Like most activities, reading becomes even more enjoyable when you experience it with others.
Throughout the first portion of the semester, our class was assigned to read the book “Fabricated”, answer questions about it, and share our answers on a public form for the rest of the class.
This post features ten lessons I have gained from “Fabricated”, as well as quotes from my peers that I feel further emphasizes these insights.
10 LESSONS, 10 QUOTES:
1. 3D Printing is a versatile tool that can be used in a variety of fields, from architecture to biology.
“The potential of the 3-D printer is limitless. The only limit is the imagination and the efforts of whoever has access to one. From recreating scissors, toys, and shoe heels, to recreating weapons and biological parts, the 3-D printer is still growing.”
pl140070 @ September 9th 2:18 AM
2. 3D Printing and 3D Design Software demonstrates that we are truly only limited by our own imagination and capabilities.
“Have you ever been home decor shopping and envisioned a very specific piece of furniture that would blend perfectly with the flow of your living area? With 3D printing, you have the ability to create virtually anything you want as long as you can design it.”
ac156517 @ September 14th 10:10 PM
3. 3D Printing can play an important role in improving the environment.
“The benefits of shifting towards 3D printing is that there is less pollution generated. Mass production often requires a long assembly line of machines that demand a lot of energy input. If mass-production was led by a few 3D printers, energy usage would reduce dramatically.”
Tina Jing Ru Shen @ September 15th 4:13 PM
4. 3D printing has made the entrepreneurial process cheaper and therefore more accessible to the common person, allowing people to retain their day jobs while still pursuing another dream.
As stated in the “A future economy of printable products” section, using 3D printing for introducing new products is relatively lower cost than its traditional factory manufacturing. By simply printing out a few copies and testing its effectiveness in the market, one will be able to quickly test out new ideas. Whereas traditional manufacturing would require one to manufacture a much larger amount and has a much higher cost if the product fails.
ep145853 @ September 14th 8:55 PM
5. The process of creating an object to be 3D printed is an on going collaboration between the computer software and the person; they both try to understand each other and work together.
When turning the sketch into a digital model in Sketch-up, I realized that reducing the physical information into a workable set of digital symbols was a tad bit of a challenge. While I may perceive my block as a whole, the computer registers it in parts using the x, y and z coordinates, such as Chapter 6 suggests.
Jewel Tolbert @ September 25th 10:12 PM
6. The concept of a tool that is able to create whatever you want, whenever you want, sounds too good to be true–and it kind of is. Despite the technological advancement and achievement of 3D Printing, it is still constantly improving upon what it already is.
A 3D printer would be like a magical box for people to definitely fulfill your dream lives. It would support you anywhere and anytime. It would be a perfect world.
However, in reality, there are so many downsides to 3D printing at present. The book mentions that selective deposition printers can print only in materials, photopolymers, SL printing are expensive, fragile and brittle, excess material needs to be rinsed off, fumes uncured photopolymers can be toxic to breathe, three dimensional printing (3DP) is difficult to create extremely thin layers without a laser, and so on.
IPPEITA KAKIMOTO @ September 27 9:15 PM
7. 3D Printing provides many benefits to a classroom: a hands on approach to understanding STEM fields, as well as teaching people that failure is not loss, but the opportunity to learn and improve.
“I am so glad that students are now able to engineer things into the real world instead of just learning about the theory. It will definitely produce a bigger pool of students excited to enter into the STEM fields…I really wish that I was taught at an early age that failing more quickly is the key to arriving at the solution. …To me the struggle and the willpower to push forward is much more interesting to observe because I go through it every day in everything that I try to learn.”
sb164538 @ October 7th 3:41 PM
8. 3D Printing could transform the process of cooking into an actual ‘exact’ science, and ensure that no food be wasted and not more than necessary is used.
I feel that the use of 3D printers in making food will aid in saving food, insuring that only the proper amount of food is used per meal.
cc156495 @ October 14th 3:27 PM
9. The opportunities provided by 3D Printing may be threatened by those seeking to take advantage of it for illegal purposes.
The concepts of ripping, mixing, and burning physical things as well as creating shoddy products relates to tissue engineering in terms of the fear of a more sinister organ black market.
brendan.lukas @ October 13th 5:56 PM
10. As 3D software becomes more intuitive towards designing and the limits to what a 3D printer can print decrease, humans may no longer be needed in the design process.
“Ultimately machines in the future will have the ability to make more machines. The technological singularity, wherein intelligent machines will be capable of creating even more intelligent machines, will be within reach. With the ability to continually produce improved versions of themselves, machines will be able to mimic biology and evolution. Humans will not be necessary to design or produce the successive generations of improved machines.”
mc061311 @ October 27th 9:39
