hello hamburg,and let's ask that question right off, i'm talking about 3d printing. who here had heard of 3d printing before?by show of hands. fantastic, that's 90%. and of those numbers, how many of you have actually seen or interacted with a 3d printer, actually used one? okay, so it's aboutcut in half from there. let me just reaffirmthat if you'd like to tweet any of this please grab me on twitter @dfflanders.
but right on to the topic. the reason why i'm passionateabout 3d printing is because i work in universities,and we have this group called pif3d, which stands forpay it forward 3d printing. and what we do is we're a groupthat just enjoys this stuff. we'll come to your university,we'll put on a 24-hour party and we will give you the skills to be ableto build one of these 3d printers, and the best part is this printer,once you've made it, it can print its own partsand build another one.
so it can have children, if you will.(laughter) i think one of the reallyexciting things, as i said, is this goes back to childhood love of just enjoying things, and having an idea, and using your imaginationto just build something out of nothing, and that's what excites meabout 3d printing on a personal and core level. but today,what i'm really going to talk about is the larger ideaof what 3d printing can achieve for us
on a grand scale. so here's the hypothesis: humans can turn the web off,they can't turn reality off. which makes it significant. we'll always like real objectsmore than virtual ones. so my simple example is this:i'm willing to stand up here today and give you my best ideasfor free, for nothing. however, if you wantmy phone in my pocket, i'm probably going to expect a little bit of a cash reimbursement for that.
3d printing will change everything,and more to the point, because it's physical reality, i think it's especially going to changethe way we think about money, and also all the opportunitiesfor making money from these objects. okay, so why do i thinkit's a big technology? so a graph up here,percentage of change on the vertical, and the years,date here, on the horizontal. and as you can see,these significant technologies all had this momentum,where actually at some point,
they take off from innovation, and they start to significantly changewho and what we do. onto obviously one of the big ones here,and it's just begun. again this is numberof servers on the vertical, and this is years along the horizontal, and again right in about '98, boom! we see this massive shift in the numberof servers across the planet. and of course, we're just on the journey, we haven't even begunto realize how much
the internet's going to effectand change us. so, 3d printing, a brief history. how does it fit into this model? well, it's older than you think. 1980 was the firstrapid prototyping 3d printer. it was a commercial printer,cost $30,000 and above. in fact they're much more expensive,that's just the cheapest one. in 2007 a land mark,a red-letter date occurred, where this group, under the reprap,self-replicating printer,
actually created a desktop printer. so, unlike the commercial large ones,this will sit on your desk, and it will print objectsof about a foot by a foot by a foot. and of course the significant bitis the fact that it can actually print itself. which is what we're doing. and then makerbot is a companythat now sells these printers. so if you don't want to make it yourself,you can just buy one outright. we can build one for around 300 euros, 300 to 500 euros, depending on what parts.
makerbot sells them for around 1,000 or so, but check their website, please. and then finally,the real question i'm asking here is does 3d printing fit into the bigger thing? well, since that 2007, this is the mapwhere people have just registered to say that we're actuallybuilding printers, and willing to help you build printers. so it's starting to take off,and that's kind of where this graph goes. so, here's where we are, right.
and the question is,are we going to see that big sweep? and that's what i'm goingto talk to you about today. it's really the big question of,how is this going to change? i don't want to talk about the technology. i want to talk to you about, is there ideas here, that youcould build into all of your creativity, and all the things you're doing,and i think there's a possibility of that. so, there's four types of things,four types of change, that i think these printers can effect,
and i'm going to go througheach one of these, and give examples of each one,and in fact, all of the pictures following here,all of them are 3d printed. these are not photoshopped,these are real 3d printed objects that have been printed either by desktop,or commercial 3d printers. first one, okay,this is kind of the boring stuff. change the everyday things, right. so this is what i callthe "made in china" stuff. so this is my belt buckle. these are the things you find in your office,
that you've gotan entire cabinet full of things, that you've overstockedand probably won't use, and will probablyget thrown away some day. so i think that's going to changethe way we think about those things. i think it's also going to changethe way we think about what is luxurious. so there's a great companycalled "i.materialize" that's starting to do lamps. and i was in hamburgactually this weekend, enjoying shopping around with my wife.
and we were looking at lamps, and saying, wow these are brilliant,and then the cost of them. i was just --they're incredibly expensive. well, 3d printing gives you the capabilityto do this at a much lower cost, than you would imagine,with the same quality, if not even more, bespoke customization, that you can do inside of these things. this is one of my favorite examples, it's called"the chandelier of the damned".
as the beautiful chandelier here is, you can imaginewhat that would have cost to carve, say and what the cost would be. well, that can be printed,and even more powerful, the design for that can bere-uploaded digitally, so that you could remaster it. so instead of doing a rodin's damned,you could do rodin's parade, all right. so you could change the chandelierto be a bit more positive, perhaps. change how we buy --and this is important.
so these objects are things that we do spendsignificant amounts of money on. and you will notice, that again,these are all 3d printed objects. that's right,they printed a motorcycle. in fact, this motorcycle was shownat a ted conference, and they've even gone so faras to build the parts for this low-level energy consumption car,as well as an airplane. now all of that stuff,as amazing as it is, and indeed i mean seeinga running motorcycle that was printed, is incredible, but the trouble is,is it's just copying things.
it's not rethinkingabout what the technology can do for us, and how it can change. so that's what i'm goingto talk about next, it's what are the objectswe really care about, and start to want to rethinkhow we design, and how we use them. so, what do we enjoy? well, one of the significant bitsis fashion, right? it changes our core self interestin what we think of ourselves, and how it works.
and again, what's great about fashionis that being able to customize things, that's exactly what a 3d printer can do. it can give youinfinite level of customization. change the way we have fun -- right, so this is oneof my personal favorites, the sports equipment side. so on the left there, with the surfboard, that's a skeleton that you can print, and so, my friend, who's halfthe weight of me, who surfs,
can give me that design, i can scale upthat design to fit my body weight, and be able to actually printa surfboard for my usage. the same with the football boots. so the football boots,imagine the industry, and the amount of money that's going to be made, by people who wantcustom-made football boots, to their foot. not only to fit, but also to be ableto kick the ball in very specific ways. change the way we experience -- right, so this is one of my favorites.
many of you probably sawthis article in the economist, about printing a stradivarius. yes indeed they're startingto with work that, but again, the question is,is moving beyond just copying? so at mit they've started to do this flute, and you can reprintthe different parts of it so that you can havebigger fingers, or smaller fingers, depending on what sizeinstrument you need. and then more importantly,
reimagining what wecan completely do with instruments. what would a 7-horn trumpet look like? and being able to use and play that. there's really exciting potentialfor creativity in art here. so i've talked aboutthe things that we like, but now we need to talk aboutthe necessary things. these are the things that make us survive, and enable us to exist, right. so let's think about food.
this is quite exciting,they've adapted the desktop printer to be able to push out ice in a freezer,so that you could print ice sculptures. maybe not a massive significant thing,in terms of survival, but it's starting to push that bounds,and those limits of what we can achieve. another one here,this is using a syringe-type method, so that you can dolayer upon layer cake. so, you can actually build up multiple cookie designs or something like that. another one here, this is using multiple print heads to do multiple food types. so you can imagine your appetizer,or your canapã©
being delivered to you from a 3d printer, just being able to print that up. so buildings, these are important. can we actually imaginea 3d printer printing a building? well, someone's already done it. in italy, they're experimentingwith printing cement. so this is on a much larger design, and they plan to scale this upeven further to make this next step to actually be even a larger size,the size of say a house or so on.
so this is one of the most exciting ones,i think of all. there's already several universitiesin the states, who are actually starting to be ableto graph skin cells from you, cultivate those skin cells,put them in a syringe type mechanism, be able to put your hand down,or other body part, lay the printer over the top, and actuallyprint a new layer of skin on you. this is actually happening. and even more significant than that, and this is where i thinkthis could really change lives full stop,
is the fact that wakefield forresthas already demonstrated the ability to actually cultivateyour liver cells, cultivate those, and then print you a new liver. now that doesn't mean you shouldstop signing your organ donor cards. this technology's not fully capable yet, but it's well on it's way,and it's starting to get there. okay, so finally, the big one. the next set of these is actuallyasking the bigger question, so it's a bit speculative,but it's the question of
does 3d printing become a significant technologythat changes the century? is it going to do that big up curvein the way we do thing? so, here's a simple example. let's think about thisin a more holistic way. imagine shoes,kids growing up 5-years of age, every mother can tell youhow quickly they grow out of those shoes. well, there's no reason whythose shoes can't be shredded down as a base plastic that's organic.
you take a milk bottlefrom your refrigerator, and you shred that alongwith the other plastic, you scale up your design0.01% to be the next sized foot, and you reprint the shoe. imagine the cost savingsfrom shipping all of those shoes, the amount of energy you saved, wasted, and the amount of time, you're gonnabe having to go shoe shopping, and all the rest with your kids. this could start to fundamentally changethe way we do things.
with the good, comes the bad. i can print this up tomorrow. i can print up a gun out of plastic,that would not be detected by most metal detectors in airports. doesn't mean i can getthe bullets through, but there is the capabilityof being able to sneak that through. it's going to change the waywe think about safety. laws are going to have to be rethought. there's going to be new waysof thinking about these things.
now finally i want to suggestto you a bit larger of an idea. so this is me just trying to be creative, because i do thinkthere's new businesses to be had, and especially when you combine itwith something like the web. so, let's pretend something-- well, let's not pretend, we know thatthe earthquake happened in japan, and obviously we want to help them. well, you can imagine by usinganother significant technology, like the web, where you can setupa site where the japanese
could come along and requestthe items that they need, because they've lost itin the earthquake. enough printers around the countrycould actually print those things, and then we'd be ableto send those objects over to them to help them in their time of crisis. how munch more significantwould that be than sending money? knowing that you're printing an object,and giving it to someone else? how is that going to change the way you see helping out other countries? most importantly,this one we're quite excited about,
we're trying to stagea little group to go down to egypt and get these printersinto the hands of people who are just going tobe able to use these things, and that's what becomesreally exciting. if we get these 3d printers in the handsof people who need these things, and can print the objects they need, we're going to be able changetheir fundamental economy and the way they're doing things. so, i hope i've inspired you today.
i hope you have some ideas, and i would love itif you would come up to me, and share those ideas with me. and more importantly, if you'd liketo put on a 3d print party, and have some of meand my developer friends come
what exactly is 3d printing,and show you how to buildyour own printer so you can get started, there are my contact details. thank you all very much. cheers. (applause)
