A journey down the UK's '3D Tongue' into its mini industrial revolution

Renishaw is not privately-owned: FTSE listed (ticker RSW), a member of the FTSE250, no sign of an unusually major shareholding by directors. Not a bad company, one of the super-exporters whose stock has soared since Brexit

Actually, modern electronics is based on quantum mechanics

I stumbled across a medical report the other week which I at first thought had been written by sci-fi scribe William Gibson - but it's actually real:

Here we report an accidental retinal burn with a femtosecond laser during laser-induced plasma formation in a process of nanoparticle production. - http://www.scielo.br/pdf/abo/v76n5/15.pdf

Of course nano particles are widely used in chemistry, medicine and engineering - they can just be very, very fine powders. As for nanoscale structures, TSMC and Intel are knocking on the gate (groan) of mass produced 10 mn transistors. 'Quantum dots' are already mass produced, and used in phone and TV displays.

""...quantum physics are both rather vague areas, and I suspect that projects involving them are just not as consumer-visible""

There are several technologies which depend on quantum physics, but they are very rarely seen in day-to-day life so very few people have heard of them.

e.g. Semi-conductor electronics (i.e. all modern computer technology), LASERs (fibre optic comms, CDs, DVDs), atomic clocks (GPS), MRI Scanners...

<Coughs>

Nanotech...

..is not just Buckyballs. You need to create structures at nanometre scale to make MEMS (Micro-Electronic Mechanical Systems) devices, and these are in pretty much every mobile phone on sale today, as the accelerometer and "gyroscopic" sensors, and as high-dynamic-range microphones.

@dropbear

Don't confuse low quality DIY and hobbyist 3d printers with the more expensive kit you can obtain.

3D-printed aircraft parts are 3-20 times stronger than the parts they replace and usually come in at 40-70% lighter with far less time required to fabricate them.

fab time is a big issue. It's possible to 3dprint a truck driveshaft that's lighter and stronger than a cast one, but it costs 20 times as much and takes 50 times longer than a cast one. That said, if you're at a frontline army base and you need a driveshaft it's faster and cheaper to print one than ship one out.

For prototyping, low-volume or custom items, 3D printing is great, whether you're printing out a replacement part on a US Navy ship in the Atlantic, making a high-precision part for a jet engine or printing out some props for your latest cosplay outfit.

In fact, prototyping is probably where 3D printing has made the greatest inroads and will continue to do so.

For mass-production, it's not so great, as it's a slow and expensive process. I was at a maker's fair this weekend and someone was using a 3D printer to make little rocketship models; each one took 2-3 hours to complete.

It'll be interesting to see how this improves as the technology matures - looking at the website for the HP Multi Jet Fusion, it's actually only claiming a 10x speedup against comparable 3D printers (i.e. ones with a six-figure price tag), which is still nowhere near fast enough for mass production.

Then too, if you have used 3D printing to produce a proof-of-concept and decide to use a more traditional method for mass-production, you'll have to redesign your widget from scratch to account for differences in material strengths and stress points.

Beyond this, some of my friends genuinely think that there's going to be a revolution of sorts, where every home will end up with a 3D printer sat in the corner; if you want a new item or something breaks, you'll just download the 3D model for it and set it printing.

I just don't see this happening. Partly because non-technical people have enough issues with standard printers - I get regularly summoned to help relatives change ink cartridges or install drivers.

Partly because I suspect there'll be issues with getting hold of the actual 3D models - as with cultural media (e.g. music, books, movies, etc), the people who make them will generally want to be paid for them, which means that there's likely to be a plethora of copy-protection mechanisms and formats.

And partly for the same issue/reason as per above: you can't always replace a mass-produced item with a 3D printed model. 3D printed items can be stronger, but they can also be weaker, as the guys who scanned and printed out gun components found out (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/download-this-gun-3d-printed-semi-automatic-fires-over-600-rounds/).

There's also the question about other physical properies (e.g. heat resistance, expansion/contraction when temperature changes occur) and tolerances - the Multi Jet Fusion claims to have an accuracy of 0.2mm, but only after sandblasting. whereas injection moulding and CNC routers are usually accurate to around 0.127mm

Nothing except one-offs?

Obviously you haven't seen how artificial hips are produced both on the NHS and in the US?

You also might want to google: Sintered Titanium 3d printing, SpaceX, 3d printing chemicals, 3d printed houses, etc etc

The entire concept of 3d printing is one-offs. Scale of process is no longer a barrier to entry. Customized items can be made as one-offs without immense effort and money. THIS is why big companies are terrified. They're staring death in the face and death is grinning with his one-off 3d Printed custom-fitted dentures....

Re: "take weeks rather than months or years to build an aircraft, claims BAE Systems."

You're confusing design with manufacture, and the f-35 was designed using more traditional methods. The bulkheads were originally machined from titanium blocks for example. The modern approach would be to create them from laser sintered titanium powder, which is a very much faster process.

Re: Failed Premise

Your failure to understand how your home items were made is showing. Most were made from parts that were original cast or molded, then were machine finished with traditional subtractive methods. Your car for example has many cast parts that are then precision machined to their final shape. This saves money over machining them from a solid block, but costs rather more in tooling and setup costs and produces weaker parts.

Re: Failed Premise

>A quick look around my home revealed just two items that were made by subtractive processes,

Um, what are you wearing, LeeE? (Oh er!) Most clothing is made by cutting shapes from a woven rectangular sheet.

Okay, I think I see the root of this misunderstanding (not your fault) - yes, most products are made by adding parts together, but many, many component parts are made by removing material - including some parts from all of the examples you listed.

Subtractive processes include stamping shapes out of sheet metal (often combined with bending the metal in the same operation). Think of the metal chassis in old desktop PCs, car panels, cutlery, metal bowls, the tops of disposable cigarette lighters, coins, that sort of thing.

Then we have a lot of subtractive processing of wood, for furniture - of which there will probably be a fair bit in your house. Turning, routing, milling, sanding, drilling, planing etc.

I'd be hesitant to hazard a guess of percentage use of subtractive, moulded, additive processes used in everyday objects around us. If you were to say that most products that pass through our houses in the course of a year are moulded (food containers and other packaging) I'd say yes, that's plausible.

Really though, 'Additive Manufacturing' is really just a convenient umbrella term for a range of process, because 'Rapid Prototyping' and '3D Printing' are often too narrow or inaccurate.

There's no misunderstanding here; the article refers to products, not component parts.

But in any case, the examples that you and ST give aren't valid; my clothing does not consist of just 'shapes' cut from 'a woven rectangular sheet' (would you not describe weaving as additive? And don't forget the dyes). Until those 'shapes' are combined in an additive process they're still just 'shapes' and won't become a product (clothing, in this case) until they are combined (togas, turbans and the original design of kilt might qualify but I would guess even they require(d) the addition of some stitching along the hems to prevent the weave from unravelling). Similarly, a table leg can't be regarded as a product, unless you're a tablemaker, and furthermore, one who neither varnishes, polishes or otherwise seals their wooden products which, as a result, will then have a very short usable life.

But if we follow the logic that a subtractive phase in the manufacture of a component part qualifies the the end product as being made by subtractive methods then it follows that all products must be the result of harvesting, without which you'd have nothing to process at all, whether it be additive or subtractive (and before anybody wastes time gobbing off about harvesting being subtractive the difference is that in harvesting the product is made from what is subtracted whereas in subtraction the product is the remainder (just to use a deliberately wonky maths allusion)).

ST's response, by starting with a personal deprecation, qualifies itself as simple trolling and so is not worthy of a reply.

Re: Say what?

"One thing that does make me actually LOL is the fact that food dorks constantly state their opposition to genetic engineering and... the advise people to eat Quorn which is made from re-cycled bacteria from the same family as tuberculosis and leprosy that have been genetically engineered for maximum growth."

I don't disagree with the rest of your post (I actually said essentially the same, a bit higher up), but I'm pretty sure you're wrong on the Quorn thing.

Quorn is reportedly made using Fusarium venenatum - which is a fungus rather than bacteria.

Furthermore, while I don't know for a fact that it's not genetically engineered, I don't believe it to be - I've not seen such a statement on the packaging, which would be legally mandated. It's entirely possible (I would say likely) that it underwent a program of strain improvement, which would involve selecting for improved growth under the given conditions, possibly with some mutagenesis. This is so common as to be unremarkable, is not 'genetic engineering' as defined, and would not require package labelling.

I do eat Quorn, but then I was also happy to eat genetically engineered cheese. (The milk clotting enzyme was extracted from a genetically engineered bacterium.)