3D Printing Applications Syllabus

Course Description

In this course, you will learn how 3D printing changes the dominant paradigm of manufacturing
with an extensive overview of the industry and a look at concrete examples in some cutting
edge areas such as medicine, space and food, and bio printing. You will also get an in-depth
look at the potential of 3D printing in development, with an overview of projects in India,
Tanzania, Argentina, and the US.

In Module 1, we get some views on the industry from research done by academics/consulting
firms, from experts in intellectual property, and even from venture capitalists.

In Module 2, we will highlight the potential of 3D printing to revolutionize the process of

designing, making, distributing, and selling products and will give you an opportunity to meet
the players creating the ecosystem to make this possible.

In Module 3, we consider the role of 3D printing in revolutionizing education and the role it
can play in development in underserved communities in both developing and developed
countries.

Finally, in Module 4, you will be introduced to a design thinking framework, which will help
you apply the skills you learn in the subsequent courses on software and hardware.

You will get a lot of opportunity to discuss and share your knowledge. We will also bring in
experts in hangouts and recordings will be kept in the course as Bonus materials in the relevant
modules. Look out for announcements for hangouts.

Course Goals and Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

Describe the ways in which 3D printing enables a new way of making things.

Describe the trends in the 3D printing industry.

Explain the various applications of 3D printing.

 Leverage the ecosystem around 3D printing to start your making journey.

Understand the basics of the design thinking approach, and build a foundation for learning
the software and hardware skills in later courses.

Textbook and Readings

There are no textbooks for this course. Individual modules have recommended readings listed.

Course Outline

This course consists of one orientation module and four modules that focus on increasing your
understanding of 3D printing applications.

Module 1: 3D Printing A New Way of Making

Key Concepts:

Complexity and variety is Free

Economies of scope vs scale

Mass customization

Disruptive innovation

Manufacturing renaissance

Module 2: 3D Printing On-Demand Manufacturing

Key Concepts:

Distributed manufacturing

The sharing economy in 3D printing

On-demand production in your neighborhood

Rapid prototyping

Everyone is a maker
 Module 3: 3D Printing for Development and Education

Key Concepts:

Subsistence marketplaces and the role of 3D printing

Maker literacy

Reuse/recycle and print

Distributed, decentralized philanthropy

Empowering individuals to solve local problems

Active learning with 3D printing

Module 4: From Ideas to Objects A Design Thinking Approach

Key Concepts:

Design thinking framework

Role of design thinking in making

Elements of This Course

The course is comprised of the following elements:

Lecture Videos. In each module the concepts you need to know will be presented through a
collection of short video lectures. You may stream these videos for playback within your
browser by clicking on their titles or by downloading the videos. You may also download the
slides that go along with the videos.

In-Video Questions. Some lecture videos have questions associated with them to help verify
your understanding of the topics. These questions will automatically appear while watching
the video if you stream the video through your browser. These questions do not contribute
toward your final score in the class.

Module Quizzes. Each module will include 1 for-credit quiz. You will be allowed 3 attempts
per every 8 hours at each quiz. There is no time limit on how long you take to complete each
 attempt at the quiz. Each attempt may present a different selection of questions to you. Your
highest score will be used when calculating your final score in the class.

Peer Review Assignments. Each module will include 1 peer reviewed exercise. You can
attempt these assignments multiple times. Your highest score will be used when calculating
your final score in the class.

How to Pass This Course

To qualify for a Course Certificate, simply start verifying your coursework at the beginning of
the course and pay the fee. Coursera Financial Aid is available to offset the registration cost
for learners with demonstrated economic needs. If you have questions about Course
Certificates, please see the help topics here.

Also note that this course is the second in the 3D Printing Specialization offered by the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. By earning a Course Certificate in this course,
you are on your way toward earning a Specialization Certificate in 3D Printing. You may also
choose to pre-pay for the entire Specialization, at a discount. See more information
about Specialization payments here.

If you choose not to pay the fee, you can still audit the course. You will still be able to view
all videos, submit practice quizzes, and view required assessments. Auditing does not include
the option to submit required assessments. As such, you will not be able to earn a grade or a
Course Certificate.

The following table explains the breakdown for what is required in order to pass the class
and qualify for a Course Certificate. You must pass each and every required activity in
order to pass this course.

Number Estimated %
Activity Required? per time per required
module module to pass
 Lecture
Yes 5-10 2 hours N/A
Videos

Module
Yes 1 0.5 hours 80%
Quizzes

Peer Review
Yes 1 1 hour 70%
Assignments

Getting and Giving Help

You can get/give help via the following means:

Use the Learner Help Center to find information regarding specific technical problems. For
example, technical problems would include error messages, difficulty submitting
assignments, or problems with video playback. If you cannot find an answer in the
documentation, you can also report your problem to the Coursera staff by clicking on
the Contact Us! link available on each topic's page within the Learner Help Center.

Use the Course Suggestions forum to report errors in lecture video content, assignment
questions and answers, assignment grading, text and links on course pages, or the content of
other course materials. University of Illinois staff and Community Mentors will monitor this
forum and respond to issues.

Note: Due to the large number of learners enrolled in this course, I am not able to answer emails
sent directly to my account. Rather, all questions should be reported as described above.

Glossary

Here you will find a description of some of the key concepts, organizations, and technologies
that we discuss in this course. If you would like us to add a description of something that we
may have missed, please make a suggestion in our discussion forum.
A good list of technical terms relevant across the specialization is available at the RepRap
Project

Additive manufacturing (AM). A process of joining materials to make objects from 3D

model data, usually layer upon layer

Advanced Manufacturing. Use of technology to improve products and/or processes, with the
relevant technology advanced or innovative

Computer Numerical Control (CNC). Automation of machine tools that are operated by
precisely programmed commands encoded on a storage medium

Digital scanner. A device that generates a digital representation of an image for data input to
a computer

Fabrication. A Manufacturing process in which an item is made from raw or semi-finished

materials instead of being assembled from ready-made components or parts.

Lean manufacturing. A systematic method for the elimination of waste within a

manufacturing system.

Injection Moulding. A manufacturing process for producing parts by injecting material into a
mould.
Intellectual Capital. A difference between a firms market value and the cost of replacing its
assets.

Intellectual Property (IP). A term that refers to the creation of ideas that an owner can make
a financial gain off of protected by law.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, etc. See
Intellectual Property.

Internet of Things (IoT). A system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital
machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability
to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer
interaction

MakerSpace. A Community center that provides technology, manufacturing, equipment and

educational opportunities to the public.

Photogrammetry. The science of making measurements from photographs, especially for

recovering the exact positions of surface points. More simply put, this process can be used for
3D scanning.

Polycarbonate (PC). A type of strong, impact resistant thermoplastic.

Polyphenylsulfone (PPSU or PPSF). A high performance polymer often used in rapid-

prototyping or rapid-manufacturing processes.

Production System. A manufacturing subsystem that includes all functions required to design,
produce, distribute, and service a manufactured product.

Rapid Manufacturing. A process of Building parts out of plastic or metal one layer at a time
using a method of additive fabrication such as 3D printing.
Rapid Prototyping (RP). A group of techniques used to quickly fabricate a scale model of a
physical part or assembly using three-dimensional computer aided design (CAD) data.

STEM. A type of educational field including the areas of science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics.

References

Intellectual property. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 18, 2016 from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

Photogrammetry. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 18, 2016 from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry

Polycarbonate. (n.d.). In RepRap. Retrieved May 18, 2016 from http://reprap.org/wiki/P

Module 1: 3D Printing A New Way of Making

Overview

In this module, we continue the discussion from the first course with Aric Rindfleisch, and
explore further the reasons why 3D printing is considered a paradigm shift and a revolutionary
change. We will hear from people working in the field, from academics, venture capitalists,
and even lawyers. We will focus mostly on accessible desktop 3D printing but will look at
applications across a spectrum of 3D printing technologies.

By the end of this module, you will have a richer understanding of the history and future of 3D
printing and an analysis of the industries where it is currently being used, with various use
cases of 3D printing to illustrate some of the trends.

The assessments in this module will ensure you get familiar with the terms discussed and
motivate you to explore applications of 3D printing in the area of interest for you.
 Time

This module should take approximately 3.5 hours of dedicated time to complete, with its
videos and assignments.

Lessons

The lessons for this module are listed below (with assignments in bold italics):

Lesson Title Estimated Time Required

Lesson 1: What's Different about 3D Printing 30 minutes

Lesson 2: 3D Printing Industry Trends 60 minutes

Lesson 3: 3D Printing On the Edge 30 minutes

Module 1 Quiz 30 minutes

Module 1 Peer Review Assignment 120 minutes

Goals and Objectives

Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:

Understand some of the principles central to 3D printing.

Explain why 3D printing represents a paradigm shift.

Describe the trends in the industry.

Understand the Intellectual property issues.

Getting and Giving Help

 You can get/give help via the following means:

Use the Learner Help Center to find information regarding specific technical problems. For
example, technical problems would include error messages, difficulty submitting
assignments, or problems with video playback. If you cannot find an answer in the
documentation, you can also report your problem to the Coursera staff by clicking on
the Contact Us! link available on each topic's page within the Learner Help Center.

Use the Course Suggestions forum to report errors in lecture video content, assignment
questions and answers, assignment grading, text and links on course pages, or the content of
other course materials. University of Illinois staff and community TAs will monitor this forum
and respond to issues.

Module 1 Readings

Required Readings

When Complexity is Free by Friedman, T. L.

The Ten Principles of 3D Printing by Lipson, H. and Kurman, M.

3D printing: Complexity is free may be costly for some by Cotteleer, M. J.

3D Printing comes of age in US industrial manufacturing by McCutcheon B., Pethick, B., and
Bono, R.

Wohlers Report 2016 Published: Additive Manufacturing Industry Surpassed $5.1 Billion

Suggested Additional Resources

The Big Picture

Future of Making Excerpt from SXSW video starting at 19:10, and ending at 28:43.

The Questions Executives Should Ask About 3D Printing by Flynn, C.

Interesting Use Cases

Here's how Marines are using 3-D printing to make their own parts, by Bacon, L. M.

Summary of Trends

2015 Roundup Of 3D Printing Market Forecasts And Estimates by Columbus, L.

Feel free to find other readings or resources and share them in the forums.

Complexity Is Free

In this video, we are chatting with Howard Lipton, who's a professor of mechanical engineering
at Columbia University. And he's going to help us understand some of the characteristics of 3D
printing that have made it so popular in a wide variety of contexts. A couple of the main points
you'll hear from him.

One is the fact that he talk about complexity being free and variety being free. So complexity
referring to the fact that the 3D printer doesn't care about the features that you are building in
your model. And variety refers to that you can create object that are one of a kind. And in the
same build, you can have four different objects being built or you can activate over time with
slightly different versions without worrying about the traditional economy's of scale. That
would constrain traditional manufacturing, so he talked about something called the economies
of scope, which is where 3D printing really shines. Finally he referred to some of the other
things that have made 3D printing so popular, such as the lower amount of skills required in
operating a printer. Of course, they are different, but not that much training required to
operate, being a technician and operate a printers. And some of the things you already heard
about such as low waste, low lead times.

And of course the ability to iterate quickly and create prototypes and eventually functional
products as well.

>> So I always get heat for saying complexity is free and I want to explain exactly what I mean
by that. The idea of complexity as free means that if you make an object, if you print a three
dimensional object and now you want to add a feature, you want to have a hole in it
somewhere. Or you want to inscribe your name. Or you want to round off the corner, you want
to add some complexity. That additional complexity will not cost you more to make. So the
same cost before the complexity and after the complexity per kilogram of part. The marginal
cost of manufacturing complexity is zero. That is not true for any other manufacturing
method. So if you look at CNC injection molding, any other manufacturing technique. If you
want to add complexity to your part it's going to involve more time, effort, skill, money. But
with 3D printing it does not, and that changes the equation dramatically, because when
complexity is free a lot of new possibilities emerge. These printers, all the information about
the part that needs to be made Is in the print file. So it does not cost you. It does not take any
more effort, time, or skill to make complex things. Another thing that's free is variety. There's
no economy of scale. If you want to print 50 different things or 50 identical things, it's all the
same. These two things allow you to start making products that are optimized
and customized. And that's the real benefit. Few companies can understand what that
means. But those that do, really create new modes of business. The best example I know, this
is invisalign. So, invisalign creates orthodontic liners, braces. If you remember the old days
braces were these metal things that somebody, and then just needed to adjust, it was a one-size
fits all and then a dentist would adjust them on a weekly basis. Now, these braces are 3D
printed. The sequence of them are 3D printed. There are 150,000 of these printed every
day. Each one of them unique. Each one of them complex. That's varieties free. That's
complexities free. And that's, not a business model that would even remotely viable using the
commercial manufacturing. So, often people will ask at what point does this technology break
even with injection moulding or commercial manufacturing. And that's not the question to ask,
the right question is, what new business models are enabled because complexity is free and
variety is free? And if you can answer that, that's where the gold is. If we can harness this idea
of economy of scope, as some people call it, instead of economy of scale then there are
opportunities. And there's also other disruptives. The fact that almost no skill is required to
manufacture. And, literally, you have kids that make things that would traditionally require a
trained engineer. The fact that it's a very mobile technology. That you can move it around
packs, a lot of manufacturing might into small square footage. The fact that it creates relatively
little waste byproduct when you print in metal especially. And the fact that you can duplicate
things. All these different aspects of this technology are very disruptive, all very different than
conventional manufacturing. The fact that there is almost no lee time from when you finish
designing, when you start manufacturing allows you to iterate very quickly. The fact that there
is no constraints on the geometry allows you to reach places of the geometry. That you couldn't
reach otherwise for free or not for free. It was just impossible. So, all these things mean that
it's a very, very disruptive technology, very, very different than conventional
manufacturing. It's not yet another manufacturing technique, it's completely different. The
question is, how do you use it?
 3D Printing: A Paradigm Shift

In this video, we will speak to John Hornick who's actually a lawyer by profession. And he
works a lot in the intellectual properties space around 3D printing. And we'll hear from him
later in the course on that, but he's also written a great book on the topic and that provides a lot
of context around why 3D printing is really a paradigm shift. And how is that changing
manufacturing and disrupting the industry? So his perspective on the issue is that 3D printing
is really a disruptive force, it's going to eliminate some jobs and create other kinds of jobs. It
is democratizing manufacturing, reducing the barriers to entry and many of the firms in the
future instead of selling products might just be selling designs that can be 3D printing. As a
result, many of the customers are also becoming manufacturers and he shares some interesting
case studies as part of this interview.

Hi, we are here today to discuss issues around intellectual property in the context of 3D printing
given that 3D printing is available everywhere now. And we are fortunate to have with us John
Hornick, who's the partner at the law firm Finnegan in Washington. And he's also helped set
up the 3D printing working group at the firm. So John, thanks for joining us and spending time
with us. >> Thank you, it's my pleasure to be here. >> First of all, you have over 30 years of
experience in the field, but you've recently over the last year or so focused on 3D printing
issues. Give us a sense of the work you've done in this area. >> Well it's been several years
now actually. But the work that we do is mostly intellectual property related. My firm is an
intellectual property law firm, that's all we do. We have about 350 lawyers. And I realized
several years ago, well actually I've read in several places that 3D printing present a lot of
issues for intellectual property, but it never said what they were. So I thought well, I'm going
to figure out what they are. And so I started diving deeply into it, and the deeper I got into it I
realized well, this has implications for really all types intellectual property, all types of
technology. Many of our clients, maybe most of our clients, so I started to realize that we could
actually formalize our practice in that area. We'd been doing work in that area for many years
it was mostly called rapid prototyping. >> Yeah. >> It's only have been with in the last few
years that companies and others have started to refer to it as 3D printing added in
manufacture. When I realized that we could formalize our practice in that space and around the
same time we started to see the clients were getting curious about it. So the two kind of came
together at the same time. >> I had the opportunity to meet you at one conference, I believe
last year in New York. One of the things that sort of stuck in my mind there is sort of your
framing of the micro level impacts and the macro level impacts of 3D printing. Could you share
more- >> Sure. >> On that. >> Well on a micro level, because of machines, the machines have
the potential to make a part of a product in one build basically, no assembly required, you
eliminate a lot of machines. In traditional manufacturing, you might have had 12 machines, 12
operators and 12 different operations that had to be used to make some particular part. Now
you might be able to make that entire part or maybe that entire product in one build, that
eliminates a lot of machines, eliminates a lot of labour. Also the technology really allows you
to design in ways that you've never been able to design before. It used to be that we had to
design for how products could be manufactured. Now we don't have any limitations really on
how they can be manufactured. So we can do things that we were never able to do before. First
of all, the designs can be very different from anything that we've seen. But it just a kind of
simple examples are you could make nonlinear holes, you can build honeycomb structures
easily, you can have variable wall this is. You can have semi porous materials but more
importantly, you don't have to have square edges, you don't have to have square corners. I think
design with 3D printing can be much more organic, maybe much more like mother nature. But
in addition to that with 3D printing, the economies are very different. With mass production
you have to have economies of scale to make it cost effective. With 3D printing, you can make
one product and it's as cost effective to make one product, because it is to make a million
products. Also it lands itself to mass customization instead of making million products are
all the same, you can make a million products that are different. So those on a micro level,
those are the effects that I see, I think that everybody sees. On the macro level, I think we have
the potential for creating jobs and having a manufacturing renaissance in countries with high
intellectual capital, but also high labor costs like the US and UK and Australia and even
Japan. It seems like we might be having a manufacturing renaissance. 3D printing can be very
disruptive of traditional business models. We might be eliminating jobs in some
regard, because it's changing the way that we do things. But it might be creating entirely new
jobs at the same time, and entirely new job ideas, and also startups that have never existed
before. >> People when they come into the lab and when they see the potential of this, it sort
of opens up their mind. And people often say that 3D printing it represents a paradigm shift. Do
you agree? >> I think it is a paradigm shift, because it has the potential to democratize
manufacturing. So an example I often use is hammers. I don't know how many companies in
the world make hammers. But let's just say there are five companies or ten companies that
make large numbers of hammers. So there's five or ten companies, but with the democratization
of manufacturing, you could have a 1,000 companies or 10,000 companies or 100,000
companies all making hammers, because 3D printing essentially eliminates barriers to
entry. Anyone, even a small company, even a garage shop can start to make products or parts
as long as they have the right equipment to do so. And the other thing that can happen is
that, some companies may start to shift from selling products to selling designs. And also we
may start to see customers become manufacturers. A great example of that is a situation I know
of where a company that needs turbine blades for power generation, they have to replace these
turbine blades every few years. And now what they're doing is they're using 3D printing not to
make new blades, but to repair the blades that they had. So we have the customer essentially
becoming a manufacturer. And this is great for the company that needs the blades, but it's
terrible for the company that makes the blades. So that company that makes the blades might
eventually say, well why are selling blades? Maybe we should just sell the design for the
blades. So you see they might realize that really doesn't make any sense for us to continue to
manufacture. We can shift that burden to our customers or maybe to independent
fabricators. And we can get out of the manufacturing business, cut a lot of overhead. Maybe
still make a lot of profit from selling the designs, because they can be very valuable. So those
things together are a major paradigm shift in how businesses are organized. Companies that for
example are being manufacturers today, may turn out to be design houses in ten years. >> So
to sort of close the discussion, give us your thoughts on the future. >> As I said, I think there's
going to be an increased amount of 3D printing away from control. There will still always be
a certain amount of 3D printing that's done within control. But I think it would be a mistake to
assume that the within control world is just going to continue going the way its going and it
really won't be affected too much. I think the more and more 3D printing we have away from
the control, the more pressure there's going to be on the with in control world. And the example
I gave before is company might realize that it doesn't make sense to sell products
anymore. Maybe they can't sell products anymore. There's no demand for them anymore,
because people only want designs. And if the company won't make its own designs available,
then whoever needs a design will just go on the Internet and they will find a design, a
reasonable substitute or they'll take a 3D scanner and they'll scan the part that they need. They'll
create their own design and print it out themselves, and that will eliminate the need not only
for the parts sold by that manufacturer, but for the designs sold by the manufacturer. So I think
we'll see a lot of disruption of industry, I think we will see some companies fail that don't
adapt. We'll see a lot more smaller companies, fewer larger companies. In the intellectual
property space, I think we'll see companies start to beef up their IP portfolios. They'll do
whatever they can there.
We will start to see increased amounts of litigation over, not only in the space where 3D printers
are made and materials that are sold for them, and the process that are involved. But also in the
area where they're used, which could be virtually anywhere. I also think we'll start to see calls
for legislation, new legislation. One area that we will probably see that demand or pressure on
congress to enact laws that would provide broader copyright protection. Copyright protection
for digital scans for example, I don't think it will happen. Will probably also see pressure on
congress to make it more likely to be in Frenchmen if someone makes a copy from a digital
scan or scanning a part and then printing it, make that infringement. And that's possible, but
over time I think we're just going to see IP laws become narrower not broader. We're in a period
right now where IP laws are really unprecedented attack or pull back.

We have a court decisions resulted in a lot of patents being invalidated. We have the America
Invents Act, which was intended to strengthen patents, but the result of it is that roughly in 80
to 90% of patents that are being challenged are being canceled. And we also have congress that
wants to make it harder for certain types of patent owners to sue. The fair use exception in
copyright is becoming broader, and courts have been chipping away at copyright owners rights,
especially in the software area for years. I think those trends are going to continue. So I think
that we're going to see narrower IP laws over time. So even though incumbents who own IP
rights might want to see IP rights be broadened. I think it's more likely that IP rights in general
would be narrowed over time.

A Look into the Past and the Future

So in this video, let's look at some numbers on the trends that we have heard about.

We will look at the research from three consulting firms and they are Wohlers Associates, Price
water house Coopers, and Gardner. Now two of them focus on market growth. And the third
focuses on how manufacturers are adopting 3D printing into their operations. Now, keep in
mind that in many of these projections, there is a healthy optimism there, and we expect that
these numbers get revised every year.

For example, there was quite a bit of skepticism about the market for 3D printers in early to
mid 2015 but the sales of 3D printers, particularly at the desktop price point have far exceeded
expectations and the projections are very now optimistic for 2016 and for the next four years
as well. Now one of the first things that I do when I'm looking at trend information is to analyze
some search terms on the website which is trends.google.com. So this allows you to get a proxy
measure of end user interest in the subject that you're researching about. So I put in two search
terms. One is 3D printer and 3D printing and the search interest graph shows that the search
activity around these two terms exploded just about after 2010. And, it reached a few peaks in
the period 2013 to 2015. And a significant drop in the mid to later months of 2015. Now in
2016, there has been some resurgence of interest and if you also look at the stock prices of the
big firms in the space. For example, if you look up 3D Systems or Stratasys, you'll find that
their stocks have been quite badly hit in 2015 and they are now back up in 2016 with a few
good sales numbers from these firms and some of the other numbers we'll see shortly in these
research reports.

So let's start with the numbers in the Wohlers Associates report in 2016. Now they are a very
respected firm in this space and bring out an annual state of the industry report,

which by the way is rather expensive so it's difficult to get access to it, but we have a few
summary items or highlights from their report. According to their report, additive
manufacturing, which is another term that industry people like to use for 3D printing, grew at
about compound annual growth rate of 25.9% and the value was just over $5 billion in 2015
which is pretty significant.

Another number that was pretty striking in 2015, which was not expected, was the number of
desktop 3D printers which is printers under $5000 as classified in that report. And the numbers
about 278,000 which

was way more than earlier estimates by several firms. They also found a significant growth in
what's called metal additive manufacturing or metal 3D printing, and of course in desktop 3D
printers. Looking back a few years, the industry is over 30 years old.

And the report points out that the compound annual growth rate for the industry is about 26.2%,
which

over a period of ten or 15 years is very significant.

Now let's change tracks and look at two studies from Gardner.

One is their popular the Hype cycle which indicates the diffusion of new technologies. The
Hype cycle for 3D printing which was released in 2015 gives us some interesting perspectives
on the growth of 3D printing in different areas.
Now, the Hype cycle suggests that medical applications are widespread now as MOS
customization is practical and very relevant as a use case for 3D printing. Well you have
already heard the examples about hearing aids. We have now a common hip and knee
replacements, dental implants, and of course braces as well. One example of braces which is
very popular is the firm Invisalign, or rather the product Invisalign. Where over 80,000
implants are printed and shipped everyday, and these are all custom unique to the person. One
of the topic of the braces, an interesting story of the college student who scanned his teeth and
printed braces by himself at the fraction of the cost that Invisalign or some similar firms would
charge.

So this all of an example of a second order of disruption happening to disruptors in the

market. So, an individual with the power to create and with the tools available on the desktop
is now disrupting. A firm which was disrupting earlier encumbrance in the braces market, so
that's an interesting example on the side. So let's get back to the Hype cycle now. Another trend
to note is that the content creation or capture around 3D models has become better, cheaper,
and more accessible. With easy to use software and easy to use scanners as well. Some experts
believe that this might have been an important obstacle in the option of 3D printing. And along
with the availability of service bureaus, such as 3D hubs and shape ways, we are now at a
stage where there is significant adoption of 3D printing across different areas. And we'll see
some more of that in the next report as well. They also found that specialized medical
applications such as 3D bioprinting for research and development and for organ transplants are
still about five to ten years out. And we will hear more about this from an expert in the field
later in the course as well. One interesting statistic they point out around classroom, 3D printing
says that they expect to reach maturity in over ten years.

I'm not sure I agree with this forecast as we see significant push by public and private
institutions to get 3D printing into the curriculum. Now there have been several reports of
initiatives by governments in UK and China, among other countries to promote wide spreaded
option, and some of these initiatives are looking at you know for example some reports last
year the China was looking at a 3D printer in every year secondary school, we don't have
conformation on that yet. Interestingly, when we talk about China, it turns out, the firm IDC
predicts that China will overtake the US in terms of local printer shipments and perhaps the
focus on schools might be one reason for increasing adoption of 3D printers in China. We have
quite a few learners who are educators, and we would love to hear from them in the forums
about this trend. Let's move on and review some of the findings from a survey done with
120 manufacturing professionals by PWC on how US manufacturers are adopting 3D
printing into their operations, and how they expect the technology to play out in the future.

Now PWC started out this array in 2014 so this is the result from their second annual
survey. And this site, an interesting statistic again from IBC that global spending of printers
reached about $11 billion in 2015 and they're forecasted to reach about $27 billion by
2019. Some of the interesting trends from their survey. Their survey results point out that more
than two-thirds of US manufacturers are using 3D printing in some ways and mostly
prototyping right now. But there is a good percentage also looking at final products compared
to what they found two years back. Expectations are rather rising that 3D printing will soon be
available for high volume production in the future. And this is again in a timeframe of about
three to five years, but at the same time, at present, most of them still believe that it is suitable
for low volume or for specialized products as well. An interesting segment of the market which
is for after market and obsolete parts seems to attract a lot of attention and the survey results
pointed that out as well. The trends again are about the same over the two years that they've
seen. In the next three or five years, they're seeing over two-thirds of the manufacturers who
will use 3D printing for all their obsolete parts, which is a little decreased from what they saw
in 2014. Now finally, to close this discussion, let's look at the threads they identified in this
survey.

So the top two threats the respondents identified were the challenges due to supply chain
restructuring and the threats due to intellectual property or threats to intellectual property
rather.

We will get an opportunity to discuss intellectual property in more detail with a lawyer who
specializes in this area.

Another interesting trend they see is a changed relationship with customers, which might force
them to change the way they are, they do business. And this is pretty similar to what you heard
from Professor Alec Trainflus in the first course where he talk about the trend that customers
are now creators and in many cases, co-creators with the firm. And finally, they see a big
concern around finding talent to explore this technology and which is where and opportunities
for you to build expertise are possible.

3D Printing Use Cases

So in this video, we are speaking to Gerard Garcia, who works at Ultimaker, and who has some
work experience at Shapewood as well. So he does a reasearch on the major use cases for 3D
printing at the desktop level. One of the interesting insights that I have learned from him is that
3D printing at the desktop level is being used in big way by businesses as well. Over 40% to
50% of the use cases that he's look at are coming from businesses which was surprising.

Another perspective that he'll share with us is the spread of applications, where 3D printing is
being used predominantly from the desktop printers as well. >> I'm Jerry Garcia. I lived in
Barcelona, now I live in the Netherlands. And around 3 years ago I started to get really
interested and passionate about the 3D printing, because of my background in engineering. I
worked at for a while, and right now I'm helping the Ultimaker Team just to make better
printers. First we should start with how 3D printing is being used? And there's really two big
groups, we could call it rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing. On the rapid prototyping
there's two slightly different path that people use as reprinting. First, of all is constant
models. So basically in the design phase, it's getting the yes for a design, so getting an
approval. And what you want to do there is basically communicate your design. Usually, you
have a model and you post-process it, you paint it, you make it look nice, so it can communicate
a lot to either customers, stakeholders, or your boss.

Then what you have also are functional prototypes. So those are prototypes that have a
purpose. And usually, they are used to avoid mistakes before going into production. And the
most common ways to use them as function, and fit testing, ergonomics and field evaluation,
and also manufacturability verification. So sometimes before going to manufacturing, you
have to check that that design is actually manufacturable. So you prototype in 3D printing, later
on producing with traditional manufacturing tools.

Then there's a big chunk of the market as well that uses it for lessons. So basically finding a
way to involve students in science technology, engineering and maths. That's mainly for
primary and high school. When we look at universities, they use it more as companies use it. So
for functional prototyping. Then we have the manufacturing environment and we can
manufacture tools, jigs and fixtures. That basically manufacturing aids that help the assembly
process, and handy testing to basically be repeatable and more efficient. And then we have the
main purpose of 3D printing where you can Just cost to make and used parts. So very complex
geometries. Parts that have to be tailor made for example for a patient, or just a one off
project. And there's even some start ups and small companies that are starting to use it for a
batch production.

There's no significant difference when it comes to size of the model. Right now, desktop 3D
printers can already start printing with

varied technical materials. But when it comes to big bars models of course, SOS machines have
a bigger build platform usually. However you could always think that they are not so
fast. because you can always build a big object out of parts that are printed in smaller printers,
and those printers are going to be faster than one big print. Then of course we [INAUDIBLE]
grew it together, but of course it depends . So it's really you have to make a case study for each
user basically.

Diving is there to stay what we see is that internal manufacturing. So, tools, jigs, and pictures
as the industry starts to note is the benefit of using those. And how much it to use them now. We
expect a lot of growth in that sector. Mainly in the industry on the professional side of
things, we believe that there are four clear groups. Those are engineering, product design,
manufacturing, and research. And then there are some more niche industries like could be
aerospace, architecture, fashion, or medical. For those, engineering and research you could
either, they use 3D printing in a rather similar way. There's a lot of functional prototyping, for
example, for field testing and ergonomics or just simply fit testing. You build a part and you
want to see how that part can assemble In the whole product that you are building. A lot of
tools are being built for engineering in the R&D department and also in research. Tools to hold
electronics in place, and to test in a repeatable manner. Or there's also a new concept that's
called open source lab equipment, and 3D printing supports that very well, because of
flexibility and the cheap cost of FDM 3D printing. There's even some industries and some
companies that are using less of FDM 3D printers, and their main material, the cheapest one,
PLA, to make final parts of steel. So they to make lost PLA casting. Then we can move to
manufacturing. And in manufacturing they have a great advantage in the manufacturing
floor. So in the core production process by using tools, jigs and fixtures that are 3D
printed. They can save huge amounts of money, and huge amounts of time because a traditional
methods would take maybe two to three weeks. You need to get the quote. You need to order
the part. The part is milled Basically, it's made out of mantle, it occupies a space, it's very
heavy. With 3D printing, you can just have the part custom made. If it doesn't work, you can
make an alteration. If your part changes, you can just iterate the CAD design. You don't have
to keep stock, you have all your files in your digital computer It just makes the process so much
faster, and so much efficient. You can create new business like, let's say custom ear plugs. You
have a scan of your ear you basically have a one-off product that you made, tailor made for
each person. That's something that was not possible before. You can also decentralize
manufacturing. You can build at home, or you can build it in a lab. But the company can just
the files the user builds it themselves. Then there's a little of potential as well in the medical
sector. For example these are the same readings from a computer screen, and from data of a
CT scan or MRI scan industry. When having a physical model. So we found that there are quite
a lot of surgeons. And since they started to 3D print the organs or bones of patients, their
techniques and the surgery blooding really dramatically, technically change. So now instead
they can cut open a lens and the recovery time of the patients is way higher. They have to use
less surgical room time. So basically we translate in savings of money. It also translate in
adding quality of life for the patient. It's just a truly game changer. Similarly with
prosthetics. Now they are much cheaper and can be tailor-made exactly for your volume,
and device innovation. The medical industry can use rapid prototyping as any other
industry. They also need tools and rapid prototyping enables them to just get to market
faster. To just increase the speed of research breakthroughs as well In any field basically.

Well I truly believe that taking this course will enable to

either get to know how to implement 3D printing in your company. So your company just takes
advantage of the new technologies. It I truly believe that 3D printing can be used in any
company. Either for promotioning in the marketing sign, for just prototyping, getting to market
faster in product development, to helping with assembly and manufacturing. But it is also a
way to just unleash the creativity in you. So being able to know how to use CAD modeling and
just have an idea.. Next day you go to make your piece in the fab lab, you get access to the 3-
D printer. You just put your file in there and then overnight you have a print, you have a new
model, you have something physical that you've created. I think that's basically empowering
people to just make the world a better place.

The reason why that is is probably because companies have so much to win out of just getting
a 3D printer. And spending 2,000 or 3,000 Euros for a 3D printer is not that much of a big deal
for a company. Otherwise at home or a person that likes do it yourself stuff, you still need to
have a technical background. You need You know CAD modeling skills, you need to be
creative, a lot of hours and understand how material interacts with the printer. It's not yet just
plug and play, so since there are not a lot of courses like yours, it's very difficult to embrace
3D printing, at this point. I think for the industry, the industry will continue to benefit from all
the 3D printing possibilities. Probably the industry is looking forward to just bringing unused
parts of metal and really good materials,. And at the part I am most excited about is as you
mentioned the entrepreneurs, cause you are just enabling people that have good ideas to just
make them come true. And make their, from their passion, they can make their own
business. So, so that's really something.. Is with changing lives with people and through
Kickstarter, and through Corsera all these kind of projects I think they are great. And then on
the home side I think it's more difficult. But as soon as there's someone that reels that cat
somewhere that just can't be learned by anyone. So basically when my mom can start to cat
model then that's when the disruption's going to happen.

Venture Capitalist's View of the Industry

In this video we are speaking to Zach Sheldon who is a partner at Lux Capital and he will give
us a slightly different prospective as an investor in firms that are building 3D printer software
or hardware platforms. And that gives us an industry view on what has been happening over
the last 10 or 15 years in this space. So we'll talk about some trends in the hardware, the
software, and finally on the content side of there. So content refers to the 3D designs that we
are finding on platforms such as Thingiverse or YouImagine. And that content library is
growing exponentially everyday in fact. So let's hear from Zach.

>> I'm Zack Schildhorn, I'm a partner with Lux Capital. We're a venture capital firm based in
New York and Silicon Valley with $700 million under management. And we focused
exclusively on futuristic science and technology companies. So if it sounds like science fiction,
we're probably invested. Our companies are doing everything from nuclear waste cleanup to
3D printing, surgical robotics, space communications, launching satellites, driving
autonomous vehicles. It's all very exciting stuff. This is a space that I've personally been
passionate about for a long time. I have a background in material science and so sort of had a
natural affinity for this idea that you could start manipulating matter in a new way. And started
focusing on the sector, probably over five years ago. We made our first investment in 2012 in
company called Shapeways, that's now quite a significant 3D printing market place and
platform, that lets anybody make anything in a lot of different materials and they do it all with
the highest end equipment so you don't have to have anything at home. That was our first
investment we've subsequently made two more investments directly in 3D printing companies,
and other investments generally in the 3D ecosystem. The other investments in 3D printing are
one called Sols Systems, also headquartered here in New York City. And Sols is focused on a
very vertical application of 3D printing. They're using scanning and printing technology to
make customized footwear with a broader vision to make really customized anything for
anybody. And it's a very cool and exciting company that's here in New York and then another
reason investment that we haven't disclosed as much about but is, I would say, on very much
the cutting edge of what is possible is a company called Desktop Metal. And Desktop Metal in
broad strokes is working on making it possible to print the highest performance metal parts
directly in a desktop office environment. As an investor, we're always trying to figure out how
we can best allocate our capital. And we have millions of dollars to put to work and we don't
want to lose it. So, what's really important before we start making investments and just cool
sounding ideas or great technologies is understanding what's happening in a market place, in
an industry. And within 3D printing we spent about a year analyzing the whole space. Looking
at every start-up. Looking at big companies. Looking at how companies were using the
technology, what we thought was going to happen. And one of the first things we really focused
on were the technology trends. How did we think this was going to evolve. And When you
think about 3D printing there are really two important aspects, just like printing a document on
your computer. You need to have the digital file that you're going to print and then you need
to have the printer itself that makes it come out. So if you think about it in terms of content
creation and then production, those are sort of the two absolutely necessary ingredients to
be able to have a functioning ecosystem. So we focused on that and we tried to understand
what was happening in each of those categories. On the printer side it was quite obvious what
used to be these very expensive isolated machines only used in research labs of the top 500
companies. We're slowly, but in some cases very quickly, getting out into the world
and becoming accessible to anyone at much lower prices. So with the launch of things like
Maker Bot that came out of some open source university projects. All of a sudden you have,
for just a few thousand dollars, a capability that was once tens of thousands of dollars in the
hands of very few. And of course as a result you start seeing many go into the field and that
creates competitive pressure. Now you have 15 companies all trying to make desktop 3D
printers. You have the big companies that's saying, what's going on here? We need to start
lowering our prices. We need to start coming up with better machines so that we don't get our
business ripped out from under our feet. And that competitive dynamic and that new entrance
brought new capital in and new ideas and I would say just generally much more
momentum around the technology for the actual printers. So you saw new materials coming to
market at much faster pace. You saw prices dropping, you saw new capabilities coming to
bare. You saw the machines getting Faster, people focused on making them easier to use. And
for us, as an investment firm we said this is great for the industry, really hard to pick a
winner. So as a firm we decided we're probably not going to place our bets early on on
actual 3D printer technology unless it's something that is so revolutionary. But let's focus on
how people are going to use this technology. So that was our investment bent and what we saw
happening on the hardware side. On the content creation side, so the files that were going to be
printed. And you had a sort of similar dynamic taking place, where what used to these very,
expensive, isolated, esoteric, types of software packages. Where all of a sudden, these
capabilities were becoming available to everybody. So something that used to maybe cost
$5,000 for a single software license for a CAD-trained engineer at a large engineering
company. Now some of those capabilities were started to get released in free or open source
programs. Sometimes, not even based on computer but on the web. And then finally, we saw
actually another hardware technology coming to bare and coming down in cost and that is in
the form of 3D sensors. And instead of having a straight 2D camera imagine having a 3D
camera that actually captures the depth data about a scene or an object, and that lets you all of
a sudden capture content that's in he real world. And very easily turn it into something that can
be manipulated in an existing program or printed directly. And so we say all of these things as
similar trends of going from what used to be very expensive and complex to becoming much
easier and more accessible to everybody. And we thought that was a really good sign for what
thee future of the industry could hold. So I think one common misconception that a lot of
people had and continue to have about 3D printing is that this is a manufacturing technology
that's going to replace everything. It's not true, in fact 3D printing today is still in most cases
much more expensive than traditional manufacturing methods. And there's a challenge in 3D
printing, as objects grow in size t hey become exponentially more expensive to produce. So
why would anybody use this technology if it's more expensive and really hard to make bigger
size things? You know what, what we realized, and I think what people often miss about
3D printing is it's not about replacing what you can make already but about making things that
were never possible before. And what this means is that because of the technology, you can
produce geometries that you could never manufacture another way. So imagine a device that
has incredibly intricate internal structure, almost like a seashell or something like that, like a
very organic shape. That would be almost impossible to produce through traditional
manufacturing methods so it's an advantage of the technology. And another advantage is that
you don't have the same loss of scale that you see in traditional manufacturing because there's
no tooling, because everything is digital. You can produce just one of something and it's the
same cost as producing hundreds or thousands of something. Or you could produce many
iterations of a similar thing without incurring any additional expense. So when you're thinking
about it from a business perspective, the question always has to be, how can I exploit these
unique capabilities of being able to create on parallel the geometries and also to produce things
on demand to help my business case? And if you look at how real businesses are using this
technology today you'll see that almost all of them flow in to those Used cases. So let's start
with the aerospace which is been one of the earliest adopters in military in aerospace companies
for 3D printing technology. Boeing has leverage 3D printing to make over 20,000 parts. That
are now flying on FAT and fighter jets. Now what's interesting about these parts, some of the
early parts that they started making with these convoluted air ducts. So trying to get air to flow
around the really tight spaces of a cock pit to cool critical equipment. These weren't
for structural parts, the plane wasn't going to fall apart if the part failed, but they had to have a
very unique shape that is hard to manufacture. And in fact by using 3D printing, they were able
to not only cut out a lot of manufacturing steps but also reduce the weight of the part. And for
anyone that knows anything about aerospace, the more weight you can reduce, you get
dramatic fuel savings, which saves on costs tremendously over time. So that's a huge deal. And
by using 3D printing, I think they were able to take 32 different components, add the 787
Dreamliner. And use those in 3D printing to save weight, so it's a really big change for them in
terms of weight saving and the ability to reduce manufacturing steps. Also let's say you have a
part that does fail or you need to replace. Instead of needing to hold hundreds of them
or thousands of them in inventory in a warehouse somewhere all of a sudden, you can just print
one up and have it shipped out to the site. So there are a lot of advantages in aerospace. I'll
move on to some other examples sort of in the medical space and taking advantage as 3D
printing. Most in ear hearing aids so kind of like these ear buds the custom fit inside people's
ears. The shells for those hearing aids are 3D printed. And the reason is, is because everybody
has a different ear canal on the inside, just like everybody has a different fingerprint, everyone's
ear canal on the inside is different. And in order to make a part that fits in there perfectly it has
to be unique for every person. So you could either have a craftsman hand carve a custom ear
mold for every person or you can take a digital scan and then 3D print the part perfectly in the
ideal material. And so that's exactly what they do. And 90% of all in-the-ear hearing aids are
already 3D printed today.
 A View from the Trenches

Well I'm Adam Clark, Chief Strategy Officer at Tangible Solutions. We're additive
manufacturing company rather than being a service provider we did start out strictly as a
service provider, slaying parts off the machines. Quickly saw that there was an education grant
and we came out of the defense industry, so we really have three pillars of business. That's our
defense market. That's a commercial market and academia. All three of those pillars kind of
overlap. When we talk about academia we do a lot of curriculum development, work force
development. We also do some servicing, parts for the class or the students or whatnot. For
defense it's more on the research and development side. Everything from DMLS all the way
down to the thermoplastics. Just understanding what's happening at the molecular level of some
prints. And then on the other end of the spectrum for defense it's the enterprise solution of
additive manufacturing. Where the technology should be inside an organization? What levels,
skill sets? Some of the things I want to talk about today. And then we have our commercial
sector which a lot of the things I just mention overlapping to the commercial sector cause there
are companies that we consult and deliver professional corporate training and then obviously
servicing parts. We're doing prototyping, but our goal is to move towards the
industrialization of additive manufacturing metals in particular. I really ramping up to be more
of a contract manufacturer rather than just prototyping and we're seeing that trend a little bit
more over the last year especially, just the way companies are realizing how they can take
advantage of additive manufacturing. So that is Tangible Solutions. It's happening in a couple
of different areas, and each one is on their own timeline if you will. The hot one right now is
medical devices, and I think what really drives that is the fact that their relatively small pieces,
spinal implants, hip implants. There's a lot of softwares that are coming on market to really
advance the designs of added a manufactured implants. It's a osteoporosis designs that
encourage bone growth. So being able to achieve those type of geometries and the engineering
behind that and the cost drivers. We're really cutting down a lot cost because we're taking out
material which is time and material on the machine, ultimately lowering the cost. You can run
it at 24/7. It's more on demand. This type of logistics of how this is all happening is at a small
level right now, but it's how we do things now with the metal stuff that will really impact the
industrial OEM. They are starting to get into the game, like I was saying earlier, it is more on
exploratory type ventures right now. Caterpillar in particular has a capital ventures, a wing
where they're going out and they're investing in service bureaus like ours. Because they're
realizing they don't have enough service providers to provide them with the parts, so they're
happy to go and inject a million dollars into a company to hold specific type of equipment to
run their part. I think the next hot market is the UAV market combined with the aerospace
market. What's really holding that up is some of the work that's happening over what we call
across the fence, across the street over there on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. They're going
to hold a lot of keys to the standards that are going to be set and used in the industry. One, they
have a lot of money, because it's DOD, and they can afford to do a lot of high risk long term
research and development that won't really come to fruition in industry for ten, maybe 20 or 30
years. So they're investing in tit now and they're investing more and more. Doing conversations
with people, and they're trying to figure out how to get additive manufactured parts evaluated
and then collect enough certifiable data that we can now put this on a flight critical part, or this
can be a flight critical part. So those are some barriers of entry. Now all the OEM's in
aerospace, they're buying their own machines. Airbus is going to buy, like, 200 concept laser
machines in Europe over the next two years. So they're ramping up their capability in-house
but they're going to need more they going to be going out and decentralizing all the
manufacturing go exactly where they need it. A longer term market after that would say is the
automotive. It's just such high quantity I think it's still trying to find it's identity. Space is a hard
one because it's kind of in the middle of everything. And it's a very wide spectrum and materials
and goals that we're trying to accomplish. Printing structures on Mars to printing wrenches up
in space, to having 3D printers that release and then print a big satellite. It's a very wide
spectrum. Love to play in that market, but it's going to be a little bit of time and it's just
different. So for us we're saying very focused on additive manufacturing in the medical field,
getting our ISO certifications and stepping up into more contract manufacturing. [SOUND] It's
a combination of a couple things that are really coming to a head. The advances in the
technology, people have been working on it for 30 years. Talked about design, topology,
optimization, that kind of thing and then that workforce that's coming out with additive in
mind. Those three factors, social factors if you will, are sort of coming to a point where they're
about to collide in a hard way over the next two to three years, and that's going to drive a lot of
this industrialization. I think we're finding more and more questions every year and that will
always be reformulating and trying to understand standards and trying to get to a point where
every print is perfect. Which is we have a lot of work to do but it's going to be a very interesting
time over the next couple of years and how of the market moves because it's not just one factor
and those are the underlying trends. You saw everyone started missing earnings, all the big
sellers and everyone started, you can't look at the stock market because people buy and sell on
emotion every day. And that's what they did, they bought on emotion because they thought
they read into the hype. We put on a breakfast briefly that was literally called beyond the
hype. Because we want people to know about this technology, and if you just buy and sell
and think it's high whenever, look at what the OEMs are doing, look at their activities. Their
merger and acquisition activity, their investment activity, how they're strategically doing things
in design news about this new design for additive. They're doing publicity stunts through
putting together content for some of the magazines so it's starting to come out to the
industry. And they're letting that trick a lot because they want their suppliers to get ready. And
they're realizing they probably need some new suppliers to come in and they're doing their
homework right now on who's going to be the best. So we're trying to position ourselves to be
right there when they're ready.

Cutting Edge Applications

So in this video, we look at some of leading edge applications of 3D printing. First off, I think most
of you would have seen this in the first course with Professor Ali Kranfridge, as well. He talks about
3D printing a wrench in space. The firm made in space incorporated put up a 3D printer on the
space station, you have to be careful about the lack of gravity and how the filament or the excursion
material will work with zero gravity. They're printing some replacement parts in space, but there's
an interesting project called Archinot. Which involves building a robotic 3D printer that can
autonomously 3D print a portion of a structure in orbit. Grab on to non-3D printed parts from orbit,
and assemble all of them to construct large and complex space structures. This is still in planning,
so this is about four or five years out into actually getting any results from this project. But that's
an interesting vision, and you can think of potentially creating structures to inhabit the moon, and
maybe one day, go to Mars, as well. Another interesting trend that's sort of highlights what is
possible, is 3D printing completely functional objects. Now, one of the developments, which is a
desktop printer currently priced at about $8,000, is called the Voxel. It's a multi-material 3D printer,
and it can print plastic as traditional FDM machine, and conduct them in together to create circuits
while the part is being printed. At the end of the print, you'll have a fully functional product. All you
need is a chip in there to make the parts work with some cord that you put in it. Another interesting
example is developed by a team at MIT, were they hacked a commercially available 3D printer to
print it. A robot body with both solids and liquids. And they created a hydraulic robot. Of course,
they still did need to put in a battery sensor and a computing unit, but we already have technology
being developed to 3D print batteries. And there are firms in the space who are now printing, for
example, the antenna for your iPhone is being printed on the board itself with liquid conductive
inks. The time is not far, well, maybe we will be printing robots that are functional off the printer
itself. So, a revolutionary concept in navigation is one of digital materials. A term coined by Neil
Gershenfeld in 2005. And you heard about this in the discussion with Professor Hard Libson in the
previous course with Professor Alex Rindfish. And the vision for digital materials is to allow for the
creation of a 3D assembler, which can work at a very tiny scale in our molecular, or at the nano
scale and assemble products in three dimensions.

Think of these as three dimensional pixels or voxels, as Dr. Hard Libson calls it, which are used to
create objects, and then perhaps disassemble them as well. The assembly is from discrete units
and is digital, rather than the analog mode compared to the other 3D printing technology we see
today, provides for a lot more flexibility and accuracy in what you create and then potentially
disassemble those products, as well. Another interesting trend that is quite tasty, quite frankly, is
that of 3D printed food. And rapid prototyping really is a requirement in trying out any recipe until
you get it right. Now, it's only natural to consider applications for 3D printing in food. And here are
some examples. Now, two firms, Foodini and CocoJet are looking at printing food and different
structures using liquefied ingredients. The structure and the texture can be varied to give
innovative shapes, and the structure, of course, also impacts the eating experience and the taste
as well. The developments right now are focusing on making this repeatable, making it more
accurate. So, these are incremental improvements in printing food. Not really revolutionary. Many
of the desktop 3D printers can be hacked to work with liquefied food. In fact, a group of students
at the university modified one of the auto makers to 3D print chocolate as part of a programming
workshop, where kids will learn programming, and their reward at the end would be they get to
print out a cookie for themselves with some chocolate on it. Of course, an advancement for food
printing is really when you start re-engineering food and create synthetic food essentially with
proteins, 3D printed into meat. It may not sound like a good idea to many of us, but it's increasingly
become possible with advancements in technology. Let's look at another application where we
might now be able to download and print our medicine. A company recently got approval from the
FDA for a drug for epilepsy, where the firm uses 3D printing to create a more porospil.

5:40

The structure means the pill dissolves more quickly in contact with liquid, making it much easier to
swallow high doses compared to a conventional tablet. It also allows layers of medication to be
packaged more tightly In precise dosages, and the day of customized medicine may not be too
far. So, we close this discussion with a lead into bioprinting, and you will hear more about this in
the video with an expert on the field, Dr. Tolou Shokuhfar, at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Bioprinting

Bioprinting is a mechanism which includes software and hardware for the design of living tissue
and organs. The field originated about 15 years back, but significant advances over the past few
years have got us to a stage where artificial tissue is being used widely for research and
development. For drug development and some early experiments in organ development are also
showing promise.
There are about a dozen forms in this space, but it still early days. Gartner Research Firm
predicts that we are about five to ten years away from maturity of this field, which quite frankly, is
not to far out.

The scale of some of the tissue that people are able to create and use, and this is available
commercially as well, is still very small. And as we look at 3D printing organs, one of the biggest
obstacles researchers face is to overcome the challenge of figuring out creating 3D printed blood
vessels. So let's find out more from Dr. Shokuhfar about advances in bioprinting and her own
work in the area. >> My name is Tolou Shokufar. I'm associate professor of bioengineering at
The University of Illinois in Chicago. I have two major research areas as a focus of my research
lab, which is in-situ bioelectro microscopy of biological tissues and proteins for diagnostics of
disease as well as nanomaterials and biomaterials for regenerative medicine.

As a main focus of my bionanomaterial research in nanomedicine, I also work with 3D bioprinting

for regenerative medicine.

Can you possibly make something living? So that is the idea. Can we bring the idea of 3D
printing into 3D bioprinting? So, what bioprinting is, in simple words, we can say how about we
try to construct something that is used in the body, in a living system. With this, we can even
categorize the 3D bioprinting systems. Either we can 3D bioprint a scaffold, and then use that to
replicate or replace parts of the body that is un-functional.

Or we can actually print living cells and then use that to actually replace an organ that is not
functional. Well, I have to add that the second part of it is way down the road and is the future
idea of 3D bioprinting that everybody is hoping to achieve. Going back again to 3D printing of
scaffolds, where you do not have any cells, that is actually a more approachable application of
3D bioprinting right now. Because you don't have to worry about keeping the cells alive, keeping
them functional, providing the environment for them to basically replicate what they have to
do. Rather than that, you can actually print a part of the body that is missing. For example,
scaffolds for bone, those could be a good examples. You can actually use these 3D bioprinter
products to better mimic the properties and the shape of the implant. You can even take CT scan
of a skull, and if there is a case of accident from maxillofacial injuries, so you can make a 3D
scan of the missing part. And you can really replicate, with all the detail, missing part, the
construct from a biologically compatible biomaterial. And that could be replaced for the missing
part. And the human cells by themselves, the tissue by themselves can

encounter the whole scaffold and try to regenerate and mimic the construct. So as a summary, I
would like to say that 3D bioprinting is a next generation, which we all look forward to it. It has
two concepts behind it. One either you can print biomaterials that could be used and implanted
within the body. Or you can actually print cells which the mimic extracellular environment, that
could actually mimic an organic or a tissue in the body.
My research, for now we are focusing on two aspects. We are working on developing certain
type of scaffolds. And with the specific bio-ink, development of that specific bio-ink that can help
the regeneration of nervous system. So we are incorporating and developing our actual
matrix, which would be also in hydrogel-based matrix. We're incorporating some components
which are compatible.

If you think of a bio-ink as a nanocomp or a composite material, we have that hydrogel base. We
have other components that can provide electrical conductivity, they could be graphene based,
which we're incorporating them as well, as well as stem cells. And an additional to that, we
change out the stem cells and some other cases, different bio-inks, to astrocyte cells. And then
we can apply electrical impulses to help and assimilate the regeneration of astrocytes, then to
have a proper external regeneration. We are also starting to work with the GI system. That could
be essential, and very important for toxicology studies. So we're missing, right now, a lot of drug
development. Drug discovery is a billion dollar industry right now. Its suffering through really
coming up with a good method to do discoveries of the drug. Right now, I would say, well, they
have to go through animal studies, and then clinical trials. In many of the cases, the drug actually
would fail in the case with the animal studies and would not even get approval for further
studies. And there are a lot of costs and other ethical issues related to that. As the last example
of what we do in the lab,

we are working with manufacturing 3D printed scaffolds that could be used for lower jaw or
maxillofacial reconstruction. That is extremely valuable for the cases of traumatic injuries. In this
case, we are not bioprinting any cells. Rather, we print an environment consisting of
hydroxyapatite bone forming environment that can replicate those missing part.

The future of bioprinting, and the main, whole, beautiful idea is to maybe at some point we can
save lives.

And really print organs that are not functional at this point, helping people that need, today,
donors of organs. But that's a beautiful future which I see for it. So today, it has been possible,
for example, to 3D bioprint a kidney or a liver.

You look at it it, it actually does look like or feel like coming from a cadaver, a patient recently
passed away. But it is not really functional, is not really working as its supposed to. But that's the
future, so to really take it to the next level, overcome the barriers. Overcome the milestones right
now, and hopefully, make that bioprinted tissue or organ a functional organ. For a future
application, I would like to mention drug screening would be amazing if it's possible to get to that
point where we really don't need to go through all the required steps that may even fail in some
. We can have even the organ on a chip, or a natural organ that we can use for drug testing and
drug screening. We don't need to go through a lot of animal studies, from small scale, all the way
to big animal studies. We then can avoid a lot of unnecessarily required human trials. There is a
lot that I believe 3D bioprinting can offer us, and there is a lot that could be done in future. And I
personally believe that something that might be coming from a Star Trek or science fiction is no
science fiction anymore. Right now, it's just human creativity and how much we are willing and
wanting to make that happen. As long as we desire and as long as dream, I believe that's
possible.

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