Welcome to Day 1483 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
3-D Printing – Ask Gramps
Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1483 of our Trek, and our focus on Fridays is the future technological and societal advances, so we call it Futuristic Fridays. My personality is one that has always been very future-oriented. Since my childhood, I have yearned for the exploration and discovery of new technologies and advancements for the future. I grew up with the original Star Trek series, and even today, as I am now on my 65th revolution around the sun, I still dream of traveling in space. Each week we will explore rapidly converging technologies and advancements, which will radically change our lives. At times, the topics may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but each area that we explore is already well on its way of becoming a reality over the next couple of decades.
To keep with our theme of “Ask Gramps,” I will put our weekly topics in the form of a question to get us on track. This week’s question is, Hey Gramps, I hear a fair bit about 3-D printing today. Can you explain why it will be so crucial for our future?
3-D Printing
Last week we learned how superfast transportation and avatars would change how we work with others. This week our focus will be on the 3-D printing revolution. I am using some of the information mentioned in Peter Diamandis’s blogs and book “The Future is Faster Than You Think.”
3D printing is about to transform manufacturing as we know it, decimating waste, multiplying speed to market, and harnessing never-before-used materials.
It has already hit $15.8 billion in value in 2020. 3-D printing as manufacturing of products and services is projected to more than double to $35.6 billion by 2025—just five years from today.
Not only will 3D printing turn supply chains on their head here on Earth, shifting how and who manufactures our products, but it will also be a vital catalyst for making space colonies (and their infrastructure) possible.
Welcome to the 2030 era of tailor-made, rapid-fire, ultra-cheap, and zero-waste product creation on our planet and far beyond.
3D printing on the ISS
Today, the most expensive supply chain in the known universe extends only 241 miles. Jutting straight up from mission control down here on Earth, this resupply network extends directly to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (or the ISS).
Yet the supply chain’s hefty expense is due almost entirely to weight. Why? It costs $10,000 per pound to get an object out of the Earth’s gravity well. Because it takes months for that object to reach the Space Station, the storage of replacement parts takes up a significant portion of the ISS’s precious real estate.
In other words, the most expensive supply chain in history leads to the most exotic junkyard in the cosmos. The first-ever company seeking to solve these problems, ‘Made in Space,’ had the ambitious goal to build a 3D printer that works in zero gravity. A few years later, Made in Space is now in space. For this reason, on a 2018 ISS mission, when an astronaut broke his finger, the team no longer needed to order a splint from Earth and wait months for its arrival. Instead, they flipped on their 3D printer, loaded in some feedstock, found “splint” in their blueprint archive, and created what they needed, when they needed it. Successes like that of Made in Space represent a level of on-demand manufacturing capability, unlike anything we’ve seen before.
‘Made In Space’ is pushing the envelope on what can be made in space with its next mission – which is set to launch aboard a Northrop Grumman International Space Station (ISS) resupply mission set on September 29th. Aboard that launch will be Made In Space’s Turbine Ceramic Manufacturing Module (aka CMM), a commercial ceramic turbine blisk manufacturing device that uses 3D-printing technology to produce intricate parts the require a high degree of production accuracy.
But how did we get here…?
The original 3D printers showed up back in the 80s. They were clunky, slow, hard to program, easy to break, and worked with only one material: Plastic.
Today, these machines have colonized most of the periodic table. We can now print in over 500 different materials, in full color, in metals, rubber, plastic, glass, concrete, and even organic materials, such as cells, leather, and chocolate.
The interfaces are nearly plug-and-play simple—meaning if you can learn to use Facebook, you can probably learn how to 3D print. What we can now print is astounding. From jet engines to apartment complexes to circuit boards to prosthetic limbs, 3D printers can fabricate enormously complex devices in ever-shorter timeframes.
Moreover, because objects are being built one layer at a time, customization requires nothing more than altering a digital file. Design complexity, what was once one of the most expensive components of the manufacturing process, now comes for free.
In a big win for our planet, 3D printing also cleans up the process. In comparison, traditional manufacturing is about turning more into less. Start with a big chunk of whatever, then you carve, shave, and shred your way down to the desired object. Most of what you’re producing along the way is waste.
3D printing turns this process on its head. By building up objects one layer at a time, the process uses much less of the raw materials of traditional manufacturing. Nor is it just the waste that vanishes. The on-demand nature of 3D printers removes the need for inventory and everything that inventory requires. Besides the space needed for printing materials and the printer itself, 3D printing all but erases supply chains, transportation networks, stock rooms, warehouses, and other components required in traditional manufacturing.
The development and advancement of 3-D exponential technology threatens to demonetize, dematerialize, and democratize the entire $12 trillion manufacturing industry. It did not happen overnight, though; it was a long time coming.
Until the early 2000s, 3D printers were expensive toys. The industry started to shift in 2007 when what was once a several-hundred-thousand-dollar machine became available for under $10,000. Just one year later, the first 3D-printed objects hit the market: housewares, jewelry, clothing, even prosthetic limbs.
Transportation was next: 2011 saw the world’s first 3D-printed car. Jet engines soon followed, and rocket engines were not far behind. 2017 was the year that 3-D printing as manufacturing entered its disruptive phase. By then, printing speeds had increased 150-fold, the variety of materials had increased 500-fold, and printers themselves could now be purchased for under $1,000.
3D Printing Convergences
As the price dropped and performance increased, convergences began to arise—and this is what moves 3D printing from a manufacturing revolution to a society-wide force for change.
Take computing, for instance. A couple of years back, the Israeli company Nano Dimension brought the first commercial circuit board printer to market, which lets designers prototype new circuit boards in hours instead of months. Since the design of circuit boards is a brake on the speed of computer development—that is, a brake on the biggest driver of technological acceleration—this convergence doesn’t just represent a revolution in computer manufacturing; it puts the pedal to the metal on an already accelerated process.
Another convergence sits at the intersection of energy and 3D printing, wherein 3-D manufacturing is already making batteries, wind turbines, and solar cells— three of the most expensive and essential components of the renewables revolution.
Even transportation is seeing similar impacts. Engines used to be among the most complicated machines on the planet. GE’s advanced turboprop, for instance, once contained 855 individually milled components. Today, with 3D printing, it has twelve. The upside? A hundred pounds of weight reduction and a 20 percent improvement in fuel burn.
Yet another convergence involves 3D printing and biotech. The first few 3D-printed prosthetics arrived in 2010. Today, hospitals are rolling them out at scale. Just last year, for instance, a Jordanian hospital introduced a program that can fit and build a prosthetic for an amputee in only 24 hours. The price tag? Less than $20. Meanwhile, as 3D printers can now print electronics, we’re seeing innovations like the Hero Arm: the world’s first 3D-printed, multi-grip bionic prosthetic available at non-bionic prices.
The next step is replacement body parts are about to become replacement organs. In 2002, scientists at Wake Forest University 3D-printed the first kidney capable of filtering blood and producing urine. In 2010, Organovo, a San Diego-based bioprinting outfit, created the first blood vessel. Now in 2020, a San Francisco-based 3D tissue printing company Prellis Biologics is achieving record speeds in its pursuit of printed human tissue with viable capillaries. In success, these 3-D manufacturing breakthroughs could forever end our shortage of donor organs.
In the realm of real estate and infrastructure, the construction industry will be downright unrecognizable within the next two decades. In 2014, the Chinese company WinSun successfully 3D-printed ten single-family homes in under 24 hours, each costing less than $5000. A few months later, WinSun was at it again, printing a 5-story apartment complex in the course of a mere weekend. In 2017, a different Chinese company combined 3D printing with modular construction to erect a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days.
Another story that might best illustrate the world-changing power of 3D printing belongs to a guy named Brett Devita. Sickened by the tent cities he saw in Haiti after the earthquake, Devita decided to find a way to use emerging technology to provide permanent shelter for people who need it most. Forming a non-profit called New Story, he raised research capital from a group of investors known only as “the Builders.” New Story created a solar-powered 3D printer that can work in the worst environments imaginable. Greatly democratizing the field, Devita’s printer erects a 400-800 square-foot home in 48 hours at the cost of about $4,000. These homes aren’t bunkers; they consist of awesome modern designs complete with wrap-around porches.
In the fall of 2019, New Story started the construction of the world’s first 3D-printed community. One hundred homes to be given or sold (using no interest, micro-repayment loans available to anyone) to people who are currently homeless.
Final Thoughts
3D printing is not a mere paradigm shift in manufacturing. It is fundamentally democratizing access to vital resources, redefining nodes of power in contemporary supply chains, and turning wasteful production processes into closed-loop economies.
Whether a bearer of infinite organ supply or trillions of sensors, 3D printing and the production materials it unlocks will permeate every industry imaginable. Even in some of the most barren of environments—think: desolate planets, disaster zones, or scattered among asteroids in space, 3-D manufacturing is one tomorrow’s most significant conduits for converting scarcity to abundance.
These exciting developments in exponential technology, including 3-D printing, have been many years in the making. Providing the basic needs to everyone in the world at a reasonable cost will also allow us as Christ-followers to reach many more nations with the Good News of Jesus Christ. These technologies will facilitate the building of God’s Kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven. Let us build on the foundations that have been laid by many others so that we can say as the Apostle Paul said.
Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.
That is a wrap for today’s question. Join us again next Futuristic Friday as we look at another exciting exponential technology area on our ‘Ask Gramps’ episode. Our next trek is Meditation Monday, where we will help you reflect on what is most important in life. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along on Monday for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’
If you would like to listen to any of the past 1482 daily treks or read the associated journals, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.
Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, but most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.
As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:
- Live Abundantly (Fully)
- Love Unconditionally
- Listen Intentionally
- Learn Continuously
- Lend to others Generously
- Lead with Integrity
- Leave a Living Legacy Each Day
I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you on Monday!
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