Argumentative Essay #1

Joshua Hahn-Varona

2/24/15

3D Printing: Why We Should Be Excited

Over the past decade, 3D printing equipment has started to become more and more available to those who wish to build their own printer to start 3D printing at home. As "What is 3D Printing?" says: "Personal 3D printing or domestic 3D printing is mainly for hobbyists and enthusiast." However, over the last few years, not only has 3D printing become cheaper and more readily available, it has also become better in terms of speed and precision. In this year's CES2015 (a technology convention that showcases new and innovative technology) a new product was revealed that may eventually make at home 3D printing a norm. The XYZprinting: Nobel 1.0 is the newest at home 3D printing technology that the author, Hong Ngo, says himself, "The maker of the Da Vinci today unveiled at CES 2015 its first SLA 3D printer, the Nobel 1.0. It's the first on the market to retail at $1,499, which is significantly less than any other 3D printer of its type." and "XYZPrinting says that the Nobel 1.0's strength is not only its speed but also the quality of the print, capable of delivering print resolution of up to 25 microns. From the demo prints I've seen, the quality was indeed a huge leap forward from those printed by the Da Vinci or any other 3D printers I've reviewed. It was hard to believe that they were 3D-printed objects." Though $1,499 isn't necessarily cheap, eventually, the price of this type of product in particular may drop.  Newer, smaller and cheaper models may also be available in the near future for everyone to use, and benefit from. 3D printing is becoming one of the best technological breakthroughs of our time, and we should be looking forward to what 3D printing has to offer in places like manufacturing, medicine and even in our homes.

However, some say that at home 3D printing is going to make it easy for people to have and assemble undetectable weapons that will be abused by criminals that mass produce weapons in their garage. Because of this, it is believed by some that in home 3D printing is a step in the wrong direction as people will be able to use free files from the internet to 3D print weapons. Though I agree this is a huge concern in regards to public safety, I want to focus on the positive aspects of in home 3D printing. 3D printing is the way of the future, it is changing the world.

As "What Is 3D Printing?" explains, 3D printing has many benefits for the consumer along with benefits on the industrial side of things, and how 3D printing will be in the future. The article also shows an infographic at end which shows the history and possible future of 3D printing, along with its current and possible uses.

In terms of in home 3D printing, many things come to my mind of the extensive uses that a 3D printer has to offer. A cool idea I was thinking of was being able to buy a file for cheap from a place like Amazon to 3D print a missing or broken part to really anything. Need a new door knob? 3D print it for little cost. Are you missing an important part to a Do-It-Yourself project? 3D print it for cheap while you assemble the other parts. The list of possible uses goes on to other things, of course. As stated previously, 3D printers used to be mostly for hobbyists. These hobbyists could use 3D printers for, well, their hobbies like model cars. A recent example for this that I personally witnessed was at the Chicago Auto Show 2015. A man (I don’t think he was sponsored by any car companies as he didn’t have any sort of badge on. Just a suit and tie) was showing a 3D printer that was printing very basic model cars. I didn’t have time to talk to him about what he was doing exactly there, but he did let me take a picture of the machine that was in the process of making another model car along with some of the already made cars on display.

Artists may very well have a use for 3D printing, too. A new product on the market called the 3Doodler is a small pen-like instrument that “writes” in 3D. One end of the pen is fed a plastic, cylindrical material that goes through the pen and comes out on the other side of the pen in a liquid form that cools and hardens quickly to create 3D models that you design on the spot. Some of the already designed and tested creations from the 3Doodler include a working rocket, wall sculptures and a remote controlled plane.  The great thing about this product is that it is already available at Michaels giving access to those interested for $99.

That is not to say that in home 3D printing doesn’t have its risks. When it comes to whether 3D printers are safe for home, things get a little foggy. The problem with in home 3D printing comes when people have the ability to make weapons. Cody Wilson is the creator of the first 3D printed handgun called "The Liberator". Since this gun is made of hard plastic, it is undetectable by metal detectors, which is a huge public safety concern. Interestingly enough, Cody Wilson is an anarchist, he basically designed this weapon to scare governments. Since governments cannot  regulate files on the internet to stop people from downloading them off of the internet, the only way to counter in home 3D printed weapons is to ban the production, sales and possession of the weapons. Sadly, criminals will eventually find a way to break the law, but the benefits of having an in home 3D printer outweighs this set back by a large margin.

3D printing has many uses outside of your own home. In the medical field, 3D printing has been used to make cheap prosthetic limbs. As the article here explained “The e-NABLE team recently visited a leading trauma surgeon, Dr. Albert Chi, to show the surgeon their $50 3D printed plastic hand. Dr. Chi saw the potential for this hand and likely many other types of prosthetics, to change the lives of thousands of people worldwide, who could never afford a commercially made $30,000-$50,000 prosthetic.” Cheap prosthetics will benefit anyone in need because of how cheap and available 3D printed prosthetics will become.  There has also been development in 3D printing human tissue by “biotechnology firms and academia for possible use in tissue engineering applications where organs and body parts are built using inkjet techniques. Layers of living cells are deposited onto a gel medium and slowly built up to form three dimensional structures.”  Even working organs to eliminate the need for organ donors as the infographic mentioned above explained.

Another odd but may very well become quite practical use for 3D printing is construction. Recently in China, a fully 3D printed apartment building was built. The first of its kind. It is a five story villa that is 11,840 square feet that also has decorations inside and out. The article also mentioned how the process of 3D printing this apartment building “process saves between 30 and 60 percent of construction waste, and can decrease production times by between 50 and 70 percent, and labour costs by between 50 and 80 percent.” And “In all, the villa costs around $161,000 to build.” This is astonishing to me, as some houses in our area by themselves cost more than this five story apartment building. This idea of cheap architecture  may sound as if construction workers will lose jobs. However, 3D printing homes does not mean that the house is built by the 3D printer, but rather the parts for the house are made by the printer. Basically, you still need builders to put the building together, but the parts of the building are made by a 3D printer. You can think of it as a life-save LEGO project.

Other uses for 3D printing outside of home can be in manufacturing. 3D printers allow manufacturers to “create prototypes or objects that would be impossible to machine.” This is great for manufacturers because fast, testable prototypes will make both cheap and easy to innovate within a company. This is also good for small business owners who can provide printable designs on the internet, as small excerpt from “U.S. Productivity Growth: An optimistic Perspective” points out. The article also talked about how products will be “endlessly customizable- in form, material and dimension.” and how products will both never be out of stock and “manufacturing will become truly just-in-time.”

While the 3D printing technology we have today is still making progress, it is by no means at any sort of halt. In the next 10 to 20 years, 3D printing may have advanced enough to the point where we are saving lives in the matter of minutes. Along with being able to save money on parts for projects or full blown homes for us, 3D printing will let us imagine and then almost instantly create things to better our lives, letting us create 3D works of art as well as advancing enough to save lives in the medical field with cheap prosthetics and quicker, more efficient manufacturing of products all together.