3D Printing and Copyright

[Enki]

I disagree with everyone.

3D Printing isn't going to be nearly as revolutionary as you think Tinker. I used to think it would be. Now that I know more, I don't. Sure, it may bankrupt some toy manufactures in China, and free up some isles at Walmarts. People may fix more stuff around the house, especially after photo-to-CAD automation is developed. So what? All of the things you mention: spoilers, forks, poker chips - are not revolutionary, merely slightly more convenient, depending on the price of the printer and the metal-plastic cartridges. The plastic/metal powder you would use to print stuff has to be specially processed so will necessarily be more expensive than mass-produced plastic/metal parts, even after the cost of distribution. Will big and medium-sized manufacturers also run a few batches and particular parts via industrial-sized 3D printers? They already do. But will Joe Schmoe install a nanometer resolution 30x10 ft void-chamber printer in his garage? A few eccentrics may, but unlikely to be everybody's cuppatea, as Zack says.

The substrates will be A) mass produced like printer cartridges are now. B) recyclable. No doubt Dow and Dupont are already looking at the problem.

I strongly disagree with Zack that the IT revolution has run out of steam.
1) Have you noticed how for the past few years computers have gone multicore, instead of breaking through the 4Ghz barrier? It was because of fundamental problems with cooling. Well the new Sandia Cooler blasts that away, with a 3,000% improvment in cooling power. That should take us to about 9Ghz processors.

The notion that the IT revolution is beholden to processor speeds shows a profound ignorance of the innovation on the software end of it.

2) The AI advances of the last decade have been amazing. Back when I designed my first visual detection neural net back in the early 2000s, there were probably a few thousand people in the world who knew how to do that. Now every camera has face-detecting nets embedded. Asimovian butlers are not that far off, a mere sixteen fold increase of capability, an adequate power supply, and a good company to properly integrate the disparate techs into a working ensemble are needed. Pseudo-intelligent robotic helpers will turn the labor relations intranationally and internationally between rich and poor on their head. China's low-skill model is fucked, and they know it. This is more revolutionary than anything that has ever come before. The first 2 industrial revolutions (steam and electric) hugely increased the brawn of humankind, leaving slow failing human minds to deal with the power. The third one, once it properly sets in, will exponentially increase the mental-analytic and observational capabilities of the civilization. Of course, our decision making powers (information-integration) and willpower (goal-setting and planning) will lag far behind, causing tremendous (perhaps fatal) stress on the system. But it will be exciting.

Right, when I say 3D printers will be revolutionary, I don't mean in a vacuum sans this other technology. Bringing down the costs of manufacturing at every level will change the fundamental structure of manufacturing the world over. It's a scale thing. When you fundamentally alter the scales of society everything has to shift and reform around them, that's revolutionary. So if people like me have the 3D printer equivalent of an inkjet at home, and a laserjet at work, then the company that is producing small novelty goods for the neighborhood can have a storefront where they sell toys and other household items. Hardware stores can produce certain custom jobs in house kind of like they already have key grinders to produce keys. Auto parts stores will be able to produce some parts. The town machine fabrication joint will use rapid prototyping to spec out jobs for prospective clients.

It's a tier thing and I have yet to have anyone address this fundamental point I continue to make. No one is looking at it from the SOCIAL angle. When you reduce the barrier to entry and introduce more use cases for a technology then certain benchmarks for market saturation occur that cause fundamental economic shifts in the access that people have to resources.

At the top end the level of sophistication in the things produced will be mind-boggling. Mitsubishi's robot butlers will have incredibly intricate parts.

[Taboo]

It may lower the barriers to entry on the 1-100 units (perhaps up to 1000 unit) range, but it's unclear to me why that would make such a huge difference socially. On the truly industrial scale of it, mass-production will probably still have the advantage, that with the law of diminishing marginal costs to mass production. Mass producing one car has a marginal cost of $10,000,000, and printing may cost something like $100,000. But mass-producing the 10,000th car costs about $10,000, while printing the 10,000th car costs at least $100,000 (assuming your printer didn't break down and need repairs at any time while printing the first 9,999 cars). Same goes for the time spent in construction.

I will grant that this is not true in the case of structures that cannot be produced by regular mold-style mass-production techniques. And I think this is where the 3D printing industry has the most potential - customized, super-high end products with amazing stats (ultra-light objects with sponge-like inner-structures to maximize durability and minimize mass), rather than taking regular manufacturing head-on.

The notion that the IT revolution is beholden to processor speeds shows a profound ignorance of the innovation on the software end of it.

Well, the software has gotten clunkier and buggier and higher-level abstracted (thus less efficient processing-power wise) each year since I have been paying attention. The only innovation that did not follow that path worth speaking of is the advent of the Arduino boards, and they're using 1990s technology for the most part.

In order to do truly intelligent stuff, the hardware needs to be at least 1000 times more powerful and at least 1000 times more energy-efficient -- right now simulating a non-static human brain would take the energy output of a nuclear powerplant to power the chips, and something like $10-$50bn in processors.

[Enki]

It may lower the barriers to entry on the 1-100 units (perhaps up to 1000 unit) range, but it's unclear to me why that would make such a huge difference socially. On the truly industrial scale of it, mass-production will probably still have the advantage, that with the law of diminishing marginal costs to mass production. Mass producing one car has a marginal cost of $10,000,000, and printing may cost something like $100,000. But mass-producing the 10,000th car costs about $10,000, while printing the 10,000th car costs at least $100,000 (assuming your printer didn't break down and need repairs at any time while printing the first 9,999 cars). Same goes for the time spent in construction.

It's about saturation of certain products and the ability to work with new scales. The Industrial revolution did not invent 'building things'. So your argument could be applied to any sort of invention we view as being revolutionary today. The cotton gin, the steam engine. None of them are doing something we couldn't do before, they are just doing things that we did before with a greater deal of efficiency. Very few things actually were NEW things. Like the telegram was a new thing. The airplane was a new thing. But computers are just an abacus on a whole 'nother scale. Just like trains are ox carts on a whole 'nother scale. This is kind of like that. It fundamentally alters the scales. Every scale of manufacture will have a greater level of capacity, all the way up and down the chain.

The notion that heavy industry is going to stop is a straw man, and doesn't pertain to my argument.

I will grant that this is not true in the case of structures that cannot be produced by regular mold-style mass-production techniques. And I think this is where the 3D printing industry has the most potential - customized, super-high end products with amazing stats (ultra-light objects with sponge-like inner-structures to maximize durability and minimize mass), rather than taking regular manufacturing head-on.

Yes, and this ability will be revolutionary. Perfect spheres produced in orbit for deep sea laboratories for instance.

Well, the software has gotten clunkier and buggier and higher-level abstracted (thus less efficient processing-power wise) each year since I have been paying attention.

That statement cannot be considered 'true'. It's true for some software and false for others. I know developers who develop very lean applications. It's the same sort of thing. A lot of lean applications are running massive datasets now. The management of that data is where the information revolution is going right now, that's where the most demand is. The web 2.0 era of bloatware is certainly a problem for CONSUMER software.

The only innovation that did not follow that path worth speaking of is the advent of the Arduino boards, and they're using 1990s technology for the most part.

A technology is really from the era that adopts it and uses it widely. Sure, a thousand geeks like you in the 1990s were doing Arduino. The people that will make it revolutionary are the kids who are playing with it and modding their erector sets with it.

In order to do truly intelligent stuff, the hardware needs to be at least 1000 times more powerful and at least 1000 times more energy-efficient -- right now simulating a non-static human brain would take the energy output of a nuclear powerplant to power the chips, and something like $10-$50bn in processors.

I am not sure of that, considering the way the human body works. A lot of the conscious integration of the body's movements are done peripherally. If each servo had the ability to process the basic needs of that servo, then it could just send statistical info and receive command info from the central computer. A lot of the processing can be off-loaded to units devoted specifically to the specialized process. Kind of like how you could have no fine motor coordination in your fingertips if every tiny minute touch-sense based correction required it to be sent back to the brain for processing.

[Milo]

If you want to see the closest thing to simulating human brain that we have now it's a Google server farm. This includes the redundancy; when one of Google's servers breaks they don't replace it or repair it.

[anderson]

I am not sure of that, considering the way the human body works. A lot of the conscious integration of the body's movements are done peripherally. If each servo had the ability to process the basic needs of that servo, then it could just send statistical info and receive command info from the central computer. A lot of the processing can be off-loaded to units devoted specifically to the specialized process. Kind of like how you could have no fine motor coordination in your fingertips if every tiny minute touch-sense based correction required it to be sent back to the brain for processing.

Do you have any links describing this phenomenon of local low level computation in the nervous system? I'd never heard of that before; had understood everything was computed centrally.

[Enki]

I am not sure of that, considering the way the human body works. A lot of the conscious integration of the body's movements are done peripherally. If each servo had the ability to process the basic needs of that servo, then it could just send statistical info and receive command info from the central computer. A lot of the processing can be off-loaded to units devoted specifically to the specialized process. Kind of like how you could have no fine motor coordination in your fingertips if every tiny minute touch-sense based correction required it to be sent back to the brain for processing.

Do you have any links describing this phenomenon of local low level computation in the nervous system? I'd never heard of that before; had understood everything was computed centrally.

Calling it computation is probably a misunderstanding. It works by gating mechanisms where if certain stimuli rise to certain levels, inhibiting stimuli arise as a response. I am no cognitive neuroscientist, so this is the edge of my knowledge, but as I understand it, every neuron engages in some form of computation. It is the integration of all of it that occurs within the brain. But each level synthesizes the information and sends that information on to the central hub. Kind of like how a router doesn't perform any sort of 'intelligent' functions, it's just a system of open and closed channels that route information throughout the rest of the system based upon that information.

[Taboo]

Anderson,

Some stimuli are processed at the spinal cord level, ( not going back all the way to the brain, but most of the motor coordination DOES happen in the brain. That's why people with Alzheimer or dementia often have shaking hands.

It's about saturation of certain products and the ability to work with new scales. The Industrial revolution did not invent 'building things'. So your argument could be applied to any sort of invention we view as being revolutionary today. The cotton gin, the steam engine. None of them are doing something we couldn't do before, they are just doing things that we did before with a greater deal of efficiency. Very few things actually were NEW things. Like the telegram was a new thing. The airplane was a new thing. But computers are just an abacus on a whole 'nother scale. Just like trains are ox carts on a whole 'nother scale. This is kind of like that. It fundamentally alters the scales. Every scale of manufacture will have a greater level of capacity, all the way up and down the chain.

Not sure what you are trying to say, but steam power was a new thing and it was revolutionary. What it achieved was releasing mankind from the dependency on muscle power, and provided this power on demand, i.e. regardless of the availability of running water or constant wind. That did not exist before. Before steam, it was cheaper to import coal to NY from the coast of England than from 100 miles inland. Trains opened the heartland of most countries for commerce. Electricity had a similarly massive effect. Not only could you have machines do things that would have taken a person (usually a woman) hours, but you didn't have to build the industrial steam infrastructure nearby. Electricity made it possible for women to get jobs en masse. Computers are not just an abacus on a whole nother scale. It is simply not possible to do on an abacus, in human lifetimes, what you can do with even a rather primitive computer. Again, revolutionary.

Again I ask, what is it about 3d printing that is so utterly disruptive. I don't see how saving on a $20, 20 minute trip to the hardware store, and being able to print small, relatively simple things at home or at the hardware store on the corner is such an amazing thing.

Now come back to me with molecular-level constuctors (working at the scale of ångströms, not micrometers - there are 10 000 ångströms in one micrometer), that can build any physically possible set of molecules from basic atomic components in macro-level quantities, and yes, I will be blown away. But that's 4 orders of magnitude away.

The management of that data is where the information revolution is going right now, that's where the most demand is.

Yes, and that's because everyone is drowning in bloatware, and unsuccessfully trying to make 15 different programs written in 5 different languages by 20 different programmers work together without blowing up all the time. Which is exactly the kind of software bottleneck i was mentioning. This is not because programmers are getting stupider, or programming languages worse. Quite the contrary. We're too smart for our own good -- the levels of complexity of the actions we want the software to achieve are so high that the most high-end programs are not understood in entirety by any one person.
Which is why training massive neural nets to do stuff, rather than programming them instruction by instruction, is probably the way of the future. To do that successfully for complex tasks you need massive neural nets - hence my emphasis on raw hardware performance. Of course, you can build customized hardwired neural nets that perform well and consume little, but these are not flexible and to figure out how the wiring must go, you need to simulate it first on a regular piece of hardware and figure out the links. Hence, again, the emphasis on the importance of continued hardware progress.

Kind of like how you could have no fine motor coordination in your fingertips if every tiny minute touch-sense based correction required it to be sent back to the brain for processing.

Um, I'm getting a bit out of my depth as well, but I suspect you're wrong, at least insofar as voluntary movements go, since they are processed in the brain in the primary motor cortex. Some of the reflex movements are processed in the brainstem, still all the way up in the cranium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_motor_cortex

[Enki]

The scale argument is going in circles, so I'll leave what I've said alone and let people figure it out.

Yes, and that's because everyone is drowning in bloatware, and unsuccessfully trying to make 15 different programs written in 5 different languages by 20 different programmers work together without blowing up all the time.

No. It's because there are massive data sets. Some of it has to do with the software, i.e. databases with non-standard formatting. When we're talking about data we are not just talking about data generated by computers. We are talking about census data, we are talking about environmental data. This has nothing at all to do with bloatware. It has to do with the fact that we are collecting data faster than we are processing it.

Which is exactly the kind of software bottleneck i was mentioning. This is not because programmers are getting stupider, or programming languages worse. Quite the contrary. We're too smart for our own good -- the levels of complexity of the actions we want the software to achieve are so high that the most high-end programs are not understood in entirety by any one person.

I think it's got little to do with that. Apples and wombats.

Which is why training massive neural nets to do stuff, rather than programming them instruction by instruction, is probably the way of the future. To do that successfully for complex tasks you need massive neural nets - hence my emphasis on raw hardware performance. Of course, you can build customized hardwired neural nets that perform well and consume little, but these are not flexible and to figure out how the wiring must go, you need to simulate it first on a regular piece of hardware and figure out the links. Hence, again, the emphasis on the importance of continued hardware progress.

You are obviously fixated on the hardware end of things.

[quote}
Um, I'm getting a bit out of my depth as well, but I suspect you're wrong, at least insofar as voluntary movements go, since they are processed in the brain in the primary motor cortex. Some of the reflex movements are processed in the brainstem, still all the way up in the cranium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_motor_cortex[/quote]

I am speaking of involuntary movements exclusively. I am talking about minor reactions to stimuli, not gross motor function.

[Taboo]

I am speaking of involuntary movements exclusively. I am talking about minor reactions to stimuli, not gross motor function.

Sure, but I thought you said fine motor coordination. Never mind. Doesn't matter.

The scale argument is going in circles, so I'll leave what I've said alone and let people figure it out.

So you can't think of any instances where it would make a drastic change in our lives at the micrometer scale either.

No. It's because there are massive data sets. Some of it has to do with the software, i.e. databases with non-standard formatting. When we're talking about data we are not just talking about data generated by computers. We are talking about census data, we are talking about environmental data. This has nothing at all to do with bloatware. It has to do with the fact that we are collecting data faster than we are processing it.

Which suggests we need faster hardware, doesn't it?

I think it's got little to do with that [software bloat]. Apples and wombats.

You are obviously fixated on the hardware end of things.

It all stems from my deep-seated sexual insecurities.

[Enki]

Sure, but I thought you said fine motor coordination. Never mind. Doesn't matter. [/quote}

I meant the movements that correct automatically, like when grasping a cup, the movement that alters your finger's grip by half a millimeter.

So you can't think of any instances where it would make a drastic change in our lives at the micrometer scale either.

I can think of hundreds if not thousands. You're just missing the basic point. I'll try another tactic since you are a fan of PC RPGs.

We have

Offense
Damage (D) How much damage you do per strike
Rate of Fire (F) Ten strikes per minute

Defense
Healing per second (H) This is a combination of your character's innate healing
Resistance (R) This is how much damage you take off of each strike from your enemy.
Hit Points (HP) This is how much damage you can absorb before dying.
Speed (S) Ability to avoid getting hit. Calculated by a differential, your speed v your opponents. Higher speed = superior.

To win a battle, you must remove all of your opponents hitpoints before the opponent removes all of yours. Now, each of these attributes contributes to scale.

You at level 1.
D 5 F 1 H 1 R 2.5 HP 75 S 3

Lets look at a new enemy. A zombie.

Basic Zombie
D 5 F 2 H 3 R 10 HP 150 S 3

At level 1, you simply cannot defeat a zombie in hand to hand combat. You're about to become another zombie. So the point of revolution is that point at which a single zombie cannot defeat you. Lets say your stats increase by a factor of 1 per level.

Level 2
D10 F2 H2 R5 HP150 S6

Now your speed makes it so the zombie is going to miss you 1 out of every 2 swings. But you cannot damage it because your damage and its resistance are equal. But at

Level 3
D15 F3 H3 R7.5 HP225 S9

you are going to make short work of that zombie because you only need to hit it 30 times to kill it, you're hitting it every time, it is missing you 2 out of 3 times and only doing 2.5 points of damage when it does strike. So level 3 is a revolution, because the goal of killing zombies is now easy for you. At level 4 the revolution is complete because the Zombie cannot do damage to you AT ALL.

Now in most RPGs you'd be picking and choosing your stat increases. So that's what 3D printing is like for society. It is millions of marginal stat increases at every single scale of manufacturing. At the top end, for cars, and airplanes it's structural differences that make the vehicle both lighter and stronger. With electronics, it's power supplies that don't have fraying wires. It's fewer imperfections in the manufacturing process. (Yes I know with computers and electronics computer aided manufacturing is already the status quo) At the level of the home, it's spending fewer hours of your life in a given year running back and forth to the grocery store. Just like in the role-playing game, small incremental advances at every level are going to change the way things operate. I got this lesson driven home best in Eve Online, as there were ways to min/max your increases because higher levels became orders of magnitude more difficult to attain. So it was better to train lots of attributes to 3 rather than trying to get to 5 on one attribute. i.e. If you could speed up your tracking speed a little, your rate of fire a little, your resistance a little, your healing a little, and your damage a little that was better than increasing your damage a lot and your hit points a lot. I skilled up a character who would fly cheap little ships very very very close to other ships so that the guns tracking speed on the bigger ship couldn't hit me. After that it just became a matter of time before my puny guns killed them as they couldn't shoot me at all.

If a new technology allows you to eliminate a menial chore that took a week of your life every year is that revolutionary? What if it eliminated 5 menial chores that too up 3.5 days of your life each per year? Is that not revolutionary? Or is something only revolutionary if it completely and fundamentally alters your way of life?

Which suggests we need faster hardware, doesn't it?

Need? Well yes, we always need faster hardware, faster hardware is going to make our analysis of data sets go faster. But there is a lot of room for software to advance to become more crisp clean and efficient to get better times out of your data analysis regardless of hardware.

It all stems from my deep-seated sexual insecurities.

It just sounds like you're a hardware guy.

[Typhoon]

voxeljet prints 3D Aston Martin models for James Bond film Skyfall

[Nonc Hilaire]

3D printing will demonstrate potential when it can make models usable for sand or lost wax casting.

Until then, CNC routers will remain king of the hill for manufacturing. Viva le ShopBot.

[Demon of Undoing]

3D printed and assembled AR15 lower

Not flawless, needs work to be truly functional, but we're getting there.

[Simple Minded]

Lets not forget the nature of the humans who will be using this 3D printing technology.

Once the materials used by 3D printers become viable, The first 10% who get in ahead of the crowd will easily be able to recoup their capital expenditures and will therefore become known as........ "the evil rich."

When the next 70% jump in, profit margins will go way down, and those who formerly wanted to service society at low cost will complain about the competition under cutting them (ie: kinda like frugal Westerners who complain that their jobs are getting shipped to India or China, psst..... not if they, as consumers, were willing to pay more!).

At that point, the former altruists will form unions and/or lobby politicians for protection against people and companies who are undercutting them on cost. They will attempt to close the market from the entry of newbies with the charge of "They are not willing to pay a living wage."

"I need to recoup my capital expenditures and pay my bills and taxes! Otherwise my creditors or the government will shut me down!" sayeth the evil entrepreneuer.

"Did you hear him? He just said screw the poor people!" sayeth the critics of the evil entrepreneuer.

On a similar note, assuming ditch diggers make $10 an hour, and heart surgeons make $2000 an hour.
There is nothing preventing any of us from hiring someone to dig a ditch for us and paying them $2000 an hour,
nor shopping around for a heart surgeon who will cut open our child for $10 an hour (might not be the most successful heart surgeon out there)
other than our own...................selfishness!

Why are altruists and capitalists both the same?

[noddy]

i know lots of people with sheds full of fun tools but only a handful that can build an engine from raw materials using them.

3d printers pretty much end up in that space for me, next to the lathe or mill or whatever, its an evolutionary improvement to what we can already do if motivated or inspired enough but not a revolutionary change.

the automation aspect that allows the skill-free to still print things is somewhat different but the old tools are getting the benefits from automation aswell and those plans would be cheaper printed in a mass production factory so that brings me back to it being a prototype/inventing tool.

driving 3d modelling software is every bit as difficult as learning how to use one of the existing machines, so much the same as now but with an extra gadget in the shed.

id want my gun done on a lathe and mill out of metal for the time being, though i dont mind watching other people experiment with printed plastics from a safe distance

[Enki]

Lets not forget the nature of the humans who will be using this 3D printing technology.

Once the materials used by 3D printers become viable, The first 10% who get in ahead of the crowd will easily be able to recoup their capital expenditures and will therefore become known as........ "the evil rich."

When the next 70% jump in, profit margins will go way down, and those who formerly wanted to service society at low cost will complain about the competition under cutting them (ie: kinda like frugal Westerners who complain that their jobs are getting shipped to India or China, psst..... not if they, as consumers, were willing to pay more!).

I think it is pretty obvious that Dow, Dupont and BASF will be at the front lines of materials manufacture.

[Crocus sativus]

.


bioprinters, to print functional human tissue for medical research and regenerative therapies.

Organovo, a San Diego-based company that focuses on regenerative medicine, is one company using 3D printers, called bioprinters, to print functional human tissue for medical research and regenerative therapies.

"This is disruptive technology," said Mike Renard, Organovo's vice president of commercial operations. "It's always interesting and fun, but never easy." (More: 15 Surprising Global Technology Cities)

Traditional 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using additive processes, in which an object is created by laying down successive layers of material such as plastic, ceramics, glass or metal to print an object. Companies including Boeing , General Electric and Honeywell use this type of 3D printing to manufacture parts.

Bioprinters, though, use a "bio-ink" made of living cell mixtures to form human tissue. Basically, the bio-ink is used to build a 3D structure of cells, layer by layer, to form tissue.

Eventually, medical researchers hope to be able to use the printed tissue to make organs for organ replacement.

However, growing functional organs is still at least 10 years away, said Shaochen Chen, a professor of nano-engineering at the University of California, San Diego, who uses bioprinting in researching regenerative medicine.

But even though developing functional organs may still be a decade off, medical researchers and others are using bioprinting technology to make advancements in other ways.

Researchers in regenerative medicine at Wake Forest University in North Carolina partnered with the Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine to make a 3-D skin printer that deposits cells directly on a wound to help it heal quicker. Researchers at the university have also had success printing off kidney cells.

Bioengineers at Cornell University have printed experimental knee cartilage, heart valves and bone implants. And the non-medical start-up Modern Meadow, which is backed by investor Peter Thiel, is using bioprinting technology to develop a way to print meat.

Bio-printing is also playing a part in how some pharmaceutical companies conduct medical research, and the technology may also have the potential to save the drug companies a lot of money because it could cut drug testing costs, Chen said.

Medical researchers in the pharmaceutical industry, until lately, have used two-dimensional cell cultures to test drugs during the early stages of development. However, the 2D cell cultures do not reflect human tissue as accurately as 3D printed tissue, meaning the 2D models can create misleading test results.

Testing with 3D tissues, however, provide more precise results, which allows for pharmaceutical companies to determine failed drugs early on before investing more money in development.

And with clinical trials accounting for the largest percentage of the biopharmaceutical industry's budget for the research and development at $31.3 billion, according to a report from the Presidents Council on Science and Technology, it's no surprise that drug companies want to use 3D tissues to help avoid wasted costs.

"It's very, very significant...It takes a lot of time and money developing a successful drug," Chen said. "I think this is a great idea and will save the pharmaceutical industry a lot of troubles ... It could help get drugs to market faster."

And this is where Organovo sees opportunity, Renard said. (More: Big Data Moves to the Food Industry)

Organovo, with the help of the Australian company Invetech, was the first company to launch a commercial 3D bioprinter. The company originally intended to sell its printer, which is called the NovoGen MMX bio-printer, to other companies for use. But after seeing opportunity to cash in on the market for human tissue, the company changed its business model to making tissues for drug companies for medical research and therapeutic applications instead.

"Generally, the drug business can benefit significantly from these 3D tissues ... There's plenty of evidence that their processes are basically broken. They are inefficient and highly suspect," Renard said. "There's a big problem and they are looking for a better solution."

Organovo, which trades on the OTC market, wants to be that solution.

The company has partnered with Pfizer and United Therapeutics, and while Renard would not disclose the details of their partnership, he did say that the companies have a business arrangement in which funding is provided and some rights are shared.

Renard did not disclose any other drug companies that are partnering with Organovo.

But Organovo, which has made blood vessels, lung tissue and recreated tumors using bio-printing, is customizing tissue of all types for its current partners' medical research, Renard said.

"We build custom tissue for them," Renard said. "They may have specific cell lines, disease areas of interests and they want a proprietary model for them ... we can make it."

.

[anderson]

^That's an ambitious idea. Anyone with specialized knowledge about the physiology in terms of the number of different types of "lego blocks" of cells needed to make different organs? How many different cell types would you need to make, say, a liver? Is there a continuous gradient of types of cells in functional organs, or a small number of finite types (fat cells, hepatocytes, blood vessel cells, bile duct related cells, connective tissue cells), with the function being from the arrangement and concentration of the types? I wonder how it would work to make sure the proper connections between adjacent cells for connectivity and intercellular communication are made as the cells are printed, layer by layer?

[Enki]

^That's an ambitious idea. Anyone with specialized knowledge about the physiology in terms of the number of different types of "lego blocks" of cells needed to make different organs? How many different cell types would you need to make, say, a liver? Is there a continuous gradient of types of cells in functional organs, or a small number of finite types (fat cells, hepatocytes, blood vessel cells, bile duct related cells, connective tissue cells), with the function being from the arrangement and concentration of the types? I wonder how it would work to make sure the proper connections between adjacent cells for connectivity and intercellular communication are made as the cells are printed, layer by layer?

No doubt this will be for skin at first.

[Crocus sativus]

That's an ambitious idea. Anyone with specialized knowledge about the physiology in terms of the number of different types of "lego blocks" of cells needed to make different organs? How many different cell types would you need to make, say, a liver? Is there a continuous gradient of types of cells in functional organs, or a small number of finite types (fat cells, hepatocytes, blood vessel cells, bile duct related cells, connective tissue cells), with the function being from the arrangement and concentration of the types? I wonder how it would work to make sure the proper connections between adjacent cells for connectivity and intercellular communication are made as the cells are printed, layer by layer ?

.

These are the technologies of future, strengh of America

No doubt BioPrinting will happen, question only, when and which company will pioneer


.

[Enki]

A building I work out of has several robotics companies and a DIY synthetic biology lab where you can come and learn biology experimentally. From what I understand the bio startup scene in New York is burgeoning. I'm not linked into that community though.

[Heracleum Persicum]

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That's an ambitious idea. Anyone with specialized knowledge about the physiology in terms of the number of different types of "lego blocks" of cells needed to make different organs? How many different cell types would you need to make, say, a liver? Is there a continuous gradient of types of cells in functional organs, or a small number of finite types (fat cells, hepatocytes, blood vessel cells, bile duct related cells, connective tissue cells), with the function being from the arrangement and concentration of the types? I wonder how it would work to make sure the proper connections between adjacent cells for connectivity and intercellular communication are made as the cells are printed, layer by layer?

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Could tissue engineering mean personalized medicine ?





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[Sparky]

anderson, that is what I have been trying to explain to people for years. lavender is about to get real. Marx predicted that one day there would be plenty and everyone should have what they need. We are there now.

Ehhh... not so fast, 'lil fella.

Soon(ish) maybe, but now?

[noddy]

mining of oil and petrochemicals hasnt got any cheaper nor have those resources become more plentiful and its bloody expensive buying raw materials for non trivial home projects.

[Enki]

anderson, that is what I have been trying to explain to people for years. lavender is about to get real. Marx predicted that one day there would be plenty and everyone should have what they need. We are there now.

Ehhh... not so fast, 'lil fella.

Soon(ish) maybe, but now?

What durian thought that article was worth publishing? The low end consumer printers have thousands of times that quality.

These kinds of idiots ar the same ones who thought steam engines wouls never take off because the first few were colossal failures. If you need to point to retrograde DIY projects fun ten years ago, then you aren't in the conversation.