Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Black market bioprinters range from well-intended, would-be healers to deadly,
proit-driven peddlers of rogue, counterfeit lesh. Some call the competent and
hygienic black marketeers heroes for helping ill people obtain vital new organs at
a lower price. Others deplore the organ merchants' eagerness to proit from buying
and selling essential tissue to vulnerable people, especially in cases where the new
printed organ is poorly crafted.
At the end of the work day you stop by your daughter's middle school. You're one
of the parental sponsors of this year's Science Fair. Your daughter's teacher tells
you that 3D printers are disrupting the culture of the Science Fair. Lazy students
3D print elaborate objects with little effort and no skill—they just need to have
a good design ile. Many lower income students do not have home 3D printers so
they aren't getting the design time and practice they need for a level playing ield.
There's another twist. The teacher explains that for this year's fair, parents will
serve on a clean-up crew. Last year after the fair ended, the school's custodians
complained that the gym loor was littered with the debris of dozens of frenzied
printing demonstrations. Even worse, for several days after the fair, students and
teachers stumbled over dozens of mouse-sized, ready-made robots that clanked
and rolled around school hallways. Some printed robots recited appropriate and
preprogrammed bits of scientiic lore. A few of the roaming robots, however, seemed
to have mastered a few unauthorized and slightly more colorful bits of wisdom.
When you and your daughter get home, your spouse shares good news. His 3D
printing manufacturing business just got accepted into an aerospace cloud manu-
facturing network. Cloud manufacturing is a new way to make things that's starting
to replace mass manufacturing. Cloud manufacturing—like cloud computing—is a
decentralized and massively parallel model of production. Large companies order
parts and services on demand from a vetted network of several small manufacturing
businesses that have joined forces to manufacture specialized parts.
Cloud manufacturing is catching on quickly in the electronics, medical, and
aerospace industries. These companies need complex, highly sophisticated parts,
but not in huge batches. Clouds of small manufacturing companies save the big
companies money. Cloud networks tend to be located near their clients so there's
less long-distance shipping of printed parts. The companies keep designs for product
parts in digital inventory and make just one or a few at a time. Cloud manufactur-
ing networks have been a boon for regional economies everywhere, creating local
jobs in specialized small manufacturing and services companies.
Your spouse's particular cloud consists of small companies that fabricate special-
ized fuel injector parts for military and commercial airplane manufacturers. To ge t
into this particular network, his business had to demonstrate its manufacturing
