A 'special report' from the Economist on how 3D printing will evolve our future - worth the read. A couple of points to I want to highlight:

1. "A number of remarkable technologies are converging: clever software..." Exactly. First on the list for good reason. Why is clever software (such as Symvol and other products) required? Because the underlying technology of most software available today has been bent and tweaked to make it 'look' great for visualization, not for manufacturing. There are expense solutions available to try and facilitate a smoother handshake between software and 3D printers, but this process is not without flaws, and even at its best, adds time and money to the cost of the manufacturing.

Let's stop bending tools that were never made for 3D printing/manufacturing and instead invent new tools that can TRULY and accurately represent reality in a computer (borrowing some words from Turlif, our local evangelist/CTO). This is such an important piece of the 3D printing future, it deserves to be stressed. And this what we are hard at work doing in Uformia. Our current products begin to hint at the possibilities, and our future products (the first being Symvol Pro, due out later this year) will really demonstrate the power. Case in point, can you design and print an object as simple as a toy marble? How about a venetian vase? There are printers that can print multiple materials for objects such as these, but so far no commercial software can take advantage of this feature......... yet.

2. Localizing manufacturing. This is an exciting notion. At least for some manufacturing, the driving force will no longer be the sheer quantity of cheap labor, but rather the complete opposite! The driving force will be were the skilled labor resides, the designers, engineers, technicians, etc. who can create and operate this new 'factory'.

Quote: "The Boston Consulting Group reckons that in areas such as transport, computers, fabricated metals and machinery, 10-30% of the goods that America now imports from China could be made at home by 2020, boosting American output by $20 billion-55 billion a year."

You can be certain that Uformia will continue to do its part in making sure the tools are available for such a change to take place.

Lexus is testing out some of its newly designed parts made from carbon fiber and plastic on the new car model LFA. The process they invented to make these parts is a large circular loom which effectively weaves the parts together.  Not only are these parts much lighter and stronger than its counterparts,  Lexus also claims that the volume of material is 50% less when using this new process.

Check out the video.

Check out this story about the first car to have its entire body 3-D printed using additive manufacturing processes. (Thanks to Peter for sharing.)

Organovo Inc, a San Diego based company, is leading the way in regenerative medicine with its tissue printing technology. Currently they are getting ready to print artificial blood cells for transplants with a new machine developed together with Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in Melbourne, Australia. Some say in 20 years, this could be the standard for replacing tissue/organ systems.

Since the 1960s computers, with the advent of Computer Numerical Control originally envisioned by John T. Parsons in 1949, have been used to digitally control matter and directly participate in the manufacturing of physical objects. Extending traditional manufacturing, largely using subtractive processes, computers provided a reliable, high level of precision that was previously impossible. This alone has allowed the advancement and creation of many new types of objects, materials and processes. With the invention of the first working stereolithography system, by Chuck Hull in 1986, it has been possible to not only digitally control subtractive processes but also additive processes for the physical construction of objects from a computer. This new advent is profound as it largely strips away many previous manufacturing limitations. This manufacturing capability is analogous to the “replicator” from the TV franchise Star Trek where digital fabrication, taken to the extreme, assembles objects at a molecular level from small and even personal machines. Successful efforts are already underway to make molecular assembly a reality. Currently it is possible to exactly deposit a variety of materials at the near micro-scale.

Today most of the machines that make this possible are in the tens or hundreds of thousands of US dollars – affordable to only a few. However in addition to these machines several free and open source projects are underway that currently provide cheap desktop solutions. It is likely that in the very near future individuals will be able to own a digital desktop “factory”. These machines can be easily built for a cost of around 2,000 USD. In addition to being cheap, one of these systems, the Fab at Home, was the first machine to allow objects to be printed in multiple usable materials and even allow users to experiment with materials. The Fab at Home has printed operational batteries, motors and even a flashlight with included circuitry as one integrated object.

Although these printers are capable of creating usable objects, many problems still persist such as precision, resolution, and the complex or even heterogeneous distribution of materials. The precision and resolution of the more expensive machines continues to improve and it is a matter of time before cheaper machines will also obtain resolution of 40 microns (600 DPI) or better. Currently, Objet's Alaris 30 printer bosts a layer thickness of 28µ (0.0011 in). However, it is far from clear how to design and drive the explicit construction of complex volumetric objects at such resolutions, much less deposition resolutions expected to near a few micron (the same as some modern ink jet printers).

The biggest limitation facing complex high resolution digital fabrication comes from the software or informations systems. Current digital design and fabrication systems have failed to fully capitalize on computation to date since existing systems are non-exact, non-volumetric, proprietary, often complex to use and fundamentally incapable of accurately representing real objects.