3D printing still seems really new to me because I haven't heard that much about it.
My notes:
-3D printing is coming to the end of it's patentee
-no assembly is required, the object can be used after printing with no hassle
-infinite shapes of material
-it can be used to make 3D portraits, such as dolls based on real people
-Wide variety of materials can be used to print with such as metal, plastic and human cells
-someone invented a 3D printed gun, which had no parts to assemble
-Iris Van Herpen designed a 3D printed dress
- you can get a 3D printer for your home / desktop 3D printer
-the 3D printing process is quite slow at the moment, as things take a while to print out
We then discussed some of the issues surrounding some of the objects that have been printed.
The one that seemed most controversial was the 3D printed heart valve, and other body parts printed out of cells.
This opened up a lot of issues such as :
is it okay to prolong life?
is it natural?
are humans playing god?
will anyone ever die if we keep fixing ourselves?
It's a difficult topic to discuss because there is no right or wrong answer, and printing organs is just a bit too much for me to take in.
Another interesting topic was the 3D printed gun.
Quite a few people had an issue with the blue prints being posted on the internet because it meant that people could access them and end up printing their own gun, with no licence.
Meat can be 3D printed aswell. I thought this was weird.
I had wondered if Jewish people could eat 3D printed 'pork', because it's never been an animal.
Would it be classed as Halal?
Is 3D printing green?
The program allows users to work out the optimum shape of an object based on its maximum strength and minimum amount of material usedany waste metal can be reused, but the designs are created through trial and error, so you land up creating a lot of wasted products, meaning that the design process is less precious.
Talking about the waste problems of 3D printing lead onto talking about the North Atlantic Garbage patch, as a lot of the objects created by 3D printing are made of plastic, they are likely to end up here.
I was really interested to find out that there are such thing as artificial microbial reefs that survive by eating the plastic. It's amazing that because of plastic, new life forms have evolved, and it is now an important part of the oceanic ecosystem.
Realistically, I don't see myself using 3D printing in this project because it is just too expensive at uni. I also think it takes the process of making away a little bit because everything is done on a computer.
