Gadgetory

the printing press one of the greatest inventions of all time allowed for easy and rapid printing of books and information which spread literacy and knowledge across the world the printing press revolutionized the spread of information but now a new method of printing called 3d printing is poised to revolutionize manufacturing the way it works is actually very simple using a 3d model as a guide a moving 3d printer head lays down a layer of material that has a certain amount of thickness to it then it does it again and again putting down one layer at a time until finally the completed model has been created literally from the ground up one slice at a time any complex object that cannot support its own weight during printing is printed along with some kind of scaffolding which can be easily removed or washed away once the object is completely printed 3d printing can be done with all sorts of materials different kinds of plastic metal sand stones ceramic concrete wood and more and here is an example this is a lego technic compatible 32 tooth gear you see I like to build robots in my spare time and well I have a lot of parts there are some very useful pieces that simply don't exist so 3d printing to the rescue once I knew what I wanted to make I needed to decide on some 3d modeling software to use there are a ton of options but I ended up using Google Sketchup which is easy to learn and use for a really powerful 3d program I would recommend blender but it does have a very steep learning curve once I finished making my 3d model I needed to figure out how I was going to print it you can buy or even build your own 3d printer but because the technology is still pretty new it's probably more worthwhile for most people to use a 3d printing service coincidentally as I was writing this episode a company called Shapeways contacted us and offered to do some 3d printing for us I agreed and uploaded my exported STL files to their server I chose which pieces colors and what kind of material I wanted I went with strong and flexible plastic I was also pretty surprised to see that they can print in 14 karat gold that is one expensive gear a few weeks later I got a package in the mail containing all of my pieces as you can see the plastic is a lot different from real Lego it's rough and kind of chalky unless you get the polished stuff a lot of the pieces I designed are a bit too tight but they still fit with real Lego overall I'm very pleased with the results and I'll probably continue to design and print more pieces in the future if you'd like to print any of the pieces I've designed you can follow the link in the video description but being able to print little plastic gears is just the beginning for 3d printing imagine 3d printing an entire product from scratch does that remind you of anything you know like the Replicators from Star Trek perhaps computer tea Earl Grey hot there you go ok so we probably won't be able to print out a new toaster or a cup of tea anytime soon but it's already possible to 3d print custom prosthetics clothing food jewelry guns drugs even living skin cartilage and bone scientists are currently working on ways to print entire organs like kidneys and livers and even with 3d printing in its infancy there are already many legal concerns about what people can do with 3d printing technology easy homemade weapon manufacturing and patent and copyright infringement among them keep an eye on this because it's going to be an interesting couple of decades something else to keep your eyes on shutterstock.com I actually made a special request to do this ad integration because as a video editor I have a lot of very relevant things to say about them I've been using shutterstock for the past 3 months and I love it we make a ton of videos at lines Media Group and before we got shutterstock it was always such a pain to get usable images of things that I needed I can't use Google Images because most of those aren't licensed for reuse and they're usually too small anyway shutterstock is great because they have more than 35 million images all of them carefully labeled and easily searchable and you don't even need an account to see what they have to offer also a lot of the images have their subjects isolated on a white background which is perfect for compositing in Photoshop or elsewhere and most images are available in enormous resolutions which is very useful for video and image creation whatever your project might be Shutterstock has lots of different plans to suit your unique image needs so if you'd like to go check them out go to shutterstock.com and use the offer code tekzilla order to receive 20% off thanks for watching this episode of fast as possible give us a like or a dislike if that's how you feel and leave a comment about what you want a 3d print and also any future topics you'd like me to cover on fast as possible don't forget to hit the subscribe button if you haven't already so you don't miss any of our videos thanks again