my name is anderson i'm out of houston
texas i work at miller lab which is part
of rice university so i'm working on 3d
printing applications for tissue
engineering so we're trying to see if we
can adapt the 3d printing technology
that's available to biocompatible
materials so that we can create organs
like the liver
and tissue samples like cardiac and all
sorts of different
parts
um the reprap technology and the guys
typical filament-based printers does
have some concepts that are applicable
like for instance the
miller lab the professor i work for
jordan miller he started using wrap
wraps to print with sugar
and essentially he's using sugar melting
it down and pulling fine fibers of sugar
so that he can create
a bathroom chair which is essentially
one of the biggest problems in tissue
engineering we can grow cells in a petri
dish but one of the issues is that
cells on the interior usually die
because they can't get the blood and
only the ones on the outside survive so
we can use 3d printing and create this
network tree branch like webbing
structure which we can find in our body
we can then have cell survival inside
and outside sla has been the original
form of 3d printing and it's very
interesting to see it become available
from low end now but typically these
machines vary in the hundreds of
thousands material costs are also very
high
now we're starting to see very portable
compact desktop uh formats you know with
form one which is a huge hit last year
and
drastic improvements this year as well
and we have some new players coming in
with you know three system
and you can also see in kickstarter that
there's a lot coming i mean they weren't
available at this time but i think next
year we'll have at least four more
machines
the sla machines aren't a very good
first three bird because it's very
involved process the chemicals are very
non-hospitable for the home environment
requires multiple table spaces for
cleaning and post-processing
and in general it's not for general use
parts like you're not going to take
something off and
do something stressful with it like
as a tool it's more for aesthetics
purposes like the target audience is
more of jewelers
sla allows you to have very very high
fidelity parts
and that's what it's very good at
yeah this year i think a lot of
companies are starting to focus on form
instead of purely just function you know
we made comments that there's one
printer that laser cut wood
companies are stepping up how they're
manufacturing 3d printers it definitely
shows
they're trying to target it as appliance
one in your home
and
throughout all the printers we're
reviewing you definitely see that
there's an overarching theme
yes this thing works but it also needs
to look like it belongs in your home and
i think that's what everyone's trying to
push for this year around
what would you like to have on your desk
in your office in your home kitchen
you