Imagine living in a time where virtually anything you wanted in the world was accessible by the touch of a button with the ability to possess it within minutes. 3D printing, a term only recently entering mainstream media, has already stirred up major debates about its validity and possible positive and negative impacts on the future of science, technology, medicine, engineering and of course everyday life. Even President Barack Obama in his 2013 State of the Union Address stated that, “3D printing has the potential to revolutionize the world.” It goes without saying that with greatness there always comes risk. This breakthrough platform has the power to render absolute change over life, as we know it. The printing of organs, food, buildings, …show more content…
You can take almost anything, create a blueprint and have the object readily available within minutes. By downloading a 3D digital file and with the click of a button, you can create it as the software makes it layer-by-layer. You can print out anything you can possibly think of, as 3D printing works by following a computer 's digital instructions to "print" an object using materials such as plastic, ceramics and metal. The printing process involves building up an object one layer at a time until it 's complete,” (Hsu). NASA is even developing its own 3D printing technology called “Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication” (Morehead), as it enables metal components to be 3D printed in space. This allows space missions to be longer and safer; if a component were to fail a new piece could be printed and put in its place. NASA is also developing 3D printing technology uses their to build bases on lunar grounds “using just microwaves heating up lunar dust to just below the point of melting, and use these dusts to build the base” (Morehead). If these two technologies success in field tests, it would allows human to explore much further and establish bases in every place human can set their feet …show more content…
Jorge Rakela, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and a member of the American Liver Foundations medical advisory committee says the 3D printing of organs can be described as a “rapid prototyping computer-aided 3D printing technology, based on using layer-by-layer deposition of cell and/or cell aggregates into a 3D gel with sequential maturation of the printed construct into perfused and vascularized living tissue or organ,” (Griggs). Although the technology necessary for 3D printing is still over a decade away from being perfected, breakthroughs already are showing a very promising and bright future in terms of the possibilities 3D organ printing will have. The process of 3D printing is separated into three subparts: “pre-processing or development of ‘blueprints’ for organs; processing or actual organ printing; and post processing or organ conditioning and accelerated organ maturation,” (Mironov). This process of building the organs layer-by-layer dramatically accelerates and optimizes the tissue and organ assembly, while enabling a new rapid prototyping 3D organ printing technology. These layers are made of “the appropriate cells from patient’s own body on dissolvable scaffold that mature inside the body and connect with the blood vessels and nerves,” (Mironov), with this research being conducted at the University of South Carolina. These processes demonstrate how universal this phenomenon could actually be as every organ is made up of an
3D printing has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything. 3D printing was invented in the mid 1980s and was initially known as additive manufacturing. It consists of the fabrication of products through the use of printers which either employ lasers to burn materials (sintering) or place layer upon layer of material (known as stereolithography), eventually resulting in a finished item. Unlike the traditional manufacturing process, which involves milling, drilling, grinding or forging molded items to make the final product, 3D printing “forms” the product layer by layer. There are many different technological variants but almost every existing, 3D printing machine functions in a similar way: a 3D computer-aided engineering
Brendan Maher, in his article “How to Build a Heart” discusses doctor’s and engineer’s research and experimentation into the field of regenerative medicine. Maher talks about several different researchers in this fields. One is Doris Taylor, the director of regenerative medicine at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Her job includes harvesting organs such as hearts and lungs and re-engineering them starting with the cells. She attempts to bring the back to life in order to be used for people who are on transplant waiting lists. She hopes to be able to make the number of people waiting for transplants diminish with her research but it is a very difficult process. Maher says that researchers have had some successes when it comes to rebuilding organs but only with simples ones such as a bladder. A heart is much more complicated and requires many more cells to do all the functions it needs to. New organs have to be able to do several things in order for them to be used in humans that are still alive. They need to be sterile, able to grow, able to repair themselves, and work. Taylor has led some of the first successful experiments to build rat hearts and is hopeful of a good outcome with tissue rebuilding and engineering. Scientists have been able to make beating heart cells in a petri dish but the main issue now is developing a scaffold for these cells so that they can form in three dimension. Harold Ott, a surgeon from Massachusetts General Hospital and studied under Taylor, has a method that he developed while training. Detergent is pumped into a glass chamber where a heart is suspended and this detergent strips away everything except a layer of collagen, laminins, and other proteins. The hard part according to Ott is making s...
With the massive rise in the quality, lower prices and availability 3d printers anybody anywhere in the world now has the ability to produce almost anything they like. Websites like https://www.thingiverse.com/ offer millions of models for almost anything someone needs to produce. Websites like https://www.upwork.com offer online consulting for 3d modelers that will design anything you need. Prior to the availability of 3d printers anything that was designed had to be manufactured at professional production facilities at huge costs relative to 3d printing it. 3d Printing lowers the barriers of entry into a market that was previously dominated by a few people because of the cost of prototyping.
It is unbelievable how much progress has been made by bioengineers over the past decade, and instead of being put onto a huge waiting list, an artificial organ can be made by using one’s own cells [5]. In developed countries, this is a revolutionary technology. It is so practical to be able to give an artificial organ to a patient that may not have been able to live otherwise. At this point in time we are able to create organs out of living cells. In ten years, maybe we will be able to create entire limbs. Who knows what will come next?
It is predicted that humans will come a long way throughout the 2st century, hopefully eliminating the possibility for amputees to have a disadvantaged life. 3D printing is set out to be one of the most revolutionary technologies of this decade and will continue to impress on the biological front. Thanks to the use of 3D printing, new limbs can be printed with exceptionally accuracy for a infinitesimal cost. Even in the year 2017, new limbs can be printed for less than $100 USD per person making it a cheap alternative to more “advanced” prosthetic
This will even be further refined and we will simply print out replacement parts as needed using a modified 3-d printer similar to what we have today. Whether printed or grown this advancement will have the potential to extended human life well beyond what we currently think the limits are. The pros for this advancement would be simply that what we consider life altering diseases or accidents would simply be a temporary condition until replacement parts are either printed or grown and then used to replace the defective areas. This has a clear potential to end several common modern conditions and allow people a normal life beyond what we can manage today. Cons to this advancement are numerous but the most apparent is when we combine genetic manipulation and this technology we can produce genetically superior body parts. Thus, the human condition we have at birth will be thrown out and replaced with something beyond our imagination. This also has a con in that as with genetic manipulation towards a superior human if someone had an ulterior motive they could in fact insert a type of gene marker that if activated could potentially kill the recipient or be used to control a person through either overt blackmail or covert control. AS is the case with all advancements we have looked at thus far we would need to manage this one and ensure the safety of anything being used to replace a body part is not modified to the detriment of the person receiving the replacement
Solid Freeform Fabrication(SFF) has been possibly the most large scale fabrication technique among the different types of design and fabrication methods (Bose, et al., 2012). The main feature of SFF has three dimensional parts which are printed layer-by-layer depending on computer aided design (ask plagiarism). The fabrication of SFF on polymer, ceramic, metal and composite scaffolds has been widely accepted in bone tissue engineering applications (Bose, et al.,
This new form of joy, otherwise known as 3D origami, has wiped away the past defeat better than any stain remover. It is such a simple process to create them, though it is a time-consumer. It requires for weeks going on to months to create the required pieces (16 from a piece of copy paper and 32 from a piece of cardstock), and all pieces look the same. The only part that causes gasps of astonishment is when I assemble them together following a simple pattern. It’s very similar to legos, considering the fact that one piece inserts itself into another piece so as to remain in place and become a small part of a larger picture. 3D origami even helps me to see things in a 3-dimensional perspective rather than be confined to the 2D world that is a common mind. It helps me to see through the eyes of an engineer, yet I have no desire to become one. All of these advantages, the attention, the new perspective, the presence of an actual hobby, all result from a single thing. Perseverance has guided me through a very troubling time that most would have avoided. Most would just follow the yellow brick road like everyone else, but the shining light at the end of the path was far too endearing for me to simply look the other
Technological advances are growing at a rapid pace. When Christmas began, homemade treasures were an ideal gift option. Now, homemade treasures have diminished significantly. In ten years, technology will transform our gift buying experience. By then, we will be in the age of 3D printing. 3D printers will be the new normal and it will make it possible to simply give someone a code and they can print their gift in the privacy of their own homes.
In order to analyze its pros and cons, we need to know the technology first. As one of the advertisements states, “3D Printing: Make anything you want”. Of course, with the current maturity of this technology, this line exaggerates its effects, yet it certainly has a point. 3D printing is “a mechanical process whereby solid objects are created by ‘printing’ successive layers of material to replicate a shape modeled on a computer.
Although it may seem that exactly the same concerns on bioethics have already been faced when debating tissue engineering or stem cell research, bioprinting introduces new ethical and policy challenges. It is important to take them into consideration, given the rapid development of this technology and its huge potential for saving lives. The fact that indeed, both tissue engineering and bioprinting share some of the issues, such as the source and donation of cells, or the processes of review and approval of a tissue engineered product, other problems hold to be either unique or much more amplified in complexity. These ethical and policy concerns that will particularly arise at the technological maturity of bioprinting will be described in
The field of bioprinting, using 3D printing technology for producing live cells with extreme accuracy, could be the answer to many of the problems we as humans face in the medical field. It could be the end to organ waiting lists and an alternative for organ transplants. In 3D printing technology lies the potential to replace the testing of new drugs on animals. However, the idea of applying 3 dimensional printing to the health industry is still quite new and yet to have a major impact. Manufacturing working 3D organs remains an enormous challenge, but in theory could solve major issues present today.
Advanced CNC fabrication tools and 3D printing machines have made notable improvements in the construction industry. The benefits of this new approach have been developed over many years to increase...
By convention, the field of healthcare research was entirely occupied by physicians and doctors. They were the ones who came up with new methods to treat diseases and get better results from diagnostic tests. Technology, on the other hand, was always looked at as a way to solve problems that we faced that didn’t pertain to the medical sector. It was employed to enhance the quality of life and make day to day work easier. But as technology progressed, so did the areas of application. The structural balancing techniques which were previously used to hold a building steady were now being used to develop near-perfect artificial joints and prosthetic limbs. Transparent polymers, developed to enhance robotic vision, were being suggested as a candidate for an artificial lens for the human eye. Before anyone could even understand what was happening, engineering had taken up the mantle to further medical technology to dizzying new heights.
Everyone has heard a cashier one time or another mumble, “Paper or plastic?” as he put their groceries in a bag, but do shoppers know the effects of each vessel in which they carry their comestibles? There are many issues and benefits to both paper and plastic. The making and recycling of both paper and plastic bags can harm the environment. One must also look at the costs of making each bag. The convenience of each is also something to look at. Many people jump to conclusion that paper bags are better for the environment without knowing the facts. Since plastic bags are preferred by customers and plastic bags actually do not hurt the environment as much as paper ones do, consumers should feel at ease when choosing plastic.