3 Ways 3D Printing Will Change The World (+VIDEO) – Part 1

MakerBot Replicator the ingenious 3D printer by NOTLabs has become a start of something that is usually called the future, but beginning now. In this article we are going to introduce you three personalities who do apply this technology with revolutionary outcome. Those three are an engineer wishing to make the human condition better, a robotics expert with the least aim to place a construction on the Moon, and an MIT architect employing natural materials to upturn the sphere of design. The question posed is actually if we are ready to face the consequences of such avant-garde possibilities?

Behrokh Khoshnevis, director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT) at the University of South California, has made decided to develop the “Contour Crafting” technology building with a 3D printer a square foot of wall in less than 20 seconds, which implies a possibility to produce whole strings of houses with different designs and conduits for plumbing, electricity and air-conditioning at once. This method would need an architect’s digital blueprint and little human workers direction. Thus the printing could cost around one fifth of what a usual construction costs. This 3D printing technology would help eradicate slums all over the world.

Enrico Dini is a robotic expert, who developed his D-Shape, a 3D printer controlled by CAD software, which produced both a small dwelling named “trullo” and the tallest printed sculpture. For the raw materials this machine uses sand and an inorganic binder together forming stone. Foster+Partners have addressed Dini with a question of feasibility utilizing D-Shape to build on the Moon with usage of moon dust. However, the most mind-blowing thing about this particular printer is its ability to produce convex, organic and very complex works of art. The concave and curvilinear shapes usually involve time consuming, expensive and manual work and many of those forms were considered impossible to use in the designs. With the 3D printers those figures take up as much time as straight lines and angles and the immense field of opportunities is open for architects and artists.
The third visionary, possibly the most radical one, is to be disclosed in the next article…
Via: archdaily.com