This article was taken from the October 2013 issue of Wired
magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before
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When carpenter Richard van As lost four fingers on his
right hand in an accident, he discovered that conventional
replacement fingers would cost $10,000 (£6,500) each, and would not
function well enough for him to return to work.
While researching alternatives, he found a YouTube video of Ivan
Owen, a costume and prop designer in Washington state, showing an
outsized mechanical hand. Owen agreed to help van As develop new
fingers. The mother of a limb-different child who had heard about
the project approached them, and Owen and van As resolved to make a
hand for him.
Progress was slowed by the need to exchange physical prototypes,
but the donation of two MakerBot printers let them send bits and
print atoms locally, adjusting the fit and weight as they went.
Anybody can print the "Robohand" -- the open-source design is on
MakerBot's Thingiverse site -- and a volunteer network is lending
Liam Dippenaar, born with fingers missing on his right hand,
first used the Robohand when he was four. "He thinks it's very cool
that he is able to use both his hands," says his mother,
1597 Sconce Light
There are several methods of 3D printing, each with its own strengths and
weaknesses. The 1597 Sconce light is printed using selective laser
sintering: a laser rapidly heats specific parts of a thin layer of
nylon powder, bonding them into a solid. Another layer of powder is
added, and the process repeats. This creates durable but intricate
shapes inside a block of loose powder.
The 3D-printed light shown here is a creation of Finnish
designer Janne Kyttanen and his studio, Freedom Of Creation (FOC).
The number 1,597 is a "Fibonacci prime" -- a Fibonacci number and a
prime -- and references the fractal patterns displayed by the
arrangement of seeds in flowers' heads. Here, the perforated form
scatters light in patterns. Kyttanen set up FOC to explore the
possibilities of rapid prototyping. It's now owned by 3D Systems,
home of Chuck Hull, the inventor of stereolithography.
London-based designer Daniel Widrig founded his own
studio in 2009 after working with Zaha Hadid. Since then, he has
applied 3D printing to the world of fashion, with a collection of
sculpted dresses made in collaboration with the fashion designer
Iris van Herpen and exhibited at Paris fashion week.
This piece from his Kinesis project (below) demonstrates how
intricate shapes can be created in a single piece using laser
sintering. The polyamide prototypes were unveiled at the 2012 World
Conference on Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing. Because each
print job can be different without added production cost, each
"printout" can be customised to fit a specific buyer's body, for
instant bespoke clothing.
3D-printed fashion took a step forward this year when a dress
printed from flexible thermoplastic polyurethane was exhibited by
van Herpen. The supple material -- which drapes and bends more like
rubber than the hard polyamide usually used for selective laser
sintering -- has completed trials and should soon be available for
commercial use. 3D printing
Dutch footwear designer Rem D Koolhaas had the idea for his first
shoe while working as an architect on a Prada store in New York,
and founded United Nude with Britain's Galahad Clark to make and
His most recent collaboration, also with Iris van Herpen,
features 12 pairs of 3D-printed shoes, for her "Wilderness Embodied" show at Paris
Objet Connex and Eden printers were used to make the shoes. They
build up thin layers of polymer which are "cured" using UV light.
During printing, gaps are filled with a soft gel to support the
polymer; the gel is then washed away.
When Olaf Diegel isn't busy as professor of mechatronics
at Massey University's School of Engineering & Advanced
Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, he's crafting intricate
3D-printed guitar designs that are as loud aesthetically as they
are sonically. This modest number is his Americana axe, a Les
Paul-style frame sneakily incorporating a number of New York
landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and various skyline
highlights, all constructed using laser sintering.
The printing process allows Diegel, working through Cubify's
online store, to customise each model so owners can have a bespoke
instrument without paying the sort of money one would pay for the
services of a master luthier. Seymour Duncan pickups and wood
choices for the neck and fret board in maple, mahogany and
rosewood, should please picking purists. $4,000 , by Olaf
How they work
Many 3D printers work through "additive manufacturing" --
by adding layer after layer of material, each usually less than a
millimetre thick, they build an object from
the ground up. Different printers use a variety of materials --
anything from plastic and plaster up to steel and titanium.
More advanced printers can print objects in multiple materials
-- 3D-printing form Stratasys used an Objet printer to create a
"ship in a bottle" (left), featuring a rubber ship encased in a
transparent plastic block, to promote multimaterial printers.
Next generation 3D printing
Dental components -- and even a jaw -- can be 3D uniquely
printed for a patient. Next-generation technologies are printing
with embryonic stem cells, aiming to create skin for grafts and
even organs for transplants.
Similar "bio-ink" has been used to print small amounts of
edible meat -- although currently a whole burger would cost around
£200,000. Nasa is using printers to mix powdered meals for
astronauts on long space journeys.
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency is researching the use
of robots and giant printers to create huge bubble structures on
the Moon or Mars, using the planets' dust as sinter
particles, at temperatures of 1,200-1,500