Office Document Strategies Blog

Creative Use Of 3D Printing Grows Steadily

Posted by Lee Kirkby on Wed, Mar 21, 2018 @ 07:03 AM

We have covered some of the ways that creative people have applied the technologies which have grown out of the early ventures in 3D printing in a number of articles over the past few years.  The concept continues to grow as more and more ways are found to 3D printing in construction.jpgapply the concept using different types of mediums as well as different kinds of tools to create the printed items.

One of the most compelling long term uses is in construction as traditional modes of building get altered to permit the use of the 3D print concept to create buildings and other structures.

One of the latest uses of these techniques has received a fair bit of media coverage as it was displayed at the recent South by SouthWest Festival in Austin Texas.  The concepts behind the house which was created and displayed in a little over a day were used to showcase how it is proposed to be used by a non profit charity to address housing issues in smaller centres in El Salvador using versions of the sample system.  The house which is the first building permit approved of its type built in the US is covered in an article in Singularity Hub.

This article focuses on construction in a number of instances and includes a video which shows the house being built.  Other coverage we have found details more of these creative activities and some of the linkages to manufacturing as well.

In the past we have covered how the technology has been used in making large walk through trade displays, and recently how it is used to produce one of a kind parts for auto restoration.

Forget it is printing, focus on the paradigm change

What is really important about these stories and the hundreds of others that are being written or which can be found is how a fairly simple concept can now be applied to so many new ways of creating things.  Of course while the concept, additive, incremental production, is fairly simple the execution in many fields is not.  It takes careful design, superb software development, robotics and constant experimentation in mediums to be able to apply this new field to meet useful outcomes.

While 2D printing has been around for a long time the the short life of 3D printing  has yielded a rapid alteration in thinking about how to do many things in hundreds of fields.  This is a common theme of many technological advancements as the early implementations get built upon the older ones yielding more sophisticated and elegant outcomes.

It is going to be increasingly interesting to see how people come up with new problems which can be addressed by this changed thinking.

Lee K

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Photo credit; ICON and New Story

Topics: video, Printer, digital tools, automation