Gadgetory

hello i'm luis trophy CNET reporting from the 3d printshow in london where some of the most exciting jaw-dropping and futuristic tech is being shown off let's take a look for the uninitiated 3d printers work by taking data from a virtual computer design model then building that model slice by slice into an actual object items built using this process can be incredibly detailed and if you print one piece at a time can even feature moving parts here on show today is some seriously impressive printed marbles including musical instruments toys and even items of clothing where do you see this eventually going fashion wise do you think in 10 years time we're all going to be walking around wearing plastic clothes and rubber trousers well maybe some of us the streets of London but hopefully not everyone I think it's going to be integrated both in direct 3d manufacturing so in 3d printing but probably as is already being used for something okay so in Winchester design you know see what it looks like talk about it and then put it into manufacturing the flexibility of 3d printing means designers can really go to town there are loads of very unusual styles on show here I've noticed especially when it comes to jewelry so you designed this ring how exactly did you design it what software did you use am i used a program called poser first it's an animation program with pre-generated human figures and they're from that I shaped the hands which clasping a ball of human hair whereas smooth it out makes it look more organic more human rather than ridden with polygons so I managed to get it to not look so digitally this technology isn't just for hobbyists it's even finding a home in Hollywood meet Iron Man's mask and articulated gauntlets so tell me about the glove how exactly has this been made so this is the glove from the second movie from Iron Man 2 so we revisited and tried to change the technique from the first movie so we 3d scan Roberts hands and then took the design and wrapped around his proportions and came up with all the articulation and then we broke it down and printed it out on an object that was then cleaned up metal etched and basically nickel-plated and painted from there and fully assembled and it's a functioning gauntlet glitz and glamour aside there's plenty of evidence here that 3d printing has scientific applications as well this incredibly detailed physical model of an ancient cat skeleton was created by scanning the animals mummified remains meanwhile full 3d body scans like this one give a clearer picture of someone's physical makeup something that could come in handy when designing prosthetic limbs so what are some of the advantages of using 3d printing for prosthetics I think it's a the essence of form fit and function fit because you get a perfect fit from scan to print form because you get to restore symmetry for people which emotionally we find is equally as important as the physical function and finally the performance lightweight durable high-impact allows people to play football to run to climb to really restore meaningful way of life so what's the future of 3d printing well amazingly from what I've seen it looks like it could be objects that designed themselves so if I'm not mistaken a computer actually designed this object is that right yes this is correct this is designed without designer interaction the geometry was created by a topology optimization algorithm from a set of load criteria and what happened was the computer basically decided where to put which element of geometry resulting in a sort of biologically looking component a trait shared by this 3d printed concept house which was also designed by a computer algorithm so this thing doesn't like any building I've ever seen but you're saying that this is actually a concept for a house yeah this is the very first prototype for a completely 3d printed house we wrote our own algorithm that is able to arrange material on I'm almost like in nature it's almost creating kind of bone-like structure that it's extremely lightweight because it's it's actually using the same algorithms of nature it almost yet it's actually almost building itself yes what does that mean for architects in the future I mean we are we are kind of playing playing with the algorithm and curating the algorithm we were obviously still in charge of the algorithm it's it's not taking over yet yet yes if that's not an omen of the robot apocalypse I don't know what is for more on 3d printing check out CNET's and let me know what you would like to see crafted by robots in the comments below I'm Luke Westaway and this is the 3d printshow in London