By now we’ve all probably come across at least the concept of 3D printing or ‘additive manufacturing’, whereby successive layers of material are laid down under computer control to create an object of almost any shape, based on electronic data. With prices starting in the hundreds of pounds (having dropped from the tens of thousands a mere five years ago), it’s possible that some of you out there might even have your own home printer – capable of making everything from plastic figurines to jewellery and ceramics or even guns (though not legally, of course!).

To date, the technology has largely been the preserve of hobbyists making trinkets and large companies making prototypes, along with some very successful personalised medical applications. Many in our industry, though, have seen great potential for it to save resources – predominantly through its ability to make replacement parts to extend products’ lifespans. Indeed, speaking to Resource about designing for the circular economy in 2013, Sophie Thomas, Director of Circular Economy at the RSA, noted: “I think 3D printing could have incredible potential for designing things for longevity. Opening up the operating manuals, getting that information online, would allow you as a user to go and print new pieces for your electronics instead of having to throw them away. So, actually, the potential’s not for the designer, although it could potentially change the way we design things, but really for the user because it will give them more control over how long their machines last and they can make bespoke elements.” She added that designers would need to think about “futureproofing” their designs, to allow people to build upon and repair devices with new patterns that come out, “instead of having to upgrade by chucking something away and getting a new one”.

But so far, the resourceful revolution promised by the technology’s emergence has failed to materialise. There have, however, been a few recent developments that indicate 3D printing could meet and exceed the expectations it excited when it first came to the public’s attention a few years ago (although you may be surprised to learn it was actually invented in 1983 by an American called Chuck Hull).

Lisa Harouni, co-founder of Digital Forming, a software house that aims to democratise design for 3D printing technologies, says that the detail and quality of products that you can create through 3D printing has vastly improved and insists that we’re at a ‘tipping point’ when it comes to the technology. Speaking at TEDSalon London, she summarises the current state of the industry: “I believe we’re at a tipping point where this is now something that we can’t avoid. This technology is really going to disrupt the landscape of manufacturing and, I believe, cause a revolution in manufacturing.

“So today, you can download products from the web – anything you would have on your desktop, like pens, whistles, lemon squeezers. You can use software like Google SketchUp to create products from scratch very easily. 3D printing can be also used to download spare parts from the web. So imagine you have, say, a Hoover in your home and it has broken down. You need a spare part, but you realise that Hoover’s been discontinued. Can you imagine going online – this is a reality – and finding that spare part from a database of geometries of that discontinued product and downloading that information, that data, and having the product made for you at home, ready to use, on your demand? And in fact, because we can create spare parts with things the machines are quite literally making themselves.”

So, that’s the current situation, but potential advances could see the technology develop much more still. The material most associated with 3D printing – and that people currently have most access to when creating products in their homes – is plastic, but that aspect of the technology is also changing and expanding. Scientists are now developing additive manufacturing technology to accommodate materials including metal, glass, and even food, with corresponding increases in applications, functionality and, of course, resource efficiency.

Researcher Chris Williams, at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the US, for instance, is using a National Science Foundation Grant to develop what he hopes will be a low-cost and efficient process to 3D print with copper. Copper has excellent conductivity and is used in many electronic devices, so could be quite valuable as a 3D printing medium. Williams explains: “We’re trying to give engineers more choices of what they have to print with. They can’t use copper and other materials right now, and were trying to fix that.”

His process sees copper powder selectively infused with glue layer by layer before it is all fused together in a furnace. Currently, resulting products still contain small pockets of air that can reduce performance compared to products from conventional copper manufacturing, but Williams hopes that adding copper nanoparticles to the glue could fill in the pockets and solve the problem of functionality, potentially resulting in a marketable process within the next five years.

Up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), meanwhile, researchers are developing technology to 3D print with glass – again, a difficult material to work with because of the extremely high temperatures required to melt the material. Previous attempts to 3D print glass have relied on melding fragments of glass at relatively low temperatures, but the resulting products lack the transparency and strength of conventionally-produced glass. According to the MIT Media Lab, its high-temperature ‘dual-heated chamber concept’, which operates at 1,900°F and uses a special alumina-zircon-silica nozzle to funnel material layer upon layer (in much the same way as a soft serve ice cream machine) solves that problem.

The researchers expect that the development could be particularly useful in the architectural field – creating architectural components and potentially even whole building facades that are structurally sound and environmentally informed. Neri Oxman, associate professor at the MIT Media Lab, says the project is investigating whether it is possible to “surpass the modern architectural tradition of discrete formal and functional partitions, and generate an all-in-one building skin that is at once structural and transparent”.

Additive manufacturing technology could also play a role in the battle against food waste and world hunger, believe it or not. Farther up the US East Coast, this time at Cornell University in Upstate New York, scientists pioneered ‘hydrocolloid printing’ way back in 2012: ‘Using a novel combination of hydrocolloids (xanthium gum and gelatin) and flavour agents’, the ‘Hydrocolloid Printing: A Novel Platform for Customized Food Production’ paper explains, ‘texture and flavour can be independently tuned to produce printing materials that simulate a broad range of foods, with only a minimal number of materials.’ The scientists claim that printing food from cartridges of the hydrocolloid gel could be used to create food without any supply chain waste and could also make alternative proteins seem more edible (mealworm shortbread, anyone?).

3D food printing technology is already making its way into the market, with companies including ChefJet gaining attention with its confectionary machine. In 2013, it launched ChefJet Pro ‘the
world’s first professional food 3D Printer’, which ‘can create bespoke confections for an unlimited array of applications – sculptural, ornate cake and cupcake toppers, bespoke candies and mints, delicate latticework over which a cocktail is poured’, and so on. The resulting creations can be quite beautiful, though are perhaps somewhat gimmicky.

On the more practical side, German company Biozoon, meanwhile, 3D prints what it calls Smoothfood, aimed at older people who suffer from dysphagia and have trouble chewing and swallowing. For such individuals, the only food option is normally purée, but many find it unappetising, so Biozoon’s technology aims to combat that by taking fresh puréed food and printing it through a nozzle into a shape that resembles more conventional (and appetising) food, which is then much easier to swallow.

But it’ll probably be a while before you can 3D print any meal to your stomach’s content à la Star Trek. Here in the present, recycling enthusiasts will be pleased to learn that post-consumer plastic is increasingly being used instead of virgin for the more ‘traditional’ 3D printing applications. It is already possible to purchase 100 per cent recycled filaments for use in typical 3D printing applications from companies including Refil in the Netherlands, which makes recycled ABS filament from car dashboards and recycled PET filament from fizzy drinks bottles. But it gets better: The Plastic Bank (whose CEO, David Katz, is featured in this
year’s Hot 100 list), has created the world’s first 3D printing filament from ocean plastic using open source technology. The ocean plastic filament forms just a small part of the social enterprise’s overall aim, which Katz describes as making ‘plastic waste a currency to help the world’s most disadvantaged people’. It works with people from underprivileged communities, where opportunities are few, but waste is often prevalent: individuals collect plastic – often found on beaches and in waterways – and sell it on to Plastic Bank. Speaking in a Plastic Bank video, Katz explains: “I think the greatest opportunity in incentivising people to collect and recycle plastic is to exhibit its value. When people know that they can go and take that piece of plastic, and that actually gets them medical care, or... to create something new out of it that they can then sell... and to give them the hope and the creativity that they can use that material to change their lives and their community, well, I think that’s the process – it’s to reveal the value... what we thought was garbage was actually money.”

The Plastic Bank is already operating in several countries, and after it has purchased the material, the organisation can either sell the plastic on to other companies (it already counts Lush amongst its clients) or recycle it onsite using an extruder created through open source technology – potentially to create filament for 3D printers that the collectors (as well as others) can then use.

Indeed, open source programmers have now created RecycleBot, ‘a waste plastic extruder that creates 3D printer filament from waste plastic and natural polymers’ to use in open source 3D printers like RepRap. If the technology becomes more widely adopted and finds its way into more community applications and homes, it could result in mass expansion of small-scale recycling at home (or in small community or business centres) that adheres quite closely to the proximity principle. Indeed, writing about the prospect, scientists from the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen’s University in Canada claimed in ‘Distributed Recycling of Waste Polymer into RepRap Feedstock’ for Rapid Prototyping Journal in 2013: ‘Centralised recycling of polymers is often uneconomic and energy intensive due to transportation embodied energy. This paper provides a proof of concept for high-value recycling of waste polymers at distributed creation sites.’

That means anyone, in theory, could both recycle their own plastic waste at home and use it to create parts for their broken electronics – or novelty unicorn figurines. Only time will tell.