Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
3D printed parts and products are creeping into everyday life. Your car's
dashboard was designed with the help of 3D printed prototypes to make sure
all the various parts it snugly together. If you wear a custom hearing aid,
odds are good that it was 3D printed using optical scan data that captured the
precise shape of your inner ear.
Dental labs print custom crowns in less than an hour from X-rays. Printed
titanium and ceramic replacement knees are walking around in bodies all
over the world. If you've had the good fortune to ly in Boeing's new premium
airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, you've placed your life into the hands of at least
thirty-two different 3D printed parts.
The secret to 3D printing could be summed up as follows: 3D printers are
more accurate and versatile than any other mode of production—be it a human
or machine—at fabricating a complex design into a physical object, combining
raw materials in ways that were once impossible.
Today, the average home 3D printer can make a plastic object as large as a
shoebox. Industrial-scale 3D printers can fabricate an object as large as a car
or as small as the barely visible head of a pin. Some people have rigged up
custom 3D printers that can print large concrete structures the size of a small
house. Other researchers have printed at the micro-scale level, making objects
whose details are barely visible by the naked eye.
On being digital (and analog)
In the mid-1990s, ecommerce and digital media were in their infancy. In his
wonderfully prescient 1995 bestseller
Being Digital
, Nicolas Negroponte pre-
dicted the demise of “entertainment atoms.” Years before the great transition to
digital media actually took place, Negroponte correctly predicted that purveyors
of entertainment in physical form—traditional topic publishers, video rental
stores and big television networks—would meet the same fate as the dinosaur.
The demise of centrally controlled mass media and topic publishing was just
the beginning. The end of the 20th century was about information becoming
digital. The 21st century is going to be about bringing the virtual world into
closer alignment with the physical one.
The virtual world is a place of freedom where gravity is optional. In a video
game, characters can leap over buildings, grow themselves a new arm, and
morph into different physical shapes. The virtual world is easy to edit and
revise. It's impossible to change the color of the bark on a real tree, but simple
to edit its image in a digital photograph. The behavior of the virtual world
