4D printing - a new front

Original author: Oliver Marks
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Skylar Tibbits

Today we are witnessing how new incredible materials and industrial methods are changing the basic principles of design, borrowing the methods of nano- and biotechnologies, but already at the macro level.

The current generation of 3D additive printing technology is limited to several types of plastics and soft metal materials from which products are formed from CAD files. That is why four-dimensional technologies have such enormous potential.

Advances in nanotechnology and biotechnology are applied at the macro level: incredible new materials can be programmed so that they change shape over time. Earlier this week (last - approx. Per.) I spent some time with Carlos Olguin, head of the Autodesk bio-programmable materials group, and talked yesterday with Skylar Tibbits from MIT and Shelly Linor and Daniel Dikovsky of Stratasys. I was interested in learning more about this new industry, what forms it takes and how it all works in general.

When talking about 4D printing, the fourth dimension is understood as the property of materials to change and mutate over time under the influence of water, changes in temperature and / or air for the purpose of self-assembly. Soon formats of 4D objects will receive their APIs, with the help of which designers will be able to choose arbitrary characteristics of the materials from which the objects are created. Then they are printed using precise chemical calibrations, giving them the desired properties and functionality.

imageSimilar to the movement of home-made computers in the 1970s, which led to the emergence of DOS and the first staff, today's “four-dimensional” front (the author of the term 4D in this context is Skylar Tibbits) also consists of very curious participants. Autodesk is playing an increasingly important role in life science by providing design tools for working at the nanoscale, based on its versatile design solutions in architecture and mechanics. And today Autodesk is well aware that the microworld affects the macrocosm. Research in this new world is led by the scientific community, but it works with Autodesk and others to democratize this space. This is done using standards and APIs that programmers and designers will use.

Stratasys has been working in this field since 1989, and its experience in 3D printers, rapid office prototyping systems and direct digital production solutions has been very useful here. Late last year, Stratasys merged with Objet Geometries. Today, these two companies play a key role in production processes. Organovo creates biological 3D printers: its “bioplotter” can form living tissue from living cells, and over time it can “print out” entire organs. Organovo is now collaborating with Autodesk to create 3D design software. All these companies are interesting in their own right, but together, by joining forces, they create simply incredible innovations.

According to Carlos Olguin of Autodesk, the goal of all this work is to democratize this area so that ordinary people, without a doctorate in chemistry and life science, could experiment in it. Stratasys Global Director of Education Shelley Linor told me about the ASTM F2915 (.amf) XML file format called Additive Manufacturing, which standardizes the features that Autodesk and others can use to create their designs. This file describes the geometric properties of objects - how they are used to determine sequences and mixtures of materials. Autodesk will soon launch the Cyborg project, and now you can download the 123D 3D modeling software .

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The synergy and collaboration between these companies and the Self Assembly lab at MIT, led by Skylar Tibbits and other research groups, has identified a wide range of promising research areas. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the trend is the progress in 4D materials that generate new ways of thinking. Self-repairing jeans made of biological materials, flat furniture in a vacuum package, assembling itself under the influence of the atmosphere, objects that are assembled and disassembled depending on the temperature - all this may seem fantastic, but quite real studies are being conducted in these areas. As in printed human organs, more than one year will pass before tangible results, but the goals are already clearly defined and innovations are already taking place.

When polymers and plastics appeared in the late 1950s, an explosion of innovation occurred (say, the modern Lego designer was patented on January 28, 1958). Another five years were needed to find the right material for mass production - acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or an ABS copolymer. However, attempts to create 4D objects in the then relatively rude chemical experiments gave rise to very few new toys and, by and large, did not lead to anything but hype in the press. On the other hand, mass production of plastics has changed the world.

Today we are entering a new era with inverted rules of the game: a new generation of “programmers of matter, not computers” (a phrase by Skylar Tibbits) is curbing the natural self-assembled order of things in the universe for small-scale production of products.

This is already happening: Autodesk bought Instructables, more work from Thingiverse and defcad, more and more active in the 3D and 4D open source community. Today, MIT and printer companies widely use tools such as cross-platform voxel modeling and analysis software vox.cad (a voxel is a three-dimensional volume pixel).

The most important role in these processes is played by materials. Despite the current hype surrounding home 3D printers, due to the high cost of supplies and size, it will be difficult for such printers to compete on the cost of products with industrial production, as Jonas Benzen showed on his blog . Today, 3D printers are mainly used for prototyping and industrial design from soft model materials.

Some of our printing concepts have already become obsolete paradigms. A real breakthrough will undoubtedly come from the field of material chemistry. As Daniel Dikowski of Stratasys explains, these will be mixtures of several materials that play the role of material program interface elements. Such modern alchemy, able to program the necessary properties of materials, will become a new key paradigm. Design principles based on the volatile properties of these amazing new materials are slowly being formed. Although today there are still few such materials, titanic work is being carried out in this area with very rapid progress. In 4–5 years, we will see very advanced materials that can be programmed and printed. This will result in fruitful cooperation,

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