The following is a complete copy of the first chapter of my book 3D Printing: The Next 1 Industrial Revolution, and may be freely shared for non-commercial purposes. This content is, THE NEXT REVOLUTION however, copyright © Christopher Barnatt 2013, and may not be reproduced in whole or part in any As I emerged from Moorgate underground station it was other format without my written permission, starting to rain quite hard. Most of the area outside the except in limited extract for the purposes station was also boarded up for building work, making it of review or academic study. difficult to orientate myself with the crumpled Google Map hardcopy in my hand. Even so, I stepped out into the dull, The complete book is available from most Amazon damp early afternoon of 19th October 2012 with a spring in sites as a 276 page paperback or as a Kindle e-book. my step. I was on a mission. And it was going to be rather interesting. ISBN: 978-1484181768 Arriving anywhere in a city around 1:00pm is never ideal, Paperback RRP: $14.99 / US £9.99 UK / €11.50 EU and especially so when it is raining and those on their lunch break are intent on using umbrellas to stop non-locals finding Amazon.com: Paperback or Kindle their way. Nevertheless I persisted, and was soon arriving at a venue called The Brewery. Amazon.co.uk: Paperback or Kindle As I crossed its cobbled courtyard I realized that The Brewery was a very upmarket place indeed. Well before the For more information see: main entrance I was intercepted by an immaculately dressed ExplainingTheFuture.com/3Dprinting young man with an extremely large umbrella. For a second I thought my clothing choice of a leather jacket had let me With Best Wishes, down and I was about to be turned away. But no, the now soggy ticket I was clutching along with my Google Map was Christopher Barnatt. enough to assure him I was legit, and I was let through. ExplainingTheFuture.com On the door I was asked whether I was ‘trade or press?’ My answer of ‘both really’ did not phase an equally immacu- 2 3D PRINTING THE NEXT REVOLUTION 3 lately attired doorman, and I joined a short queue at a regis- case, all kinds of jewelry, a fragmented human head 3D tration desk. A moment later my bedraggled ticket was ex- printed in black plastic, and a computer keyboard with raised changed for a glossy programme, and a plastic purple bracelet 3D printed keys in the shape of a city skyline. had been secured around my left wrist. Many of those milling around in the gallery were clearly The strap line on the programme proclaimed that the amazed that everything on display had been 3D printed. Yet Internet had changed the world in the 1990s, and that the this was just the beginning of a very eye-opening three day world was about to change again. With this statement I also event. Upstairs in the main exhibition halls we were all soon agreed. I had just arrived at the 2012 3D Printshow – the first to see scores of functioning 3D printers, as well as a plethora major 3D printing event to be held in the United Kingdom, of their creations. These included coffee cups, several lamp- and one of the first in the world. shades, two guitars, a bikini, a range of customized dolls, a I was there in part to shoot a video, and so before I left the fabulous model of a concept car, two prosthetic limbs, a registration desk I asked if there were any restrictions on the hoard of plastic robots, and an Egyptian mummy 3D printed use of cameras. They knew of none, and suggested that I visit from a digital scan. Figure 1.1 illustrates some of the many . © Christopher Barnatt 2013. ISBN-13: 978-1484181768 2013. ISBN-13: Barnatt . © Christopher their gallery of 3D printed works of art as the main exhibi- 3D printed objects that were on display. tion halls were yet to open. In addition to hundreds of fascinating exhibits, the 3D The gallery was down several flights of red-carpeted stairs, Printshow also harboured a very noticeable buzz. As I and entering it was a bit like stepping into another world. toured the exhibition halls and talked to both exhibitors and The room was already heaving with people, and most were fellow attendees, it was incredibly obvious that something looking at its 3D printed exhibits through the cameras on very significant was starting to happen and that we were all their smartphones or iPads. Clearly my question about what part of a watershed event. From the conversations taking could be photographed had been irrelevant! The room was place it was also clear that many visitors were in attendance also liberally festooned with things worth committing to because they planned to become the entrepreneurs, scien- flash memory. tists, artists or investors who would help shape the Next In- 3D printers turn digital computer models into solid, dustrial Revolution. 3D Printing: The Next Industrial Revolution Industrial Next The 3D Printing: physical objects by building them up in a great many very thin layers. As the exhibits in the art gallery demonstrated, SO HOW DOES 3D PRINTING WORK? already objects can be 3D printed in a wide range of materi- OK, I have hopefully now captured your attention! But als including plastics, metals and ceramics. At the centre of how, you may be wondering, does the apparent magic of 3D the room were a pair of white, high-fashion 3D printed shoes printing actually work? Well, to a large extent, the processes that their designer told me would be worn on the catwalk involved are no more than a logical evolution of the 2D that evening. Only one plinth away was a display of very printing technologies currently in use in a great many offices colourful 3D printed vases. Next to them were some intri- and homes. cate 3D printed metal sculptures, including one in the shape Most people are familiar with the inkjet or laser printers of a teapot. Elsewhere in the room were a 3D printed iPhone from Reproduced material. Copyright that produce most of today’s documents or photographs. 4 3D PRINTING THE NEXT REVOLUTION 5 These create text or images by controlling the placement of ink or toner on the surface of a piece of paper. In a similar fashion, 3D printers manufacture objects by controlling the placement and adhesion of a ‘build material’ in 3D space. To 3D print an object, a digital model first needs to exist in a computer. This may be fashioned by hand using a computer aided design (CAD) application, or some other variety of 3D modelling software. Alternatively, a digital model may be created by scanning a real object with a 3D scanner, or perhaps by taking a scan of something and then tweaking it with software tools. However the digital model is created, once it is ready to be fabricated some additional computer software needs to . © Christopher Barnatt 2013. ISBN-13: 978-1484181768 2013. ISBN-13: Barnatt . © Christopher slice it up into a great many cross sectional layers only a fraction of a millimetre thick. These object layers can then be sent to a 3D printer that will print them out, one on top of the other, until they are built up into a complete 3D printed object. Exactly how a 3D printer outputs an object one thin layer at a time depends on the particular technology on which it is based. As we shall see in chapter 2, already there are more than a dozen viable 3D printing technologies. This said, almost all of them work in one of three basic ways. Firstly, there are 3D printers that create objects by extrud- 3D Printing: The Next Industrial Revolution Industrial Next The 3D Printing: ing a molten or otherwise semi-liquid material from a print head nozzle. Most commonly this involves extruding a con- tinuous stream of hot thermoplastic that very rapidly sets after it has left the print head. Other extrusion-based 3D printers manufacture objects by outputting a molten metal, or by extruding chocolate, cheese or cake frosting (icing sugar) to 3D print culinary creations. There are even experi- mental 3D printers that output a computer-controlled flow of liquid concrete, and which may in the future allow whole buildings to be 3D printed. from Reproduced material. Copyright 6 3D PRINTING THE NEXT REVOLUTION 7 A second category of 3D printer creates object layers by IMPROVING PRODUCT DESIGN selectively solidifying a liquid – known as a ‘photopolymer’ Already 3D printing is starting to be used to improve product – that hardens when exposed to a laser or other light source. design. It does this by facilitating the rapid creation of ‘concept Some such ‘photopolymerization’ 3D printers build object models’, so allowing physical manifestations of in-progress layers within a tank of liquid photopolymer. Meanwhile designs to be viewed and handled early in the design process. others jet out a single layer of liquid and then use an ultra- While computer graphic renderings of new products are violet light to set it solid before the next layer is printed. A now highly sophisticated, still nothing compares to holding few of the 3D printers that are based on the latter technology a 3D model of a potential new product in your hand. Often are able to mix and solidify many different photopolymers at potential design flaws that are not obvious when a design is the same time, so allowing them to print out multi-material viewed on a computer screen or tablet become very evident objects made of parts with different material properties.