This article was taken from the October 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Robohand When carpenter Richard van As lost four fingers on his right hand in an accident, he discovered that conventional replacement fingers would cost $10,000 (£6,500) each, and would not function well enough for him to return to work.
While researching alternatives, he found a YouTube video of Ivan Owen, a costume and prop designer in Washington state, showing an outsized mechanical hand. Owen agreed to help van As develop new fingers. The mother of a limb-different child who had heard about the project approached them, and Owen and van As resolved to make a hand for him.
Progress was slowed by the need to exchange physical prototypes, but the donation of two MakerBot printers let them send bits and print atoms locally, adjusting the fit and weight as they went.
Anybody can print the "Robohand" -- the open-source design is on MakerBot's Thingiverse site -- and a volunteer network is lending their printers.
Liam Dippenaar, born with fingers missing on his right hand, first used the Robohand when he was four. "He thinks it's very cool that he is able to use both his hands," says his mother, Yolandi.
1597 Sconce Light There are several methods of 3D printing, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The 1597 Sconce light is printed using selective laser sintering: a laser rapidly heats specific parts of a thin layer of nylon powder, bonding them into a solid. Another layer of powder is added, and the process repeats. This creates durable but intricate shapes inside a block of loose powder.
The 3D-printed light shown here is a creation of Finnish designer Janne Kyttanen and his studio, Freedom Of Creation (FOC).
The number 1,597 is a "Fibonacci prime" -- a Fibonacci number and a prime -- and references the fractal patterns displayed by the arrangement of seeds in flowers' heads. Here, the perforated form scatters light in patterns. Kyttanen set up FOC to explore the possibilities of rapid prototyping. It's now owned by 3D Systems, home of Chuck Hull, the inventor of stereolithography.
Kinesis London-based designer Daniel Widrig founded his own studio in 2009 after working with Zaha Hadid. Since then, he has applied 3D printing to the world of fashion, with a collection of sculpted dresses made in collaboration with the fashion designer Iris van Herpen and exhibited at Paris fashion week.
This piece from his Kinesis project (below) demonstrates how intricate shapes can be created in a single piece using laser sintering. The polyamide prototypes were unveiled at the 2012 World Conference on Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing. Because each print job can be different without added production cost, each "printout" can be customised to fit a specific buyer's body, for instant bespoke clothing.
3D-printed fashion took a step forward this year when a dress printed from flexible thermoplastic polyurethane was exhibited by van Herpen. The supple material -- which drapes and bends more like rubber than the hard polyamide usually used for selective laser sintering -- has completed trials and should soon be available for commercial use. 3D printing
3D shoes
Dutch footwear designer Rem D Koolhaas had the idea for his first shoe while working as an architect on a Prada store in New York, and founded United Nude with Britain's Galahad Clark to make and market it.
His most recent collaboration, also with Iris van Herpen, features 12 pairs of 3D-printed shoes, for her "Wilderness Embodied" show at Paris Fashion Week.
Objet Connex and Eden printers were used to make the shoes. They build up thin layers of polymer which are "cured" using UV light.
During printing, gaps are filled with a soft gel to support the polymer; the gel is then washed away.
3D-Printed Guitar When Olaf Diegel isn't busy as professor of mechatronics at Massey University's School of Engineering & Advanced Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, he's crafting intricate 3D-printed guitar designs that are as loud aesthetically as they are sonically. This modest number is his Americana axe, a Les Paul-style frame sneakily incorporating a number of New York landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and various skyline highlights, all constructed using laser sintering.
The printing process allows Diegel, working through Cubify's online store, to customise each model so owners can have a bespoke instrument without paying the sort of money one would pay for the services of a master luthier. Seymour Duncan pickups and wood choices for the neck and fret board in maple, mahogany and rosewood, should please picking purists. $4,000 , by Olaf Diegel.
How they work Many 3D printers work through "additive manufacturing" -- by adding layer after layer of material, each usually less than a millimetre thick, they build an object from
the ground up. Different printers use a variety of materials -- anything from plastic and plaster up to steel and titanium.
More advanced printers can print objects in multiple materials -- 3D-printing form Stratasys used an Objet printer to create a "ship in a bottle" (left), featuring a rubber ship encased in a transparent plastic block, to promote multimaterial printers.
Next generation 3D printing Medicine Dental components -- and even a jaw -- can be 3D uniquely printed for a patient. Next-generation technologies are printing with embryonic stem cells, aiming to create skin for grafts and even organs for transplants.
Food Similar "bio-ink" has been used to print small amounts of edible meat -- although currently a whole burger would cost around £200,000. Nasa is using printers to mix powdered meals for astronauts on long space journeys.
Space Meanwhile, the European Space Agency is researching the use of robots and giant printers to create huge bubble structures on the Moon or Mars, using the planets' dust as sinter particles, at temperatures of 1,200-1,500 degrees Celsius.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
