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right now 3d printing is about thirty years old
and has seen explosive growth in the last five to 10 years
there are a number of use cases for 3d printing traditionally
for the first kinda twenty years or so its life cycle
was really focused on rapid prototyping so it was a tool that designers and
product developers used
to get physical models in their hands faster so that they can
interact with that see what it look like when it felt like what you've seen
recently is kinda this this
huge surge in growth and more consumer initiatives
having an artist involvement in the 3D printing world at this stage is very important
because artists are the ones experimenting with the different
possibilities
of 3D printing. They are thinking about 3d printing
not from an engineering perspective but rather from
like a much more open-ended perspective.
I've been a professional sculptor basically my whole life.
I first started following 3d printing in the actually in the seventies
when it was just at its inception but that always been
this magical box than that was gonna let the shapes come
out on the computer for the particularly complicated shapes
it compresses the fabrication shop
as long as you're willing to accept the the limitations other compresses the
fabrication shop down into
your desktop so it's it's a prototyping lab
its you know a model shop
and its essentially brick factory the rock that's being printed right now is
one and the kind of quintessential
more iconic 3d printed items and the reason being is that there's a set of
stairs
inside rock thats been printed stair tread by stair tread
and there is no other manufacturing technology that exists today that would
be able to produce that
other than 3d printing process but reprinting
first date with the modeling process and usually most people spend a lot of time
laboriously creating models and a variety of programs
you'd have a model in digital space then you have to slice it up
into thin sections if you I'm
cut us up into little a million little fleiss's
each one each one of those places the 2d object
low like a piece of paper but if you off to extract all those at the right order
they'd make a three-dimensional object and the slicing software goes in
and identifies each one of those layers that needs to be printed
all the way up from the bottom to the top it's essentially a robot
that's driving a glue gun around in a path and
that melted material that is laid down is built up
layer by layer by layer she can control what object
your building by controlling where that extruder nozzle
go and that this is only one type of 3d printing their
many many types on the consumer side to see a lot of plastics either ABS RPL a
plastic
on the more industrial side you see high and ceramics
metals IOM again more plastics
this time with different chemical property is our strength to weight
ratios and things like that
it is completely free of the constraints above
making most things so for instance if I was to carve
interlocking hands like that you
really couldn't get up into those spaces an
even if I modeled that to make a mold to make a bronze casting you
you still couldn't get up into those spaces those are called undercut
but because if the the the slicing aspect
difficulty undercut simply just disappears that completely opens up
ability to make any shape you could pick up the audio show where is an important
step in the sense that
for the first time a establish fine artist saying that the work comp
of the printer is itself finish fine arts culture
as opposed to being an interim step for some other process
you know these are just pieces I'm working on here check
have come off the printer and I think they're they're really wonderful
an I would not have been able to make the shapes
in any other way we're looking at the ways that we can push
3d printing beyond kinda consumer kirsch
replacement parts stuff that you see typically
into more design aesthetic in
so at the time it was the world's largest
3d-printed objects we we call it the world's first peace agreement that
architecture
and we knew that project 387 up and the Redwood
3 1&2 really Taylor the piece from the components
the static have ako beer and to
the site and we also were interested in creating a space for people that do well
in the forest
so it was 500 individually
3d printed parts every single one unique everything on different
we printed them over the course have two months
with eight to nine printers running 24 hours a day
total 10,000 800 hours printing
you I kind of a lot that way
in order to make this thing any other way with every single component
being totally unique on everything on
every edge with a level of precision to the tent millimeter
would have been in saint we would have had to use
extremely expensive military milling equipment
that we went in we want to be able to have access to let alone
I'm I story here is a resident artist I did ask they have stated are
facilities including 3d printing and offers a fabrication facilities
my process for modeling 3d object is to create my own software
which takes datasets converse then into you
structures using our Co the rather than model something by hand
I spend time with the code because they think the generous the models
whether things in San Francisco provides is a practical the Open Data Portal
and it provided alter the daily parking meters crimes that
just about anything you can think some reason that data as the basis from which
in generating
these dataquest this one represents all the crime locations in San Francisco
it turns out the crime occurs everywhere so it's a really clumpy
like blah ke mas router a romantic idea that
that you know this comes out just these alone and
some people sort of feel well you know what's happening you're leading a
machine make that
but for me the the the only rules are
sisters gonna sculptures I can make isn't honest expression
and is it the best I can do and then that if that's the case then I'll use
any tools available
3d printing will get faster it will get cheaper
it will become more ubiquitous I just as more people become aware of it
and these use cases summer which we're kind of helping to define a really kind
of
empowering users to identify and some people just
you know could have come up with on their own weermets we learn as much from
our users
as I think they do from us in the future I hope that
3d printing will be available for just about everyone I see this as an
alternate
know dat making things creatively not just
replacement parts but thinking about stuff that's in your head
and your imagination space and nationalizing at physical objects
it's a really seductive process to be able to take
anything and physical I said and its
it's great to be able to do that but we wanna see
you know okay what else when Austin still how can
design intention really embrace new power and
internet into something better on ok
on
good