3-D printing opens up brave new world of instant manufacturing
Three-dimensional models of buildings, and products such as shoes and even plane parts, are created before your eyes
Visitors who have booked a session at a novel photo booth in Japan are experiencing perhaps the closest possible thing to Star Trek-style teleportation. Each is scanned, then recreated in miniature using a 3-D colour printer.
Of course, no one actually moves between places, and the model people are not magically alive. Yet the process is just one example of the rapidly developing and expanding field of 3-D printing. While this and some applications, such as chocolate printing, are akin to novelties, its uses include rapidly making complex prototypes, and even creating plane parts.
In Hong Kong, the Housing Department is embracing 3-D printing to create models from 3-D architectural design software. It has done plastic printouts of individual flats complete with plumbing, cross sections of buildings, and a new housing development. These help in presenting design concepts to the public. One 3-D prototype showed how an excavation site would appear, helping the contractor fine-tune the work sequence.
"We can build models in 3-D software and view it on the screen - it is more fascinating to print them out, and make models we can touch, and a group of people can see from various angles and discuss," said Alex Ho Kwing-kwong, the department's information technology manager.
"The models are accurate, and we can print various pieces and see how they fit together, simulating real life construction. This can lead to redesigns at an early stage, saving costs."
3-D printing involves creating solid objects layer by layer. Lasers have played a key part in its development, and the first 3-D printers employed an ultraviolet laser beam that was aimed at a liquid photopolymer. The photopolymer solidified in places where the beam hit it, and the beam moved on to gradually build the printout. Other techniques have also emerged, such as print heads which extrude molten plastic or even chocolate that quickly hardens, and lasers that fuse powdered material together.