1.
3D Printing: A Bridge Between3D Printing: A Bridge Between
Engineers, Designers and Innovation?Engineers, Designers and Innovation?
Olaf Diegel

2.
From A to Z

3.
Life before academia

4.
Subtractive Manufacturing 101
The really old way: Take a block of material and
carve it out
You want to make a bust of yourself...
The more modern
way
•Generate 3D model
•Generate CNC
program
•Machine away
unwanted material
•If possible, recycle
waste

5.
Additive Manufacturing 101
• Generate a 3D CAD
model
• Software slices the 3D
model into thin slices
• Machine builds it layer
by layer
• The thinner the slices,
the better the quality
of the model

6.
The Past
 For most of the 90s, Additive Manufacturing was
known as Rapid Prototyping, and mostly used
for prototyping engineering parts.
 In the last decade AM has begun to make
appearances in real, commercially available,
products, ie. moved beyond prototypes.

7.
Why Additive Manufacturing?
1. Complexity for Free
2. Mass-Customisation
3. Complete products in one print
4. Trying Ideas with minimal risk
5. Encourages Innovation
6. Supply-Chain Reduction / On-demand
manufacturing

8.
Advantage 1: Complexity for Free
• The more complex the part, the better it is
suited to Additive Manufacturing (AM).
• If a part is relatively simple, there are,
generally, more cost-effective ways of
manufacturing it than AM.
• Many simple parts can often be consolidated
into one much more complex parts as no
assembly is required (so less assembly labour).

9.
Art & Design Objects
Freedom of Creation
Joshua Harker

10.
Jewellery

11.
Marketing

12.
Advantage 2: Mass customisation
• A small production run of parts can be
undertaken in which each part is uniquely
customized to suit the user
• It costs no more to do 100 different
components than 100 of the same component
• This opens up a whole new area of business
for products that are mass-custom-made for
the user

13.
Medical Applications
Knee replacement, EOS
Hip socket, Ala Ortho, Italy, made
on Arcam machine
Laser Sintered Hearing Aids,
EOS/Materialise
Dental Crowns and Bridges, EOS

14.
Lighting
MGX Design

15.
Printing People

16.
Know your baby before its born…
Tomohiro Kinoshita , of FASOTEC, the company
offering the 'Shape of an Angel' model, even offers
parents a miniature version which could be a 'nice
adornment to a mobile phone strap or key chain.'

17.
Advantage 3: Complete Products
• AM allows the production of complete
products with moving parts. This can greatly
reduce the amount of assembly (ergo labour)
required to make products.

18.
Textile & Fashion Applications
Continuum Design
Freedom of Creation
Francis Bitonti & Michael Schmidt Studios
Joshua DeMonte

19.
3D printed airplane
University of South Hampton

20.
Advantage 4: Try Ideas at No Risk
• Testing the market with an idea, using
traditional manufacturing methods, can often
be extremely expensive. AM allows small
production runs of product to be taken to
market with very little capital risk.
• This allows many more inventors to realize
their inventions and test their market validity.

21.
Galantai Soap Dispenser
Short production run of
100 units undertaken for
Australian market.
Cost ~US$2000

22.
Adding Aesthetics to Utility
People who feel good about how
they look are likely to be happier
than people who are uncomfortable.
Bespoke Innovations has taken
this to heart and, through the power
of AM, has created what they call
prosthetic Fairings.

23.
3D Printed Musical Instruments

24.
Challenges
• Body configuration without flex
• CAD files suited for mass-customisations,
aesthetics, neck scale/style, pickups,
bridge, electronics, tremolo, etc.
• Colour on SLS

25.
Where to from here?
• Have sold around 30 instruments since July
2012
• Americana won Best in Show at NAMM 2013
• Licensed designs to 3D Systems in November
2012. They are now working to take over sales
and manufacturing.
• Working on app that allows customer to
design their own 3D printed guitars in an
intuitive ‘gaming’ style

26.
The Goal
“Spore” Guitar Creator online customer co-creation software

27.
Advantage 5: Encouraging Innovation
• The relatively low-cost ability to easily try out
ideas generates many innovations that would
just not have seen the light of day with
conventional manufacturing.
• AM has seen children returning to making
things. Where, over the past 20 years, they
have slowly drifted into a digital
entertainment age, 3D printing is now
allowing them to move back from digital into
reality.

28.
Beauty and the beak

29.
Miles Lightwood
Innovative Applications

30.
FabCafe in the Shibuya, Tokyo offers
custom-printed chocolate, that
resemble a customer’s face. It’s done
with 3D printing technology
“Eat Your Face Machine” (EYFM) is a
3D printer developed by David Carr
and the MIT Media Lab

31.
Skyfall–AstonMartinDB5
1/3scalemodelprintedonVoxeljetVX4000

32.
May 2013: 3-D Printer Makes A Bionic Ear
The “inks” consisted of hydrogels mixed with calf cells and silver nanoparticles.
Michael McAlpine, Princeton University

33.
Baby's Life Saved with 3D Printing
Researchers built a 3D printed device that saved the life of Kaiba Gionfriddo, born with a rare
condition, tracheobronchomalacia, that caused life-threatening breathing problems.
polycaprolactone splint, Dr. Glenn
Green and Scott Hollister, PhD,
University of Michigan

34.
Prototype engagement ring, in case she says “No”

35.
Innovative use of power sources
Markus Kayser’s “Solar Sinter” 3D printer

36.
And, of course, it was only a matter of time…
The Justin Bieber

37.
Virginia tech’s 3D printing vending
machine
The DreamVendor is an interactive 3D printing vending machine for Virginia Tech
students to enable them to quickly make prototypes for their academic, or personal,
design projects. Insert an SD card with the 3D model into the machine; the
DreamVendor then prints your 3D part and dispenses it into a bin when it's finished.

38.
The Challenge: Innovation vs Engineering vs Design
Don’t be stupid!
You cant do that…
What do you mean
you can’t make it like
this?
Engineer
Designer/Artist
Additive Manufacturing missionary
AM Reporter

39.
Innovation and AM
• Yes! We absolutely need more engineering
research into the technical aspects of AM
• Design for AM is fantastic!
• But let’s not forget about the innovations
that are often brought about by those who
know nothing of the engineering constraints
of AM.
• So avoid telling people what cannot be done
with AM!

40.
The Catch-22
How do you avoid telling people what cannot be
done with AM while, at the same time,
dispelling the many myths created by bad
reporting, and by us giving people bad advice by
telling them that anything can, and should, be
made with AM?
In other words, Is it time that we now start a
much more effective and responsible education
program around AM and it’s uses?

41.
The opportunity
Because it crosses all disciplines, from hard-core
engineering, to art & design, to social sciences,
to business, additive manufacturing gives us an
unprecedented opportunity for all disciplines to
work in much closer synergy than ever before,
and to innovate in an extraordinary manner.
USE IT!