Lisa Harouni: A primer on 3D printing

It is actually a reality today

that you can download products from the Web --

product data, I should say, from the Web --

perhaps tweak it and personalize it

to your own preference or your own taste,

and have that information sent

to a desktop machine

that will fabricate it for you on the spot.

We can actually build for you,

very rapidly,

a physical object.

And the reason we can do this

is through an emerging technology

called additive manufacturing,

or 3D printing.

This is a 3D printer.

They have been around

for almost 30 years now,

which is quite amazing to think of,

but they're only just starting

to filter into the public arena.

And typically, you would take data,

like the data of a pen here,

which would be a geometric representation of that product in 3D,

and we would pass that data with material

into a machine.

And a process that would happen in the machine

would mean layer by layer that product would be built.

And we can take out the physical product,

and ready to use,

or to, perhaps, assemble into something else.

But if these machines have been around for almost 30 years,

why don't we know about them?

Because typically they've been too inefficient,

inaccessible,

they've not been fast enough,

they've been quite expensive.

But today,

it is becoming a reality

that they are now becoming successful.

Many barriers are breaking down.

That means that you guys

will soon be able to access one of these machines,

if not this minute.

And it will change and disrupt

the landscape of manufacturing,

and most certainly our lives, our businesses

and the lives of our children.

So how does it work?

It typically reads CAD data,

which is a product design data

created on professional product design programs.

And here you can see an engineer --

it could be an architect or it could be a professional product designer --

create a product in 3D.

And this data gets sent to a machine

that slices the data

into two-dimensional representations of that product

all the way through --

almost like slicing it like salami.

And that data, layer by layer, gets passed through the machine,

starting at the base of the product

and depositing material, layer upon layer,

infusing the new layer of materials to the old layer

in an additive process.

And this material that's deposited

either starts as a liquid form

or a material powder form.

And the bonding process can happen

by either melting and depositing or depositing then melting.

In this case, we can see a laser sintering machine developed by EOS.

It's actually using a laser

to fuse the new layer of material to the old layer.

And over time --

quite rapidly actually, in a number of hours --

we can build a physical product,

ready to take out of the machine and use.

And this is quite an extraordinary idea,

but it is reality today.

So all these products that you can see on the screen

were made in the same way.

They were all 3D printed.

And you can see,

they're ranging from shoes,

rings that were made out of stainless steal,

phone covers out of plastic,

all the way through to spinal implants, for example,

that were created out of medical-grade titanium,

and engine parts.

But what you'll notice about all of these products

is they're very, very intricate.

The design is quite extraordinary.

Because we're taking this data in 3D form,

slicing it up before it gets past the machine,

we can actually create structures

that are more intricate

than any other manufacturing technology --

or, in fact, are impossible to build in any other way.

And you can create parts with moving components,

hinges, parts within parts.

So in some cases, we can abolish totally

the need for manual labor.

It sounds great.

It is great.

We can have 3D printers today

that build structures like these.

This is almost three meters high.

And this was built

by depositing artificial sandstone layer upon layer

in layers of about five millimeters to 10 mm in thickness --

slowly growing this structure.

This was created by an architectural firm called Shiro.

And you can actually walk into it.

And on the other end of the spectrum,

this is a microstructure.

It's created depositing layers

of about four microns.

So really the resolution is quite incredible.

The detail that you can get today

is quite amazing.

So who's using it?

Typically, because we can create products very rapidly,

it's been used by product designers,

or anyone who wanted to prototype a product

and very quickly create or reiterate a design.

And actually what's quite amazing about this technology as well

is that you can create bespoke products en masse.

There's very little economies of scale.

So you can now create one-offs very easily.

Architects, for example,

they want to create prototypes of buildings.

Again you can see,

this is a building of the Free University in Berlin

and it was designed by Foster and Partners.

Again, not buildable in any other way.

And very hard to even create this by hand.

Now this is an engine component.

It was developed by a company called Within Technologies

and 3T RPD.

It's very, very, very detailed

inside with the design.

Now 3D printing

can break away barriers in design

which challenge the constraints

of mass production.

If we slice into this product which is actually sitting here,

you can see that it has a number of cooling channels pass through it,

which means it's a more efficient product.

You can't create this with standard manufacturing techniques

even if you tried to do it manually.

It's more efficient

because we can now create all these cavities within the object

that cool fluid.

And it's used by aerospace

and automotive.

It's a lighter part

and it uses less material waste.

So it's overall performance and efficiency

just exceeds standard mass produced products.

And then taking this idea

of creating a very detailed structure,

we can apply it to honeycomb structures

and use them within implants.

Typically an implant

is more effective within the body

if it's more porous,

because our body tissue will grow into it.

There's a lower chance of rejection.

But it's very hard to create that in standard ways.

With 3D printing,

we're seeing today

that we can create much better implants.

And in fact, because we can create

bespoke products en masse, one-offs,

we can create implants

that are specific to individuals.

So as you can see,

this technology and the quality of what comes out of the machines is fantastic.

And we're starting to see it being used

for final end products.

And in fact, as the detail is improving,

the quality is improving,

the price of the machines are falling

and they're becoming quicker.

They're also now small enough

to sit on a desktop.

You can buy a machine today for about $300

that you can create yourself,

which is quite incredible.

But then it begs the question,

why don't we all have one in our home?

Because, simply, most of us here today

don't know how to create the data

that a 3D printer reads.

If I gave you a 3D printer,

you wouldn't know how to direct it

to make what you want it to.

But there are more and more

technologies, software and processes today

that are breaking down those barriers.

I believe we're at a tipping point

where this is now something

that we can't avoid.

This technology

is really going to disrupt

the landscape of manufacturing

and, I believe, cause a revolution

in manufacturing.

So today,

you can download products from the Web --

anything you would have on your desktop,

like pens, whistles, lemon squeezers.

You can use software like Google SketchUp

to create products from scratch

very easily.

3D printing can be also used

to download spare parts from the Web.

So imagine you have, say,

a Hoover in your home

and it has broken down. You need a spare part,

but you realize that Hoover's been discontinued.

Can you imagine going online --

this is a reality --

and finding that spare part

from a database of geometries

of that discontinued product

and downloading that information, that data,

and having the product made for you at home,

ready to use, on your demand?

And in fact, because we can create spare parts

with things the machines

are quite literally making themselves.

You're having machines fabricate themselves.

These are parts of a RepRap machine,

which is a kind of desktop printer.

But what interests my company the most

is the fact that you can create

individual unique products en masse.

There's no need to do a run

of thousands of millions

or send that product to be injection molded in China.

You can just make it physically on the spot.

Which means

that we can now present to the public

the next generation of customization.

This is something that is now possible today,

that you can direct personally

how you want your products to look.

We're all familiar with the idea

of customization or personalization.

Brands like Nike are doing it.

It's all over the Web.

In fact, every major household name

is allowing you

to interact with their products

on a daily basis --

all the way from Smart Cars

to Prada

to Ray Ban, for example.

But this is not really mass customization;

it's known as variant production,

variations of the same product.

What you could do is really influence your product now

and shape-manipulate your product.

I'm not sure about you guys,

but I've had experiences

when I've walked into a store and I've know exactly what I've wanted

and I've searched everywhere for that perfect lamp

that I know where I want to sit in my house

and I just can't find the right thing,

or that perfect piece of jewelry

as a gift or for myself.

Imagine that you can now

engage with a brand

and interact,

so that you can pass your personal attributes

to the products that you're about to buy.

You can today

download a product with software like this,

view the product in 3D.

This is the sort of 3D data

that a machine will read.

This is a lamp.

And you can start iterating the design.

You can direct what color that product will be,

perhaps what material.

And also, you can engage in shape manipulation of that product,

but within boundaries that are safe.

Because obviously the public are not professional product designers.

The piece of software will keep an individual

within the bounds of the possible.

And when somebody is ready to purchase the product

in their personalized design,

they click "Enter" and this data gets converted

into the data that a 3D printer reads

and gets passed to a 3D printer,

perhaps on someone's desktop.

But I don't think that that's immediate.

I don't think that will happen soon.

What's more likely, and we're seeing it today,

is that data gets sent

to a local manufacturing center.

This means lower carbon footprint.

We're now, instead of shipping a product across the world,

we're sending data across the Internet.

Here's the product being built.

You can see, this came out of the machine in one piece

and the electronics were inserted later.

It's this lamp, as you can see here.

So as long as you have the data,

you can create the part on demand.

And you don't necessarily need to use this

for just aesthetic customization,

you can use it for functional customization,

scanning parts of the body

and creating things that are made to fit.

So we can run this through to something like prosthetics,

which is highly specialized to an individual's handicap.

Or we can create very specific prosthetics

for that individual.

Scanning teeth today,

you can have your teeth scanned

and dental coatings made in this way to fit you.

While you wait at the dentist,

a machine will quietly be creating this for you

ready to insert in the teeth.

And the idea of now creating implants,

scanning data, an MRI scan of somebody

can now be converted into 3D data

and we can create very specific implants for them.

And applying this

to the idea of building up what's in our bodies.

You know, this is pair of lungs and the bronchial tree.

It's very intricate.

You couldn't really create this or simulate it in any other way.

But with MRI data,

we can just build the product,

as you can see, very intricately.

Using this process,

pioneers in the industry are layering up cells today.

So one of the pioneers, for example, is Dr. Anthony Atala,

and he has been working

on layering cells to create body parts --

bladders, valves, kidneys.

Now this is not something that's ready for the public,

but it is in working progress.

So just to finalize, we're all individual.

We all have different preferences, different needs.

We like different things.

We're all different sizes and our companies the same.

Businesses want different things.

Without a doubt in my mind,

I believe that this technology

is going to cause a manufacturing revolution

and will change the landscape of manufacturing as we know it.

Thank you.

(Applause)