more important for us than printers.
I agree, it won't stay static, but I'd bet on the food printer in the medium run. I don't see a future kitchen without a food printer to be honest. The power of it alone is like nothing else.. it could remove entire industries and free them up for other things to lead innovation in new ways. just food printing alone eliminates cooking time, horrible fast food, multiple appliances, eventually expense, and definitely food waste.. It adds quality preparation, multitude of recipes, reduced space, perfect nutrition if that's your goal, it could add more taste, way better than I can cook or most of us. 3d printing overall may be out best bet on humanity's major breakthrough for boosting quality of life. Moreso than computers. More and more jobs are freed up for sciences, tech, jobs that innovate and improve the world.. It eliminates space - warehouses, inefficient distribution, inefficient supply, and therefore reduced costs... Hundreds of thousands of store chains eventually. More time to focus on design, on invention and innovation, on research... On relaxing even or being a bum.
-Ultimate Stickman Game Developer Infinite World Puzzler
They also need electricity, which is by no means guaranteed at a disaster site.
But the current idea is to 3d-print medical supplies, which in theory should be used by medical teams, which are supposed to have some level of self-sustainability in case of emergency.
Most hospitals are designed to be able to run unaffected under almost all circumstences, except only the harshest. And even then, they not completely shut down, they route power to the most critical part. (The TVs in the patient room may not be operationnal, but the surgery department is supposed to still be able to operate its patient).
3D printers could in theory be operated unless the hospital has gone in "all energy only to surgery and ER" mode.
Why waste what little electricity you have at the disaster site making plastic crap when you could use power or stockpiled goods from an unaffected region and send in high quality equipment by the ton?
Could be reversed in the other way:
- why waste storage space for small plastic object that you could produce your self, when such storage space would be better suited to store critical stuff (drugs, etc.)
- when the accessibility of a disastred area is limited (route have been blocked by the disaster. For exemple, that can happen more frequently than you think in the mountains, when a snow avalanches block road/rail access. Flying things is the only possible way. And until the new high-tech blimps come back into fashion, helicopters are the only way in), why waste resources bringing small plastic crap that you can produce your self? better concentrate the limited transport capabilites to transport what matters most (bring in: food, drugs, similar critical supplies, carrying out injured people that can't be treated locally)
Of course, as of today, 3D Printing is really limited and can't be used much except for the most simple and un-cricital objects (clamps, caps of all sorts, etc.) and can't be constantly relied on.
As technology improves, their role could expand to more object, freeing more storage-space to stockpile- and more transport capabilites to bring in- things that matters the most (drugs, food, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
1) COST. 3d printing is the future, and most of you know it. If it's as ubiquitous as the microwave, you can bet the machines themselves will be damn cheap, but that's the small point.
Wow, you're dumb. 3D printing doesn't actually help with costs unless what you're making is a one-off or very low volume.
2) SUPPLY. Do you bring a cake to a disaster site, or would it actually be CHEAPER to bring the supplies and 'bake it one site cheaply'?
Preferably, you don't consider it a priority to supply cake to disaster victims. Because, you know, it's a disaster, and cake is a luxury food.
You bring flour and concentrated eggs. What's more expensive, set up a kitchen, or a printer? Don't tell me you bring MREs and feed people for WEEKS on these things. Does FEMA do this now? Of course not.
If you're bringing food into a disaster site, it's a huge advantage if it can be prepared offsite because the disaster site often doesn't have enough resources like power, fresh water, etc.. I don't actually know for sure but it's virtually a slam dunk that FEMA will often distribute MREs. They have a crazy shelf life (so you don't even have to start up production in response to the emergency, they're already made), the military keeps stocks of them, and the military is involved in FEMA disaster relief logistics. To cap it all off, they're extraordinarily nutritious. You can get very fat on MREs if you're not exerting yourself like a soldier packing 70+ pounds of gear while running around in the mud. They're designed to keep an army in the field well nourished ("for WEEKS", or longer), not as starvation rations (as you appear to assume).
3) FLEXIBILITY: How many bandaids do you need? need a broken pipe fixed immediately with a special hard to find part? 3d printers will be EVERYWHERE, especially in NICHE markets where you may need anything on a moments notice, or where you can't predict supply, it'll be cheaper than overshipping, and better than not shipping enough.
Yeah because 3D printers do such a great job of producing either bandaids or pipe fittings on demand from one machine. (they don't)
Since you can use, and will be able to use more, a variety of materials in multiple ways. You need pipes, pliers, medical tools? Bring a couple chunks of metal in perfect squares that stack neatly and can be printed in a million ways.
He says, ignoring the fact that 3D printers which "print" metal are unwieldy affairs which aren't easily portable and require large amounts of support infrastructure, power, etc. And that they aren't actually all that great at making everything under the sun: tools as simple as pliers are better off being made with a drop forge because the forging makes the metal so much stronger. (3D printer advocates consistently ignore materials science issues because they're inconvenient for the narrative that 3D printing can make anything at all, and do it better than conventional methods.)
4) THE OBVIOUS IS NOT YOUR OBVIOUS: Who cares if it's the future, it's definitely not the "far" future. People are thinking about ways in which the technology will truly be beneficial. FEMA already deploys tons of it's own power.. What's wrong with a generator and solar cells? They are already shipped en masse. Do you all know anything about disaster relief? Just felt like being opinionated on it? The negative sentiment misses the points of everything entirely..
Like many 3D printer advocates, you don't know anything about anything and are just trying to handwave to justify your idee fixee. 3D PRINTERS MAGICALLY MAKE FOOD!1!1!!! (they don't, they just arrange food into prettier fancier food) 3D PRINTERS CAN MAGICALLY MAKE EITHER BANDAGES OR HIGH PRESSURE PIPE FITTINGS ON DEMAND!!1!!!! (they can't)
If you took a shop class that at least touched on things like mater
Hmm... All those print-head nozzles, heating elements, food containers, refrigeration requirements, loading of raw materials.
And I dread the washing up :D At the very least, dishwashers will need to be totally reinvented. Or you'll have to print out a 'cleaning run' after printing food - which may not clean hygienically enough.
No, I think food printing will remain a niche technology; maybe, used in molecular gastronomy. Elements may be incorporated into modern cookery, but Star-Trek like food synthesisers certainly won't be able to print anything close to strawberries and cream, chicken wings, or even a serving of rice in the medium term.
I don't think it will print strawberries either :) There are a good amount of things it could be early on already that don't require baking or where ingredients do not need to extremely fresh. Anything that can be in powder form, certainly, sugars, proteins, vitamins included. The technology by itself will not only evolve, but food packaging technology will have incentive to evolve with it as it becomes more popular, so do those markets. If we look at the medium term, we're already seeing developments in synthetic meat - you surely have read about the synth burger.. good texture, lacking some flavor at the moment supposedly.. they are next working on adding more fats to it to give it better flavor.. It's possible these all congeal in the medium term and you can do things like casseroles or many kind of cooked meals.
Even if not, you may get very flavorful food bars - full of nutrition - which sub in for breakfast, or for snacks or quick lunch/dinners. Or high protein snacks if you're working out. or help with diet plans by always knowing food nutritional information (and be quite precise about it).. However, this is worst case, it'll likely do quite a bit more if recent pasta developments in 3d are any indication.
Given this likely worst case, it's still quite appealing for the masses. Zero time to make breakfast? Want snacks on hand in a variety of forms? I'm not sure that will be niche.. Going to the store to pick up bags of chips is no longer required.. It's very easy to store the raw ingredients and have them shipped.. Your kids can use it when you have no time to cook.. it can likely monitor nutritional content, good for the layman and those on diets or need special eating habits.
-Ultimate Stickman Game Developer Infinite World Puzzler