3D printing | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Reverse financing a manufacturing revolution

3D electronics printing startup Nano Dimensions illustrates some fundamental changes in finance, business and manufacturing

Nano Dimensions may not have shipped a product since it was founded in 2012 but is worth $49 million dollars and was Israel’s best performing tech stock last year reports Bloomberg Business.

It’s not surprising that Nano Dimensions has caught the imagination of investors, the company was founded in 2012 to develop advanced 3D printed electronics, including printers for multilayer PCBs (printed circuit boards) and the nanotechnology-based inks those machines rely upon.

Should the technology prove successful, the application of those printers in fields like rapid prototyping is immense. The company speculates their devices may even get RFID tags down to the magical one cent figure which opens may opportunities in industries like logistics and retail.

In a GeekMe profile of the company last June, the writer even speculated Nano Dimensions could be heralding a disruption to the electronics industry similar to that the music industry faced when home users could burn their own CDs and stream music.

While that – and the speculation that 3D printing of electronic devices will kill Chinese manufacturing – may be some way off, it isn’t hard to see the potential of this technology.

The Israeli aspect of the Nano Dimensions story is interesting as well, with the company receiving a $1.25 million investment from the country’s office of the chief scientist after it was reverse listed onto the local stock market by taking over a moribund company.

For countries like Australia, Canada and the United States which are likely to have many moribund small mining and energy on their stock markets in coming years, such reverse listings may be an opportunity to spark their tech sectors with fresh capital and talent.

While Nano Dimensions is still very a speculative venture, the company illustrates a number of possibilities for 3D printing, electronics, the Israeli tech industry and the future of fund raising at a time when the Silicon Valley venture capital model seems to be under stress.

Another fascinating aspect of Nano Dimensions is that it’s one of the new breed of hardware startups, a field that until recently was dismissed as ‘too hard’ by most tech investors. Overall, the Israeli businesses an interesting company to watch for many of the aspects it touches upon.

The limits of today’s technologies – day two of Autodesk University

The second day of Autodesk University gave more insights into the future of design and manufacturing but it also showed the limits

The second day of Autodesk University 2015 in Las Vegas continued the focus on innovation and changing industries, the afternoon innovation session was particularly focused on some of the opportunities being realised in drones, pre-fabricated buildings and lampshades made out of fungus.

Brooklyn based designer Danielle Trofe gave a great demonstration of how she’s using fungus to create a range of sustainable light shades. Interestingly in a conversation earlier in the day with Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski the topic of growing products out of Mycelium, the vegetative part of a fungus that Trofe uses, was discussed in terms of smart packaging and biodegradable products.

Growing products out of organic material is one of the themes explored in Mercedes Benz’s Biome concept car which proposes to grow the chassis out of seeds. While realising that concept is some way off, Trofe’s Mush-Lume idea shows some products are already at that stage.

Rethinking prefab buildings

Following Trofe was Jos Mulkens, the CEO of Dutch building company Voorbij Prefab, who described how by using sophisticated design tools and 3D printing to make prefabricated building panels they had reduced to the time to fabricate elements from days to hours.

Mulkens gave a good insight into how design and production workflows are being accelerated with modern technology, particularly in replacing manual form makers to make the moulds for the precast panels. Voobij Prefab are flagging a lot of disruption heading for the building industry.

At one the media breakout sessions a group of senior Autodesk managers discussed the trends in design and materials engineering. This turned out to be an interesting session on the limits of current technologies.

Composite technologies

Max Moruzzi, Autodesk’s Principal Research Scientist, is a passionate believer in composite materials and the benefits they promise. However he conceded when challenged by his colleague Steve Hobbs, who joined Autodesk last year with the acquisition of UK based Computer Aided Manufacturing company Delcam, about the structural properties of composites that we still have a lot to understand about how they behave and fail.

Bringing a touch of English scepticism to the panel, Hobbs pointed out almost all metallic components made by 3D printing require some sort of mechanical, subtractive finishing such as milling or polishing.

Hobbs went onto warn that we risk introducing a “hairball of complexity” into the design and manufacturing industries as people experiment with developing products with materials and techniques they don’t fully understand.

All the panel, which also included Carl White – Autodesk’s senior director of marketing for advanced manufacturing – and Benjamin Schrauwen who leads the company’s Spark 3D printing division, agreed that applying current design and manufacturing methods need to be rethought in the light of new methods being developed.

The limits of 3D printing

It was notable in the panel Q&A around the revelation that 70% of 3D printing projects fail, the panel put this down to the relative immaturity of software and machinery along with the technologies currently being poorly understood. Hobbs observed that for GE to 3D print their jet engine parts they rebuild and reprogram the printers they buy to their own higher specifications.

For the final session CEO Carl Bass and CTO Jeff Kowalski faced a Q&A from analysts and the media, that session was interesting in exploring some of the directions Autodesk sees industry and business heading and I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

Overall, the Autodesk University has been an interesting insight into the future of design and manufacturing along with the effects this has on other industries. With these technologies at an early stage, it’s a field that is going to evolve rapidly.

Paul Wallbank travelled to Autodesk University in Las Vegas as a guest of Autodesk.

Touring the Autodesk demonstration gallery

Autodesk’s San Francisco demonstration gallery showcases how design and manufacturing are going to radically change in coming years.

What is the future of design and manufacturing in an age of 3D printing and powerful software? Computer Aided Design company Autodesk gives us some clues at how the world of design is changing.

Sitting in what was once the Southern Pacific Railway’s headquarters at the beginning of San Francisco’s Market Street is design software company Autodesk’s demonstration gallery showcases how design and manufacturing are going to radically change in coming years.

The first exhibit in the exhibition, which is open to the public three days a week with guided tours on Wednesdays, is a scale model of the Shanghai Tower that illustrates the power of simulations and the value computers add to the building and architecture industries.

Currently China’s tallest skyscraper and the second highest in the world, one of the notable features of the Shanghai Tower is how the designers were able to extensively model the shape of the building to reduce the loads on the structure. The cost and weight savings enabled the developers to create a far more lightweight building with a reduced environmental footprint.

For architects, builders and designers the Shanghai tower is an example of how desktop prototyping can be used to experiment with competing schemes to see what designs meet the needs of those using the building or product.

The biggest exhibit in the hall is the Mercedes Biome concept car chassis. First unveiled at the 2010 Los Angeles Car Show, the idea behind the vehicle’s design is an organic form similar to an animal’s skull to create a strong but lightweight structure.

Adding to the Biome’s exotic design is the proposal to ‘grow’ the car’s chassis out of genetically modified seeds. Essentially the vehicle’s structure wouldn’t be manufactured in our current understanding of the word at all.

While the Biome or similar vehicles won’t be seen on the roads in the near future – Mercedes predict the vehicle is at least 60 years away – the idea behind ‘growing’ industrial items is one that may well become commonplace in the near future for smaller items.

The other big exhibit in the gallery is the Lego dinosaur. Made up of 62,000 custom designed pieces, the dinosaur was assembled in at the company’s Czech Republic facility before being shipped to California.

One disappointing aspect of the dinosaur for some of the attendees is that these models aren’t made of solid Lego. Instead an internal brace is made that supports the structure. Again this is a feature of the design software that allows the creators to accurately calculate the weight and build a model that won’t collapse under its own mass.

At the other end of the size range, but no less important, is the display of 3D printed prosthetic limbs. It’s now possible to scan the remaining limb and create a device that closely replicated the lost limb.

Again, using 3D printing allows those limbs to be quickly made to the custom specifications, the design also allows weight saving features to be incorporated into the prosthetic. This exhibit shows just how life changing modern technologies can be.

Finally, one of the most intriguing devices is the The SOCCKET power generating soccer ball designed to promote physical activity and help children in developing nations access light to study by.

The SOCCKET charges up as kids play with the ball, in the evening an energy efficient LED lamp can be plugged into the ball. The Soccket retails for 99 US Dollars and for ball sold one is donated to a third world community.

Products like the Soccket, the prosthetic limbs and many of the other displays in the Autodesk Demonstration Gallery show the potential of a world where new ways of manufacturing join with modern design tools. It’s worth a visit to appreciate some of the ways our world is going to change in coming years.

The gallery is open to the public every Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a guided tour at 12:30 p.m. every Wednesday. Admission is free.

Management in an age of information abundance

How do managers and business owners deal with an age of abundant information?

The Twentieth Century was defined by abundant and cheap energy while this century will be shaped by our access to massive amounts of data.

How do managers deal with the information age along with the changes bought about by technologies like the Internet of Things, 3D printing, automation and social media?

Management in the Data Age looks at some of the opportunities and risks that face those running businesses. It was originally prepared for a private corporate briefing in June 2015.

Some further background reading on the topic include the following links.

The not so smooth rise of 3D printing

MakerBot’s story shows the development of new industries is never smooth

Vice’s Motherboard details the remaking of MakerBot, the rescue of an early leader of 3D printing industry.

The story is great long read for any business owner or want to be startup founder and a reminder that the development of new industries is never smooth sailing.

Prefabricating change in the construction industry

Prefabrication and 3D printing promise to radically change the construction industry.

One of the industries being dramatically reinvented by China is the construction sector as the nation’s demand on labor and materials puts stresses on the economy.

An answer local developers and builders have found to these constraints has been to turn to prefabricated construction.

While prefab building isn’t new, Chinese builders are pushing the techniques of designing, manufacturing and assembling the structures.

In Changsha, the capital of southern China’s Hunan Province, local construction company Broad Group built a 57-story building using 1200 in 19 days.

Coupled with large scale 3D printing and computerised design tools, the Chinese builders are redefining the construction industry with methods that are far more efficient and less labor intensive.

For companies, and countries, that depend upon the construction industry for employment and profit these techniques could be another disruption.

Again we’re seeing there are few industries immune from major disruption as technology changes business.

Apple Watch shows us the limits of 3D printing and crowdfunding

Ahead of its launch the Apple watch has been criticised for its price and upmarket focus but the product shows what it costs to manufacture high quality goods along with the limitations of both 3D printing and crowdfunding.

In its Watch Craftsmanship videos Apple shows off some of the workmanship that goes into manufacturing the device and the Atomic Delights blog has a deep look at the processes and the design decisions behind the company’s choice of techniques.

What Apple’s series shows is that making top end devices is capital intensive and very, very hard. It also puts lie to the idea that raising a few thousand, or even million, dollars on Kickstarter will get a luxury item to market.

Greg Koenigin, the author of the Atomic Delights blog, gushes about Apple’s attention to detail and high quality manufacturing.

I see these videos and I see a process that could only have been created by a team looking to execute on a level far beyond what was necessary or what will be noticed. This isn’t a supply chain, it is a ritual Apple is performing to bring themselves up to the standards necessary to compete against companies with centuries of experience.

It’s clear Apple isn’t stepping back or making any compromises in making its mark on the watch industry, even though the entire global market for timepieces is less than one quarter’s income from the iPhone.

At the other end of the market the 3D printing revolution continues with Feetz raising $3 million for its customised shoemaking operation.

While Feetz is an impressive and quirky business with great promise it shows the rough-and-ready face of the makers’ movement and the businesses relying on 3D printing services, it’s a world away from the Apple Watch.

While both crowdfunding and 3D printing are going to have a massive effect on business and manufacturing, the truth is that other manufacturing methods are still going to be used by deep pocketed companies. Nothing is ever as simple as we think.

3D Printing promises to change architecture and building

Large scale 3D printing is about to radically change the building industry

One of the longest running large scale 3D printing projects is based at the UK’s Loughborough University where since 2007 researchers have been working on developing the technology’s applications to the construction industry.

Loughborough’s technology, named Freeform, offers faster and more flexible ways of casting concrete and building structures using a computer controlled concrete pouring system. For property developers the attraction is cheaper buildings while for architects the technologies offer more innovative structures.

In late November the team announced a venture with Swedish building company Skanska SA to develop the world’s first commercial concrete printing robot.

The venture, which will include collaborations with companies including iconic UK architects Foster and Partners, Buchan Concrete, Scandinavian contracting giant ABB and Lafarge Tarmac, aims to have the first commercially available robot printer available by mid 2016.

Competing with the European venture is Chinese company WinSun who earlier this year showcased its 3D printer capable of producing ten houses every 24 hours. An interesting aspect of WinSun’s project is that the printing rig was build out of existing parts and controlled by an off the shelf Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing software system.

While the Chinese results are relatively crude, they show the potential for the technology. The economics of the WinSun project are enhanced by using waste building site material for the concrete which only increases the attraction of these machines to cost conscious property developers.

The Chinese and British are not just the only countries working on these technologies, in the Netherlands the 3D Print Canal House shows how techniques and materials are being developed while in the United States the University of Southern California’s Contour Crafting project is looking at how to use large scale 3D printing in a range of construction scenarios including building space colonies.

While using moon dust to build structures in space is some way off, both Freeform and WinSun show what will become commonplace on building sites in the near future.

These technologies promise to radically change architecture and the building industry with ramifications for jobs and the economics of building structures. 3D printing buildings is another example of how industries and employment will be very different by the middle of this century.

For businesses, it’s another example of how managers have to prepare for very different marketplaces.

Builder image courtesy of thesaint through Freemimages.com

ABC Nightlife – security, dropping off the grid and 4D printing

Apple Security, the Heartbleed bug and dropping off the grid are the topics of the May 2014 ABC Nightlife spot

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time tonight to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

For the May 2014 spot we looked at computer security, specifically Apple ransomware and The Heartbleed bug along with dropping off the grid, 4D printing and the future of design.

To protect from the Oleg Pliss ransomware – or any similar problems – have a strong password, enable the screen passkey and enable two factor authentication.

Join us

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

4D printing and the next generation of design – ABC Sydney

The future of design and 4D printing are the topics of today’s 702 Sydney segment with Linda Mottram

I’ll be on ABC Sydney this morning discussing 4D printing and the future of design as the Sydney Vivid Festival swings into gear.

Some of the areas we’ll be looking at in the spot that should start around 10.20am is what exactly is 4D printing, how can materials build themselves and how designers are creating more sustainable devices like Google’s Project Ara.

One particularly interesting Vivid session is the Electric Dreams to Reality session that will feature local entrepreneurs and makers explaining how they are using the internet of things and new design.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 222 702 or post a question on ABC702 Sydney’s Facebook page.

If you’re a social media users, you can also follow the show through twitter to @paulwallbank and @702Sydney.

4D printing and the quest for elegance

Many of us are still getting comfortable with the idea of 3D printing, but MIT’s Skylar Tibbits is working on a fourth dimension.

Many of us are still getting comfortable with the idea of 3D printing, but MIT’s Skylar Tibbits is working on a fourth dimension that he hopes will move us into a more elegant era of design.

Ahead of Skylar’s visit to Sydney for the Vivid Festival in June, Decoding the New Economy had the opportunity to interview him about what 4D printing is and his quest to create materials that can build themselves.

What is 4D printing

“We called it 4D printing because we wanted to add the ability for things to change and transform over time,” explains Skylar. “Time is the fourth dimension.”

Skylar’s mission at MIT’s Self Assembly Lab is to create materials that assemble themselves. In a TED presentation he demonstrates how these materials may work and the philosophy behind them.

Part of that search involves developing techniques for building large and complex structures from small components. “People know and utilise this in biology, chemistry and material science domains and we’re trying to translate that into larger scale applications.”

Avoiding big machines

“We don’t want to build bigger machines than the things we want to build, we want to build distributed systems,” Skylar continues. “If you want to build a skyscraper, you don’t want to build a skyscraper sized machine.”

Not only does this philosphy offer benefits for manufacturing and building but it may also save energy, transport and labour costs as things can automatically build themselves once they’re delivered to a customer.

“Materials should be able to assemble themselves or at least error correct or respond to active energy. There’s a whole application of packaging and minimising volume after manufacturing and transforming on site.”

Over time they could also adapt to changed conditions Skylar believes: “There’s also how products themselves can transform and be smarter adapt to my demands or adapt to the environment as it’s fluctuating around.”

Redefining the makers’ movement

Worldwide we’ve seen the rise of the makers’ movement as affordable 3D printing and cheap electronics has made it possible to build new things; Skylar sees the Self Assembly Lab as being part of, but slightly apart from this group.

“We make machines that make things, we’re integrated into that theme. We’re arguing that people can collaborate with materials and materials can be collaborative. It’s not just us making stuff and forcing materials into place, it’s materials making themselves.

“A lot of methods are top down, big machines force materials into place and we’re trying to argue you can have bottom up applications in manufacturing.”

So more than just simply printing components, Skylar sees the opportunity for embedding the intelligence into components so they can assemble themselves; the real task lies in programming the materials.

The internet of elegant solutions

Similarly, Skylar sees the internet of things as being a far more passive, perhaps even friendlier, field than that dominated by machines and plastics.

“It’s not about the number of sensors and electronics and motor and things so that we can make these smart devices, we’re interested in how materials and fundamentally elegant solutions responding to external energy can have the same capabilities.”

“We certainly believe in a connected internet of things, but it’s more a material based internet of things.”

“I think that any solution in the beginning you throw a lot of money, technology and motors at it but over time you find more elegant solutions where materials can do more for you.”

“The wearable space is a good example where people don’t want to wear electronics all over their bodies, they don’t want bulky things that are expensive and hard to assemble and clunky to wear.”

“You want materials that you want your skin to touch, so we’re trying to find elegance in the solutions with smart devices.”

Seeding the forest

The challenge for Skylar, the Self Assembly Lab and those looking at changing the worlds of design and manufacturing is – like many other fields – funding.

Material sciences, particularly those being explored at the MIT, have long lead times that aren’t suited to the current Silicon Valley led model of innovation and Skylar believes we need a different model.

“We need to invest in super, long term radical innovation, to seed the economy and global technology development. We gained substantially in the Silicon Valley model with short term wins – with apps and simple technologies with incremental progress.”

“It’s sort of like we need to seed the forest, we can’t just keep taking all these things from the top like low hanging fruit we need to create a forest effect so that we create many new technologies.”

What comes out that forest of 4D printing and smart materials is anyone’s guess; but if Skylar Tibbits has his way, it will certainly be elegant.

NASA and the five technologies that will change business

The Chief Technology Officer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory discusses the technologies that will change business.

What will be the next five technologies that will change busines? CITE Magazine has an interview with Tom Soderstrom, the chief technology officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on what he sees as the next big game changers for business.

The list features many of the topics we’ve discussed on this blog; data visualization, the Internet of Things, robots, 3D printing and new user interfaces.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a good place to start when looking at what technologies will become commonplace in business as the organisation is testing the limits of modern engineering.