[MUSIC] Welcome to the session on
design thinking and action. So in this video, we are going to help you run through an actual application
of the design thinking framework. And see how you can use to come
up with a solution to a problem. A prototype that you can test or
several prototypes. Because with 3-D printing, the main
benefit is that you can prototype fast and test again. And then finally, you might even be able to come up with
a product that you can actually sell. So now to do this, we are going to use a project that one of the teams,
who worked with Doctor. In his course called Making Things. They came up with a product
that they actually tried. They were successful at
selling during the course of 16 weeks that they had
in the spring semester. So we have with us one member of the

team. Mr. Kevin Hauger,
who is an industrial design student and also a guru at the Illinois Maker Lab. So welcome, Kevin and thank you for
taking the time to chat with us. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> So, could you give us
a sense of your background? >> So I'm a senior in industrial
design here at U of I. I'm also a guru at the lab, like you said. >> Okay. >> And just a designer in general. I like making things,
either with 3D printing, or just a number of things
that I can get my hands on. >> So, before we discus the particular
project that we are doing to explain the design thinking framework. Just give us a sense of
what industrial design is. >> So industrial design is kind of
a broad term for product design. And so, I like to tell people that
product design kind of then

encompasses consumer goods that you
would go get at the store. But industrial design is more
of encompasses every industry or field, so
anything that gets designed, really. So it could be anything from toy design, furniture design to UX design or
anything, really. >> So tell us a little bit
about what did you make. >> So my team created multiPLY. And multiPLY is a toilet paper attachment that lets you add an extra roll onto
your standard toilet paper holder. >> That seems like a great solution for
a common problem. So, in the process of identifying
the users you're going to work for, or the users you're going to try and help. One of the first stages we
constantly emphasize process, so tell us how you applied this
part of the frame work. >> For our team, we all had the same issue with

roommates
not replacing the toilet paper roll. So, we've all experienced it ourself. But it's important at
this stage to remember, that you're not always just designing for
yourself. You're designing for
other users and so, we went out. And we asked a number of
people that had roommates or family members that they lived with. And really tried to figure out
more about the problem and experiences that they have. >> Once you get a sense
of who your users are and perhaps a range of problems
that you're looking at. How do you focus and
get to one particular problem? Or perhaps, most important problem or
the problem that you want to solve and we call that the defined process? Could you talk about that?? >> Yes so for the defining stage,
it's really important to narrow down your scope, so
you

only have a few problems. And so typically what I like to do is, choose the most important
problem you're trying to solve. So for in this case, it was the problem
that you're in a sticky situation, can't get up, you need a spare roll. So how can we always have
the user have a spare roll. >> One of the other thing that also
come up is the constraints that we have. So for example in this case, perhaps one of the constraints I
just can't get a double sized rows. So, I think that's also important too. As you look at the problems you
also identify the constraints that the user has. So once you have
the problem identified and you are also looking at the constraints
that are applicable to the problem. Then you start thinking about
the design alternatives and going towards the prototype phase.

Could you talk about how
you went through that? >> We initially sketched
out ideas on paper. So, we had a number of different ideas
out and then, we chose our top two. And then we modeled in a 3D CAD program,
similar to Fusion 360. >> Okay. >> And so at that point,
we were able to, within a few hours, put them on a 3-D printer and
already have our first prototype out. And so
that's the great thing about 3-D printing, is because now you already have
a fully functional prototype. That you can either take home and
test yourself or give to your target market or your users. And have them test and give feedback and
so, at this point in the stage, we're able to give it to our users. We let them test it for a few days,
and then give us a bunch of feedback. And then we went back to the

cabs
software and fixed our issues and then, printed it out again. >> So
how many prototypes would you have made? >> For our specific product here,
we had around 42 prototypes. >> Wow.
>> A large number. But it really depends on your timeline and
the problem you're trying to solve. And the feedback you get
from the user will kind of define how many prototypes
you should go through. >> So you were able to do,
to make the sketches, design alternatives and
prototype and tests all together. With Feedback loop among
these three stages, so that's another important point to note. That you may not want to look
at these stages as discreet, something that happens
one after the other. You might just be doing them in
a cycle with a feedback loop from each of these phases. So, you were able to do

so
many prototypes in a short time feed. Could you take us through sort of
the timelines for this process? >> So we spent about a week really,
understanding our user needs and researching and
talking to the users themselves. And then the next week or so,
we spent ideating just on paper. Figuring out,
what are some ideas that we could have. And then we jump right in,
spend about eight or nine weeks, CAD modeling our products. And then prototyping and testing, getting feedback from the user
and then recycling that circle. >> And so all of this was done in
the Illinois Maker Lab where we have 3D printers there. And from identifying a problem to design,
prototyping, and iterating and even testing. Their team also designed the packaging for
the product and the branding. And they were

actuallyalso
able to sell the product to students in our time frame of 16 weeks. So, that is pretty amazing and I think several other teams in the same
course were also able to do that. So that is really
a powerful example of how fast this process can proceed
given the tools that we now have. >> Exactly. 3D printing has really let
anyone become an entrepreneur. Within a day,
you can take your idea into a prototype or even a small product that you can sell. So it's pretty great. >> I know you also have your
product up on Shapeways. Hopefully, you'll make some money
selling that there as well. Thank you for joining us for
the session and thank you Kevin for sharing your thoughts. We hope that you have gained a clearer
example of design thinking in action. So this is motivating the

skills
that you will be learning in the software modules and
the hardware modules. And you would come back to
the design thinking process again, to apply that in the caption as well,
thank you. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] So in this video we have Professor
Darrel Wakeman speaking to one of his students to get an over view of
a project where they use the design thinking approach to help a child who
had some impairment in his hands and they were able to come up with
solutions for that child itself. And they have been able to train the
organization that works with such children to leverage the same work
flow to help more children. So it's an inspiring story, have a look. >> I run a class with a colleague
in engineering which is about digital prototyping. And we start off Introducing students
to 3D modeling software scanning and 3D printing. And then we divide them up into groups. And they work on design projects. The groups of students we have
are a combination of engineers, this year it was

mainly
people from bio-engineering. And also industrial design students. So in groups of four, this year they
took on various bioengineering projects. So I want to introduce Colin Heshmat,
who's a student from mechanical engineering, who was in one of the groups
in the digital prototyping class that exploited the particular characteristics
of 3D printing In a very interesting way. So Colin, could you tell us a bit
about the problem that you took on, how the group approached
the design phase of it, and then how you went through to modeling and
3D printing? >> Sure, so our problem was
with a certain individual from child care facility called Easter Seals
in Chicago, he had a condition called agenesis of the corpus callosum which is a
birth defect, a neurological birth defect that hinders his

motor abilities so
he had trouble independently eating. He was already working with
a lot of speech pathologists and occupational therapists on this problem. So they were trying to re-train him
to be able to independently eat. So they were trying out a lot of
different off-the-shelf solutions and products that were created for
that purpose. From what we've learned in class
such as we got a quick taste of some new CAD software, some 3D scanning,
and also 3D printing. And it was kind of a perfect project for this class because we were able
to utilize all of those things, and it was kind of necessary that we,
we needed to utilize all those things in order to tackle this challenge
in the best way we found possible. >> What did you find were
the problems with existing utensils? >> The main

issue was, his grip was
very different from normal grips. He had more strength and
less strength in certain areas and he just could not comfortably
hold a normal utensil and some of the other products
that they were using, such as oversized handles and kind of
longer handles that could wrap around. He had trouble actually manipulating them,
and picking them up, and setting them down. Yeah.
>> So how did you start working on what might be a more appropriate set
of shapes for utensils for Jeremy? >> At first,
we really didn't touch any software. It was really great. We had a team of four
Individuals that were from different colleges Industrial Design,
General Engineering, Bio Engineering and so we all kind of have a unique
perspective on the problem and we used quiet first we took kind
of

shape things in certain ways. Then we had a several conversation with
individual that worked with Jeremy. They seemed to think that the best
way to approach this problem was to actually make a personalized grip. It wasn't obvious at first, but
eventually it became obvious that we needed to bring Jeremy clay, and
have him grip it and shape it with him. And then take that, scan it,
and do what we want with it. We were able to obtain
a really complicated, probably impossible to CAT on your own,
shape that we were able to replicate because of all the tools
we got to learn in that class. >> I mean, I think that the biggest
insight that the group brought to the whole project was how you take
the lump of clay that is specific to Jeremy's hand, and is therefore,
going to be usable and comfortable.

But then, how you develop a workflow or
whatever that takes that shape and turns it into something which
becomes a more usable utensil. >> See we're working with the Easter Seals
to try and help them understand our process to help them do
that on their own, in house. It was very interesting what the future
holds for personalized objects. >> What was the next stage of
the process that you established? >> So we took a lot of lumps of
clay up to Jeremy, Play-Doh, too. And we had him grip it. We were there with a speech pathologist,
an occupational therapist. So they helped Jeremy get
him to hold the clay. We kind of stuck it on a fork so he could grip it as he would grip
a normal utensil in the way he saw fit. It was soft enough to where
it would change shape. And when we got it to a certain

shape
that saw that would be pretty awesome, we tacked them up and
headed back to campus. And then we used a 3D scanner, and
we scanned this lumps of clay and so we're able to get this kind
of geometry on the computer. From there, we are able to manipulate and actually create something we
could stick on silverware. >> And I feel the thing that was really
interesting about that is that most of the lumps of clay ended up as fairly big,
right so? >> Yeah. >> How did you construct the 3D print so
that although it was big on the outside, it wasn't going to be heavy or expensive? >> With a 3D printer you can actually
change densities when you're printing it layer by layer. So we really played around
a lot with those settings, so we were able to print really dense prints
and some that weren't so

dense, so some were really light,
some were really heavy. We didn't really know what would be best
for Jeremy, so we just tried everything, and we brought that to him later to
see what he was most comfortable with. >> Right, how did that work out,
what was his reaction? >> It was very exciting for all of us. I don't really know if Jeremy was
aware of with how we made it. But the results were pretty
astounding when we went. We have like three or
four different models that we gave him. And one of them in particular, he was
able to actually pick a certain utensil geometry up, and put it down, and rest his
hand on the table with it comfortably. And this was kind of exclaimed by
one of the speech pathologists that was working with him, who was only
a half a semester long project, so I think the

progress in that moment
was kind of worth all of the effort. And it was pretty amazing to get physical
evidence that this actually works this actually needs a difference. >> And that was pretty interesting
because I think up until that point nobody really source a bad. Him being able to put something down and
pick it up the same way. >> Before we met Jeremy, we got a couple
video of how he used silverware. And he was able to hold this silverware,
and then when he wanted to put it
down he would just drop it. >> So somebody else would have to come and
pick it up. >> Exactly. Somebody else would have to be
there to give him silverware, to help him hold it, and
this was a pretty huge step. >> Absolutely. So as well as being more comfortable,
and enabling to do things, it also made him a lot

more independent. >> Yes.
>> Because he didn't have to have somebody hanging around
to pick it up when it fell. >> Yes, before he could even
use these special utensils, off the shelf solutions,
he was getting fed through g-tubes. There's been amazing progress,
I think, with the team there. >> I mean, one of the things that you said a little
while ago was that you were particularly interested in establishing a process
that the home could use themselves. So that you guys,
having set up the project and devised a way of doing it, then,
they could do it themselves, essentially, for these applications and
then for other things. >> When we were doing this, it was really kind of interesting that
this wasn't already standard practice. And when I asked them about it,
I was like no one else has tried

this? No one else has,
you don't know of any other conferences that you've gone to
that anybody's like attempted this? This and they said no,
this is the first time. They were interested in being able to
use our process not only for Jeremy, but a lot of other patients there that
had similar physical ailments. So it was pretty exciting
to do this project and have a sense that this could
help a lot more people than just the individual that we
were helping at the current time. >> Sure, but the end of the project you
were thinking about what specifications, scanner, and what kind of printers
they would use, and so on. >> Right.
>> And you're still carrying on with that? >> It's very confusing now to
figure out a way to do this, and then have them do it replicate easily
like it we want to to

put this snap or some of the feature and cad that. So it's we we're trying to
figure out a way to do this in such a way that it's not,
like, over cumbersome for them. When we were giving a presentation
the gentleman from Autodesk mentioned that we called it the custom utensil grip,
and he said well actually it's personal. It personalization that you're doing
when you go to like a car lot and like a blue car, a red car, a green car. But that's kind of you can get
it custom car with this grip. It's taking this beyond customization
into the realm of personalization. >> You like say a little bit
about what you discovered about the capabilities of 3D
printing as a technology. >> I think the one shocking
thing about 3D printing was not what it does by itself but what it does
when you pair it

with other technologies, like 3D scanning, and
how radical it can become. And I think that in the future,
localized manufacturing is going to become a huge player, and
it's pretty exciting to see it unfold. If we hadn't of had 3D printing there is
no way we could have gone to a molder and machined something. The costs would have just been too much. When I came to the university,
3D printing was already everywhere so I was spoiled in that sense. The next generation of
students I think will have 3D printing as something that
they buy as a normal printer. I think it will be almost as common
as just like printing out paper. So it's pretty incredible,
what's going on. >> Yeah, I think you're right. Okay, so thank you to Colin for
showing us and talking about your work and hope this fits in with

the,
I hope this is of interest and fits in with the rest of the course. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So this video is part of our
design thinking and action series. And here we are interviewing Mr. Ron Duncan, who is an educator in
the U of I extension who manages our partner project on
Illinois Marketplace and Maker Literacy. And here has been using the curriculum
developed in the CityX Project to work with kids of all ages and
explore how the design thinking process and 3D printing can
come together to encourage or motivate children on finding
innovative solutions to problems. So join us as we chat with Ron. >> My name is Ron Duncan. I'm a Community and Economic Development Specialist with the
University of Illinois Extension Service. And I'm currently working
under the Illinois Maker and Marketplace Literacy Project out of the
School of Business at the University of Illinois.

The CityX Project was
a secondary opportunity for us in our Illinois Community Marketplace
and Maker Literacy Project. That program was specifically geared for
adult or young adult audiences, if you were from ages 16 on up. But we were looking for something that
could help us reach into that younger age group, something that would be appropriate
but that also could allow us to use many of the same tools and skill development
attributes that we were looking for in IMMLP in this younger audience. And we found the really
cool CityX Project and really got into the six step design
process, basically the Stanford model. Really thought it would be appropriate for
our audiences. We've done CityX now,
probably more than 15 times with age groups as young as 9 years old and
again, youth as old as 15.

And it found a very broad range acceptance
of the premises and have seen some really, really good work from our young
people come out of that project. [SOUND] The CityX Project starts with
a premise that there's a group of individuals that have left the planet. They're colonizing a new world. And once they arrive at this new world,
they obviously run into difficulties and problems, and
have actually phoned home, if you will, to solicit some help from the citizens
of Earth on how to solve their problem. Now it just so happens those citizens of
Earth are actually the young people that we have working in the class. So these some 45 different problem
scenarios they have are brought to bear for the use to look at it. And our process is we actually let
them select a project or a problem and an

individual that's associated
with that problem to work on. They take those problems and
then we start introducing the six design element steps,
which of course the first one is empathy. The idea there is that we look for
the deeper problem. Someone may say they're just hungry. Well, is the answer to that,
you just need to go eat? Or is the answer to that,
there's not enough food for you? Or is the deeper answer to that,
there's not enough food for everyone? The program allows them to
explore that deeper why. It also then connects up with
a larger sociological issue to see if the problem that
the youth are exploring or have picked actually has broader
implications across the whole society. And obviously in almost every case they
do, so they're allowed to pick that. Then we go into the

definition
of the problem. What really is the problem? What might the possible
elements of that problem be? From that point, obviously it would go
into some elements of ideation, where they're thinking sort of broad range,
out of the box, about solution sets. And one of the things I really appreciate
about CityX is the idea that right off the bat in the manual that they give
facilitators, there is no bad idea. Adults really can't help, they have
some very, very limiting priorities. They're about we can't have
robots do this or do that. But the field is wide open for youth
just to explore their own creativity and own ideas. So within that ideation phase,
a lot of issues bubble up. And again, as a facilitator one
thing that's really important is to make sure that you give
them freedom to

express that. And now matter how outlandish or
wild the idea might sound initially, the real premise here is
to get those ideas out. Then there's the process
of sort of windowing down. They do some ideation and
try to arrive at a more or less a final thought or final design or
final solution to the problem. And there we work with them
to try to prototype that. That prototyping takes
basically two forms. Number one, we almost always try to give
them some tactile material to work with, whether that's clay, it could be
a building blocks or something. We want them to just make a physical
representation of the base of their idea. From that ideation and prototyping part, then we allow them to
go into the design software that we use. Tinker Cat is the tool of our choice. And then we let them

replicate that idea, once they have the physicality of it,
into the software. Once they have it into the software, then
is where we ask them to start working on actually testing their ideas,
making sure they're going to work. And this is where our 3D printing
process that we utilize here is so, so very important because they can get
a much more refined view of their idea with the 3D printer. And obviously, they can iterate very
quickly by utilizing the 3D printer. And it's just fascinating to see how
really mesmerized ten year olds get when they realize that they can online
create something in a visual or virtual environment in the program and then actually see a tactile physical
piece come out of the 3D printer. That is hugely important in
terms of their, if you will, closing the loop

around the idea of build,
design, test, iterate. Next iteration, build, design, prototype,
test, iterate, next design and on and on and on. And finally,
I think one of the most important things, again this is back to the,
if you will, the Stanford model. The last part of that would be
the fact of the sharing aspect of it. It's just super important and
we find a lot of our young people really grasp on to that idea about if
you got a solution to the problem, they really do need to be able to show
that problem to the wider audience. And it's great to see
what a great take rate that those young people have around
sharing that idea for the larger audience. [SOUND] We've worked from
age groups as young as nine years old-
>> Okay. >> which would be equivalent to fourth
grade here in North

America, all the way up to juniors in high school, which would
be in the 15 or 16 year old age group. And originally we thought at the older
age group we might have a little bit of problem with them buying into the,
if you will, the reality of the scenario. But once they got a glimpse of some of
the problems, very quickly they got focused on that problem and
that individual who had that problem. And so the plausibility of the scenario
as a whole really didn't factor in. [SOUND] Yeah, there's a vast difference. One of the best allegories I can probably
make for you there is how difficult it is once we start this process
within a classroom setting. Quite frankly, how difficult it is to get
the young people to disengage from it. >> Okay.
>> We always run out of time. >> Okay.
>> They always

want to do one more change, one more adaptation. Hey, we just thought about it,
we've got a better idea. Another thing that's really interesting is
that we let the youth work in small teams. Although it's designed in Quirk, it could
be done on an individualized basis. We actually think there's value
in creating team level work within the CityX exercise. Because again, there are some values
that we can hone in on there as well, in terms of working together,
finding who's best at what, and letting them explore that capacity. Within the team development I
was trying to solve the problem. The interesting thing is that we find there's shared learning
team to team to team. So that from the time we start and
one team explains their solution, we give them a chance to get up and
actually show their

results, show what they built,
explain why they got to that idea. By the time we go around
the room with maybe eight or ten of those solution sets, by the time we
get back to where we started, those young people have already looked at everybody
else and said, you know we can incorporate what team three did Into our work, and
it would make our product even better. So those are some of those collective and
group learnings that take place here, that I think are really impactful,
really make a difference in young people understanding the fact,
that yeah we really need to iterate, get the best idea out there, and if somebody
else has got one that will work for us, let's incorporate it
into what we're doing. One of the most memorable efforts that I
think we did is, one of the problems they were

faced with is, that the CItyX colony
was faced with meteorites and asteroids. One of our groups created this very,
very intricate levitation device, as they called it,
that they would levitate a ball or a projectile instead of shooting it,
like with a gun or something. They would levitate this to the point
where it would actually interact or intercept any meteor that was coming in. I thought that was incredibly
advanced thinking in terms of design around
that particular thing. One other device that I saw made
which was very cool was one of the other scenarios in CityX
project is the sun shines too much, it's really bright,
we get sunburned really easily. And so
the young people were inquiring to me, well what's the planet like that
they're on, can you explain it? And I said, well just

assume for
sake of discussion, that it was Mars. If it was Mars,
what would your solution be? And they came up with this incredibly
intricate solution about actually creating greenhouses
that would heat the soil, drive the frozen moisture out of
the soil up into the atmosphere. And then the atmosphere then, it obviously, it would condense and
create clouds and shade the thing. And it showed just an incredible
connectivity between the physicality and physical relationships of materials,
matter, a physics, meteorology, hydrology around trying to create
a solution to solve that problem. And so that was just incredibly impressive
to me that they'd be willing to do that and to go to that depth. [SOUND] It's hardwork but
it's the best two days I spend usually when I have just working with
the

energetic 12 year olds. I mean really, it's really cool to be able
to see their ideas, what they think and how they approach the process. And again I wouldn't that's why I like
the guidance that the Stanford model gives because I really think that it's
a very appropriate approach. The fact that it just starts with an idea,
that greater understanding, the deeper why about being empathic,
that ends up with sharing your results is really cool and fits, really does fit the
mold of many of our young people today. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So in the previous three modules of this
course and the first course, you have got a sense of the variety of uses that 3D
printing can be put to by individuals like you and me, by entrepreneurs,
and by small and big businesses. And we hope that this has
inspired you to start thinking about turning
your ideas into objects. In the next two courses,
you will learn about the software skills to turn your ideas into objects and
the hardware to make it possible. However, before you do that it's important
to get some insight into the process for finding a need or a problem, and
going towards a prototype or a functional product, and perhaps
a service that provides a solution. And once you learn such
an approach it becomes easier for you to put a framework
around your efforts and go towards

creating the solutions
that you're looking for. This framework will also help you
leverage the skills in software and hardware that you will learn
in the next two courses. So in this module, we're going to try and introduce you to one such approach
which is design thinking. Now design thinking is really
not a prescriptive approach. It's more a set of guidelines. And there are many frameworks that
have formed around this broad field of design thinking. But they all leverage
a few basic principles. Essentially dealing with
finding solutions for complex or, as some people call them,
wicked problems. Now wicked problems are those
where both the problem and the solution are unclear or
undetermined when you start out. So this is where a framework really helps. So some of the common

principles
that I've found in my research, one is being user-centered or
being empathetic. So that's quite intuitive that
you're creating a solution for somebody, you should spend time and effort
in focusing on what the user really needs. Given the fact that you're looking
at often complex or wicked problems, most frameworks ask you to embrace
ambiguity in the problem space itself. So do not shy away from dealing
with the complexity that you find when identifying
what the real problem is. And being empathetic and
user centered helps in that phase as well. The second thing all of them talk
about is that you should look for a lot of variety in the potential
solution that you are exploring. And don't discard the crazy
ideas essentially. Once you move on from the ideation phase,
all of them,

all the frameworks, talk about frequent with what is
called low fidelity prototypes. That means don't wait for
that perfect prototype in the process. Start early, get something out
in the hands of the users, and be willing finally be
willing to fail many times before you land up with a product
that you can actually use. So given these principles there
are several frameworks and you'll see some of them referred
to in the additional readings. You know the prominent ones are from the
Stanford school of the designed school. And the firm ideal as well. So have a look at those. Now I'm not an expert in design thinking
but we were lucky to find an expert at the University of Illinois in the School
of Art and Design and he's professor David Weightman and you will see
an interview with him in this

module. Then to show you some examples
of design thinking in action. We picked two great projects which our
students worked on under mentorship with either Professor David Weightman or
another instructor in another course. And they will share with you how they
leveraged the design thinking process to create prototypes, and
functional prototypes, and perhaps end use products as well. So join me in this module as we
learn about design thinking. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] In this video, we're going to
learn about design thinking, the process of design thinking,
the steps involve and also get to understand how the process has
changed because we have 3D printing and tools such as 3D printers, all other rapid
prototyping tools available to us today. We are fortunate to have with us Professor
David Weightman, who is a professor in industrial design practice at
the School of Art and Design here. He's had a long and distinguished career
in academia and in the industry as well. He's consulted for firms such as
Yamaha and BBC Television as well. Thank you for
taking the time to chat with us, David. Could you give us a sense of your
background and your research in the space? >> I mean, my background is in
industrial design with slightly more content of

engineering, that might be the
case in some industrial design programs. I've been fortunate enough
to combine a level of design practice with my interesting education and
curriculum developments. Currently, at the university
those interests are focused on curriculum developments of
courses that concentrate on exposing people from different
disciplines to design thinking. So, I do regular courses
with design students but I do other courses with groups of
design students and engineers and other people from different
programs across the university. I quite like that kind of mixture. And some of those courses
have a particular concentration on the use of
digital prototyping tools. That's the vehicle by which people
are going to realize their designs and the way in which they going

to
communicate and work together. >> I think we've seen, at least in the
maker lab as well when we've done courses where we brought together
engineering design and business students The output has been so
much richer. So let's start with the just
baseline explanation of what design thinking really is. >> Design thinking is really about
a human centered design process that considers all aspects of
the relationships between people and the product services, and
experiences they encounter. So, it's not just about physical things. It's also about services and experiences. And those are equally amenable to
that kind of holistic consideration. I've used the model of design thinking, that was developed by IDEO,
which is really saying that good design is really about putting together things
that

come from three different areas. There are things that are with people,
which you could group together under the category of being desirable,
developing an understanding of people's needs to produce things that
people both need and want. It's also thinking about what something
looks like, how it's used and so on. Things which connect with people. There's another set of things which
are really to do with business. Whatever products, services, and
experiences people are designing, it has to fall part of some
kind of business model. It has to be viable in a business sense. It's gotta be a return on investment,
has to generate profit. And the third set of things
is about feasibility. This is really the technical stuff
about how something is made, whether it's durable enough, whether
it's

economic to manufacture and so on. So, those kind of
concerns about technology you could lump together under
the heading of feasibility. So, desirability,
viability, and feasibility. Looking at the areas where those three
things intersect, that's the kind of sweet spot where good design thinking,
good design actually resides. There's really another set of concerns
that you also need to take into account about the environment, the sustainability,
both in a business sense and also in terms of use of materials and
processes and so on. We can add another ible to the set
of three by having responsible as being the fourth area where this
consideration should be given. >> Could you take us through
sort of the framework itself, that if it starts with empathizing,
how do we go forward? >> You first

start of by trying to
identify what needs or wants people have. It's really a case of, kind of market pull
if you like, where in technology push. So, the first part is really about
observing what people do and then asking them questions about what
they do, what they might do differently. And one of the tools that you can employ
at that stage is the one of empathy. It's very important for designers
to be able to put themselves into somebody else's position, to walk a mile
in somebody else's shoes if you like. Because most of the things that
most designers design all the time, are not for themselves,
they're actually for other people. So, understanding what other people
are about is a very important part of what a designer needs
to do in that first stage. Observing and
inquiring gives you

insights into unmet needs or needs which are not
met particularly well at the moment. And that's the time when
you start ideating. What are the various ways that you can
think of, of doing that differently or doing that more effectively. The general approach tends to be, let's get as many ideas as possible,
and then we'll filter down, and then analyze them to work out
which are the most useful ones. And there is a certain amount of It's
a ratio and cycling back in this anyway. So, it's not necessarily a linear,
totally linear process. But, the next stage generally,
is to do experiments in prototyping, make something that illustrates what
it might look like or what it might work like or how you might actually, how
it might function, how you might use it. And prototypes made at all sorts

of
different levels starting off with cardboard and string and
pipe cleaners and that kind of stuff. The prototype isn't the one really
expensive thing that you make at the end just before you start production. Prototyping is the essential
part of the thinking process. The last stage of the process
is implementation. Putting things in the production,
looking at the details of tooling and all that kind of stuff. And then the very last stage although,
it has occurred at different points all the way through is one about
communication, telling people what is about, pitching to people who are going to
provide money or provide the technology to make it or the people who might sell
it or buy it or use it or whatever. One thing that's maybe characteristic
of design thinking as a process which is a

little different from some of
the more traditional design approaches is an emphasis on story
telling as a means for engaging and communicating with people. Working out the story of
the user in the first place, working out the story of the product,
and so on. Learning how to tell those kinds of
stories and engage people in that way. It's a very important part of the process,
not just the end of the sequence. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So let's talk a bit about, for
example, our learners are going to be learning about software modeling and
also the hardware around 3D printing. Technologies are becoming cheaper and
there's more widely available, rapid prototyping different platforms and
not just 3D printers. How has that impacted
the design thinking process? >> I think what is done is
actually democratized the process very significantly. It used to be, if you developing designs, whether you were talking to people or
you were describing something that you produced which you wanted somebody
to invest in or think about making. You needed particular skills. You needed to be able to draw or
to model it so that people would understand
what the idea was about. Designers or people engaged in design
processes need to be

good at visualizing. But visualizing only as really as good is the tools you have to make
it obvious to other people. You can kind of wave your arms around and
you can use words and so on. That will get you some of the way. But beyond a certain point you have to
make it more tangible and physical. So a sketch, a model,
a prototype, and so on. Those are all ways of doing that. And I think what rapid prototyping
has done is actually make that process of making things tangible
much quicker and easier generally. And some of those technologies have
been used in the professional design world for a long time in 20,
30 years or so. But what's been the major
difference in the last five or ten years Is that those processes
have got significantly cheaper and significantly easier for people to

engage
with, whether it's through software, or whether it's through machinery. That gives people access
to a set of tools and techniques for making things tangible
that they didn't have before. Then at the same time, it also gives them ways of making
things which were not available before. It used be that you either made things
by hand fairly laboriously or you made things by mass production in which
case you invested a lot of money in buying tooling and then maybe all the things that
came out of the tooling were quite cheap. But It was a couple of $100,000
before you could actually make one. Rapid prototyping enables you to make one, almost slightly more expensively,
than if you're one of 100,000. But to do that easily and to do that
being able to incorporate change, and development, and

customization,
and all those kind of things. I think the proliferation and the
reduction in cost of that technology and also the increased accessibility
from improve CAD software. That's certainly made an enormous
difference to how the professional design world works, but more significantly
how people engaged in designing can do things themselves with a different
relationship with professionals and democratization of the design process and
by association. Democratization also of the product
development and the production process. Those are really significant development
in the last ten years or so. >> So thank you for taking the time
to teach us design thinking. We look forward to learning more with some
more examples from you in another video. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] >> The four dimensions you talked
about earlier desirability, viability, feasibility and sustainability. Let's focus on desirability. If I'm talking to the end users,
one person or five people or ten people. And I'm getting sort of
conflicting requirements, how do I make sense of
what's really important. >> It's also a case that if you
asked people about what they do, you'll get different kind of information
than if you watch them doing things. Sometimes people will answer questions,
whether in interviews or surveys, with the kind of answer
that they think you might want or the kind of answer you think, or that they
think, a person like them should give. I always find in the process
of observing people and trying to identify what their needs are,
that watching what they do is

actually a more effective way of
establishing behavior and intention. And it also means that you
have to kind of watch and listen very carefully to try and
illicit insights from what people do. And also sometimes to way what they say,
people's ability to do that is somewhat conditioned
by what they think is possible. So there's the famous Henry Ford
example that if he'd asked people, before he designed the Model-T,
if they wanted a Model-T, they'd have said, we want a faster horse. If he'd asked the question, how quickly
do you want to get from A to B? Like what's the purpose
of you using a horse? So why are you making
these kind of journeys? Then you might have got closer to that
kind of answer, to that kind of insight. So observation is a very powerful tool,
but it can also be a little

misleading. You need to use it effectively to generate insights that you can
then use as the basis for more work. >> We always see noise in data and some of the approaches say let's clean
up the data and then work on it. I know this is more qualitative, but do we
apply those same principals here or not? >> I mean, the problem with cleaning
up the data is that sometimes you may leave the wrong things out. >> Okay.
>> And so when people started using focus groups
as part of their design process, which is something that really
goes back probably about 20 years. Scarab put a group of
users together in a room, we'd talk to them about what it is they
do we show them examples and so on. Initially that tend to be done by
people who were experienced in running focus groups. Psychologist and

Sociologist and so on. It was found to be much
more effective if you can actually put designers
in to those focus groups. So they can actually hear
what people were saying. Unfiltered and raw and they might then spot things which would
otherwise have been kind of ironed out. Filtering is a,
sometimes you have to do it just for convenience, but it's a slightly risky
in terms of what you might miss. >> There's one person who uses
a power drill in a particular way and everybody else in another way. Are we excluding that user from our set or
not? >> There's some very interesting
interviews with designers in the film Objectified. That if anybody's interested in design
processes the authority recommend that to one of the people from small
design gives a very good account to this. It says we're

interested in users but
we're not interested in the average users, because that doesn't
really tell us very much. Well they're interested in extreme users. And that can be people who
are not very experienced and not familiar with a particular device. To take your example of an electric drill, it may be people who don't use one
more than three or four times a year. A little bit frightened about it,
not sure what it can do but they know it's a little bit dangerous. So that can give you useful information
about how you communicate what the thing does and how you make it safe. The other extremes of users are people
who use electric drills 12 hours a day. Six days a week and so on so they're very contractors,
professionals, builders and so on. So, they would give you lots of
information about

durability, reliability the kind of things that wear out,
the kind of things that need replacement. Those are the two groups that
will give you useful insights and In terms of how you might
design it more effectively. >> As for the viability and
the feasibility and the sustainability of these, are these
sort of integrated into the process or do we do them at particular stages? >> It's useful to be aware of those
different considerations at all times, even if you're focusing on
what's technically feasible, what kind of business
model might actually work. Or looking in detail at the kind of
things that people might need or want. If you bear all of those three things in
mind, I think that there is more chance that what you end up with is going to
satisfy things in those three categories. Then

if you say, well, okay, we're going to start of just thinking
about people ignoring this other stuff, and then later on it comes in,
and we can't keep on ignoring it. We might bring it in later,
and then there are some things that maybe are not possible, or
just going to be really expensive. Given that you want to come up with
some kind of balance solution. That's the point about the three or four spears that it's useful to bear
them in mind from the beginning. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] Welcome to the 3D printing
applications course. In this course, you will learn how 3D
printing changes the dominant paradigm of manufacturing with an extensive overview
of the industry, and a look at concrete examples in some cutting edge areas, such
as medicine, space, food and bioprinting. You will also get an in-depth look at the
potential of 3D printing in development with an overview of projects in India,
Tanzania, Argentina and The US. In module one, we get some views on the
industry from research done by academics, consulting firms, and
from experts on intellectual property, and even from venture capitalists. In module two of this course, we will
highlight the potential of 3D printing to revolutionize the process of designing,
making, distributing and selling products. And

we'll give you an opportunity
to meet with the players creating the ecosystem
to make this possible. In module three, we consider the role of
3D printing in revolutionizing education, and the role it can play in
development in underserved communities in both developing and
developed countries. Finally, in module four, you will be
introduced to the design thinking framework, which will
help you apply the skills you learn in the subsequent
courses in software and hardware. You will see design thinking in action,
which will motivate you for the need for building skills in 3D
modelling software and the hardware in course three and
four in this specialization. The assessments in this course will
focus on having you research trends in 3D printing, in the industry
of your interest, in countries

or regions local to you, and explore
possible ways to leverage 3D printing to solve problems or
just create new things for yourself. Join me in this journey to help
convert your ideas into objects. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] In this video,
we are chatting with Howard Lipton, who's a professor of mechanical
engineering at Columbia University. And he's going to help us understand some
of the characteristics of 3D printing that have made it so
popular in a wide variety of contexts. A couple of the main points
you'll hear from him. One is the fact that he talk
about complexity being free and variety being free. So complexity referring
to the fact that the 3D printer doesn't care about the features
that you are building in your model. And variety refers to that you can
create object that are one of a kind. And in the same build, you can have
four different objects being built or you can activate over time with
slightly different versions without worrying about the traditional
economy's of scale. That would

constrain traditional
manufacturing, so he talked about something called the economies of scope,
which is where 3D printing really shines. Finally he referred to some of the other
things that have made 3D printing so popular, such as the lower amount of
skills required in operating a printer. Of course, they are different, but not
that much training required to operate, being a technician and operate a printers. And some of the things you already heard
about such as low waste, low lead times. And of course the ability
to iterate quickly and create prototypes and
eventually functional products as well. >> So I always get heat for
saying complexity is free and I want to explain exactly
what I mean by that. The idea of complexity as free
means that if you make an object, if you print a

three
dimensional object and now you want to add a feature,
you want to have a hole in it somewhere. Or you want to inscribe your name. Or you want to round off the corner,
you want to add some complexity. That additional complexity will
not cost you more to make. So the same cost before the complexity and
after the complexity per kilogram of part. The marginal cost of
manufacturing complexity is zero. That is not true for
any other manufacturing method. So if you look at CNC injection molding,
any other manufacturing technique. If you want to add complexity to your part
it's going to involve more time, effort, skill, money. But with 3D printing it does not, and
that changes the equation dramatically, because when complexity is free
a lot of new possibilities emerge. These printers, all

the information about the part that
needs to be made Is in the print file. So it does not cost you. It does not take any more effort,
time, or skill to make complex things. Another thing that's free is variety. There's no economy of scale. If you want to print 50 different things
or 50 identical things, it's all the same. These two things allow you to start
making products that are optimized and customized. And that's the real benefit. Few companies can
understand what that means. But those that do,
really create new modes of business. The best example I know,
this is invisalign. So, invisalign creates orthodontic liners,
braces. If you remember the old days braces were
these metal things that somebody, and then just needed to adjust,
it was a one-size fits all and then a dentist would

adjust
them on a weekly basis. Now, these braces are 3D printed. The sequence of them are 3D printed. There are 150,000 of
these printed every day. Each one of them unique. Each one of them complex. That's varieties free. That's complexities free. And that's,
not a business model that would even remotely viable using
the commercial manufacturing. So, often people will ask at
what point does this technology break even with injection moulding or
commercial manufacturing. And that's not the question to ask,
the right question is, what new business models are enabled because complexity
is free and variety is free? And if you can answer that,
that's where the gold is. [SOUND] If we can harness this idea of
economy of scope, as some people call it, instead of economy of scale
then there are

opportunities. And there's also other disruptives. The fact that almost no skill
is required to manufacture. And, literally, you have kids that make things that would
traditionally require a trained engineer. The fact that it's a very
mobile technology. That you can move it around packs, a lot of manufacturing might
into small square footage. The fact that it creates relatively
little waste byproduct when you print in metal especially. And the fact that you
can duplicate things. All these different aspects of this
technology are very disruptive, all very different than
conventional manufacturing. The fact that there is almost no lee
time from when you finish designing, when you start manufacturing allows
you to iterate very quickly. The fact that there is no constraints
on the geometry

allows you to reach places of the geometry. That you couldn't reach otherwise for
free or not for free. It was just impossible. So, all these things mean that it's
a very, very disruptive technology, very, very different than
conventional manufacturing. It's not yet another manufacturing
technique, it's completely different. The question is, how do you use it? [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] In this video, we will speak to John Hornick who's
actually a lawyer by profession. And he works a lot in the intellectual
properties space around 3D printing. And we'll hear from him later
in the course on that, but he's also written a great
book on the topic and that provides a lot of context around why
3D printing is really a paradigm shift. And how is that changing manufacturing and
disrupting the industry? So his perspective on the issue is that
3D printing is really a disruptive force, it's going to eliminate some jobs and
create other kinds of jobs. It is democratizing manufacturing,
reducing the barriers to entry and many of the firms in the future
instead of selling products might just be selling designs
that can be 3D printing. As a result, many of the customers
are also

becoming manufacturers and he shares some interesting case
studies as part of this interview. Hi, we are here today to discuss
issues around intellectual property in the context of 3D printing given that 3D
printing is available everywhere now. And we are fortunate to
have with us John Hornick, who's the partner at the law
firm Finnegan in Washington. And he's also helped set up the 3D
printing working group at the firm. So John, thanks for joining us and
spending time with us. >> Thank you, it's my pleasure to be here. >> First of all, you have over 30
years of experience in the field, but you've recently over the last year or
so focused on 3D printing issues. Give us a sense of the work
you've done in this area. >> Well it's been several
years now actually. But the work that we do is

mostly
intellectual property related. My firm is an intellectual property
law firm, that's all we do. We have about 350 lawyers. And I realized several years ago,
well actually I've read in several places that 3D printing
present a lot of issues for intellectual property, but
it never said what they were. So I thought well,
I'm going to figure out what they are. And so
I started diving deeply into it, and the deeper I got into it I realized well,
this has implications for really all types intellectual property,
all types of technology. Many of our clients,
maybe most of our clients, so I started to realize that we could actually
formalize our practice in that area. We'd been doing work in that area for many years it was mostly
called rapid prototyping. >> Yeah.
>> It's only have been with

in the last few
years that companies and others have started to refer to it
as 3D printing added in manufacture. When I realized that we could formalize
our practice in that space and around the same time we started to see
the clients were getting curious about it. So the two kind of came
together at the same time. >> I had the opportunity to
meet you at one conference, I believe last year in New York. One of the things that sort of stuck in
my mind there is sort of your framing of the micro level impacts and
the macro level impacts of 3D printing. Could you share more-
>> Sure. >> On that. >> Well on a micro level,
because of machines, the machines have the potential to make a
part of a product in one build basically, no assembly required,
you eliminate a lot of machines. In traditional

manufacturing, you might
have had 12 machines, 12 operators and 12 different operations that had to
be used to make some particular part. Now you might be able to make that
entire part or maybe that entire product in one build, that eliminates a lot of
machines, eliminates a lot of labour. Also the technology really allows
you to design in ways that you've never been able to design before. It used to be that we had to design for
how products could be manufactured. Now we don't have any limitations
really on how they can be manufactured. So we can do things that we
were never able to do before. First of all, the designs can be very
different from anything that we've seen. But it just a kind of simple examples are
you could make nonlinear holes, you can build honeycomb structures easily, you

can
have variable wall [INAUDIBLE] this is. You can have semi porous materials but
more importantly, you don't have to have square edges,
you don't have to have square corners. I think design with 3D printing
can be much more organic, maybe much more like mother nature. But in addition to that with 3D printing,
the economies are very different. With mass production you have to have
economies of scale to make it cost effective. With 3D printing, you can make one product
and it's as cost effective to make one product, because it is to
make a million products. Also it lands itself to mass customization
instead of making million products are all the same, you can make a million
products that are different. So those on a micro level,
those are the effects that I see, I think that everybody

sees. On the macro level, I think we have
the potential for creating jobs and having a manufacturing renaissance in
countries with high intellectual capital, but also high labor costs like the US and
UK and Australia and even Japan. It seems like we might be having
a manufacturing renaissance. 3D printing can be very disruptive
of traditional business models. We might be eliminating
jobs in some regard, because it's changing
the way that we do things. But it might be creating entirely
new jobs at the same time, and entirely new job ideas, and also
startups that have never existed before. >> People when they come into the lab and
when they see the potential of this, it sort of opens up their mind. And people often say that 3D printing
it represents a paradigm shift. Do you agree? >> I think

it is a paradigm shift, because it has the potential
to democratize manufacturing. So an example I often use is hammers. I don't know how many companies
in the world make hammers. But let's just say there
are five companies or ten companies that make
large numbers of hammers. So there's five or ten companies, but
with the democratization of manufacturing, you could have a 1,000 companies or 10,000
companies or 100,000 companies all making hammers, because 3D printing essentially
eliminates barriers to entry. Anyone, even a small company, even a
garage shop can start to make products or parts as long as they have
the right equipment to do so. And the other thing that
can happen is that, some companies may start to shift from
selling products to selling designs. And also we may start to

see
customers become manufacturers. A great example of that is a situation
I know of where a company that needs turbine blades for power generation, they have to replace these
turbine blades every few years. And now what they're doing is they're
using 3D printing not to make new blades, but to repair the blades that they had. So we have the customer essentially
becoming a manufacturer. And this is great for the company that
needs the blades, but it's terrible for the company that makes the blades. So that company that makes
the blades might eventually say, well why are selling blades? Maybe we should just sell the design for
the blades. So you see they might realize that
really doesn't make any sense for us to continue to manufacture. We can shift that burden to our customers
or maybe to

independent fabricators. And we can get out of the manufacturing
business, cut a lot of overhead. Maybe still make a lot of profit
from selling the designs, because they can be very valuable. So those things together
are a major paradigm shift in how businesses are organized. Companies that for
example are being manufacturers today, may turn out to be design
houses in ten years. >> So to sort of close the discussion,
give us your thoughts on the future. >> As I said, I think there's going to be an increased
amount of 3D printing away from control. There will still always
be a certain amount of 3D printing that's done within control. But I think it would be a mistake to
assume that the within control world is just going to continue
going the way its going and it really won't be affected too

much. I think the more and more 3D printing
we have away from the control, the more pressure there's going to
be on the with in control world. And the example I gave
before is company might realize that it doesn't make
sense to sell products anymore. Maybe they can't sell products anymore. There's no demand for them anymore,
because people only want designs. And if the company won't make its own
designs available, then whoever needs a design will just go on the Internet and
they will find a design, a reasonable substitute or they'll take a 3D scanner
and they'll scan the part that they need. They'll create their own design and
print it out themselves, and that will eliminate the need not only for
the parts sold by that manufacturer, but for the designs sold by the manufacturer. So I think

we'll see a lot
of disruption of industry, I think we will see some
companies fail that don't adapt. We'll see a lot more smaller companies,
fewer larger companies. In the intellectual property space, I think we'll see companies start
to beef up their IP portfolios. They'll do whatever they can there. We will start to see increased
amounts of litigation over, not only in the space where 3D printers
are made and materials that are sold for them, and the process that are involved. But also in the area where they're used,
which could be virtually anywhere. I also think we'll start to see calls for
legislation, new legislation. One area that we will probably see
that demand or pressure on congress to enact laws that would provide
broader copyright protection. Copyright protection for digital

scans for
example, I don't think it will happen. Will probably also see
pressure on congress to make it more likely to be
in Frenchmen if someone makes a copy from a digital scan or
scanning a part and then printing it, make that infringement. And that's possible, but
over time I think we're just going to see IP laws become
narrower not broader. We're in a period right now where IP laws are really
unprecedented attack or pull back. We have a court decisions resulted in
a lot of patents being invalidated. We have the America Invents Act, which was intended to strengthen patents,
but the result of it is that roughly in 80 to 90% of patents that
are being challenged are being canceled. And we also have congress that
wants to make it harder for certain types of patent owners to sue. The fair

use exception in copyright is
becoming broader, and courts have been chipping away at copyright owners rights,
especially in the software area for years. I think those trends
are going to continue. So I think that we're going to
see narrower IP laws over time. So even though incumbents
who own IP rights might want to see IP rights be broadened. I think it's more likely that IP rights
in general would be narrowed over time. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] This is non handguard that we organized or rather we should call it the zoom
meeting now, that we organized for learners in the Coursera course
on 3D printing, which is offered by the Illinois MakerLab in
partnership with Ultimaker and Autodesk. And this is, we are about week two into the second course in the specialization. And that is the 3D printing applications
course and today's talk with Dr. Charles Murray is looking at. So the possibilities of 3D
printing with soft materials and one of the, I actually got to know Dr. Charles Weiler when we were looking
at one of the projects that, actually I mentioned in the course as
well is the 3D printing with food. Done by one of the students
in our university. And that's how I got to know of him,
and once I contacted him I realized that

what their vision for
that particular hardware solution that they found was much
bigger than just food printing. So we're going to learn about that today. So Charles let us start
by introducing yourself. And tell us about your history and
how you got interested in this space and how your firm is not too old so
I could call it a start-up. >> [LAUGH] Yes, exactly. Yeah, it still is very much a startup,
so what do you? Okay, some background. How did I get into 3D printing? Some of it was a little bit accidental. I had a career in IT and I intended to transition to
a career as a scientist and so I started my advanced
science degrees and so on and got a scholarship to do
my PhD in Australia. So that started in 2007 and my project
was to print conducting polymers and biopolymers my materials. I

started out with Inkjet printing and
found that to be immensely frustrating when you're
trying to formulate custom materials. And so I started looking at a larger
scale on the micro scale of printing, and of course that was extrusion, and
that's where 3D printing fits in. Now, in 2007, you could not buy a desktop
3D printer, you could not buy a kit, there was no open source models or
anything like that, it was very early. I think that Prusa was just coming
out of the RipWrap I think. And so it was too early. And I didn't want to waste my Phd
time trying to build a printer. Because I had to get a Phd in chemistry. And so I went ahead and
I bought a desktop CNC milling machine. And then I connected a syringe to that and
built an interface for that. And that became a system that I
could print

soft materials with. So in building that, I learned a lot about
the fundamentals of a 3D printer system. And then finished my Phd and
officially graduated in 2011. And by that time,
I think Ultimaker was founded in 2011, so when the RepRap movement
was taking off more. So, anyway, that's essentially the
background that led me to this point now. And I watched the 3D printing
market rise and I thought okay, surely someone is going to invent for soft
materials because from my studies I saw that there were a lot of useful materials
for printing that were in soft form. And to my surprise nobody
came up with this product. There were some companies who tried, there
was the Fab at Home Group from MIT for example. And there's Richwrap which is an open sourced type of pierced
extruder and I think

Printer Bar has an open sourced Basic student
now that works on their printers. So it's clear that other people
are trying to solve the problem but what we did that was very different
was we put the mechanics separately. You don't have to mount the mechanics
on top of your printer. And so this makes it to where we can put
a lot more power Into our system and so the way our system works it's a tower
that stands next to your printer. You put the cartridge in and you connect
the tube over to your printer so the physical mounting is just a tube,
which is trivial. And so this way we try to
ensure wide compatibility and so the discovery is driven
by a NEMA 17 stepper motor which is compatible with most printers. The only printers that seem to
have problems that are semi-open source are the

MakerBot platforms, things
like the Flashforge, or the Wenhaus, and all that. MakerBot made some design decisions that
deviated from the standard that the rest of the 3D printing world is following,
as well as proprietary printers. >> Yeah.
>> So, a 3D Systems Cube, or something like that, unless you're
a genius electrical engineer, and you want to spend time on that,
it's probably not going to happen. So, okay so
I see a question actually in the chat. Account for shrinkage factor
with different materials and if you were to work on a project that
is sensitive to the size of product, is there any way to compensate for
the shrinkage of the part. And so, that's a very good question. So what this involves? It involves your concentration of your
material with respect to your solvent. So, if I

have a material such as silicone, silicone does not really exhibit
noticeable shrinkage when it dries. So, typically when we print
a product out of silicone it's the same dimension
as we intend it to be. So silicone is just kind of
a special material like that. However, if I have something
that is a hydrogel material or something that is going to dry up
significantly, then the printed structure will have to be tuned
to allow for that drawing factor. So basically the printing
aspect is just a tool but it does not solve the materials problem. So, the discovery extruder is intended to
allow you to bring your own materials to 3D printing. But, the material problem itself, when you're working with your own
custom materials it is truly up to you. So, that is a problem that has to be
accounted

for with respect to your design. >> So Charles,
your stools are of septi canvas. I know everyone looks
at it as discovery and we look at printing with food and
everybody gets sort of sidetracked from the conversation on what
soft materials really can do. And, I know you have explored
applications far beyond just foods, in terms of electronics and tissue
engineering and even edible electronics. So just give us the lay of the land as to
what's possible with software materials right now. The possibility with soft materials. Essentially if you look at 3D
printing before structure came along, you had a handful of plastic materials. Maybe 12 in the beginning maybe about
40 to 50 plastic materials now. Lots of different kinds of PLA,
ABS, you have PIC, you have polycarbonate materials, you
have

carbon fibre type filaments now, and then you have semi flexible
materials like NinjaFlex and so on. But the important thing to remember about
all these materials is the fundamentally plastic based and so they're fundamentally
thermal plastics meaning they require a melting in order to
deposit into your shape. What that means is then if you want
to have something that is a gasket that is going to go on
an engine of a car and you need some flexibility,
that's great, you got NinjaFlex, but as soon as you turn that car on it gets
hot, that NinjaFlex is now going to melt. Again, so you cannot use any of these
thermal plastic materials for heat sensitive applications since that's the
mechanism that is use for the printing. So that's where the softer
materials come in and open the possibilities

up even further. So when you start talking
about soft materials, it's a little bit easier if you
have some chemistry background, Advanced Chemistry,
you can do some pretty cool stuff. If you have some basic Chemistry
background you can still do some very interesting material
formulations all on your own. And then, you control that recipe, so
because of that now, it goes from say 40 or 50 materials for 3D printing to
thousands of materials for 3D printing. And what that means is it allows you
to take advantage of the benefits of 3D printing even better because
the benefit of 3D printing is not mass manufacturing because
3D printers are inherently slow. The benefit of 3D printing
is customization. Getting the very specific thing
to solve your specific problem. And when you only have 50

materials to
choose from, with filament, for example, that just gives you a very limited
choice in solving your problem. And many of those choices might be good. Obviously, if plastic is
the right material, use plastic. It doesn't have to be soft materials. But there are applications where soft
materials are very beneficial, and having thousands of possibilities there
allows you to find exactly the right one. So to go into some actual applications,
I mentioned gaskets. So if you have an older car or if you
are making a custom type of engine and you machined the engine block and whatever but now you need some gaskets,
so how do you make that? The traditional method would be to get
a flat sheet of silicone rubber or some other heat resistant rubber, and
you cut the holes in it and you hope

that you can do a good job cutting it and
not leave any gaps and so on. But with the discovery, you can actually
get proper gasket silicon that will have the heat resistance, the oil resistance,
and then you could print them. And you could print
multiple copies of them. So that's one benefit there. And then, if you start looking at say,
medical prosthetics, for example, if everyone's body is so different and
so, shape, size, everything. So if you need a medical prosthetic, the
traditional method is making a mold, very time consuming and then you have to store
the mold, so you're paying storage cost. And then, if you lost it, it's time
consuming again to make another one. Whereas the 3D printer design, the design
can live up in the Cloud and you could be anywhere in the world and you

lose
your prosthetic and you need a new one. And you go to a local print shop
that can print a silicon material. You call your doctor up on the other side
of the world and you say, hey, can you send my print file to this guy so he can
print me a new prosthetic or something. So you don't have that
in any other situation. And then, if we talk of opportunities,
something like tissue engineering. Right now there are problems
with organ donation so if somebody needs a new liver or say a new
heart or any other organ in their body, you have to find the right kind of donor,
you have to find a match. Even if you find a match though, you are
taking a lifetime of anti-rejection drugs, because your body recognizes this organ
from somebody else as a foreign object and will attack it. And so, that

becomes a dependency,
that, sure, you're alive, but nevertheless now this is
a factor for the rest of your life taking these anti-rejections drugs, whereas with
tissue engineering, the promise of tissue engineering is that you can print
a neutral scaffold material. And you can seed it with cells
from the patient themselves. So if I need a new liver they can take
healthy liver cells from my body, put it on this scaffold, let it grow
in the lab until its the right size and ready to continue growing and
becoming a part of my body. They planted in me and
because it's my own cells, now I no longer had this anti-rejection
drug issue to worry about. Then, and yes, answer here is
tissue engineering this same as bio printing in many respects, yes,
I would say tissue engineering is probably a little

bit more
advanced than bioprinting and I'll get into I think what is
the subtle difference there so. Now, some of the challenges
still with tissue engineering, we're going to see this in the real world. I think probably in the next,
say 10 to 20 years because if I can print a scaffolding row of
liver cells on it, that's great. And this is one of the slides in
the presentation I sent you, Vishel. That's one problem. But the second problem is,
you have to get blood flow to this organ. So you have to have a vascular network
inside of your 3D printed structure, so that way,
you can attach it to the arteries, and get blood flow into the system. Because if the cells don't get blood, once
they're in your body, they don't survive. Then now you have to incorporate
that design into your 3D print.

And then, secondary is that
the materials for the vascular network might be very different than the material
for the structure of the organ. The vascular network might be a little
bit of a muscular type of structure. And so, here's a fantastic slide that
kind of highlights where some of the current state of the research in
the tissue engineering side of things. So this one up in the top left here, it shows this little
lattice type of networks. This is a survey publication
from the year 2000. And the reason I put that in this
talk is to show you 16 years ago, there was a ready an established
body of research talking about the possibility of printing these
scaffolds for bone and cartilage. And then, over in the upper right,
the nature article there, this is by a Professor at
Harvard name

Jennifer Lewis, and what she showed is that you
can use temperature properties with soft materials to where
you have the melting point of two materials that have
different melting points. So where you have one material that when
it reaches room temperature liquefies and another material when it reaches
room temperature solidifies. And so you print these two materials
together and when the secondary material reaches room temperature and liquefies
that becomes your vascular network. And you simply pour the material now
as a liquid out of your 3-D printed structure and you're left with
the form factor of a vascular network. And so on the bottom here what I'm
showing as well when you think of tissue engineering, it's not just a magic, I found a great tissue that cells
grow on or something like

that. There's a lot more to it. So the first picture A there
shows that you have to test the mechanical strength
of the printed material. If the material does not hold up to
the mechanical strength that you expect it to be able to withstand
once it is in the body, it is not going to work as that organ so then you have to start again until
you find the right mechanical strain. So now you found the material
with the right mechanical strain, now you got to step B. Step B is can you make it
into the shape you want. So if you can make it into a custom shape,
then okay, that's great. That will work. Now you go to the third step,
which is can you grow cells on it? So if you cannot grow cells on it then you
go all the way back to the beginning and start all over so again. So this is why tissue

engineering is ten
to 20 years off because it's a very, very big problem, and it's even more complex than just
these three layers I have shown here. If you think of a typical organ it's
got about nine, ten maybe fifteen different cell types that are all
working together to make this organ. You have cartilage, you have connected
tissues, you have the vascular network, you have the actual cells themselves
doing the function for that organ, so it's a very, very complex problem. Now, if they solve it though, then you can
imagine that even as you get older and, for example, you get cancer in
your pancreas, for example. Okay, well then you can get some good
cells that are left in your pancreas and have the laboratory at your hospital
grow you a new pancreas, and so pancreatic cancer is a

very
difficult cancer today. And so you can potentially cure
cancer sort of on the back side of this by being able to
fully remove a cancerous organ and replace it with a new one so
that extends the lifespan of people. So, there's lots of promise in that but
nevertheless it's a very, very busy area of research now. >> [INAUDIBLE] thanks. I know that's a lot of information for
people to digest and we hear about bioprinting from Dr at UI Chicago. And, in fact, the Jennifer Lewis
that you mentioned was at UIUC before she went to Harvard,
so she's done a lot of work in printing not just on
the vascular network but on printing with electrically conductive
inks and they have the Voxel platform. >> Yes. >> Pretty impressive. >> Yes.
>> So first let's talk about the edible part and that is sort of

the next use case
or the third use case for soft material. Tell us about this. >> Yep.
So the upper left hand picture, this is my PhD supervisor and he is still
using the 3D printer system that I built at the university which is right below
him, that black CNC milling machine, Now, in the top two pictures, he is talking
about thermally actuating hydrogels. And so this is another type. It's commonly called 4D printing. So 4D is kind of a buzzword
used by the media. In the academic world, they don't talk
about it necessarily the same way. But what this means is that you have
materials with other properties that can change the shape after
you've printed them. So printing obviously is 3D. And then now in this case with these
hydrogel materials, they're chemically tuned so that way when you

change the
temperature they either expand or shrink. And there's a lot of materials that
will behave in a similar fashion. But you can take advantage of that
type of material then and 3D print it. And then you end up with a device that might not be possible at all
with traditional manufacturing. So, in this case they're talking
about the Smart Valve that you need the valve to simply respond to temperature
whenever the temperature occurs. You don't want to put any electronics
in there, or anything like that, because that means extra logic and
if the software didn't think of all the scenarios then you're limited
in the functionality of the device. But if you make it a simple binary type of
device where it either responds to hot or cold, whatever that range of temperature
is and then it just

simply works. Then that's a much better
device in certain situations. Now the food printing side of it,
so everybody I'm sure has seen the 3D printing Nutella that Structured
has done and other people have done some 3D printed food in terms of showing
off the artistry of the 3D printed food. But there is also some interesting things that you can do with food
chemistry in terms of electronics. So in this case a Vegemite
is an Australian product, it's made from beer waste. Not everybody likes this. It's very salty and
it's an acquired taste definitely. Now, because of the salt content though, it will-
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Conduct electricity. Exactly. So, when you realize that foods have properties such as this it means
that we can do other things with the food that are just outside
of the

normal range of things. So, we live in a very good time when were
we can play with our food like this. So the idea here is that, well,
there's Vegemite printed on a piece of bread and you have the wire
connected and sliding up the LED. So it shows that you can make a complete
circuit with things like that. Obviously, this is just
a proof of concept. However, if you think of
hydrogel materials or other biological materials,
you have sodium alginate for example, which is a brown seaweed extract
used as a thickener in food. And you can do some chemistry with that. You could also do some chemistry with
sodium alginate and calcium chloride, for example. And so when you have all those options for food chemistry, you have cellulose
that's often added as a thickener, you can then make something

that might
not be the most tasty food, but it may have some fantastic functionality say
as an electronic tracking device and where can this be used in a practical sense
would be imagine medicine for example. So right now most people right now
take a medicine in a hard pill format. So if you need to take a giant pill or
whatever and it's hard like a rock,
it's very hard to swallow that. Now if you have something like a printed, electronic type of device then you could
potentially incorporate drug release. You could have an edible
battery inside there as well. So then you swallow this soft squishy
pill that's maybe almost like a piece of jello and so it's much easier to swallow
and get a larger dosage of a drug and then you still have the time release benefit
that you get out of the hard

capsule. So that's a very simple idea, but
there are similar ideas, as well. If you want to go onto the Star Trek
side of things where you have these nanoelectronics that go in your body and
do stuff to repair your body, and then dissolve after ten days or something. >> Let's take some of the questions
that are there in the Q&A, if you want to open that, and
we can just start from the top. >> All right. >> So first is from Nagarajan who is
looking at what kind of extruder he should use on the Prusa or any other printer for
sugar based food substances? >> You can use, well the Discov3ry
would work on the Prusa. The RichRap would also work on the Prusa. The Printer Mod Extruder would
probably also work on the Prusa, so, there are many paste
extruders that will work, if you're just looking

for printing
sugar-based substances, like an icing. Now, keep in mind, each of these
extruders work a little bit differently. So, the way that you would mount
the RichRap extruder will be different then the way you would mount the Discov3ry
or the Printer Mod extruder. And so when you decide on which
extruder you'd like to use, then that's what you'd have to
think about with the customization. So the RichRap is an open source design,
you can download it and print it yourself and source the parts. So if you're very new to the idea
of printing soft materials and you're not sure if you want to spend
the money on a Discov3ry extruder yet, the RichRap is a great way to go to test
out to see if this is something that's interesting for you. >> And so next question was on printing
electrical

conductive material. So does the Discov3ry handle those? >> Yes, so if you were printing,
so one example that we have shown with the Discov3ry is printing
a material called bare conductive. B-A-R-E conductive,
I will type that up in the chat.. >> I can type that in, you go ahead. >> Okay, so what that is, it's a carbon
based paint so it's low conductivity. It's not like a metal or
anything like that but you can still make basic electronics
with something like that. We printed a fractal antenna on
to overheard transparency, so you can make flexible
electronics that way. Now, if you want to get into
more advance materials, so my PhD work involved conducting polymers. So I was printing a well known
conducting polymer is one called P.PSS. And so that one is often used for
solar cell

applications and other types of electronics. I did some printing with
carbon nanotubes and graphing. And so, but if you want to look at
something's that's a bit more standard for electronics, silver nanoparticle paste and
specifically nanoparticle. There are companies like DOW Chemical
that make a micro particle paste. But the particle size is large enough that
if you printed the micro particle paste, you end up having to put your
print into a reflow oven in order to center the metal and
make the electronics actually work. Now with nanoparticle paste you can do
something called flash centering and I'll get into that in a minute, but
that is one of the electrical conducting materials that you can print that's
very close to the real world. Now the nanoparticle, both of these
things being

silver they're not cheap, they're very expensive. You're paying the price for bulk silver. You can also buy gold nanoparticles,
platinum nanoparticles and every single one of those is priced
just like the precious metal. Now, I was talking about flash centering. So what that means is you can use
a light bulb to center the metal, and it's a fantastic physics
trick essentially. And, so what you're doing is you're taking
advantage of something called the photo electric effect which is what Einstein
won the Nobel Prize for, I'll type this. So you use a broad-spectrum 200-watt mercury, sorry. So, and basically,
you flash it like a flashbulb of a camera. And, it causes the nanoparticle
silver to just fuse together, so you don't need oven. And so you lower you're electric bill,
electric cost for

making electronics like that, and then that will also allows you to print
silver nanoparticle paste on something like a plastic over head transparency
which cannot go in reflow oven. And so then you got flexible electronics,
you can print on fabric, all those other kinds of things. All right, so now embedded
electronics inside silicon wrap, that is also possible. However, if you were going to make that,
the way I would recommend doing that on a 3D printer is to put the silicon
first, say a silicon membrane or something like that, a very thin sheet
of silicon, then let that cure first. Then you print your electronics
onto that cured piece of silicon. Now the reason why is because silicon
when it's not cured is wet and sticky, and when you are 3D printing
that first layer of whatever

material your printing needs to stick. If you try to print another
material onto wet, sticky silicone, the material and the tip is going to
get dragged through the silicon, so you're not going to get a very good print. But if you have a solid surface,
whether it is a solid rubber surface or a hard surface,
then that material will stick and the tip where the material is extruding
from will continue to move properly and lay down a consistent pattern for you. So that's the way I
would approach that and that is the way to make the string
gauge type of soft sensor. Now there is another way to do this
that is a little bit more advanced and this is also shown in one of the slides
where you can do submerged printing. Now the Discov3ry extruder really
works well for submerged printing. And now the

other
extruders could as well but the weight is a little bit of a factor
here in terms of and also precisely controlling your printer by not having a
lot of weight mounted on your nozzle head. And so the Discov3ry is the lightest
weight that's mounted on your nozzle head. Now, so the way you would do this
is you would use a longer needle. And so a blunt tip needle,
not a sharp needle and so the longer needles are say maybe one or two inches, about four centimeters,
two to four centimeter in length. And what you would do here is you
would have your silicon rubber or something like that,
that is still wet, okay? And so you could have platinum cured
silicon or something like that to where you got say four hours or whatever before
it's going to cure, and it's like water. So then you can

extrude
a conducting polymer or a silver nanoparticle
line inside that silicon. Okay, so you basically plunge that needle
into the silicon and then you print this line inside the silicon and then you
pull the needle out and then let that silicon cure and now you got an electrical
conduit inside that silicon, okay. This gets a little bit tricky with
the fluid mechanics side of it. So you have to make sure
that the flow resistance of your two materials are compatible. Okay, so if it's very watery, you don't want your material
sticking around on your needle and not laying a nice line
inside your silicone, okay? So that takes a little
bit of optimization and it's different for different materials. A good way to also play around with this
is if you have a natural phase separation with

materials. For example,
when I did some printing just like this, printing p.pss inside chitosan and
these two materials had phase separation, so if I stirred them together in a jar
it's going to look like egg drop soup. Okay, I'm going to have these
black flakes or whatever, so it's not going to mix with
this hydrogel material. And the reason why was
because both of these had, if I remember correctly they were
both positively charged, okay. So they were repelling each other based
on their strong positive charges, okay? So that allowed me to print submerge
electronics and stuff, all right. >> Right, thank you for that. I think we'll sort of try and
close up the session, I know families are asking for
some discounts. I know your answer to that so
I can answer that for them. I asked him for a

discount for
the lab ourselves and he said they're still a start-up so
they need all the funds they can get. So, we won't be able to get you
a discount from Charles for the [LAUGH]. >> [CROSSTALK] Right, right, yeah, yeah,
so, now the other side of this is that even though we don't offer a discount we
do share a lot of our knowledge, okay, so, if you buy this and
you have questions or whatever we'll definitely try to help you out so that's
kind of where the value add is there. >> Well certainly, I think there are,
from your expertise on several of the open source alternatives,
I think those who cannot reach that price point can certainly figure out
ways to hack together a solution. So just do sort of a closing thoughts
on sort of what is the future that you're excited about in this space?

>> Sure, so the future that I'm excited
about is I want to see, well first of all, I'm very impressed with the 3D
printing community as a whole. It's grown, so
even though it's very consumer centric and things like that, it's become a tool
where each of us can solve a lot of problems that we have a personal
connection to some way or another. And so
I love that aspect about 3D printing and now I'm very curious to see as paste
soft materials printing becomes more mainstream what creative
people do with that capability. So that's where I'm very, very excited. So both at the university and
the research level as well as, the level on the ground where people
are solving unique problems on their own. I expect to see a lot of interesting
developments over the coming years in that area
>> So thank

you for your time Charles. >> Thank you. >> And thank you to all the viewers for
joining in and see you in class. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So in this video, we are speaking to
Gerard Garcia, who works at Ultimaker, and who has some work experience
at Shapewood as well. So he does a reasearch on
the major use cases for 3D printing at the desktop level. One of the interesting insights that I
have learned from him is that 3D printing at the desktop level is being used
in big way by businesses as well. Over 40% to 50% of the use
cases that he's look at are coming from businesses
which was surprising. Another perspective that he'll share with
us is the spread of applications, where 3D printing is being used predominantly
from the desktop printers as well. >> I'm Jerry Garcia. I lived in Barcelona,
now I live in the Netherlands. And around 3 years ago I started
to get really interested and passionate about the 3D

printing,
because of my background in engineering. I worked at for a while, and right now I'm helping the Ultimaker Team
just to make better printers. [SOUND] First we should start with
how 3D printing is being used? And there's really two big groups,
we could call it rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing. On the rapid prototyping there's
two slightly different path that people use as reprinting. First, of all is constant models. So basically in the design phase,
it's getting the yes for a design, so getting an approval. And what you want to do there is
basically communicate your design. Usually, you have a model and
you post-process it, you paint it, you make it look nice, so it can
communicate a lot to either customers, stakeholders, or your boss. Then what you have also
are

functional prototypes. So those are prototypes
that have a purpose. And usually, they are used to avoid
mistakes before going into production. And the most common ways to use them as
function, and fit testing, ergonomics and field evaluation, and
also manufacturability verification. So sometimes before
going to manufacturing, you have to check that that design
is actually manufacturable. So you prototype in 3D printing, later on producing with
traditional manufacturing tools. Then there's a big chunk of the market
as well that uses it for lessons. So basically finding a way to involve
students in science technology, engineering and maths. That's mainly for primary and high school. When we look at universities,
they use it more as companies use it. So for functional prototyping. Then we

have the manufacturing
environment and we can manufacture tools,
jigs and fixtures. That basically manufacturing aids
that help the assembly process, and handy testing to basically be
repeatable and more efficient. And then we have the main purpose
of 3D printing where you can Just cost to make and used parts. So very complex geometries. Parts that have to be tailor made for
example for a patient, or just a one off project. And there's even some start ups and small companies that are starting
to use it for a batch production. There's no significant difference
when it comes to size of the model. Right now, desktop 3D printers
can already start printing with varied technical materials. But when it comes to big
bars models of course, SOS machines have a bigger
build platform usually. However

you could always think
that they are not so fast. because you can always build a big
object out of parts that are printed in smaller printers, and those printers
are going to be faster than one big print. Then of course we [INAUDIBLE]
grew it together, but of course it depends [INAUDIBLE]. So it's really you have to make
a case study for each user basically. Diving is there to stay what we see
is that internal manufacturing. So, tools, jigs, and pictures as the industry starts to
note is the benefit of using those. And how much it to use them now. We expect a lot of growth in that sector. Mainly in the industry on
the professional side of things, we believe that there
are four clear groups. Those are engineering, product design,
manufacturing, and research. And then there are some more

niche
industries like could be aerospace, architecture, fashion, or medical. For those, engineering and research you could either, they use
3D printing in a rather similar way. There's a lot of functional prototyping,
for example, for field testing and ergonomics or just simply fit testing. You build a part and
you want to see how that part can assemble In the whole product
that you are building. A lot of tools are being built for engineering in the R&D department and
also in research. Tools [INAUDIBLE] to hold
electronics in place, and to test [INAUDIBLE] in
a repeatable manner. Or there's also a new concept that's
called open source lab equipment, and 3D printing supports that very well,
because of flexibility and the cheap cost of FDM 3D printing. There's even some industries and some

companies that are using less of FDM
3D printers, and their main material, the cheapest one, PLA,
to make final parts of steel. So they to make lost PLA casting. Then we can move to manufacturing. And in manufacturing they have a great
advantage in the manufacturing floor. So in the core production
process by using tools, jigs and fixtures that are 3D printed. They can save huge amounts of money,
and huge amounts of time because a traditional methods would
take maybe two to three weeks. You need to get the quote. You need to order the part. The part is milled Basically, it's made out of mantle,
it occupies a space, it's very heavy. With 3D printing,
you can just have the part custom made. If it doesn't work,
you can make an alteration. If your part changes,
you can just iterate the CAD

design. You don't have to keep stock, you have
all your files in your digital computer It just makes the process so
much faster, and so much efficient. You can create new business like,
let's say custom ear plugs. You have a scan of your ear you basically
have a one-off product that you made, tailor made for each person. That's something that
was not possible before. You can also decentralize manufacturing. You can build at home, or
you can build it in a lab. But the company can just the files
the user builds it themselves. Then there's a little of potential
as well in the medical sector. For example these are the same
readings from a computer screen, and from data of a CT scan or
MRI scan industry. When having a physical model. So we found that there
are quite a lot of surgeons. And since

they started to 3D print
the organs or bones of patients, their techniques and the surgery blooding
really dramatically, technically change. So now instead they can
cut open a lens and the recovery time of
the patients is way higher. They have to use less surgical room time. So basically we translate
in savings of money. It also translate in adding
quality of life for the patient. It's just a truly game changer. Similarly with prosthetics. Now they are much cheaper and can be
tailor-made exactly for your volume, and device innovation. The medical industry can use rapid
prototyping as any other industry. They also need tools and rapid prototyping
enables them to just get to market faster. To just increase the speed of
research breakthroughs as well In any field basically. Well I truly

believe that taking
this course will enable to either get to know how to implement
3D printing in your company. So your company just takes
advantage of the new technologies. It I truly believe that 3D printing
can be used in any company. Either for promotioning in the marketing
sign, for just prototyping, getting to market faster in product development, to
helping with assembly and manufacturing. But it is also a way to just
unleash the creativity in you. So being able to know how to use CAD
modeling and just have an idea.. Next day you go to make
your piece in the fab lab, you get access to the 3-D printer. You just put your file in there and
then overnight you have a print, you have a new model, you have
something physical that you've created. I think that's basically empowering

people
to just make the world a better place. The reason why that is is probably
because companies have so much to win out of just
getting a 3D printer. And spending 2,000 or 3,000 Euros for a 3D printer is not that much
of a big deal for a company. Otherwise at home or
a person that likes do it yourself stuff, you still need to have
a technical background. You need You know CAD modeling skills, you
need to be creative, a lot of hours and understand how material
interacts with the printer. It's not yet just plug and play, so since
there are not a lot of courses like yours, it's very difficult to embrace
3D printing, at this point. I think for the industry, the industry will continue to benefit
from all the 3D printing possibilities. Probably the industry is looking forward
to just bringing

unused parts of metal and really good materials,. And at the part I am most excited about is
as you mentioned the entrepreneurs, cause you are just enabling people that have
good ideas to just make them come true. And make their, from their passion,
they can make their own business. So, so that's really something.. Is with changing lives with people and
through Kickstarter, and through Corsera all these kind of
projects I think they are great. And then on the home side I
think it's more difficult. But as soon as there's someone that reels that cat somewhere
that just can't be learned by anyone. So basically when my mom can start to cat
model then that's when the disruption's going to happen. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] Well I'm Adam Clark, Chief Strategy
Officer at Tangible Solutions. We're additive manufacturing company
rather than being a service provider we did start out strictly as a service
provider, slaying parts off the machines. Quickly saw that there was
an education grant and we came out of the defense industry, so
we really have three pillars of business. That's our defense market. That's a commercial market and academia. All three of those
pillars kind of overlap. When we talk about academia we do
a lot of curriculum development, work force development. We also do some servicing, parts for
the class or the students or whatnot. For defense it's more on the research and
development side. Everything from DMLS all the way
down to the thermoplastics. Just understanding what's happening

at
the molecular level of some prints. And then on the other
end of the spectrum for defense it's the enterprise
solution of additive manufacturing. Where the technology should
be inside an organization? What levels, skill sets? Some of the things I
want to talk about today. And then we have our commercial sector
which a lot of the things I just mention overlapping to the commercial sector cause
there are companies that we consult and deliver professional corporate training
and then obviously servicing parts. We're doing prototyping, but our goal is
to move towards the industrialization of additive manufacturing
metals in particular. I really ramping up to be more of
a contract manufacturer rather than just prototyping and we're seeing that trend a little bit more over the last

year
especially, just the way companies are realizing how they can take
advantage of additive manufacturing. So that is Tangible Solutions. It's happening in a couple
of different areas, and each one is on their own
timeline if you will. The hot one right now is medical devices,
and I think what really drives that is the fact that their relatively small
pieces, spinal implants, hip implants. There's a lot of softwares that are coming
on market to really advance the designs of added a manufactured implants. It's a osteoporosis designs
that encourage bone growth. So being able to achieve
those type of geometries and the engineering behind that and
the cost drivers. We're really cutting down a lot cost
because we're taking out material which is time and material on the machine,
ultimately

lowering the cost. You can run it at 24/7. It's more on demand. This type of logistics of how this is all
happening is at a small level right now, but it's how we do things now with
the metal stuff that will really impact the industrial OEM. They are starting to get into the game,
like I was saying earlier, it is more on exploratory
type ventures right now. Caterpillar in particular
has a capital ventures, a wing where they're going out and they're
investing in service bureaus like ours. Because they're realizing they don't have
enough service providers to provide them with the parts, so they're happy to go and
inject a million dollars into a company to hold specific type
of equipment to run their part. I think the next hot market is the UAV
market combined with the aerospace market.

What's really holding that up is some
of the work that's happening over what we call across the fence, across the street over there on
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. They're going to hold a lot of keys to
the standards that are going to be set and used in the industry. One, they have a lot of money, because
it's DOD, and they can afford to do a lot of high risk long term research and
development that won't really come to fruition in industry for
ten, maybe 20 or 30 years. So they're investing in tit now and
they're investing more and more. Doing conversations with people, and they're trying to figure out how to get
additive manufactured parts evaluated and then collect enough certifiable data that
we can now put this on a flight critical part, or
this can be a flight critical part. So

those are some barriers of entry. Now all the OEM's in aerospace,
they're buying their own machines. Airbus is going to buy, like, 200 concept laser machines in
Europe over the next two years. So they're ramping up their
capability in-house but they're going to need more
they going to be going out and decentralizing all the manufacturing
go exactly where they need it. A longer term market after that
would say is the automotive. It's just such high quantity I think
it's still trying to find it's identity. Space is a hard one because it's
kind of in the middle of everything. And it's a very wide spectrum and
materials and goals that we're trying to accomplish. Printing structures on Mars to
printing wrenches up in space, to having 3D printers that release and
then print a big satellite. It's

a very wide spectrum. Love to play in that market, but
it's going to be a little bit of time and it's just different. So for us we're saying very
focused on additive manufacturing in the medical field,
getting our ISO certifications and stepping up into more
contract manufacturing. [SOUND] It's a combination of a couple
things that are really coming to a head. The advances in the technology, people
have been working on it for 30 years. Talked about design, topology,
optimization, that kind of thing and then that workforce that's coming
out with additive in mind. Those three factors, social factors if
you will, are sort of coming to a point where they're about to collide in a hard
way over the next two to three years, and that's going to drive a lot
of this industrialization. I think we're

finding more and
more questions every year and that will always be reformulating and
trying to understand standards and trying to get to a point
where every print is perfect. Which is we have a lot of work to do but
it's going to be a very interesting time over the next
couple of years and how of the market moves because it's not just one factor and
those are the underlying trends. You saw everyone started missing earnings,
all the big sellers and everyone started, you can't look at the stock market because
people buy and sell on emotion every day. And that's what they did, they bought on emotion because they
thought they read into the hype. We put on a breakfast briefly that
was literally called beyond the hype. Because we want people to
know about this technology, and if you just buy and

sell and think it's high whenever, look at what the
OEMs are doing, look at their activities. Their merger and acquisition activity,
their investment activity, how they're strategically doing things in design
news about this new design for additive. They're doing publicity stunts
through putting together content for some of the magazines so
it's starting to come out to the industry. And they're letting that trick a lot because they want their
suppliers to get ready. And they're realizing they probably
need some new suppliers to come in and they're doing their homework right
now on who's going to be the best. So we're trying to position ourselves
to be right there when they're ready. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] In this video we are speaking to Zach
Sheldon who is a partner at Lux Capital and he will give us a slightly
different prospective as an investor in firms that are building 3D printer
software or hardware platforms. And that gives us an industry view on what has been happening over
the last 10 or 15 years in this space. So we'll talk about some
trends in the hardware, the software, and
finally on the content side of there. So content refers to the 3D designs that we are finding on platforms
such as Thingiverse or YouImagine. And that content library is growing
exponentially everyday in fact. So let's hear from Zach. >> I'm Zack Schildhorn,
I'm a partner with Lux Capital. We're a venture capital
firm based in New York and Silicon Valley with $700
million under management. And we

focused exclusively on futuristic
science and technology companies. So if it sounds like science fiction,
we're probably invested. Our companies are doing everything from
nuclear waste cleanup to 3D printing, surgical robotics, space communications,
launching satellites, driving autonomous vehicles. It's all very exciting stuff. [SOUND] This is a space that I've
personally been passionate about for a long time. I have a background in material science
and so sort of had a natural affinity for this idea that you could start
manipulating matter in a new way. And started focusing on the sector,
probably over five years ago. We made our first investment in
2012 in company called Shapeways, that's now quite a significant 3D
printing market place and platform, that lets anybody make anything in a

lot
of different materials and they do it all with the highest end equipment so
you don't have to have anything at home. That was our first investment
we've subsequently made two more investments directly
in 3D printing companies, and other investments generally
in the 3D ecosystem. The other investments in 3D printing
are one called Sols Systems, also headquartered here in New York City. And Sols is focused on a very
vertical application of 3D printing. They're using scanning and printing
technology to make customized footwear with a broader vision to make really
customized anything for anybody. And it's a very cool and exciting
company that's here in New York and then another reason investment that we
haven't disclosed as much about but is, I would say, on very much
the cutting edge of

what is possible is a company called Desktop Metal. And Desktop Metal in broad strokes is
working on making it possible to print the highest performance metal parts
directly in a desktop office environment. [SOUND] As an investor, we're always trying to figure out how
we can best allocate our capital. And we have millions of dollars to put
to work and we don't want to lose it. So, what's really important before
we start making investments and just cool sounding ideas or
great technologies is understanding what's happening
in a market place, in an industry. And within 3D printing we spent about
a year analyzing the whole space. Looking at every start-up. Looking at big companies. Looking at how companies
were using the technology, what we thought was going to happen. And one of the first

things we really
focused on were the technology trends. How did we think this was going to evolve. And When you think about 3D printing
there are really two important aspects, just like printing
a document on your computer. You need to have the digital file
that you're going to print and then you need to have the printer
itself that makes it come out. So if you think about it in
terms of content creation and then production, those are sort of the two
absolutely necessary ingredients to be able to have a functioning ecosystem. So we focused on that and we tried to understand what was
happening in each of those categories. On the printer side it was quite obvious
what used to be these very expensive isolated machines only used in research
labs of the top 500 companies. We're slowly, but in

some cases very
quickly, getting out into the world and becoming accessible to
anyone at much lower prices. So with the launch of
things like Maker Bot that came out of some open
source university projects. All of a sudden you have, for
just a few thousand dollars, a capability that was once tens of thousands of
dollars in the hands of very few. And of course as a result you start
seeing many go into the field and that creates competitive pressure. Now you have 15 companies all
trying to make desktop 3D printers. You have the big companies that's saying,
what's going on here? We need to start lowering our prices. We need to start coming up
with better machines so that we don't get our business
ripped out from under our feet. And that competitive dynamic and that
new entrance brought new

capital in and new ideas and I would say just
generally much more momentum around the technology for
the actual printers. So you saw new materials coming
to market at much faster pace. You saw prices dropping,
you saw new capabilities coming to bare. You saw the machines getting Faster, people focused on making
them easier to use. And for us, as an investment
firm we said this is great for the industry,
really hard to pick a winner. So as a firm we decided we're probably not
going to place our bets early on on actual 3D printer technology unless it's
something that is so revolutionary. But let's focus on how people
are going to use this technology. So that was our investment bent and what
we saw happening on the hardware side. On the content creation side, so
the files that were going to

be printed. And you had a sort of similar dynamic
taking place, where what used to these very, expensive, isolated, esoteric,
types of software packages. Where all of a sudden, these capabilities
were becoming available to everybody. So something that used to maybe cost
$5,000 for a single software license for a CAD-trained engineer at
a large engineering company. Now some of those capabilities were
started to get released in free or open source programs. Sometimes, not even based on computer but
on the web. And then finally, we saw actually another
hardware technology coming to bare and coming down in cost and
that is in the form of 3D sensors. And instead of having a straight
2D camera imagine having a 3D camera that actually captures the
depth data about a scene or an object, and that

lets you all of a sudden capture
content that's in he real world. And very easily turn it into
something that can be manipulated in an existing program or
printed directly. And so we say all of these things
as similar trends of going from what used to be very expensive and complex to becoming much easier and
more accessible to everybody. And we thought that was
a really good sign for what thee future of
the industry could hold. [SOUND] So I think one common
misconception that a lot of people had and continue to have about 3D printing
is that this is a manufacturing technology that's going
to replace everything. It's not true, in fact 3D printing today
is still in most cases much more expensive than traditional manufacturing methods. And there's a challenge in 3D printing, as objects grow

in size t hey become
exponentially more expensive to produce. So why would anybody use this
technology if it's more expensive and really hard to make bigger size things? You know what, what we realized, and
I think what people often miss about 3D printing is it's not about replacing
what you can make already but about making things that
were never possible before. And what this means is that
because of the technology, you can produce geometries that you
could never manufacture another way. So imagine a device that has incredibly
intricate internal structure, almost like a seashell or something
like that, like a very organic shape. That would be almost impossible to produce
through traditional manufacturing methods so it's an advantage of the technology. And another advantage is that

you
don't have the same loss of scale that you see in traditional manufacturing
because there's no tooling, because everything is digital. You can produce just one of something and it's the same cost as producing
hundreds or thousands of something. Or you could produce many iterations of a similar thing without
incurring any additional expense. So when you're thinking about
it from a business perspective, the question always has to be,
how can I exploit these unique capabilities of being able
to create on parallel the geometries and also to produce things on demand
to help my business case? And if you look at how real businesses
are using this technology today you'll see that almost all of
them flow in to those Used cases. So let's start with the aerospace which
is been one of the earliest

adopters in military in aerospace companies for
3D printing technology. Boeing has leverage 3D printing
to make over 20,000 parts. That are now flying on FAT and
fighter jets. Now what's interesting about these parts, some of the early parts that they started
making with these convoluted air ducts. So trying to get air to flow around the
really tight spaces of a cock pit to cool critical equipment. These weren't for structural parts, the plane wasn't
going to fall apart if the part failed, but they had to have a very unique
shape that is hard to manufacture. And in fact by using 3D printing,
they were able to not only cut out a lot of manufacturing steps but
also reduce the weight of the part. And for anyone that knows anything about
aerospace, the more weight you can reduce, you get

dramatic fuel savings, which
saves on costs tremendously over time. So that's a huge deal. And by using 3D printing, I think they
were able to take 32 different components, add the 787 Dreamliner. And use those in 3D printing to save
weight, so it's a really big change for them in terms of weight saving and
the ability to reduce manufacturing steps. Also let's say you have a part that
does fail or you need to replace. Instead of needing to
hold hundreds of them or thousands of them in inventory in
a warehouse somewhere all of a sudden, you can just print one up and
have it shipped out to the site. So there are a lot of
advantages in aerospace. I'll move on to some other examples
sort of in the medical space and taking advantage as 3D printing. Most in ear hearing aids so kind of like these

ear buds
the custom fit inside people's ears. The shells for
those hearing aids are 3D printed. And the reason is, is because everybody
has a different ear canal on the inside, just like everybody has
a different fingerprint, everyone's ear canal on
the inside is different. And in order to make a part that fits in
there perfectly it has to be unique for every person. So you could either have a craftsman
hand carve a custom ear mold for every person or
you can take a digital scan and then 3D print the part perfectly
in the ideal material. And so that's exactly what they do. And 90% of all in-the-ear hearing
aids are already 3D printed today. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So in this video, let's look at some numbers on
the trends that we have heard about. We will look at the research
from three consulting firms and they are Wohlers Associates,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Gardner. Now two of them focus on market growth. And the third focuses on how manufacturers
are adopting 3D printing into their operations. Now, keep in mind that in many of
these projections, there is a healthy optimism there, and we expect that
these numbers get revised every year. For example, there was quite a bit
of skepticism about the market for 3D printers in early to mid 2015 but
the sales of 3D printers, particularly at the desktop price point
have far exceeded expectations and the projections are very now
optimistic for 2016 and for the next four years as well. [COUGH]

Now one of the first things that I
do when I'm looking at trend information is to analyze some search terms on
the website which is trends.google.com. So this allows you to get a proxy measure of end user interest in the subject
that you're researching about. So I put in two search terms. One is 3D printer and 3D printing and
the search interest graph shows that the search activity around these two
terms exploded just about after 2010. And, it reached a few peaks
in the period 2013 to 2015. And a significant drop in
the mid to later months of 2015. Now in 2016, there has been
some resurgence of interest and if you also look at the stock prices
of the big firms in the space. For example,
if you look up 3D Systems or Stratasys, you'll find that their stocks have
been quite badly hit in 2015

and they are now back up in 2016 with a few
good sales numbers from these firms and some of the other numbers we'll see
shortly in these research reports. So let's start with the numbers in
the Wohlers Associates report in 2016. Now they are a very respected
firm in this space and bring out an annual state
of the industry report, which by the way is rather expensive so
it's difficult to get access to it, but we have a few summary items or
highlights from their report. According to their report, additive
manufacturing, which is another term that industry people like to use for
3D printing, grew at about compound annual growth rate of 25.9% and the value was just over $5 billion
in 2015 which is pretty significant. Another number that was
pretty striking in 2015, which was not expected,
was

the number of desktop 3D printers which is printers under
$5000 as classified in that report. And the numbers about 278,000 which was way more than earlier
estimates by several firms. They also found a significant growth
in what's called metal additive manufacturing or metal 3D printing,
and of course in desktop 3D printers. Looking back a few years,
the industry is over 30 years old. And the report points out that
the compound annual growth rate for the industry is about 26.2%, which over a period of ten or
15 years is very significant. Now let's change tracks and
look at two studies from Gardner. One is their popular the Hype cycle which indicates the diffusion
of new technologies. The Hype cycle for 3D printing
which was released in 2015 gives us some interesting perspectives on

the
growth of 3D printing in different areas. Now, the Hype cycle suggests that
medical applications are widespread now as MOS customization is practical and very
relevant as a use case for 3D printing. Well you have already heard
the examples about hearing aids. We have now a common hip and knee replacements, dental implants,
and of course braces as well. One example of braces which is very
popular is the firm Invisalign, or rather the product Invisalign. Where over 80,000 implants are printed and shipped everyday, and
these are all custom unique to the person. One of the topic of the braces, an
interesting story of the college student who scanned his teeth and
printed braces by himself at the fraction of the cost that Invisalign
or some similar firms would charge. So this all of an

example of a second order of disruption happening
to disruptors in the market. So, an individual with
the power to create and with the tools available on
the desktop is now disrupting. A firm which was disrupting earlier encumbrance in the braces market, so
that's an interesting example on the side. So let's get back to the Hype cycle now. Another trend to note is that
the content creation or capture around 3D models has become better,
cheaper, and more accessible. With easy to use software and
easy to use scanners as well. Some experts believe that this might have
been an important obstacle in the option of 3D printing. And along with the availability of
service bureaus, such as 3D hubs and shape ways, we are now at a stage where there is significant adoption of
3D printing across

different areas. And we'll see some more of that
in the next report as well. They also found that specialized medical
applications such as 3D bioprinting for research and development and for organ transplants are still
about five to ten years out. And we will hear more
about this from an expert in the field later in the course as well. One interesting statistic they
point out around classroom, 3D printing says that they expect to
reach maturity in over ten years. I'm not sure I agree with this forecast
as we see significant push by public and private institutions to get 3D
printing into the curriculum. Now there have been several reports of
initiatives by governments in UK and China, among other countries to
promote wide spreaded option, and some of these initiatives
are looking at you

know for example some reports last year
the China was looking at a 3D printer in every year secondary school,
we don't have conformation on that yet. [COUGH] Interestingly,
when we talk about China, it turns out, the firm IDC predicts that China will
overtake the US in terms of local printer shipments and
perhaps the focus on schools might be one reason for increasing
adoption of 3D printers in China. We have quite a few learners
who are educators, and we would love to hear from them
in the forums about this trend. Let's move on and review some of
the findings from a survey done with 120 manufacturing professionals by PWC on how
US manufacturers are adopting 3D printing into their operations, and how they expect
the technology to play out in the future. Now PWC started out this array in

2014 so this is the result from
their second annual survey. And this site, an interesting
statistic again from IBC that global spending of printers reached
about $11 billion in 2015 and they're forecasted to reach
about $27 billion by 2019. Some of the interesting
trends from their survey. Their survey results point out that
more than two-thirds of US manufacturers are using 3D printing in some ways and
mostly prototyping right now. But there is a good
percentage also looking at final products compared to what
they found two years back. Expectations are rather rising that 3D
printing will soon be available for high volume production in the future. And this is again in a timeframe of about
three to five years, but at the same time, at present, most of them still
believe that it is suitable

for low volume or for
specialized products as well. An interesting segment of the market
which is for after market and obsolete parts seems to
attract a lot of attention and the survey results
pointed that out as well. The trends again are about the same
over the two years that they've seen. In the next three or five years,
they're seeing over two-thirds of the manufacturers who will use 3D
printing for all their obsolete parts, which is a little decreased
from what they saw in 2014. Now finally, to close this discussion, let's look at the threads they
identified in this survey. So the top two threats the respondents
identified were the challenges due to supply chain restructuring and the
threats due to intellectual property or threats to intellectual property rather. We will get an

opportunity to discuss
intellectual property in more detail with a lawyer who specializes in this area. Another interesting trend they see is
a changed relationship with customers, which might force them to change
the way they are, they do business. And this is pretty similar to what you
heard from Professor Alec Trainflus in the first course where he talk about the
trend that customers are now creators and in many cases, co-creators with the firm. And finally, they see a big concern around
finding talent to explore this technology and which is where and opportunities for
you to build expertise are possible. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] So in this video, we look at some of
leading edge applications of 3D printing. First off, I think most of
you would have seen this in the first course with
Professor Ali Kranfridge, as well. He talks about 3D printing
a wrench in space. The firm made in space incorporated put
up a 3D printer on the space station, you have to be careful about the lack
of gravity and how the filament or the excursion material will
work with zero gravity. They're printing some
replacement parts in space, but there's an interesting
project called Archinot. Which involves building
a robotic 3D printer that can autonomously 3D print
a portion of a structure in orbit. Grab on to non-3D printed
parts from orbit, and assemble all of them to construct
large and complex space structures. This is still in

planning,
so this is about four or five years out into actually getting
any results from this project. But that's an interesting vision, and
you can think of potentially creating structures to inhabit the moon, and
maybe one day, go to Mars, as well. Another interesting trend that's
sort of highlights what is possible, is 3D printing completely
functional objects. Now, one of the developments, which is a
desktop printer currently priced at about $8,000, is called the Voxel. It's a multi-material 3D printer, and it can print plastic as
traditional FDM machine, and conduct them in together to create
circuits while the part is being printed. At the end of the print,
you'll have a fully functional product. All you need is a chip in there
to make the parts work with some cord that you put in

it. Another interesting example is
developed by a team at MIT, were they hacked a commercially
available 3D printer to print it. A robot body with both solids and liquids. And they created a hydraulic robot. Of course, they still did need to put in
a battery sensor and a computing unit, but we already have technology being
developed to 3D print batteries. And there are firms in the space who are
now printing, for example, the antenna for your iPhone is being printed on the board
itself with liquid conductive inks. The time is not far, well, maybe we will be printing robots that
are functional off the printer itself. So, a revolutionary concept in
navigation is one of digital materials. A term coined by Neil Gershenfeld in 2005. And you heard about this in
the discussion with Professor Hard

Libson in the previous course with
Professor Alex Rindfish. And the vision for digital materials
is to allow for the creation of a 3D assembler, which can work at a very
tiny scale in our molecular, or at the nano scale and
assemble products in three dimensions. Think of these as three dimensional pixels
or voxels, as Dr. Hard Libson calls it, which are used to create objects, and
then perhaps disassemble them as well. The assembly is from discrete units and
is digital, rather than the analog mode compared to the other 3D printing
technology we see today, provides for a lot more flexibility and
accuracy in what you create and then potentially disassemble
those products, as well. Another interesting trend
that is quite tasty, quite frankly, is that of 3D printed food. And rapid prototyping

really is
a requirement in trying out any recipe until you get it right. Now, it's only natural to consider
applications for 3D printing in food. And here are some examples. Now, two firms, Foodini and
CocoJet are looking at printing food and different structures using
liquefied ingredients. The structure and the texture can be
varied to give innovative shapes, and the structure, of course, also impacts the
eating experience and the taste as well. The developments right now are focusing
on making this repeatable, making it more accurate. So, these are incremental
improvements in printing food. Not really revolutionary. Many of the desktop 3D printers can be
hacked to work with liquefied food. In fact, a group of students at the
university modified one of the auto makers to 3D print

chocolate as part
of a programming workshop, where kids will learn programming,
and their reward at the end would be they get to print out a cookie for
themselves with some chocolate on it. Of course, an advancement for food printing is really
when you start re-engineering food and create synthetic food essentially
with proteins, 3D printed into meat. It may not sound like a good
idea to many of us, but it's increasingly become possible
with advancements in technology. Let's look at another application where we might now be able to download and
print our medicine. A company recently got approval
from the FDA for a drug for epilepsy, where the firm uses 3D
printing to create a more porospil. The structure means the pill dissolves
more quickly in contact with liquid, making it much easier to

swallow high
doses compared to a conventional tablet. It also allows layers of medication to be
packaged more tightly In precise dosages, and the day of customized
medicine may not be too far. So, we close this discussion with
a lead into bioprinting, and you will hear more about this in the video
with an expert on the field, Dr. Tolou Shokuhfar,
at the University of Illinois in Chicago. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] Bioprinting is a mechanism which
includes software and hardware for the design of living tissue and organs. The field originated about 15 years back,
but significant advances over the past
few years have got us to a stage where artificial tissue is being used
widely for research and development. For drug development and some early experiments in organ
development are also showing promise. There are about a dozen forms in
this space, but it still early days. Gartner Research Firm predicts that we are
about five to ten years away from maturity of this field, which quite frankly,
is not to far out. The scale of some of the tissue
that people are able to create and use, and this is available commercially
as well, is still very small. And as we look at 3D printing organs, one
of the

biggest obstacles researchers face is to overcome the challenge of figuring
out creating 3D printed blood vessels. So let's find out more from Dr. Shokuhfar about advances in bioprinting
and her own work in the area. >> My name is Tolou Shokufar. I'm associate professor of bioengineering
at The University of Illinois in Chicago. I have two major research areas
as a focus of my research lab, which is in-situ bioelectro
microscopy of biological tissues and proteins for diagnostics of disease
as well as nanomaterials and biomaterials for regenerative medicine. As a main focus of my bionanomaterial
research in nanomedicine, I also work with 3D bioprinting for
regenerative medicine. Can you possibly make something living? So that is the idea. Can we bring the idea of 3D
printing into 3D

bioprinting? So, what bioprinting is, in simple words, we can say how about we
try to construct something that is used in the body,
in a living system. With this, we can even categorize
the 3D bioprinting systems. Either we can 3D bioprint a scaffold, and then use that to replicate or replace
parts of the body that is un-functional. Or we can actually print living cells and then use that to actually replace
an organ that is not functional. Well, I have to add that the second
part of it is way down the road and is the future idea of 3D bioprinting
that everybody is hoping to achieve. Going back again to 3D
printing of scaffolds, where you do not have any cells,
that is actually a more approachable application
of 3D bioprinting right now. Because you don't have to worry
about keeping the

cells alive, keeping them functional,
providing the environment for them to basically replicate
what they have to do. Rather than that, you can actually print
a part of the body that is missing. For example, scaffolds for bone,
those could be a good examples. You can actually use these
3D bioprinter products to better mimic the properties and
the shape of the implant. You can even take CT scan of a skull, and if there is a case of accident
from maxillofacial injuries, so you can make a 3D
scan of the missing part. And you can really replicate,
with all the detail, missing part, the construct from a biologically
compatible biomaterial. And that could be replaced for
the missing part. And the human cells by themselves,
the tissue by themselves can encounter the whole scaffold and
try to

regenerate and mimic the construct. So as a summary, I would like to say that
3D bioprinting is a next generation, which we all look forward to it. It has two concepts behind it. One either you can print
biomaterials that could be used and implanted within the body. Or you can actually print cells which
the mimic extracellular environment, that could actually mimic an organic or
a tissue in the body. My research, for
now we are focusing on two aspects. We are working on developing
certain type of scaffolds. And with the specific bio-ink,
development of that specific bio-ink that can help
the regeneration of nervous system. So we are incorporating and
developing our actual matrix, which would be also in
hydrogel-based matrix. We're incorporating some
components which are compatible. If you

think of a bio-ink as a nanocomp or a composite material,
we have that hydrogel base. We have other components that can provide
electrical conductivity, they could be graphene based, which we're incorporating
them as well, as well as stem cells. And an additional to that,
we change out the stem cells and some other cases, different bio-inks,
to astrocyte cells. And then we can apply
electrical impulses to help and assimilate the regeneration of astrocytes, then to have a proper
external regeneration. We are also starting to
work with the GI system. That could be essential, and
very important for toxicology studies. So we're missing, right now,
a lot of drug development. Drug discovery is a billion
dollar industry right now. It’s suffering through really
coming up with a good method to do

discoveries of the drug. Right now, I would say, well, they have to go through animal studies,
and then clinical trials. In many of the cases,
the drug actually would fail in the case with the animal studies and would not
even get approval for further studies. And there are a lot of costs and
other ethical issues related to that. As the last example of
what we do in the lab, we are working with manufacturing 3D
printed scaffolds that could be used for lower jaw or maxillofacial reconstruction. That is extremely valuable for
the cases of traumatic injuries. In this case,
we are not bioprinting any cells. Rather, we print an environment
consisting of hydroxyapatite bone forming environment that can
replicate those missing part. The future of bioprinting, and the main,
whole, beautiful idea

is to maybe at some point we can save lives. And really print organs that
are not functional at this point, helping people that need,
today, donors of organs. But that's a beautiful
future which I see for it. So today, it has been possible,
for example, to 3D bioprint a kidney or a liver. You look at it it,
it actually does look like or feel like coming from a cadaver, a patient recently passed away. But it is not really functional,
is not really working as it’s supposed to. But that's the future, so
to really take it to the next level, overcome the barriers. Overcome the milestones right now,
and hopefully, make that bioprinted tissue or
organ a functional organ. For a future application, I would like to
mention drug screening would be amazing if it's possible to get to that
point where

we really don't need to go through all the required steps that
may even fail in some [INAUDIBLE]. We can have even the organ on a chip, or a natural organ that we can use for
drug testing and drug screening. We don't need to go through a lot of
animal studies, from small scale, all the way to big animal studies. We then can avoid a lot of
unnecessarily required human trials. There is a lot that I believe
3D bioprinting can offer us, and there is a lot that
could be done in future. And I personally believe that something
that might be coming from a Star Trek or science fiction is no
science fiction anymore. Right now, it's just human creativity and how much we are willing and
wanting to make that happen. As long as we desire and as long as dream,
I believe that's possible. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So in the first course with Professor
[INAUDIBLE] you have already got a glimpse of the applications of 3D printing, and
have met many of the players in the field. There are far too many applications
of 3D printing we see every day, to even try and
cover everything in our time with you. Instead, we will focus on looking at some
of the key characteristics that have helped 3D printing become so widespread in
so many different areas, look at trends in the industry, and focus on major
industry segments where it is being used. We will talk to experts in the field
from academia, 3-D printing hardware and software firms, and even a venture
capitalist who is investing in many of the firms featured in the courses. We will hear some inspiring stories and a wide variety of use cases will come

up,
which will help motivate you in your journey towards
converting ideas to objects. Join us in this journey. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] Hi, we are here today to learn
about what follows after 3D Printing Application course
that you are right now in. So you've learned from Professor Alec 3D
Printing, the revolution in 3D Printing. And in this course, 3D Printing
Applications you've learned a lot about all the different ways in which people,
entrepreneurs and industries are using 3D printing as
in a couple of the case studies. So we are now moving on to building
some skills in 3D modeling software. And this last module in this course, you've learned about
design thinking as well. As a sort of a process
around solving problems. Going from ideas to actually
creating new things. So we are very fortunate to
have Jeff Smith from Autodesk, who will be leading you in the software
course to get your ideas on paper, in a

digital medium and onwards. So thank you, Jeff, for joining us and
telling us about your course. >> Vishal, I'm really excited to do this
course right now and though my goal for the learners is to teach them
how to capture their ideas. How to get them on paper or
digital medium and how to take ideas from that sketch
standpoint onto a digital medium for 3D. How do I explore my ideas? How do I take ideas and make them
reality in the 3D environment and then ultimately leverage your
3D printing skills as well. >> In your course, you're starting
as you said with the sketches and then moving up from there
to 3D modeling tools. Give us a sense of at
the end of your course, what are learners working out with? >> My goal for learners that participate
in my course, I want to empower them. I want to

empower them to be confident
at capturing ideas on paper. And I want to empower them with tool sets
that allow them to capture their designs, capture their process,
develop ideas in the 3D world. Because without 3D CAD,
you don't have any 3D printing, you have to have something
to build ultimately. And the goal here is to give
them the confidence and skill sets to flush out their
ideas in a digital environment. >> Given my sense of what
the audience typically is and we've done some other Coursera courses. So we get people from all over the world. And this specialization is
also being designed for the absolute beginners
who are just interested. Who are saying hey,
let me find out what this is all about. There are some who might be entrepreneurs. There might be some who say,
I have a

problem, I want to fix it. Or there might be some who are saying
I need some skill building potentially at my work. Your course particularly,
how does it fit these different scenarios? >> My course is about skill building. >> Okay.
>> And I think design is universal. >> Okay. >> Everyone can leverage design and
learn how to do that. If you're an entrepreneur and you have an idea, design can be
the vehicle to make that a reality. If you're involved in industry,
design can take you to a new level. On a personal level for me, a simple
act like drawing has done wonders for me and it's made connections and
it's built me in business. Obviously, if I look at
the other side of that, with 3D modeling that has
empowered me as well. So I want to hand that off to the next
person and design as

universal. >> So I think it's a shaping up to
be in excellent course and we hope all our learners who've been with us so
far follow on and learn from you as well. >> I hope so and if you come work with me, I guarantee that I can
teach you skill sets. >> Well, thank you for taking the time. >> No problem, I hope every one joins me. >> Well, thank you. [MUSIC]

At Gies College of Business,
one of our strategic priorities is to democratize education,
we do that by delivering our IMBA, IMSA executive education and
business minor online. That is not business as usual and it's
certainly not the online education of old, we put our very best faculty
in the online space. They actively engage with students from
around the world face to face in a digital classroom, faculty and students collaborating together infuse
these programs with the personal attention that enable students to
reach their full potential. >> The IMBA program through the Gies
College of Business is so incredibly innovative, the ability and accessibility
to reach a whole new audience of students. And let them learn on their own
time has been phenomenal and being able to collaborate

with
people across the globe and to learn from top notch professors
has been completely revolutionary. >> When you're interacting and teaching
in a live session, you can kind of see the students environment and while I'm
teaching here at night and Champagne, it's day time, wherever they
are in the world, some of them. And so it's sort of slapped you in the
face immediately that there's a completely different perspective. >> You might think, it's more removed, its
more distant but in fact, my experience in an online class has actually been
surprisingly intimate and connected. In a classroom setting you might have 50,
60 or more students in a room at one time. And so I'm scanning around,
looking at at people, but in an online, I'm looking at one place and
the students looking right back at

me and that's surprisingly a direct experience. >> I was shocked at how
much it felt as good or better than when I was sitting in
class in my undergraduate days. Everyone has their cameras on, on their
computers, there's a chat feature so you can also type in a question and the professor can answer
your question that way. >> I think the cool thing is that you
can truly participate from whatever you are the system work on your desktop,
on your cell phone. >> We were traveling in the middle
of nowhere, back from Indiana and on the Wi-Fi, still on my iPad,
I was able to connect through Zoom with classmates in Dubai and Tokyo and
California all at the same time. Even being in a remote place on the go,
the accessibility and the exposure that I was
able to get was phenomenal. Getting my NBA

makes me feel
empowered because I don't need to, stop being myself. I don't need to stop working,
I don't need stop being a mother, I don't need to stop having my life and
that is everything. >> Our online programs are designed to
be career curated learning experiences. Our leading edge course
material is structured the way that professionals apply
these concepts every day. Leadership, communication and critical thinking skills are built into
the core empowering our students to put their purpose into practice
at the highest level. >> One of the most impactful
things is just your ability to take the skills that we deliver and
take them back to work on Monday. I've heard a couple of stories where
students have talked about the skills that they were able to build over a couple
of weeks and

then they were able to immediately bring that skill set back into
their job and make an immediate impact. I would recommend Gies,
IMBA program for anyone, this is both, If you're starting questioning your
career to, if you're a professional and you want to hone your skill,
this is it, this is the place to be. >> At Gies College of Business we are
truly revolutionizing how online education is delivered, this isn't just a few PowerPoint
slides and a reading assignment. Our faculty and students thrive in this
one of a kind global classroom, relevant, timely discussions about current
topics from around the world. Keep content fresh and exciting, the next
generation of business leaders will come from all corners of the world and
now they converge here at Gies Business. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So in this video, we're going to chat with Josh Ajima
who's a teacher in Northern Virginia and his job is to support other teachers
with their technology needs. And one of the technologies that he
decided to experiment with a few years back was a 3D printer. So now his job is to help other teachers
figure out ways to create solutions for their classes, and one of the tools
at his disposal is a 3D printer. And he has a fascinating set of
examples where he has helped educators bring 3D printing into the curriculum. And is also very active on the web, so his
web site has some nice resources as well. So join us as we learn
about the potential for 3D printing in education
with real-life examples. >> My name is Josh Ajima, and I'm an instructional technology coach
at a public high school

in Virginia. I work at a normal high school,
but also I provide support for a magnet science academy where students
from throughout my county come in to do science and mathematics research. I also do a stump camp over the summer for
fourth to eighth grade and that's really where my introduction to 3D printing
in the classroom and for instructions started was 3D printing models as part
of that summer stone camp initiative. So I do things like write for
reviews like Make magazine, I print lots of models and design lots of
models for classroom, and I present and write about 3D printing in the classroom
and my blog designmaketeach.com. [SOUND] Well so much of the learning
that takes place nowadays is on screen. YouTube videos and
PowerPoint presentations and sort of interactive white
board

sorts of things. What I find that 3D printing
brings into the classroom is multiple means of representation. So having three-dimensional
models to show and demonstrate three-dimensional concepts. The other aspect of 3D
printing in the classroom is to give students another
means of representation. So students can design things that can
be created and shown in the real world, and then on the science academy side,
being able to create items for research, to research the 3D printing process,
allows students to create multiple copies of something
in a kind of a repeatable fashion. And really, out of all of the sort
of digital fabrication tools, 3D printing really fits the scale of
the classroom, as far a the size, the operating cost, and the scale
of objects that can be printed and developed

really work well
in a classroom environment. [SOUND] Well, I've worked with students
from 4th through 12th grade and as far as having classroom manipulatives,
for having objects that represent real world things, I don't really think
that there's an age limit on that. I think a kindergarten student
that's able to touch and hold a model of a fossil is able to be, finds that just as
rewarding as any other age. As far as 3D modeling though,
as far as developing and making things for
3D printing and 3D design, you can do that with first or second graders, especially if you do sort
of hand drawings and digitize those. But I really found around fourth or fifth grade the ability to do 3D
modeling and something like Tinkercad, it's a little bit more reasonable
to happen in the classroom. [SOUND]

Oftentimes, teachers come
to me with particular problems that students are having and
particularly it could be problematic when students are given
two-dimensional source materials, flat source materials for a 3D concept. And so
one example is the nets of the cube. And so the Virginia standards of learning,
geometry standards, had a problem involving nets of the cube, which is a 2D
representation of a folded out cube. The idea is that the students could
mentally in their head be able to transform that net into
a cube in their head. And so
most students get that concept right away. But there's some students who just
have a little bit of difficulty while making that initial
transformation between what they're seeing on a flat sheet of
paper to a three-dimensional solid. And so I was able to

create
a foldable cube that printed flat that students could actually take and
fold into three-dimensional space. Now teachers have been doing that
a long time with paper models. But those paper models tend
to be pretty flimsy and don't always create the correct angles for students, while as the three-dimensional
model that I was able to create boundaries on it so that when it's folded
up it forms the perfect shape of a cube. [SOUND] So, I really enjoy
the six crystal families example. That's a problem that was brought to me
by a special education teacher who was working in a science classroom. The students were tasked with,
sort of, understanding shape and structures of crystal families. And so the only sort of material that
were available for students were sort of a really hard to figure

out,
two-dimensional representation. And so I was able to go on Thingiverse,
a repository of 3D objects, and download examples of, physical examples
of the six crystal families, print those out and
in turn make enough sets of those so that each group in the classroom each lab group
and classroom will have access to that. So this was an example that not only
helped the special education students, but really helped all of the students
take that from a really abstract sort of concept into a hands
on laboratory setting and environment. [SOUND] The Fujita Scale Modeling was
another example where the only sort of resource available to students were
a 2D representation, and in this case, thumbnails of the damage that's caused
by different levels of tornadoes. And so the Fujita Scale runs from an

F0
to an F5, and so the teacher asked me to come up with some models that would
be able to show students the same house being effected by different intensities
of hurricanes, excuse me, of tornadoes. Obviously, that would be impossible
to find in the real world, but we were able to do was create
a scale model in Tinkercad of an idealized House and then progressively
provide more damage to that, to show the effect of the different
intensities of tornadoes. And so we ended printing five models
showing all of those different levels. And that provided a sort of hands-on
representation for the students that made it much more understandable of what
that scale was trying to show. The Chesapeake Bay Watershed
model is a great example of creating a three dimensional
topographic map to take the

place of or
supplement a two-dimensional map. A special education teacher came to me and said her students were having trouble
understanding contour lines and that the way those contour lines
represented height elevations. The students couldn't understand
why water in New York would end up in the Chesapeake Bay. And so I was able to take
some online data sets and assemble them together to create a map
of the entire Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The center example is 3D printed,
but I was able to use that same data set to also create a laser cut version and
a paper cut version. So, these digital fabrication
files that are used for 3D printing can actually be used for
a variety of different tools. Now, the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute's Bio-Interactive Model here is showing a protein and
how

that protein changes with mutations. A biology teacher was having trouble
explaining to her students how proteins fold and how these sort of lock and
key structures will work with proteins. And so a 3D printed model actually does
a very good job of showing how some of these changes in the folding structure
of the proteins changes the overall shape. And so, this particular example
shows how a mutation in a protein affects the ability of a anti-cancer drug
to fit in and bind to a particular site. And so in this case,
the protein folds in a way that makes one cancer drug stop working,
while another one continues to work. And so it seems odd that this sort of 3D
printed model can represent that, but it actually does a good job of explaining
how the protein folding works in. So the protein

model example here, it was
brought to me by a Science Olympiad team. And their task in the Science Olympiad
team was to do protein modeling. So it was a protein modeling competition
in which students designed the protein, but then were expected to come
into the competition and, from memory,
be able to recreate that protein. And so the protein was represented
in a three dimensional space in a 3D modeling program. But having a physical
model of the protein and the structure really assisted students
in being able to understand how the different components of
that molecule came together. So they were able to practice
with the 3D printed model and then go into the competition and
do the protein modeling in there. The examples of proteins in
the Howard Hughes example and the Science Olympiad

example sort of
lead to the NIH 3D Print Exchange, where it's not just K-12 educators
that are doing this sort of modeling. But biologists and neuroscientists and
chemists in the field are using 3D models to sort of understand
structures for their research. And so the NIH 3D Print Exchange
is a great example of a variety of researchers and people coming
together to create models that are 3D printable for research use or
for classroom use. For regular FDM printers,
the only issue at the moment, is really sort of filtering
through the models and determining which ones print well for
the classroom and which ones need a more advanced sort of 3D
printer to be able to create the model. The Apollo Mission Model was another
model from Thingiverse that I printed for an aerospace educator at the

Smithsonian
Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum. And so this is an example where
it's a multi step process from sort of the launch of the mission and various
stages as the components of the craft, the command service module, and
the lunar module, and the ascent and descent component sort of come
together and then back apart again. And so normally,
this is represented in a very, sort of complex sequence diagram
that hopefully you can see here. But with the 3D model, students can
actually take the lander apart and sort of recreate each step of
the mission and sort of understand, at a more intuitive level, how the
shuttling of astronauts and supplies and moon rocks would go from one part of the
craft to the other throughout the mission. One of the very exciting things is
starting to see

government agencies like NASA make more and
more models available for the public. So the NASA 3D Resources page
is nice because students are able to print the lunar surface and
asteroids. And so things that they'd be studying in
earth science, sort of celestial objects, they can actually have a physical
connection to those through the 3D models and the 3D representations being
provided from NASA itself. So in the same vein,
The Smithsonian has been publishing some of their vast supply of items
they've been 3D scanning and providing materials about
those particular models. So for instance, Lincoln's life mask
here is a great example of the types of models that are available to
institutions like the Smithsonian. But to be able to actually print those
out while studying the civil war is a

great classroom example. And really connects to how those
models were used in the past. Where sort of plaster casts and a life
mask of Lincoln would have gone out for admirers or people who were interested
in studying the President at the time. And so
3D printing is really a modern day analog to how sort of those plaster casts and
historical objects were treated. So one of the examples that I find really
exciting about the use of 3D printing is in the art classroom. Art classrooms can treat 3D printing as. Well, 3D printing is a new medium,
a new tool. So I had an art teacher who was
teaching a photography class and having students do high contrast
photos talk to me about creating 3D printed lithophanes. And so the students needed to
create sort of high-contrast images that were suitable

for 3D printing. And so we've converted those and
printed those out. And so students were able to look at
the value, the color intensity for their prints and
see how those would convert over to a new sort of medium and
a new sort of art object. I'm most excited, I think, about the potential in
the classroom is in the research. Area. And so
because of the scale of 3D printing, 3D printing itself becomes a great
research topic for students. One of the first projects that students
did at the Academy of Science where I work is 3D printing infill patterns to
determine which particular infill pattern provided the most strength to
the finished product and model. Another research project
that's very exciting is the vertical wind turbine project. The students who were doing this project
were

collaborating with students in Singapore to develop these models
of vertical wind turbines. Whereas without a 3D printer, I think
the students would have struggled to hand fabricate even a single example
of these vertical wind turbines. With a 3D printer, they were able
to print out multiple copies of each variation of their design. In this case they were using
mathematical models to determine the blade structure
of the vertical turbines. But they were able to create three
identical copies of each design and then multiple variations on that. I think all together, we were able to print 21 different copies
of these vertical turbines on our blades. Then, in Singapore, they were able to
do the same thing by sharing back and forth the same model plans. The Spinal Disc Research Project was
very

interesting in that the students approach to this was to actually
re-engineering the 3D printer. In this case, to mimic how spinal
discs are actually created, the student went and
printed on the axle of a motor. The motor would spin, and so
he was able to create these concentric rings to build up the spinal disc. This project was great,
the student went on to the Intel International Science Fair
with this project. I'm very excited to see how his
different structures that he created handle different stresses under a press. To me, 3D printing is just a small
part of the overall process. The key component is really the designing
the three dimensional model, having a need and designing a solution to that need,
something that solves a problem. Tinkercad is a great,
low-cost way to get started.

You do need a computer and an internet
connection, but you can start 3D modeling. It's nice to be able to have the physical
model to be able to iterate off of, but most important part once the model
is designed is to sharing that model. Publishing that on three dimensional
repositories like Thingiverse or Imagine and asking for feedback, writing descriptions, adding keywords,
putting in screenshots. All of those things that are involved
in a sharing culture are very important to this 3D modeling process. I think a lot of manufacturers
of 3D printers are, of course,
looking to education as markets. A number of different companies
have 3D curriculum and resources that are available
on their site. Obviously, you don't need to have
their model of 3D printers to take advantage of that. There's

growing groups on Thingiverse,
so you can search for groups that are centered around on
your particular education topic. Of course, I find venues like
Twitter are a great place to just post questions out there and build an audience of people who are interested
in the same things that you are. For instance, some of the things that
I've done, the Virginia topographic map, came about because I posted a question
on Twitter and I asked for help. Someone was able to write
up a tutorial for me and I was able to follow
that to create the model. Finding something that's similar to what
you want to design on Thingiverse, and then writing a comment to that person. I found the educators on
Thingiverse are really easy, eager to share their ideas and
experiences for different models. They can often help

provide guidance or help maybe customize a model that
they've created for other uses. [SOUND] If you want to contact
me on a day-to-day basis, Twitter @designmaketeach is a great way,
on my blog designmaketeach.com. I have a lot of tips, and
tutorials, and how-to articles, so they're welcome to leave
a comment on a particular article. I've helped people who have left comments,
and I've helped create some models for
some folks who needed it. If you want to see just a portfolio of
the types of things that I'm printing on a day-to-day basis,
Instagram @designmaketeach. There's another good way to see what
pops out of my printer on a daily basis. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] We are here today to chat
with one of the MakerGirls. And the MakerGirls is an organization
that is focused on getting young girls, aged seven to ten, to think about science,
technology, engineering, and math. And look at careers in
one of those fields. And we have here Stephanie
with us to chat about and tell us about what
the MakerGirls are doing. So thank you for taking the time. >> Thank you. >> Could you introduce yourself? >> I'm Stephanie Hein. I'm the engagement director for MakerGirl. I'm in charge of creating the content for
the sessions and running the sessions. And making sure the girls leave
with an understanding of science, technology, engineering, and math and
how that relates to 3D printing. >> Give us an overview
of what MakerGirls is. >> MakerGirl is a program

that introduces
girls from the ages of seven to ten to science, technology, engineering and math fields through 3D printing
workshops at the maker lab. >> These girls are really small,
age seven to ten, and they're coming into the labs,
it's fun to have them. Give us a sense of how 3D printing
even is accessible to kids so young. What are they really learning there? >> In our sessions, we go through
design process and teach them how they can take their ideas and
create an actual object out of that. So we do that through connecting different
topics that they are able to relate to and know a little bit about to 3D printing. And have them create a model that
kind of goes along with that theme. One of the examples we do
a creating with chemistry session. We teach the girls a little
bit about

phase changes. Solids, liquids and gasses and tell them how the printer takes a solid
plastic, melts it down to a liquid and is able to create their object
which is then a solid again. We have had a lot of them
create objects like molecules. They'll build water, a really common
one because they know that one, H2O. So they'll create the molecule on
Tinker CAD and then print it out. A lot of them also take the elements
on the periodic table, and then will create that with the abbreviation and
the weight and the number. And sometimes we'll create
a keychain out of that too. >> How difficult is it for them to understand this process of
modeling in 3D and does this experience of doing that
modeling help them with, perhaps with math or
geometry or something? >> A lot of them come in for
the

first time, not having any experience with Tinker CAD
is pretty difficult for them at first. They're just not really sure
how to change the size and the shape and the height of different
objects and combine them together. So a lot of the times when we're
checking their designs it'll look like the object is all together and
touching but when you change the view on Tinker CAD,
their objects will be very far apart. And so we teach them how they can change
the view, so they can look at their design from above and from all different sides
to make sure that everything is together, and touching, and
centered the way that they like it. So that teaches them about the coordinate
system, and helps them visualize in 3D. >> You've run-
>> Over 55. >> 55 sessions in the lab
over the last year. What was

your favorite
thing that somebody made? >> Just recently we did
a virtual reality session and one of our girls,
she designed a little model of 3D glasses. It was very intricate and advanced,
there were so many shapes and she has come to a couple of sessions,
so she knows what she's is doing. But it was very impressive to see kind
of how her designs had involved over the sessions that she had been to and
they got a lot more complex. >> All right, all right. So, pleasure to see them
come up with crazy ideas. >> Yeah. >> And I know you are also doing
something new over this summer. >> Mm-hm.
>> So tell us about that. >> Sure, so we're planning a road
trip across the country in order to bring our sessions and 3D printing to
parts of the country that may not have had as much exposure to 3D

printing. >> Okay.
>> Our goal is to impact over 1,500 girls this summer over
an eight to nine week trip. >> So, a summer trip across
the country in a, how are you going, in a bus or, how are you planning? >> In a large SUV with a trailer that
holds our printers and computers. >> Nice, sounds like a fun summer. >> Yeah.
[LAUGH] >> Well, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. It's a pleasure. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] So in this module,
we are looking at how 3D printing can help find local solutions to local problems. Now we've seen the uses that 3D printing
has been put to in different industries. We've also heard about how,
as an overview, where 3D printing has been used in education as well and
also at sort of the home DIY market. But we wanted to focus more on
how 3D printing creates value for the community at large. So we look at some examples how
individuals or communities have helped leverage technology and 3D printing,
to create some value for the communities. One of the projects is actually
a part with the MakerLab, which is the Illinois Marketplace and
Maker Literacy project. And we'll hear from
the founders of that project. Another project that's very inspiring
is how 3D printing gets

used for local prosthetics at a global basis with
a completely volunteered led effort. And that's enabled the future project. We will also try and give you perspectives
from across the globe by looking at examples how projects such as
the Protoprint project in India. Where they are looking at how we can
help the people who recycle plastic, who are very low income, very poor, often taken advantage of can
recycle some of these plastics. And can work into filament for 3D printers which fetches a much
better price in the market. And we'll also give you a lot of
resources where you can explore such projects across the world
in Tanzania and Argentina, in India of course, and
in rural area as well. Where we are partnering with the Illinois
Marketplace and Maker Literacy project. Finally, we will

also look at the role
3D printing has played in education. And we'll talk to the organization Maker
Girls which is again a student based start up, out of the University of Illinois, and
what they are doing to encourage girls to get into STEM, which is science,
technology engineering and mathematics. Girls aged seven to ten. And again they are using
3D printing as the context. We will also hear on the use
of sort of design thinking and 3D printing together to motivate
children to learn about science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And many of the resources in
this module will point you to several other projects that people
are trying out in different schools. So join us in this journey. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] So in this video,
we are chatting with William Hoyle who is the CEO of TechforTrade,
a UK-based nonprofit. That whose mission is to enable
entrepreneurs or people who are like-minded to find solutions to
their problems, leveraging technology. So join us for
a chat with him on how 3D printing can be leveraged for development in
the global south, as he calls it. So TechforTrade really I guess,
builds on my kind of interest in the role that technology can play in terms of
improving social outcomes for people. And the vision really, behind
TechforTrade is that we see ourselves working towards a time when technology
innovation re-enables full and fair payment for work and trade. In a way that will lift, hopefully
millions of the world's out of poverty, so very much for us technology
is

at the heart of what we do. And it's central to our idea that,
technology is an enabler. That provides the opportunity to create
systemic changes in the traditional ways in which a systemic changes that
are pro-poor in the sense that they benefit the poorest in the society not
only those at the top of the value chain. [SOUND] I was fortunate enough to
be able to persuade my board to allow me to run a competition
at the 3D4D Challenge. Which really was simply to try and find groundbreaking opportunities
that could have a transformational impact on the lives of some of
the poorest people in the world. And then applying 3D printing technology
at the center of those transformational ideas and that was the competition
that is what we launched. I will be really honest with you,
when we launched

the competition I had no idea whether we would receive even
five applications and to that end. I did spend about three months
doing a bit of a roadshow, visiting universities in Kenya,
in South Africa, in Chennai in India, maker spaces
in Romania, a trip to Brooklyn. To try and plant the seed of the idea
of the competition the result, as you know, was we received 80
entries from across the world, from Chile, to Senegal, to the Gaza Strip. A wide range of ideas, many of which
we dismissed as being too fanciful. Many of which have gone on to be some of
the leading players in the Treaty printing industry, so it just shows we
don't always back Windows. And we very quickly found through the news
that spread around the competition that we were moving closer and closer
to the center of an

emerging sort of spiders web of people who
shared a similar vision. When the competition ran,
I was amazed by the level of interest. You may recall that the competition
received a full page of coverage in the economist. We were on the BBC and on NBC,
and it seemed that the idea that the technology might have a part
to play In [INAUDIBLE] relief, really resonated with a wide community. Not only of technically minded people,
but those people that were generally interested in the enabling power
of technology for development. So, I think that was Was really where we
started that really was the trigger for the work that we're now involved in. And George, to come back to your
question about what did we see and what do we see in the technology? Well, if you think about the context of
the

developing world, if you think about. What I've described earlier on,
poor infrastructure. If you think about growing populations
that are hungry to consume, to embrace new technology. A growing population of
young people in education that need to get access
to educational tools. The challenges of carrying stock in
inventory when you're operating at the base of the pyramid,
intermittent energy supplies. When you think about
the characteristics of 3D printing, it's almost perfectly suited to
tackling some of those issues. For me,
that was the most fundamental revelation. That here is a technology
that is low energy, it's additive rather than subtractive. It reduces carrying costs for inventory machines can be
powered using solar technology. It has all those characteristics, and yet nobody

seemed to be
exploring the potential. Manufacturing Today is a product
of the Industrial Revolution, our means of production and
our division of labor model. The way in which we've broken down,
manufactured an assembly into many low skilled steps are all
products of the Industrial Revolution. And they fundamentally influenced
how we think about manufacturing and yet when you look at 3D
printing technology. We look at the ecosystem, the power
of bringing together the internet, mobile phone, design And
software and the hardware. You're really bringing back all of
those things together to put the power to invent, create, and
distribute in the hands of one person. That's an enormously exciting possibility. I think the other thing for me is we talk
a lot about two words, development and

positate. And actually, when you pries open
what we mean by development, and what we mean by politic. I honestly believe that our
traditional view of development, is what we in the global north do for
people in the global south. It's the transfer of knowledge,
know how, power, advice, however you want to look at it. And yet,
3D printing is a democratizing technology, it's an enabling technology that
enables from the bottom up. So it changes the nature of that
development discourse and when we talk about poverty, obviously, often we measure
poverty in terms of ability to consume. And we measure consumption, often,
in terms of our perception of consumption, the products we would consume or
we would need to consume. And of course,
if you've ever visited a farmer's house in Sub-Saharan

Africa,
you will know that poverty in terms of consumption It's framed
by the situation of the individual. Of what we might discount as being,
if you like unfit for consumption, could be enormously beneficial for
somebody that has very little. So, I think those tenants for me are really important when one considers
the role that 3D printing can play, I think uncertainty often is
a factor of lack of control. A very current example of that
is the situation in Tanzania, a place where we're working at the moment,
where there are literally thousands of people who make a living from
collecting waste, plastic waste. And with the fall in the global
oil price the market for recycled plastic has
virtually disappeared. The two largest recycling businesses
in Dar es Salaam have closed. So you have a

market there that's
defined by the collection of waste for export, mostly to China for reprocessing. And yet the potential to relieve
poverty and reduce uncertainty by looking at waste to value opportunities
that turn waste into products is enormous. You can reduce uncertainty by
bringing more control into the hands of those people that need it. There is a project which
is based in Malawi, a project being run by
the University of Galway, where 3D printing technology is
being used to enable a redesign of agricultural tools used by
women smallholder farmers. The role that 3D technology
plays is that it enables participatory design approaches
that encourage women to think about how improvements in tool design
would improve peak time tool usage. It enables those approaches to be
translated

into rapid prototyping so that the women involved can
very quickly see how their design improvements turn into
a prototype that they can play with and test before the actual tools are produced. More often than not,
not using 3D printing technology. The technology itself enables that rapid
prototyping which very quickly brings to life the ideas that the farmers have. So I think that's, for me, a really
smart way of using The technology. The other example that I would cite
is the work that's being done with enable to create the prosthetic hand,
the customized prosthetic hand. We're just testing some of their
designs at the moment in Nairobi. But I think what they've created is a
really, really useful toolkit that can be adapted in a local context and
rapidly deploy at very low cost. For many

people in developing countries,
a prosthetic hand for example, often in is something
they simply cannot obtain. As an aside, one of the things that
came after the 3D footage challenge was an amazing technology. That has developed a technique for
creating soft tissues prostheses from a silicon gel, on to which can be
printed the pigmentation of the skin. Now facial prosthetics
are a whole different area and in most developing countries,
the technology simply does not exist. To provide all but the most wealthy
with any form of facial prosthesis. So that is a truly transformational approach which reduces the cost of facial
prosthetics to a few hundred dollars. Our start point really is
the learning from the competition. And from the competition back in 2012 it
was clear that we needed to

think about the development of 3D printing technology
in the ecosystem as a kind of journey. It feels to me that we are today where
we were with the Internet in the 1990s. It's very difficult to look at
an FDM machine printing PLA and ABS, and say, well that's where
the state of the industry. So, we're on a journey, and
I think there are a few people that could predict where that journey will take
us but I think there are more and more people that believe. That 3D printing technology
could be as transformational in the context of development
as the mobile phone. So the big question for me is if we
believe that that transformational potential is there how do we make sure
that that journey is an inclusive journey. So that we don't see the developing
economies of this world miss out on this

next industrial revolution in the way
they perhaps missed out on the last. And when you consider what the barriers
are to inclusive adoption, It sort of gives some clues, as to where
I think we need to apply our focus. So we believe that there are four areas
that we think we need to focus on, in terms of insuring that those
areas to inclusion are minimized. We call them the four e's, and
they are equipment which is obvious. Access to the machines,
the materials that it needed to make this technology affordable and
accessible. The second really then is education. How do we make sure that from school
level upwards, the ability to embrace and use these emerging technologies
is present in the curriculum. Young people gain the confidence and experience to understand the possibility
that the

technology creates. The third is, what we call,
enabling innovation. By that we mean that as this
technology starts to disrupt traditional supply chains,
new value models will be created and though the value that's created,
we believe. Should be distributed in such a way that
is much of that value as possible is able to be captured In the countries
in which we're working. So the analogy I always use is, if you
could imagine that a company like FedEx, some years from now decides that rather
than shipping the part from a Land Rover from one part of the globe to another. It simply transfers
the digital file to a small manufacturing hub in a place like Mombasa. The way in which that new value chain
distributes the value can be influenced by the capability of the actors on the
ground to meet

the needs of that industry. So we need to make sure that
those actors are prepared for those changes and those innovation models. And then the fourth is really about
enabling local entrepreneurship. I really believe that there's
an emerging mechatronics market in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Where you've got hundreds of millions
of consumers that are able to spend small amounts of money on
products designed for their market. You may have read about a product called
Brick designed by an organization called. It's one of the first modems,
come routers, come cache storage devices designed for
a base of the pyramid market. I believe you'll see more of those. But to enable that development,
you need entrepreneurs to be able to embrace technologies like 3D printing
to create prototypes for

us, the enabling components. And they come together for us in this concept that we
call the Digital Blacksmith. So our digital blacksmith is
a maker business of the future. A business that's capable of
supporting local entrepreneurs, developing value added products for
local markets. Building machines for users, for schools, supporting curriculum development,
and creatively enabling environment. For the use of the technology. So we believe that this concept of the
digital backsmith is the solid cornerstone of how we want to see 3D printing and indeed other small sky or
digital fabrication technologies enlarged. These are commercial businesses
that respond to the needs, we're not defining the needs, the
communities and defining the needs, but defining the needs of the local market. So we

have two business at the moment
that we're supporting, one in Nairobi and another in Dar es Salaam. Both of these businesses are owned by young engineering graduates
from local universities. Would be entrepreneurs that see
the potential for this technology. We're supporting them with small amounts
of seed funding, technical advice and know-how, and
business mentoring and support. We've developed a 3D
printer called Retread, which these businesses are building. We starting to produce filament
from locally recycled plastic, which these businesses can use. And we're working on the creation of
small portfolio of high value products. The first of which will
be a research microscope, which these businesses will make for
sale in their local markets. By working with these
businesses we're creating

what we call a replication handbook. A model that will inform us on how
we will replicate these businesses. Perhaps in the form of a franchise
to enable the idea to be recreated by other
entrepreneurs in other markets. Later this year we'll be developing
a third venture in garner where we will test our
application model and refine it. By the end of this year we aim
to have a full business in play using our application model and
going into next year. We plan to work on scaling
up that franchise model and looking at how we grow it and
scale it further. Alongside that, as I say, we'll be working on the product
portfolio beyond the microscope. We'd like to broaden the product range. We would love to work with innovators and
idea creators who have ideas for other high value products that

could
be of utility in developing countries. We would love to work with people
who are interested in taking our 3D printer design forward It's an open
source design, it's available online. And so over the course of next year,
we will look to grum out that replication model for our digital blacksmiths, and
seek wider corporation with the community. You need to broaden the range of
materials the machines can print with. The other area I would mention
is educational curriculum. I suspect that many of your
burners will have ideas about innovative ways in which 3D printing
can be embedded into the curriculum. It can't be adjacent to the curriculum, it
needs to be central to the curriculum, so we are open to any ideas that
people who watch this film have. And who knows, maybe next year we

could
run a mini 3D [INAUDIBLE] challenge to find the next transformational product for development that could come
out of this community. I would love that to happen. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] >> So in this video, we're going to be
chatting with Sidhant Pai, the founder of the project Protoprint, which is actually
setup in Pune, which is a city in India. And he has started this initiative where the plastic that gets recycled, the people
who are recycling plastics in the streets are now able to look at converting some part of that plastic into the
filament that gets used in 3D printers, which fetches them a lot better price for
the product that they are recycling. Now most of the community that
is recycling these plastics, they're obviously very,
very low income, very poor people. So, this effort which provide
a little bit more value for the work that they're doing creates
an immense impact in their lives. So we'll hear from Sidhant to how
we got involved in this project

and what they've been able to do so far, and
what are their visions for the future. >> I'm an environmental
engineer by training. My academic interests are predominantly in
climate change, environmental policy and air pollution. And over the last few years, I've been working on a social enterprise
in India that works collaboratively with waste pickers to convert some of their
plastic waste into 3D printer filament. I started work on Protoprint my
sophomore year of college when we visited the dumpsite with
my parents actually and it was a very impactful
experience going to the dump, and actually seeing how the plastic
was collected from the waste. The waste, because of foam in this
community that goes through these garbage dumps collecting waste
plastic from unsegregated waste and then they

send the plastic
to scrap dealers. But often,
earning a very small amount of money for the very important work that they do. And I mean, when we visited it was very
impactful, because it was very clear that they were extremely hard working and
they were extremely important just from a recycling perspective,
because they truly did form the base, but they weren't getting adequately
compensated for the work that they did. We started thinking about ways that we
could maybe potentially add value to the waste plastic at the dumpsite
level and we started to talking to the cooperative in Pune called
SWACH that has been working for years to organize waste, because,
and to fight for their rights. At the time, my father and I were
interested in 3D printing as a hobby. And so, we wondered if we could

convert
some of that plastic into 3D printer filament. The idea being that there's a significant
value added in that process and a lot of value could be
captured at the grassroots. And so we don't really have any formal
kind of training in 3D printing or polymer engineering or anything that
you might need for that process, but we hacked together a few
machines that didn't work very well. But eventually, we treated on them and
got to a point where they worked. They didn't work well, but they actually managed to convert some of
the plastic to a very crude filament. At that point, we were fortunate
to raise enough funding, so that we could actually partner
with a local machinist. We could partner with scientists
both in India and abroad to try and refine our process, improve our process
and

we formalized the partnership with SWACH without we would not be
able to do anything that we do and we started a shared at the garbage dump
in Pune, which is a city in India. And yeah, we've been working at
the dump for almost two years. At this point, our direct impact on the
community, I would say is not very large. I mean, we worked for about 40 waste,
because to source the plastic. But I mean,
Pune has well over 12,000 waste, because of which the 40s
are quite a small number. But the idea is that if we are successful,
there is a significant potential to leverage technology like this
to add value at the grassroots. There are lot of different challenges. I think working with government
is always a challenge. Our shed at the dump is
all on government land. We have permission from the

government
to continue our operations, but it took some time to kind of
get their permission. It took time to get electricity. It took time to get water. It took time to kind of set
up the infrastructure and I think this is true with any bureaucracy. These things just take time,
because there are a lot of checks and balances to make sure that we aren't
trying to scam the government or we aren't trying to be
disingenuous with our models. And so, that took time and
then community organization takes time. I mean, again,
we could not do what we do without SWACH. But even having the backing of
someone like SWACH,, even with that, it takes time to work with the community. Explain what we're there for,
what we're trying to achieve and why we would like to partner with them. And then there's the

obvious aspect of
the technology itself, it's kind of, it's all new, it's constantly maturing. Like I said, we didn't have any particularly
strong background in any of this. So it was a very steep learning curve for
us and there always times where we felt we
were out of out of our depth, and weren't well qualified to deal
with these technical problems. And unfortunately, we always found the right partner
to take us that step forward. In that sense,
we have been very fortunate. And then I think lastly, I mean,
we are essentially trying to scrub the way that a lot of
the recycling works in Pune. And so you will, I mean, right now,
we like I said we are still in our pilot. So we don't process a lot of plastic
as a percentage of the entire city, but we still do run into these large
scrap

dealers who who don't want us to kind of disrupt the things the status quo,
because it significantly benefits them. I would say that, quite frankly,
we aren't really experts in anything. I think our kind of value add comes from
bringing a lot of people that know what they're doing together. I mean, in terms of, like I said,
with the 3D printing aspect, we knew just enough to kind of go to the right people
and ask for help and refine our process. We knew enough to go talk to SWACH and
get that community organization in place. I mean, in terms of the local machinery,
we went to, like our first machines were quite
frankly not really up to any industrial standard and wouldn't be able to
function on a day to day basis. And so,
we hooked up with a local machinist. We sold him on the vision and

he agreed
to work with us at a discounted rate. And so I would say,
it's definitely a humbling process. Just realizing how difficult it is
to actually achieve to get things on the ground and I think the most important
take away is that there are a lot of people that know what they are doing, and
have been doing it for a very long time. And I think instead of trying
to reinvent the wheel, it's often much more efficient to
get the right partners together and try and figure out some sort
of synergy rather than trying to do the exact same thing that they do. So we've been working on improving our
human quality for a year and a half now, and we're making incremental progress. I would hope, we look in other ways
that our grassroots distribute production models can work in
a way that's inclusive

and in a way that actually
leverages the communities. So in other words, like with waste,
because they really understand the different types of plastics, because
this is their work day in and day out. So they understand what plastics
are easily recyclable, which ones are not. And so leveraging that knowledge-based
in a way that actually benefits that community, as opposed to having
these centralized factories. If anyone's ever in Pune, I mean,
they're always welcome to kind of come by. We're pretty open about our technology and
process and I mean, they're welcome to see our set up. If people really do kind of get motivated
to try and solve environmental issues or waste management issues or
any social issue, I would say, just look at ways that you
can start contributing today. And I think

that the cool thing in a waste
that there are always ways that you can contribute right now, you just have
to kind of actively look for them. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So in this video, you will hear from the
founder of the Enable the Future project, the global volunteer led effort
to create low-cost prosthetics. There is no central facility or location
that is making these low-cost prosthetics. They have a few designs that
have been refined over time. The organization finds a child or
adults as well in some cases, who need a particular kind of prosthetic,
mostly on the hands and then they match them up with volunteers
with 3D printers or hacker spaces who are willing to fabricate, so
print and fabricate at a very low cost. And we have done that too at the Maker Lab
in some of the courses we teach. We spent about $25 on
printing the hand and then we shipped it off to
the person who needed it and that was something amazing for
our students to be

able to do. So we had the opportunity
to chat with the founder of the project at a recent conference. So have a look at that and perhaps you
can participate in this project too. >> I'm the founder of Enable and President
of the Enable Community Foundation. We are a global network of volunteers
using 3D printers to make assisted devices like prosthetic hands and arms for
people who can't otherwise get them. And we do it all open-source, and we do the fabrication through our
volunteers and we give it away for free. [SOUND] Well we have an online community,
and a Google+ community. You can find your way there through our
website at enablecommunityfoundation.org. The basic notion is that it turns out
there is a global network of potential makers, designers, and
mass customizers who are there

to compliment what turns out to be of
course, a global population of people who need solutions that governmental and
commercial organizations have not met. Open source creates the opportunity to
bring together all of these volunteers who find this a hugely inspiring opportunity to work together without
worrying about IP and frankly, to produce things that are valuable,
even if they're not profitable products. The community itself is
a pushing 8,000 right now, it grows by 50 to 100
members every single week. We've done several thousand
devices at this point. We're confident, but there's great burgeoning of enabled
dark matter all over the world. Organizations in parts of the world that
are doing things using our name, using our designs, using many of our processes and
we're still trying to

figure out how do we cast light on what they're doing and
how do we help pull them together. But we're also part of an emerging
movement with other organizations like makers who are also supported by
Google.Org, which might be called digital humanitarians or humanitarian makers or
something like that. And I think in the long run, that may be
the even larger significance of what we're doing is that we're all together
trying to figure out how to harness what are probably hundreds of
thousands of high-tech but high-touch, compassionate humanitarians and
saying you don't need an organization, you don't need a business,
you just need a network and tools that can help us do things
that otherwise don't get done. 3D printers are ever more accessible. They probably have the access
to a public

library. But even if they don't, there are third
parties like Shapeways with whom we're developing a relationship which will
do the printing as a cloud base service and it's not all about 3D printing. It's about designing for 3D printing. It's about testing the 3D prints. It's about assembling the pieces
that someone else has 3D printed. And so there's a whole ecosystem and
plenty of things for people to do, even if they don't have
access to the 3D printer. They can still be very much a part of
the 3D printed prosthetics ecology. [SOUND] Well they can
get access to Fusion, probably by virtue of their participation
in your course and certainly, I can say, if they join the Enable community,
we can get them free copies of Fusion. Fusion now includes the Enable
devices as one of the exemplary

file sets in their on line folder and
that will be a good way to get started. [SOUND] Well of course, that is the real
mission of the Enable community foundation, is to figure out
how to take this movement and turn it into something sustainable and
world changing. I can predict that there will be far more
of us, that there will more designs and more devices, there will be developed
infrastructures and developed alliances. And there will be more structures
including Coursera courses that will help us tie together the learning materials
as well as the infrastructure for coordinating all of this. It is interesting to me that your own
program is in a school of business and those issues of financial sustainability
are ones that some of your students and some of your faculty may be
able to help

us with also. My pleasure, I hope that we will
be able to contribute to it and I hope that you'll be able to contribute
to us and keep us in the loop. That goes for everyone watching the video,
not just of those making the video. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] So in this video, we will look at
another prosthetic hand project, but with some enhancements,
and it's called a bionic hand. But again, low cost, and much lower
compared to what you would have to pay for a traditionally manufactured bionic hand. So this one has motors embedded in it and can actually respond to
signals from your muscles, and this is the Exiii Project
by a student in Japan. It started out as a student project,
but now he's trying to set up commercial operation,
it's an open-source project. So we'll hear from
the Exiii Project right now and see another example of how 3D
printing provides low-cost and customized solutions for individuals. >> I'm Genta Kondo. I'm from Tokyo, Japan and
I'm making this robotic hand called Hackberry in a team called Exiii. This is 3D

printed open source hand. So since we use 3D printer, it only
took less than $1,000 to make one unit. And since it's open source,
everybody around the world, including you, can access to our data and
just replicate this. Bionic hand is, in other words,
it's a motorized prosthetic hand. So it has three motors lIke this, this. And patients, amputees who have lost their
hand can control it with the sensors. Originally, I studied bionic hand
in college as a software engineer, but back then,
making hardware was really expensive. But these five years, 3D printer came out
and it became easy to prototype hardware, so I started three years ago to start
building my original bionic hand. Since the conventional hand has to go
through the mass production process, the initial cost was really

expensive,
so each unit, it costed more than $15,000, or even more. This hand, while it's still a prototype,
the material costs for this model was less than $1000. It's not only me, at the same time,
a guy in the US and another guy in the UK started developing
3D printed bionic hand just like us. We haven't sold it yet. We are all in prototyping,
developing phase still. But good thing is we are open. Most of us have open source and
we're sharing lots of tips together. Well if you want to
involve in our project, please access to exiii-hackberry.com. If you search hackberry,
you'll find it in one of the top three so, and there's a link to GitHub so
that you can download data. We also have a forum to discuss about it,
and we respond pretty quickly, so yeah. I really want to make this personal

item,
and make hardware as easy as cooking a meal so
that actual user can just download it, customize it, and
print it all by him or herself. So that's our future vision. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] Welcome to our chat today with Ron Duncan,
who's a leader in the field for the Illinois Marketplace and
Maker Literacy Project. Thank you, Ron, for
spending your time with us. >> Always a pleasure to be with you,
Vishal, thank you so much. >> So first of all,
tell us about yourself and what your mission is with this project. >> We started this project
about a year and a half ago, through an effort of the University
of Illinois Extension Services in something called
the Extension Initiative. That was a grant project that was
funded by the Office of Engagement as well as Extension that provided
funding for outreach projects and projects that were deemed worthy
of exploring the opportunity for the university extension to also
work within the university. And extend its reach inward

to
involve other schools, other colleges, other areas of expertise
within the college as a whole. We're very, very fortunate to
have met Professor Madhu and with previous endeavors through
our poverty simulation work, and with your help, with Eric's help, and with Madhu's help, we were able to craft
a very successful grant application. That grant application netted us
the funding to be able to move forward with this project. We labeled it the Illinois
Marketplace Maker Literacy Program. And that basically embodies the idea
of taking both marketplace literacy, as well as maker literacy,
into regions in Northern Illinois, specifically in those low-resource,
low-literacy areas that may be In the west side or
the south side of Chicagoland area. As well as into deep Southern Illinois
where we

basically have a lot of rural poverty, and again, low-resource
individuals that are available to us there that are really looking for
an opportunity to improve their life, improve their chances,
improve their outlook to life. So that's kind of what brought us to
the table and got the program going. >> I want to get some sort of
stories from you from the field. And perhaps you can share
something starting with let's say, the younger kids and then move onto one
of more of the other audiences you serve. >> We have found a great deal
of resonance with this program among the youth of our region. We've also seen many of our young adults,
especially those in certain training areas or, as we'll discuss farther in
a minute, a Job Corps opportunity there. A real hunger for this type of

opportunity
to find ways to not only have a career and get a job, but also perhaps make a job. Then some of our older adults,
if you will, or middle-aged adults, as I like to say now-
>> [LAUGH] >> That I'm already there. How they can use their experiential
knowledge to actually be the creator, to be the maker of things
that solve their problems. And then may also solve other
people's problems, and again, gives them that kind of that pathway into
the micro entrepreneurialism, if you will. A couple things come to mind specifically. One very early program that we did was
with the middle school at Carroll, Illinois. Here we were able to go
into a sixth grade class. This again is a class of young men and
women, a racially mixed class, with lots of different backgrounds. A lot of different

socioeconomic
trends there as well. And be able to bring a resource to
them that they had never seen before. They had heard about 3D printers. They may have seen something on
television, but actually being able to bring one into class, start it up and them
watch it do something was just astounding. Of course, there's always the cool factor,
wow this is really neat, this is really cool. But then we, of course, through the working that we're doing
we try to take that enthusiasm and package that up a little bit and say,
well now what could you do with this? What would this do for you? What could you create in this that
would do something for someone else? And we just see an explosion
of creativity and ideas. And we're very fortunate to have a good
program that allows us to kind of harness

that and make that into
a final stage opportunity for them where they can have an actual
product they can hold in their hand. And we find that that's very,
very important. Within this demographic, within this audience sense that
we do most of our work in. This idea of concretizing the outcomes
of products are very, very important. These are folks that either because
of various societal pressures, lack of education, socioeconomic issues,
really are inhibited in many, many ways. And I think, as you're well aware, some of the research that Madhu has
done points to this, and others as well. That their ability to think in the
abstract is greatly restrained because of these stresses that they face
in their everyday lives. And so they become very, very concrete in
their thinking and their

applications. So one of the things we're seeing is this
ability of the 3D printer to actually bring that concrete capacity to life. So that even the most nascent idea that
they may have can actually be visualized. They can pick it up and
hold it, and look at it. >> Nice.
>> And once that happens, it's very, very easy for them to say,
that needs to be bigger. That needs to be smaller. I need to do this or I need to do that. To where, if we were trying to work
with just an abstract drawing, a rendering, or even a business plan, something as abstract as a business plan,
we would not have anywhere the success we've had in terms of trying
to build this acumen into people. We see that this specifically in
our setting with our Job Corps. These are young men and women who are in
the Job Corps to

learn a tactical skill, I mean a tactile skill. They want to lay brick, they want to build
things, they want to be in urban forestry. Perhaps have not have been as
successful as they could have been in traditional school settings,
so they're here to do this. And now this ability to be the creator,
to be the maker, if you will. And put that to work in a concrete way,
it's just phenomenal. We've seen great success in their ability
to create very meaningful projects, things that solve problems
they're having now. Things that could solve problems for
other people. >> Share some specific
examples of products or maybe solutions that they might have made. >> One I would point to is
we'll just call him Bob. Bob was again in our
marketplace literacy program, went through the entire program with us.

And his circumstances were the fact
that he'd been battling a disease that had basically bankrupted him. There's a whole backstory to that. But the problem was that
his resource level was low. And he was looking for
opportunities, and what have you. And it just so happened that he is a very
avid gardener and an organic farmer who was having a great deal of problems
with some very, very expensive seed. Now remember low resources,
expensive seeds. His thinking was that the planting device
that he was using to try to plant some of these heirloom, organic products, very
expensive, $100 an ounce for the seed, wasn't performing effectively
with this hand planter he had. So he was able to create
a specific planter plate. Which is sort of the device that grabs
the seed and transports it to the

ground, to fit this particular heirloom variety
of product he was working with. >> I see, okay. >> So he was able to
initially solve his problem. And not only that, but it didn't take
him long to realize this was a problem that probably more people were having. So he's actually looking now at
an opportunity to expand that variety of plate for this particular
planter to other heirloom and other difficult seeds to plant variety. And if he's successful in moving that
forward it will be, first of all, a boon to organic farmers and
others who are using this type of planter. And also it'll be a financial boon for
him as well to actually use his problem in solving it to
solve other people's problems. I also have an example of a young man
who came into one of our classes. Went through

our
Introduction to 3D Printing. He was right at the age of the break
over age that we like to see, about 12 to 13 years old. A very competent young man, came in and just loved the idea of being able
to sit down at a computer terminal, create a design on his own, and
then have that in his hand when he left. Late last year bugged his parents, all through the Christmas season,
begged them for a 3D printer. And they very wisely said, you're going to need to have some
skin in the game on this one. So we'll buy you a kit. And then he came back to the lab and
was begging, of course, Jim McEwan from ITG3D and me. Can you help me kind of get this together? I think I can put it together. Would you help me? And now we see him and
his fully assembled printer. And now he's off to the races because
he

was printing Star Wars things and had a little figurine of Yoda. All kinds of great things. So he's got the handle on it. He's got it now to where he's
figured out that if I see it, if I can think of it,
I can make it, I can create it. And so we're thrilled about those
outcomes that we're seeing. >> In your case, you also started to
assemble your own printers in the lab? >> Yes. >> So would you say that somebody who's starting out in a small town in India or
Africa. And somehow they can get hold
of perhaps not even a kit, but they can get hold of the designs and
then potentially some place to cut up the wood frame, or
procure some of the basic components. Is this a viable technology for
that kind of audience as well? >> I would say yes, very much so. There was a need where because of some

product level changes that university
was planning to do that we were anticipating having sort of a shortage
of printers to use for a period of time. This got myself and again,
our co-partner there in the lab, ITG3D, Jim McEwen and some of his folks
thinking about well, how can we fix or alleviate the possibility of
having classes scheduled and not necessarily having all
the printer resources we might want. And we came up with the idea, well, the easiest thing to do there
is just build some printers. So we put together a very interesting
design that we thought would meet not only our immediate needs, but
longer term needs, made it versatile. One of the most important things is that,
again, we prototyped about 40% of the parts
on our 3D printers before we actually put them in to
build our

alumium form. The new printers will have dual extruders, which was a function that
we were unfamiliar with. We've never used anything like that. But we were able to prototype those
parts and assemble those in test phases. And modify our designs based on
what we could do with a 3D printer. We did that literally in the shop
with those tools that we had. And now we're about 90% complete. We're getting ready, probably next week,
to go into our testing phase with them, and so we should have a completely built
Delta model 3D printer from parts, assembled completely from disparate parts. Based on just the acumen we were able
to learn from using the printers. Knowing what we wanted to see different
from the current models that we had. And also adding to our capacity to do a
little bit larger frame

printed even more. So yeah, it was a great teach the lesson
but by the way learn the lesson. And see if you can put that into place and
make it work for you. And so far, hopefully with luck,
we'll have some very, very functional printers
in about two weeks. >> Nice, well, I think that's
a pretty good message that even in a low-resource situation this
technology which seems high tech or very expensive you can
sort of build your own, sort of with parts that
are cost effective. And of course, you need the labor and
the experimentation, but it's possible. Yeah, thank you for that message and thank
you for sharing your expertise with us. >> Real pleasure, thank you Vishal. >> Thank you. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] We are here today to learn about what
subsistence marketplaces are, and the role that rapid
prototyping tools such as 3D printers have in that
particular marketplace. And we are fortunate to have with
us Professor Madhu Viswanathan, who's been at Illinois for
over 20 years now. And he leads several
initiatives at the college, and one of the most important ones, being
the subsistent marketplaces initiative. His research area is two fold, so one is
in terms of research methodology, and then he focuses a lot of his time on subsistent
marketplaces places that's wrong. His bio is about two pages long, so we'll add some resources to this video to
give you a background on his expertise. But we're going to focus on and
have him share thoughts on how his work in marketplaces where

he's
working with low income and low literacy users to teach them
how to be smarter consumers. And perhaps also look
at becoming producers. And we'll get his thoughts on how 3D
printing plays a role in his initiative. So, thank you professor for being with us,
it's a pleasure to have you and share your thoughts. Tell us about your background. >> Thank you I'm really
honored to be here, I think this is a great learning
experience your putting together. And I really appreciate the work
that you have done in terms of bringing 3D printing and
the make a lab into the colleges, as well. I've been here forever, and
almost two decades ago, I started thinking about looking at
low-income, low electric consumers. Who are really not the focus often
in business school research. They tend to lie across

resource and
literacy barriers. And I started some of my work right here
in the US, but slowly moved to India, and now to several other
countries as well. We call our stream the subsistence
market places approach because we take a part of them approach. We want to get and the need macro and mid level approach is to try to understand
how people live, what their life circumstances are, how they engage as
consumers, as entrepreneurs, and so on. We want to understand how they think,
how they relate, how they make,
all of those different things. So, that's where we started. And the 3D printing has
been a very central part, particularly in recent times. Our social enterprise is organized around
the notion of marketplace literacy. So, if somebody has low income, in order
to participate in the

marketplace, you now they need a number of things. They need financial resources. They need access to marketplaces
to buy and to sell. And finally, they need this third thing
that I call Marketplace Literacy. Which is skills, self confidence,
and awareness of rights. And as we started looking into this, we realized that there are programs that
teach people what to buy or what to sell. Such as a specific livelihood, but there
are very few programs that focus on how and almost no program,
perhaps no program I knew of, that focuses on why that is giving people
a deeper understanding of the marketplace. So, that's part of what we've
been doing elsewhere, and we have deployed it widely through a
teacherless multimedia approach and so on. And then I got the opportunity
to work with you right

here in the state of Illinois. And we started this program where we
decided to combine marketplace literacy with macro literacy. For me,
that piece is really important because it is a wonderful pedagogical tool. To teach marketplace literacy, as well as
macro literacy, as you know, when we have a 3D printer in our class, and we make
a comb, or we make some other product. Maybe it is something personalized, maybe
it is a visiting card holder and so on. We are able to essentially concretize
what we want to show our students. One of our slogans has
always been to concretize, localize, and socialize our education. That's how we try to get across to
a low literate, low income people. So by socialize, I mean leverage the social relations
that every human being is correct. They don't need an

education in order to
be good at relating to other human beings. In fact, in many ways,
they are better than us, I would argue. Concretize really make it come
to live in front of them, and localizers use local examples. So, we would produce something
like this in our pilot classes. And what we would do is we would
essentially have people say where you buy this comb, and
what are you looking for in it? What are you giving up,
what are you getting? Compare it to the ultimate test. So, they're able to bring out the consumer
skills aspect, and they're able to bring out this concept of value, when we
make something right in front of them. And the next thing they'll say is,
okay, now you make something. And this is, of course, a curriculum
that's evolved by working with you. And we try to get

them to make something. And right away, it's very intuitive to them that what
can be made here can be personalized. It can be customized and so on. And so,
they come up with some wonderful ideas, whether it's number plates that
are personalized for an automobile, or it's something where you want to make
replicas of things you want to remember. And so on. And then we say, okay, now you made
this build the business around it. And so, we're able to really connect
the make little see in the 3D printing to entrepreneurial literacy. And that, to me, is just amazing. I cannot think of a better hook, I cannot
think of a better pedagogical tool. So currently, as you know,
you work very hard to just we have a marketplace maker
space in Southern Illinois. We have activity in Chicago as well,
and we

now are using 3D printing and a 3D printer and so on in Argentina,
with our programs as well. So slowly, we would like to use this
as a method even in a remote area, perhaps in Tanzania with
the tribal community. We would like to use it in
rural parts of India and so on. We feel it's a power pedagogical tool. Along the way, we have not only created
a curriculum for marketplace literacy, but I think we have also created
a curriculum for macro literacy. So, how do we go about that? Very bottom up. So, we say, what do you make at home? Could be a cup of tea and so on. What goes into it,
what do you get out of it? Well then, let's look at something
that is produced in a factory, how do you make that? And then we come to 3D printing and say,
well, now you can make something yourself. One other

thing I would say with
is it's really the low income, low literate settings that we're working,
whether it's a unique key for 3D printing. Why? They don't have access to markets, and
very often, they need to make one or two of something. >> Yeah.
>> And so, I really think there's
a tremendous potential. I think we are just scratching
the surface right now. >> And of course,
3D printers are a little bit expensive. So, do you really see that
this can have impact? In low income,
where people can't afford these, how do you think this will grow
in that particular market? >> That's a very good question,
I guess in a couple of ways, one, it's a great educational tool,
as we discussed, it's a great hope to get young
people involved in technology. And it could even be
a doorway to them saying, I'm

going to learn more
about digital technology. >> Okay.
>> And so on. And there's so much talent often caught in the system that it's just not
letting them come out of it. In many ways around the world. And I think, today, with this kind of
technology, it would be very empowering. So, that's one side of it,
the educational side. The other side perhaps is
more of a service model, where there is an entrepreneur who
essentially runs a lab perhaps, and allows people to do small scale
manufacturing for themselves and so on. That could be another model,
where it's like a kiosk model perhaps. And that way, I think people can
get access, they can get guidance. But I can tell you you've interacted
with some of these people as well. The self-help groups of them and
the excitement, the determination

saying we
will work on it if you show us. That you see across the world
from the low income people. I wish that we could make it
work on a grander scale soon. Certainly, we have to be patient, and I think it's working in a few places
now, and we've tried to grow that. But I would certainly say
that I saw this model. Servisication of something like
this makes a lot of sense. It's a little bit like, even in places where there's one person
with a smart phone or a diagnostic device. If that person could essentially be
the entrepreneur who was able to empower others, that may be a way to go. >> Given that the cost of these
printers are coming down, and if kits are available,
the price point gets much lower. And you can have this one
entrepreneur setting up a kiosk. And then providing service to

a village or
two or three villages. So, I think in terms of price,
it's always going to come down. So, that might help as well. >> Yeah, and I just want to make
a plug for our online courses as well. I think as you rightly pointed out, what
you're doing here is you're giving them deep, technical know-how about
the forward looking technology, but when you combine it with some of our
other courses that will be offered, or are offered from the University of
Illinois, it will be very good for our learners around the world to look at
how they can build a business around it. >> Absolutely. >> In my case,
with the subsistence marketplaces course, it's divided into understanding and
designing solutions. And there is even a piece
on market place literacy. And as I was listening to you already, I

was thinking, how do I bring in this
example so that it enriches the course, and then feeds off and
then leads to your course as well? So, I think you're providing a very nice, technical knowledge that will go
very well with our business courses. The wonderful thing about this is
there is actually the potential for access for the entire value chain,
digital making. So, in many ways, it's the making piece
that could become accessible, but it's also the distributing piece that
can be accessible in the Internet. But there are different ways in
which you can sell these products. It's also got other uses, for example,
it may be a way the I prototype something. And then I find a different way to
manufacture the share and so on. And so, this is where in marketplace
literacy and macro literacy, we

like to post it as, here's the technology, you
have access to this lab, hypothetically. Now, start think about a business idea,
think about an idea, think about a product, make it, and
then build a business around it. I mean,
that should be a very good exercise. And we are finding some success
with people learning and getting a lot out of it. >> Could you share maybe one
nice example that you've seen in the field labs that you've set up? >> I think one of the best examples are the ones where people were thinking
of personalized number plates, but I'm really stunned by the ideas
that people come up with. And they're very talented,
but they intuitively get it. The moment they see the 3D printer, they get it that it has to have
that personalized compliment. One of the things we'll challenge

them
on is why can't somebody else make it? Why can't I go buy it in a large store,
and so on, and they'll bring in the personalized part. Then they'll start thinking, well,
if it's the personalized part, how do I interact with the customer
to get the dimensions? One of my favorites is certainly making
replicas of things you want to remember. And I was thinking about, even for some
of us, remember the Tooth Fairy story. We would collect teeth, right,
for our children, and so on. And so, there are so many of those
things where making replicas and giving it to grandparents. That was an idea that came. I didn't think of where
that came from the class. There have been many other ideas, usually, it's personalized item like
a jewel box and so on. And then that gets students thinking, well, it

can't be
manufactured large scale. Well, if it can't be, why? What's the value you're adding? Well, the value I'm adding
is I know the customer. That doesn't mean I have to
know the customer only locally. I can create this through the Internet,
so that I know the customer and whatever. A skill, but
I need to provide that personalization. So, that is one piece. The second piece of it does not only
can I create that, now I can distribute it as well, I can deliver that
value because of the Internet. So, it's really digital in
the entire value chain. And it's wonderful that you are touching
on it, and our specialization on marketing in the digital world is
very much touching on it as well. >> Yeah. Well, thank you for taking the time. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you very much

I'm very excited
with the things that you're leading. And this is a great time
to be at Illinois, and it's a great time to reach out
to learners around the world. Every time I see somebody now,
may be somebody on a plane or it may be somebody, a tribal community, I
think that they are our students too, and it's wonderful to see us
reach out to the world. Thank you. >> Well, thank you for
joining us for this video. We look forward to
chatting with you again. >> Thank you very much. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] So in this video, we're going to chat again with
the John Hornick who you met earlier. But this time, we're going to
ask him to share his experience in the intellectual property
issues around 3D printing. Now IP issues become important here
because the moment you digitize a physical product and you make it shareable
easily on either on platforms or as a one to one sharing between
individuals or businesses, you start to see instances of
intellectual property violations. So we'll get a sense of what intellectual
property really means in the context of 3D printing. And he brings some interesting
perspectives to the table, where he talks about something that's
within control and away from control. Suggesting that traditional intellectual
property discussions are about what firms can do

when they know about
what's happening with their products or designs or even copyrights. So that's the within control part. But his view is that a lot of
the innovation that's happening, leveraging 3D printers or other forms of
making digitally, is a way from control. That firms don't know about it because
it's happening in your home, in your garage or even within businesses who
are not really sharing what they're doing. So that sort of puts an interesting
perspective on intellectual property. And you would think that the view would be
that this is going to stifle innovation. And in contrast, his view is that
quite frankly, it doesn't matter. Because a lot of the innovation
happens away from control. So join us as we speak to John. Help us understand the issues
that arise with IP in this

space. >> IP principles apply to 3D printing
just as they apply in any other area of technology. But what's different here is the potential
scale at which we could have people making parts or products with
3D printing that we didn't have before. Used to be only big companies,
they can make parts or products. But with the democratization
of manufacturing, potentially anyone, any customer, any
consumer, could make whatever they need. So then that raises the question, well,
how does the intellectual property owner protect himself in a situation where
virtually anybody could be making copies of the parts or
products that manufacturer sells? And I have made a distinction,
in the lectures that I've given and in articles that I've written, between what I
call within control and away from control.

And within control it's pretty much
the world that we know it now. If a company makes a product and they
sell it through their normal channels, and someone copies that and they infringe
their IP rights, they can be sued. And that's all within control,
it's all visible, we can see it happening. So if we can see it happening,
we can stop it. But away from control is the ability to
make virtually anything with virtually any functionality without
anyone knowing about it or without anyone being able to control it. What would be the effect on
traditional business models? What would be the effect on intellectual
property if anyone could make virtually any product with any functionality
without anyone knowing about it or without anyone being able to control it? The result of that is that if you

have
an increased amount of that happening, it could either be a customer
of a manufacturer, or it could be a consumer in his or her home. Then the infringement starts
to increase substantially. Because you have all kinds of people out
there who are making things that might be protected by IP. So the infringement goes up. But it becomes more and more difficult to identify it,
because it's away from control. You don't really know it's happening or
where it's happening. And if you can't identify it,
then it becomes impossible or impractical to enforce those IP rights. And at that point, intellectual property
essentially becomes irrelevant. And that could be extremely disruptive to
any kind of a company that makes parts, or any kind of consumer product. And it really depends on whether

and
when it becomes common and easy for customers or consumers to be able to make
whatever they need away from control. >> And not just 3D printers,
it expands to desktop CNC machines or desktop lasers, or any other smaller form, we talk about digital making
as a sort of a umbrella term. In this continuum of a home
user versus a corporate, when do these issues become salient?. >> With the digital music revolution, people started to become knowledgeable of,
or at least aware of, the fact that we have these things
out there called copyrights. And that people have rights to
protect from copying of the music. And with 3D printing now, people at
least who are involved in the industry are becoming more and more aware of
not just copyrights, but of patents. Because patents are, in many respect,
a

more powerful right. Because they give someone the right to
prevent others from making, using or selling whatever's covered by that patent. So when you say,
when will it become relevant? Well, for somebody who's making things at
home and they're using them in their home, they're probably not going to care,
they're not going to think about it. On the industrial level,
companies do look at this and they do look at whether they're
infringing someone else's rights. Now the end result of all of this, whether
it's consumer of whether it's on the on a corporate level, is that I believe
that it will become more and more common to make
things away from control. It will become so ubiquitous at some
point, IP owners will probably just have to throw up their hands and say,
there's nothing we can do

about this. And also at the same time, business
models are going to be shifting, so that they're going to be moving away from
selling products to selling designs. And so at the same time
that increased amount of 3D printing away from control is happening, I think we'll be shifting from product
business models to design business models. So everything will change when you
can make anything away from control. Something that I have a talked about
from time to time is that the machines, in order for them to become as
ubiquitous as I'm talking about. In order for people to be making virtually
anything that they need away from control, the machines have to be
extremely easy to use, the software has to be
extremely easy to use. And we're not really there yet. The machines are fairly,
at least

consumer-grade machines, are fairly primitive right now. But when we get to the point, and
I think we will get to the point, when 3D printers are as easy to use as
a bread machine, and where you have an app and you just go onto your phone and
you just select the part that you need and you press print and then when you
get home, they're waiting for you. Then I think that we
will see the degree of 3D printing away from control
that I'm talking about. >> I think this specialization is
trying to address that as well. Make people aware of what's possible,
what are the concerns, and then we're taking them through
discussing how the software works, and you model it and you try that out. And how 3D printing works
at the consumer level. And then actually print something out. So I think curriculums

like this, which
are now also being available in schools, will probably help address the lack
of that literacy in digital making. >> They certainly will and I think
a lot of different things will happen. It's difficult to say that we're
going to go down one particular path. I think that we'll have more and more people who are taking
an interest in 3D printing. I think kids are really going to drive
the adoption of the technology to a great extent because they see them now. They want to use them. They're seeing them more and
more in schools and in libraries. Their friends might have one. Parents might want kids to have one so
that they can learn the technology for the future,
maybe be able to have a job in the future. We'll also see companies that are printing
things down the block for you.

And that's something we don't have
right now but I think we will, where you can say well I need a mug so,
I need an Illinois mug, so I can just have it printed
right down the street. We will have more and more people who
will go on the Internet looking for designs and download them. But then we'll have a lot of people
who'll just do it a really easy way. They'll have an app and
they'll just print things, and it will either show up
in their home printer or it'll show up in the machine that's
down the street, on the corner store. So a lot of different things will happen, this technology will weave its way into
our lives in a lot of different ways. >> John, tell us, do you think your
job will even exist in the future? >> So a lot of people ask me that because,
obviously, I'm an intellectual

property lawyer and I talk about the potential
demise of intellectual property. I think there will always be a role for
intellectual property. There will always be this manufacturing of
things, and making things within control. It would increase the amount of
infringement away from control, and companies will do what
they can to prevent that. And they will want to
protect their rights, and they'll want to enforce their rights. So I think there will always be a role for
intellectual property lawyers. So will they be able eliminated entirely? No, but I think that the practice will
change substantially over the years. And it's changed for
many other reasons and this is just one of the reasons why it
will continue to change as time goes on. >> Thank you for sharing your
thoughts with us and

your expertise. So we hope you've got some perceptions
around what IP really means in this space. And we look forward to discussing
some of the other concepts in the other modules as well, so thank you. >> Thanks for having me. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] In this module, we will discuss examples
of how 3D printing enhances product customization, as well as the development
of on-demand manufacturing. We will look at how individuals,
entrepreneurs, and businesses can leverage the ecosystem,
to turn ideas into objects. We will meet with people like
the founders of 3D Hubs, who make available a platform which
gives you access to 30,000 printers. We will speak to people at Shape Ways,
which provide you a service bureau to upload designs and
get the prints shipped to you. Finally, we will also consider the
importance of intellectual property and have a chat with an expert in
the field to talk about whether intellectual property is a big concern for
3D printing or not. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] In this video, we are speaking
the cofounder and CEO of 3D Hubs, which is a platform that brings
together close to 30,000 printers on one platform and provides access for
you to upload a design and walk to the corner and pick up
the print or get it shipped to you. Much closer than what
was earlier possible. So Brad Pierce shares the vision
of distributed manufacturing, which allows each one of us to have access
to a printer instead of having to buy one. Join us as we chat with Bram. >> So I'm the co-founder
of a company called 3DHubs. And 3DHubs is an online platform where
anyone who doesn't own a 3D printer can go, upload their 3D models and
then find a 3-D printer nearby. We now have around 28,000 printers
around the world connected, actually more countries than
where you find

McDonald's. The idea is that because you get access
to local printers it's typically a lot faster, you can even print something with
a guy around the corner who has a machine, Ultamaker for example, in his garage. But you can also find the large
industrial machines, so basically, we're offering full range of
3D printing technologies and materials as close to
your home as possible. Yeah, so it's over 150 countries and we did a calculation with
some public data from NASA. Where we found out that we're providing
over one billion people in the world access to a 3D printer within
only ten miles of their home. So in Amsterdam,
we would say that's biking distance. I have industrial design background, so I already knew quite a lot about
production and how to produce my designs. And when I found

out about 3D printing,
I was immediately intrigued, and this was about ten years ago. Because I started understanding
that we can create a future where a lot more different products can
be launched into the market, and they can be produced in
a much more efficient way. So instead of producing products in
huge quantities on the other side of the planet, typically in Asia,
shipping all that stock around the world, storing it in warehouses,
getting it to retail. We can create a network of,
basically that's what 3D printers are, manufacturing robots, and
that's work of manufacturing robots. And just send a 3D file there,
and produce products locally and on demand, and that's the future
that I believe in for manufacturing. I think we did help make 3D
printing a lot more accessible. Before if

you wanted access to a desktop
3D printer, such as a Makerbot,or an Ultamaker, or a Form Labs machine,
you would have to buy it, right. There was typically no other
way to access those machines. Of course, you could access the industrial
expense of machines and they have certain advantages, but the prices are typically
high, the turn-around times are long. So that's a market that we created. You can just get something printed,
within 24 hours, on a MakerBot or FormLab. And that's really unique, and that makes
3D printing a lot more accessible, because you get your parts faster,
locally, and a lot cheaper. We have a lot of partnerships. We've done one project with Enable,
they produced 3D printed prosthetic hands. Traditionally prosthetic hands are very
expensive, they can be up to $10,000.

And for example, in developing countries,
that's typically too much so we produce 40 prosthetic hands with 3D
printing.within our network for Haiti people who lost their hand in Haiti. So that's the type of projects
we're also doing, yes. Well, the vision is that while the 3D
printing technology and market matures, that more and more both individuals and companies will discover
the benefits of the distributables. So not going to one centralized
3D printing factory and ship to all the customers around
the world from that location. But actually leverage out global
3D print production network, and produce much closer to those customers,
and basically have less shipping time, less shipping costs,
less issues with customers. Everyone can sign up to our platform,
it's free. We do some quality

checks, of course,
if you're able to print quality parts. And once you passed those checks, you can
start accepting orders from our platform. Since our start with, we've got over 2,000
prints been ordered from our platform. So, you can really do some
substantial volume, but it also depends of corse, on the quality
of your prints and your service. Yes, we've made a lot of
people entrepreneurs. We got people on our platform
that owned one 3D printer. They did as a hobby thing on evenings and
weekends and start getting so many order to our platform that they
decided to quit their regular day job and run a full time 3D printing business and
now they have 20 machines. Yeah really printing for trading a helpful time. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] [SOUND] The way we have
looked at the topic of additive manufacturing on 3-D
printing is there's five major areas. Design for additive manufacturing. Materials for additive manufacturing. Process and equipment, value chain
integration, which is the connection of the various supply chain partners
across the country or world. And the last thing is called
additive manufacturing genome. Inside of design for additive
manufacturing, it's all about being able to take advantage of the flexibility,
and the skill sets there need to not be constrained with, in some cases very
traditional ways of doing engineering. Starting the desktop is perfect because
you're not constrained by formal thinking. Then you get into what we call the
additive manufacturing genome which is all about physics-based

modeling and
simulation of these processes. It's the interaction of material
with the process itself trying to build a material at
the same time as building a part. Looking at next generation materials. There's a thing going on right now called
Integrated Computational Materials Engineering, this is a big
initiative that's global. And it's all about designing
the next generation of material for specifically additive manufacturing and
3-D printing. That requires a tremendous amount of
modelling and simulation expertise. So learning those skill sets
whether be on a desktop printer or whether it be on an industrial printer
at one of the largest universities in the world or a private industry. It doesn't really matter. It's all about trying to bring
those thoughts together and move forward in

a way that's positive that
supports economic growth in the country. There are two major jobs that a lot
of people are looking for today, that's designers. And that's really being able to,
like I said earlier, take advantage of the flexibility. The way, in really combining almost
an artistic approach to design. Autodesk those a lot of work in this area,
so do a lot of our other members. But bio-inspired or
nature-inspired designs. The ability to come in and be a designer
in that context is very, very important. The other is, I think the next,
I think research scientists around developing the next series of
materials are going to be really, really, really popular moving forward. As well as people who understand
the nuances of operating all of these pieces of equipment. So you have

operators,
you have design engineers, you have material scientists, you have
physicists who are trying to understand the interactions again as
we talked about earlier. There really isn't a skill set, in my
opinion, that you cannot consider aligning towards the opportunity of 3-D
printing and additive manufacturing. [SOUND]
>> Talking about the future workforce, what is really interesting, it's the 4th
graders to the 12th graders today that are going to take this technology. because we haven't seen an injection of
mainstream hardware technology advance, whatever you want to call it,
into the classroom since the computer. And now using a 3-D printer's
just something they do. So when we have these 4th graders come in,
these 5th graders, they're being extremely exposed to
additive

manufacturing because it's cost effective to run, it's cost
effective to have in the classroom, and it's really an effective teaching
tool in multiple disciplines. Math, history, geography, there's
lots of things that you can recreate, or terrains that you can, it's a tool now. It's not just something we
create parts with, it's a tool. So, that it's like philosophically
changing how we educate. But it's also philosophically embedding
itself inside the mind of the users, which are 4th to 12th graders. So as they go to the colleges,
they're going to look for that technology to be available. As they go into the workforce,
they're going to look for that technology to be available to
accomplish what they want to accomplish. [SOUND]. I think it's going to be
a combination of all three. Right now

the community colleges are doing a really good job on
capitalizing on workforce development. They seem to be a little
bit more profit-driven. And monitoring the market trends and
what workforce is needed and marketing to that and
creating curriculum for that. So they're pulling in everybody from
a recent high school graduate or to someone who's about to graduate but
can take some community college hours. And also the local workforce. So they have a different pool of
people that they're pulling from. And as this manufacturing
workforce picks up, it's going to come from a wide range
because the demand is going to be so high. I've talked to other CEOs of companies, Jennie Lawton of MakerBot when
she was the CEO of MakerBot. And she said that if a student wants to
take a route right now and

has to make a decision today is to go to a community
college because a community college can take the curriculum and turn it around
and offer a class, a certification, it doesn't necessarily have to be accredited
of course, but they can offer it. And they're picking up the technology
faster than the four year university. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] Hi, we are here today to chat with Jeff
Ginger who operates the Fab Lab affiliate, the CU Fab Lab facility at
the University of Illinois. And we're going to chat with him about the
role that his particular operation, and the Fab Lab Network in general, plays. In allowing people to learn by making. So, Jeff, thank you for
taking the time to chat with us. Tell us a bit about what's
the mission of the Fab Lab Network. >> Thank you, Vishal. Nice to meet everyone, this is my
first chance to talk to many of you. So the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab
is one fab lab in a giant network of fab labs. And our particular mission is that we're
dedicated to helping foster education, helping to boost research. Helping to inspire entrepreneurship,
and helping to promote art. And so we sort of

have these four prongs
that we get to in different ways. >> 3D printing has a place to play
in empowering people to create. And I know the Fab Lab Network and CU
Fab Lab have a broader variety of tools. So give us a sense of where
the Fab Lab Network puts itself in empowering people to create. >> There's actually
many kinds of fab labs. So we're a fab lab that's
embedded in universities, so we tend to link ourselves
well to education. But there are fab labs in all
kind of settings as well. So you can find them in government
buildings, and as community centers. You can sometimes find them in libraries,
in museums. There's one in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago that
we work with often. But you also can find them in community
colleges and as part of catalyst business startups

where lots of
business pool together resources. And kind of other settings, too, where they're even just a sort of
a standalone makerspace or a fab lab. And all of these might lend different
capacity building initiatives, right? Or work with different
capacity building initiatives. So the business catalyst might help small
businesses and startups work on things. Our fab lab works a lot with education, with empowering workforce development or
helping workforce development go. So it really depends on
the kind of fab lab. >> Give us a sense of scale,
I mean, how big is the network? >> There are over 200 fab
labs across the world, it's a little hard to keep track of. Because so many new ones are coming up and the specification's sort
of loosely enforced. So you have fab labs that
range from

the full MIT spec, with machines costing in
the billions of dollars. Well, machines totaling in
the cost of billions of dollars. All the way down to people that
are just trying to barely, they've got their own hacked
together laser cutter. That maybe is not as nice as
the Epilog that some others might have. So they sort of vary in their scale,
but there are roughly 200 to 250 around the world and
they're really very predominant in Europe. And they're all linked through
a common webcam system. And so we can have information sharing,
they have common classes, so they have something called Fab Academy. And they have a conference every year that
allows all the people to come together in one location, one global location. And then they'll have sub-conferences
in different areas for the US Fab

Lab Network or
the European networks, etc. >> Give us a sense of some of
the projects, perhaps addressing the four objectives that you try and
espouse for the fab lab. So some examples that make it real for people as to what all
happens at your fab lab. >> Well, so one thing it's important to
note about all the fab labs is that they have similar software, similar tools and
sort of similar ideologies. And so they tend to work around
open source projects and projects that can be capacity building or
developing kinds of projects. Now that can vary a lot. So our experience for education, and how it might apply to the people in the
class, is that by teaching people how to use these tools you're sort of
automatically helping build capacities. You're bringing the ability to use
different kind of

technologies and 3D modeling into the community. Or in the environment
wherever that person works. And then that person also might,
in turn, share a lot of their knowledge. And that's really part of
the makerspace culture, which is an important part of fab labs. Is that there seems to be
a lot less about proprietary, I'm going to hold my own knowledge. And a lot more about, okay,
I don't know how to do this, do you know how to do this,
can we figure this out? We've got a forum here,
we've got this guy that we know there. You can sort of work with a lot of people. And so that's the sort of a part
of the education as well, is there's a lot of sort of DIY and
peer to peer. But, more generally,
3D printing can be a tool for learning, also, in informal and formal settings. So it's being

explored in schools,
which is a big challenge right now, because a lot of schools will get like
one 3D printer and have 400 kids. And they have no idea how to do that yet. But then you also get hobbyists who
build their own 3D printer, and they have to learn all
the mechanics of this thing. And that can be a really great take away. So there's sort of capacity building
in how people learn how to do this. So that's the education piece. And there's also a lot of work
with research, obviously. Because we're part of
an academic institution, we can help with advanced
research projects. So here we've done a lot
of work with modelings, so geographic models to look at watershed
analysis, or that kind of thing. And then, we've also,
one of the neater ones is, we actually took a 3D printer that, it

was
one of those cool sort of cylindrical type ones, the three point type. And it would move around and they actually
replaced the extrusion head with a camera. And they could use this for quickly
scanning samples of insects and so- >> Nice. >> It was still the same sort of CNC
set up of a 3D printer, but it was for a different kind of purpose. And once you sort of get into this world
you can do all these other kinds of applications that might be useful for
reasearch. Then also,
one of my favorites is citizen science. So 3D printing might be used for creation of Internet of Things devices,
sort of assisting with that. So you can make customized housing
to maybe fit a device that might collect data on maybe pollution in
a river in your own neighborhood. And so the 3D printer doesn't

necessarily
automatically lead to that data collection. But it helps enable you to make that
device for that specific kind of context. So research happens in that way. We also do some with entrepreneurship,
and actually the maker lab is the bigger player in our town for
that side of things. But we have a lot of passionate small
business owners that will come in, or individual freelancers
that will work on things. Sometimes new products or
just new processes for things. So one of the students we're
working with right now, who you already know because
she worked with you as well. Was building specialized racing gloves for
wheelchair athletes. And one of the challenges is that
the gloves are $400 right now to have custom hand moulded modeled. And she's trying to cut this down to a $4, open

source,
you can send us the metrics for your hand. You take a picture of your hand and
we actually can scan that picture and figure out what size glove for you. And then we're going to help you
3D print that at one of the hubs around wherever you live. And her angle on it is
actually kind of inspiring. because it's not just about the wheelchair
athletes who have a lot of money who are really into this. But she wants to make this cheap so people
that maybe wouldn't be able to get into athletic, wheelchair competition
kinds of things could get into it. And so it actually becomes
a community health issue. So I think that's a really
neat kind of entrepreneurship. And then the last one that I
like to talk about is art. Of course, many of you have
probably seen 3D printed fashion. And the really

cool shoes and these sort
of giant art installations that are 3D printed, and those are really amazing. But I also like art in the sort of simple,
informal format of, I'm just a first time maker, I'm going to make a toy for
my kid, or a piece for a board game. Just the things that just
people have fun with, and we really want to inspire that piece too. So it doesn't always have to be about
solving a reasearch problem, or educating a person or making a product. It can also just be,
you're doing it for fun, and I think that's a perfectly valid way
to get people inspired for it too. So that's the scope of
the kinds of the things we do. >> How accessible are these, are there monthly payments,
or is it more accessible? >> It varies a lot by fab lab. >> Okay.
>> So some of them will be based
on

a membership model. A lot of them are partnered with an
institution that the institution provides some kind of access. So if you take a class at
the community college, you can get into the fab lab there. Almost all of them have some
kind of open community time. So either a promo night, we have just
free, open hours that are regular, and a lot of them are like that. Others, like the Museum of Science and
Industry in Chicago, it's just an exhibit. So you go into the museum,
you do have to get into the museum, but then once you're in the museum
you can go visit the fab lab. So they do, generally, try to follow the mission of
having some opportunity or access. >> I think this seems
like a great resource. And given the fact that
it's a global network, I'm sure many of our learners will
leverage

this network and learn to make. So thank you for taking the time. >> I'm looking forward
to seeing all of you. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

we are speaking to Rob Gorham, who's the director of
operations at America Makes. Now this institute in Ohio is really set
up as a collaborative initiative between academia, businesses, and the government. Their focus is on re-invigorating
US manufacturing and helping businesses understand how
to leverage additive manufacturing in product design or development and
also for end use parts. So join us as we learn about America Makes
and what they provide with Rob Gorham. >> I'm the director of operations
here at America Makes. I spent the last 11 or 12 years before
coming here at Lockheed Martin. I'm an aerospace engineer by training. I worked a lot in design and advanced
design, specifically in a skunk works. And then got into additive manufacturing,
a Lockheed

Martin, and they came to Youngstown, Ohio to serve as the director
of operations here at the Institute. We are a collaborative organization
with over, now, a 160 members and the whole point is to serve
a mission of advancing added manufacturing and
3D printing in the United States. It's all about US
manufacturing competitiveness. And so we have large industry,
small industry, public partners, academia, and we're all working together to solve
problems that are common amongst everyone. Across multiple industries
being aerospace, or bio-medical, or architecture,
or art, automotive, it doesn't really matter,
they all have common issues with really taking advantage of what the
promise of additive manufacturing holds. [SOUND] Well at America Makes,
specifically addressing that need, we have a

lot of shops
that interact with us. And the reason they do that is because
they may not have access to a huge research budget. And the ability to turn dials and knobs to
make sure the quality that the consumer expects is actually being met
during the build process. That's a very important thing. Certification procedures,
once you start to get into industries and you're ready to sell product or
services that impact the aerospace or automotive, there's a whole certification
process we all have to understand and the Institute can help with that. Once you get into start printing things
that get into more bio or food and drug, then you start to have to think
about the FDA, or the FAA, and the Institute can help there as well. So shops, tinkerers, different makers,
hackers, entrepreneurs, all of

those different organizations
have the opportunity to interact with the Institute. Interact with the broad set of members
that we have inside the Institute, and really, the word I like to use is leverage, why
try to recreate your own research budget? Or why try to recreate a skill set
at your own shop that you can take advantage of Intel, or GE, or
Toyota, or Lockheed, or Boeing, or Stratus's 3D systems, X1, Siemens,
Deloitte, it just goes on and on and on. That brain trust is I think what
we bring to the table that all of those different folks that you mentioned, and all the folks that are listening to
the class can really take advantage of. [MUSIC] We are here at America Makes in
Youngstown, Ohio to see the facility and get a tour of the fabulous
machines they have here. And we have with

us Rodrigo to
give us a tour of the place. So, Rodrigo, thank you for
taking the time. >> You're welcome. >> Could you introduce yourself. >> Sure, my name is Rodrigo Enriquez,
I'm a mechanical engineer. I'm also the manager and operator of what we call
the Innovation Factory at America Makes. Which regards this floor and
the one below us, where we have all of our
additive manufacturing machines. America Makes is the national
additive manufacturing institute, focused on advanced additive
manufacturing in the industry. >> So I know at the Meta lab we
have only a desktop machine, so we look forward to having you show us
some of the higher end machines and the kind of capability that's available,
so we'll follow you. >> Okay, this plastic filament extrusion machine,
it's filament fused

modeling. It's very similar to
your desktop printers, this is the industrial
level of the machine. Works the same way,
we have a build plate right here and an extrusion head at
the top of the machine. You have a filament at the bottom of
the machine, containing those canisters. >> So these are the filaments? >> Yes, that's the filaments. So you have space for a lot more
material than on your desktop printers. We also print two different ones,
a support, and an actual material. This just has a wider range of
plastics that you can print out and larger build envelope. It's about a cube foot to print on this. >> That is pretty good. >> Now over here,
I have a binder jetting machine. >> Okay. >> You also have a powder bed. >> Okay.
>> And then you have a binder or a glue that comes out of your

printer. >> That's the powder there? >> Yeah, in this case they have stainless
steel, but you can print sand, concrete, steel, any other metal, plastic, glass,
anything you can get into a powder, for the most part you should
be able to print it out. >> For those the binder and the binding
agent would be different for each one. For each one, but
that's the least of your constraints, and no worries the getting
the right binding agent. Then you build your part over here, and
this is nice you have a small build envelope, there are larger ones that
can actually do parts quite larger. Now, if you're printing with sand,
you can printing the sand casting models. >> Okay.
>> So, in this case, so you're familiar with casting? Which is a forming type of technology
where you pour metal into a sand

bowl. We actually are able to print
the casting and the technology for casting comes out the same. This will be the final part. Now the part is not printed out,
the casting is printed out. Now this is an SLS machine, or
Selectively Laser Sintering. You may have also heard Selective Laser
Melting or Direct Metal Laser Sintering. All these three names are used
interchangeably and they refer to, mechanically, the same machine. We're using plastic on this one so
it's a quite a low power laser. And you can see the build envelope. The parts around are surrounded
here with what's called the cake, that's the technical term. It's just since you're
centering the powder, it will actually clump together a little
bit and you need to take it off and your part will be surrounded
in all this excess

powder. And when you finish your parts,
they'll look like this. Now I have black powder in there,
but you can print white. This is the natural color of the powder. And you can get quite complex shapes
out of that and a very nice finish. >> So is this the sort of
the highest end machine you have? >> No,
the highest end will be the metal one. But the metal one and
this one are pretty similar. If you want to go downstairs and
see the metal machine. Now, this is called
a Selective Laser Melting machine or SLM. It's mechanically very similar
to the one upstairs and when I open the door,
you'll see the similarities. You have your build envelope right here
and we have some type of spreader. In the one upstairs, we had a roller,
in this one we have a wiper blade. >> So this moves front and back?

>> Forward but you've got your
lasers here, and build here. And when you're building your part, you're
shining your laser onto your powder bed, and melt it out. This is full melting versus centering. There's a materials difference
between one preferred and the other. The machine itself is the same. >> Well, thank you for giving us the tour,
it was a pleasure being here, thank you. >> You're welcome. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

we are speaking to Mark Hatch, who's the co-founder and CEO of TechShop, which is a maker-space which provides
multiple categories of tools. To allow you to make things. He talked about some of the examples that
he has seen at his locations, and he has several locations in the US, and they're
looking at global expansion as well. And he talked about two interesting
examples which are things that you and me could think about making and
developing a successful business around. And I think the main point he
makes is that the availability and access to these tools is new,
or rather, it has come back. We had access to tools, The Industrial
Revolution sort of made us lose access and the big firms took control of production. And he's talking about a trend where

that
control on production is coming back to us because of the kind of tools,
3D printing being one. And he shared two interesting case studies
of entrepreneurs who've been able to launch very successful businesses, very fast starting out with almost
no skills in that product category. So, join us as we speak to Mark. >> My name's Mark Hatch. I'm the CEO and Co-founder of TechShop. Well we called The Industrial Revolution
a revolution and what happened during that revolution is that
the average person lost access to the tools and
means of producing things themselves. And over a period it was relatively short,
30 to 40 years we moved from an agrarian economies to a Industrial economy and
so they call that a revolution. We're now moving into an era where
those tools are now coming back. So

now, makers, anybody can have
access to the same tools of the industrial revolution that
historically only large institutions and organizations could afford. And what that means is we move from an era
where maybe there are a few million institutions who can afford these
tools and can afford to innovate. To where tens of millions and
one hundreds of millions and eventually, billions of people will
be able to innovate themselves. That is truly revolutionary. And we're going to move the capacity,
the ability to innovate up to orders of magnitude just
by putting more people at it. So that is absolutely a revolution. World Economic Forum calls it
the fourth industrial revolution. I don't think its a fourth
industrial revolution. I think it's a creative revolution, or a
maker revolution because

it has an impact on education, it has an impact on,
of course, manufacturing and economics. But it has an individual impact and
will actually help create and sustain tighter social bonds
within a local community. So I like it to call it either a creative
revolution or a maker revolution. TechShop is a very large maker space,
it's 20,000 square feet and has every tool you need to
make everything on the planet. It's really targeted at any kind of
hobbyist who wants to get something done. Any kind of artist. And importantly, any kind of inventor. So we have all the tools that
you need to make anything. Many of the smaller spaces will
have something electronic, we'll have 3D printers which are fine and
they help you pick up some of the skills. But our objective is to have
these in every major

city and to become an economic engine for
that city, for individuals and creatives. We have currently eight locations
in the US, three in the Bay Area, Phoenix, Austin, Detroit,
Pittsburgh, and DC. We just opened Paris with Laurent Moulin,
our French partner. Abu Dhabi And we're about to open Tokyo. the objective is to put a TechShop
in every major city on the planet. I think at least 500
probably 1000 maybe 2000. I used to work at Kinko's, we had 800
locations in the US just to do paper and copies. I can't imagine having less
than 800 TechShops to do physical objects with 3D printing and
laser cutting and so forth. So, that's our objective. We'll see whether or not we get there. [SOUND] You can make anything there, and so we have a lot of people that do
crafty projects and art projects or

they're doing something for
their church or synagogue or something. Then we have others who are really
watching businesses and I think those are very inspiring. So I've got here one example. So this is an iPad case made
out of bamboo and book binding. And Patrick Buckley came in
to one of our location and asked our dream consultants, what we call
them what classes do I need to take to learn how to use the tools to
launch my iPad case company. And he took about 3 classes,
it took him about a week and a half to get through the classes. He learned inventor, the design software,
and launched his company. 90 days after he came through our door and
I ask what classes do I need to take, he had already sold a million
dollars in product. He sold $4 million in the first year, 10 million in the

second, we believe
35 to $40 million in the third year. The president of the United States
carries one of these. I've had the opportunity to meet president
Obama and he showed off his case. He's actually pretty proud of it. So the theme here is
that access to the tools, access to knowledge,
access to the computers and so forth. Enable you to launch companies at
speeds that we've never seen before. Three months,
he had a million dollars in sales. He didn't have the knowledge that he
needed when he walked in the door, so that's one example. One of my other favorite ones is Square. The little white dongle that goes on
the end of your phone that does payment processing. James McKelvey is the cofounder there. He came in and
took the injection molding class, he took the CNC milling class,
took

an Arduino class, some basic electronics,
built the original prototypes for Square and eventually raised 10
million dollars on their series A. They just went public at $6 billion. His background by the way,
he's a professional glass blower. He's got a beautiful glass studio in Saint
Louis it's probably 15,000 square feet, he got three glory holes. As a glass blower,
fundamentally changed the point of sale terminal business in the United States and
around the world. And he gave it to anybody
who had a checking account, not people who were
qualified in the old way. It was just if you had a checking
account and smartphone, you could now take
American Express Discover Cards. That is so revolutionary, in fact,
that the estimates are it created 30,000 jobs in August of 2012 alone by

increasing
the velocity of the money supply. So again, we live in an era where somebody
can come in, pick up the skills that they need to be able to disrupt a major
industry in a very short period of time. It is a revolution, it's very exciting. [SOUND] Absolutely, so
at our locations we have like, in San Francisco well teach 200 to
250 classes on a monthly basis. So we don't assume that you know
how to use the tools when you come through the door. Now they're mostly introductory classes,
basically just to get you safe on a machine, or comfortable with
what it is that you're working on, and then it's self-paced, and
you kind of learn yourself. But the software is one of the real keys,
and the design software in particular,
one of our partners is Autodesk, and they've got some fabulous

software,
kind of introductory level. I like Tinkercad or Fusion 360 is
their online software program. But you can get good
enough after maybe 20, 30 hours of work to be able
to actually produce things. That is new to the world, you never been able to be a millwright
after thirty hours of training. You had to go through years of
training to get any good at it. But now we've added software and
the computer. The computer takes over and
does the cutting. And you can become a in
a very short period of time. And we think we're going to be short
200,000 CC operators in the next 10 or 15 years. And these are good paying jobs. These are 60, 70, $80,000 a year job
being either an operator or a programmer. And you can take that training in
a fairly short period of time and become fast out on it.

It's critical, I believe,
to learn 3D modeling, today. So, I liken this skill to, like in 1985, most people didn't know how to type. Excel didn't even exist. I think it was 1-2-3, Lotus 1-2-3, right? And only a few people actually
spent the time in those early days, learning how to use the computer and
manipulate things and so forth. Yet, we spool forward another 20 years and
everyone's doing it. Kids are doing it at eight,
nine, ten years old. They're expected to do this. It's in order to operate in a modern
economy, you've got to be able to use. A word processor, PowerPoint,
and Excel spreadsheet. In 20 years, you're going to need to
be able to manipulate things in three dimensions because 3D printers and
CNC machines are going to be ubiquitous. And if you want to create a project

and
you want to do a craft of some kind, you're going to want to use these
tools to be able to make it happen. So, it's well worth your time. I think you're setting yourself up for
success in the future by being one of the early adapters in learning
how to use these tools. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [SOUND]

[MUSIC] So in this video we will speak to Lauren
Slovic who's the design evangelist at Shapeways. And Shapeways, as you have seen earlier in
the course with Professor is a platform that allows you to upload designs, and
have them shipped to you, or others. You can set up your own shop
on Shapeways as well, or just print one design that
you want to get printed. In this video, she will share
some examples of how Shapeways enables individuals and
entrepreneurs to produce on demand. So she'll talk about some case
studies with Kickstarter, which is a crowdfunding platform. And how somebody would create a campaign
on Kickstarter and use Shapeways as sort of the back end fulfillment
platform without needing to actually have control or coordination issues with
the actual production process. You

create an idea, you get support for
it, community support or broad-based support on platforms such as
Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, and then you find somebody who fulfills the making of
that product, leveraging 3D printing. And that's where Shapeways provides an
interesting example of how your ideas can turn to objects without expensive
investments in, perhaps, some manufacturing facilities. So join us in our chat with Lauren. >> [SOUND] There's a couple
examples I can think of. Probably the first success story we had
was a designer named Joshua Harker who designed these beautiful filigree skulls,
and I believe he did them as
a fundraiser project. And it became a wild success, and he ended up getting thousands
of orders for these objects that he probably wouldn't have been able
to fulfill all

the orders on his own. But we fulfilled all I think
something like 4,000 of them all on time, and he was able
to do a huge amount of fundraising. And that was outside of Kickstarter, I
think it was his own fundraising platform. We've definitely done successful
partnerships with Kickstarter projects. Coolest Cooler is another one,
one of their rewards for donors was a miniature keychain version
of the product that they were actually developing, and
that was a huge success as well. Another group is Hero Forge. So they started off as a Kickstarter,. They use our service API to create custom table top gaming avatars, so
you can be an elf, or a dwarf, or a witch, or whatever, and you can print
on some of different materials. So they're are actually able
to run their entire business as proposed

on Kickstarter through our
supply chain and our manufacturing. Yeah. That's a great question. We are a global company. We started in Europe, our headquarters moved to New York, but
we ship everywhere around the world. Our distribution centers
are capable of shipping anywhere. And we have a marketplace that can
ship anywhere around the world. So whether you use our marketplace on
shapeways.com, or you use our API, we essentially support global
entrepreneurship from the start, so it's really no question. You can start an account, start a shop
today, and have a global audience for your product almost immediately. [MUSIC] [SOUND]

Module 4 Readings

Required

Design Thinking
    
    by Brown, T.

Optional

Design Kit: The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design

A Very Short introduction to Design by Heskett, J. -  Oxford university Press -  Pages 1-7 in particular

Change by Design by Brown, T.  - Harper Business - pages 13 -38 and 38 - 62

Hidden in Plain Sight by Chipchase, J. - Harper Business   - pages 1 -25

Module 4: From Ideas to Objects

Overview

The previous three modules have given you an overview of a wide variety of applications of 3D printing. In addition, if you work through the assessments and participate in the discussions, you will see the immense variety of applications shared by your peers. Before you start developing the skills in software and hardware, let's take a look at the process, which will help you convert the problems/needs you see around you into potential ideas, and finally into objects.

This process is the design thinking framework, which has several flavors. All variants of the design thinking approach call for iterative prototyping, to which 3D modeling and printing are ideally suited. We will get an overview of one such framework from IDEO and by an expert at

the University of Illinois, and then see examples of the approach in action. We will close with meeting the instructor of the next course, Jeff Smith, and get his thoughts on design thinking and software.

Time

This module should take
  
   approximately 3 hours
  
  of dedicated time to complete, with its videos and assignments.

Lessons

The lessons for this module are listed below (with assignments in bold italics):

Lesson Title

Estimated Time Required

Lesson 1: An Introduction to Design Thinking

30 minutes

Lesson 2 : Design Thinking in Action

60 minutes

Module 4 Quiz

30 minutes

Module 4
      
       Peer Review Assignment

120 minutes

Goals and Objectives

Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:

Describe the design thinking

framework.

Examine its impact in everyday applications.

Develop a foundation for learning skills in 3D printing software and hardware.

Getting and Giving Help

You can get/give help via the following means:

Use the
    
      Learner Help Center
     
    to find information regarding specific technical problems. For example,  technical problems would include error messages, difficulty submitting  assignments, or problems with video playback. If you cannot find an  answer in the documentation, you can also report your problem to the  Coursera staff by clicking on the
    
     Contact Us!
    
    link available on each topic's page within the Learner Help Center.

Use the
    
      Course Suggestions
     
    forum  to report errors in lecture video content,

assignment questions and  answers, assignment grading, text and links on course pages, or the  content of other course materials. University of Illinois staff and  community TAs will monitor this forum and respond to issues.

Question 1

Shared learning is an important part of ideating.

True

False

Question 2

The CityX Project cannot be adapted to provide a platform for cross-curricular learning.

True

False

Question 3

Thomas Edison’s approach with the lightbulb was an early example of design thinking.

True

False

Question 4

According to the Harvard Business Review article "Design Thinking," what is integrative thinking?

The ability to see the world from multiple angles

Assuming a potential solution is better than current alternatives

The ability to work with other people

The ability to view problems from multiple angles and create novel solutions that dramatically improve current alternatives

Question 5

According to Professor David Weightman, Three important things to keep in mind when designing

a product or service include desirability, viability, and feasibility.

True

False

Question 6

According to Professor David Weightman, what is the first stage in the design thinking process?

Ideate

Create

Empathize

Evaluate

Question 7

The CityX project requires children to create low fidelity prototypes before trying 3d Modeling and printing.

True

False

Question 8

What has been the impact of rapid prototyping using 3D printing

on the design process ,

the kinds of things you can make

and the way you make them.

The purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to  apply the concepts you have learned in this module and to discuss some  of the key ideas of the module in your own words. Follow the  instructions provided and respond to each question. This a required  activity for this module.

Submit your answers to each of the questions based on the prompt provided on the
  
   My submission
  
  tab. Enter your answers directly in the spaces provided in the
  
  tab. You may save a draft of your work as you go, and you can come back  later to continue working on your draft. When you are finished working,  click the
  
   Preview
  
  button, verify your identity, and then click
  
   Submit for review
  
  to submit the assignment.

Review criteria

You are required

to evaluate the submissions of
  
   at least THREE
  
  of  your peers based on the instructions and rubric provided. You may begin  giving feedback to other students as soon as you submit your  assignment; click the
  
   Review classmates
  
  tab to begin. Feel free to provide additional reviews beyond the three required!

This  assignment is worth 20% of the course grade.

As you review your peers, points should  be given only for correct/reasonable answers as specified in the rubric  provided; incorrect/unreasonable answers get zero points.

Recommendations for Fair Peer Review:

For  subjective questions, the score should not be based on whether or not  you agree with the answer but rather on whether the answer is complete  and well-supported.

Both content and organization are

important  components of a response. Good writing is confident and clearly focused  with relevant details to enrich the content. Good writing also follows  instructions, such as word limits, and offers requested information.

A  clear and concise answer is preferable to a long response that lacks  coherence. Focus should be on content; try not to unduly penalize  responses for spelling or grammar.

The applications of 3d printing increase every day. This list will be refreshed from your discussions in the forums of the course and other significant developments. Our attempt will be to highlight summary articles, tutorials , prominent people in a particular field, categories of related resources rather than individual applications.

Bio Printing

3D Bioprinting of Tissues and Organs:  Where Are We
  
  ? by William J Cass, Esq | May 10, 2016

Scientists create new Bio-ink for 3d Printing with stem cells

News coverage of recent developments in bio-printing

Education

Curriculum and examples of applications on Thingiverse

NIH 3d Print Exchange : Models for Biomedical Sciences

Spanish Language Resources for 3d Printing in Education

Contributors
  
  - Jesus

Rodriguez

http://blogthinkbig.com/impresion-3d-recurso-educativo/

http://www.mundodigital.net/los-beneficios-de-las-impresoras-3d-en-la-ensenanza/

http://agencia.donweb.com/el-futuro-de-la-impresion-3d-orientado-fuertemente-a-la-educacion/

Architecture/Construction

Castles in the Sand
  
  : Michael A Parker, May 20, 2016

New Waves
  
  :  Skip Stone House and the Future of 3D Printing in Architecture : Paul Keskeys, May 11, 2016

3D Printing for Architecture

Aviation

http://3dprinting.com/aviation/

Development and Humanitarian Applications

3D opportunity for life: Additive manufacturing takes humanitarian action
  
  : Sniderman et al. 2016

OnePlus Nord 2 reviewReturn of the flagship-killer

Thursday, May 18, 2023

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Scientists create new bio-ink for 3D printing with stem cells

Scientists from University of Bristol have found a new bio-ink for 3D printing with stem cells that allows printing of living tissue known as bio-printing

hiddenJun 24, 2016 12:56:58 IST

Scientists from University of Bristol have found a new bio-ink for 3D printing with stem cells that allows printing of living tissue known as bio-printing. The new bio-ink contains two

different polymer components: a natural polymer extracted from seaweed and a sacrificial synthetic polymer used in the medical industry. "Designing the new bio-ink was extremely challenging. You need a material that is printable, strong enough to maintain its shape when immersed in nutrients and that is not harmful to the cells. We managed to do this," said lead researcher Adam Perriman from school of cellular and molecular medicine.

The synthetic polymer causes the bio-ink to change from liquid to solid when the temperature is raised and the seaweed polymer provides structural support when the cell nutrients are introduced. "The special bio-ink formulation was extruded from a retrofitted benchtop 3D printer, as a liquid that transformed to a gel at 37 degrees Celsius, which allowed

construction of complex living 3D architectures," Perriman added.

The findings, published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials, could help printing complex tissues using the patient's own stem cells for surgical bone or cartilage implants, which could be used in knee and hip surgeries. The team was able to differentiate the stem cells into osteoblasts -- a cell that secretes the substance of bone cells that have secreted the matrix of cartilage and become embedded in it -- to engineer 3D printed tissue structures over five weeks, including a full-size tracheal cartilage ring.

"What was really astonishing for us was when the cell nutrients were introduced, the synthetic polymer was completely expelled from the 3D structure, leaving only the stem cells and the natural seaweed

polymer," Perriman noted.  This created microscopic pores in the structure which provided more effective nutrient access for the stem cells.

IANS

tags

3d Printing

Bio-Ink

Stem Cells

University Of Bristol

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Recommended Books

Books on 3D Printing and Maker Movement:

Barnatt, C. (2013).
  
   3D Printing: The Next Industrial Revolution
  
  . CreateSpace Publishing.

C.Fischer, G. (2013).
  
   Blender 3D Printing Essentials
  
  . Packt Publishing.

Council, A., Petch, M., & Long, E. (2014).
  
   3D Printing: Rise of the Third Industrial Revolution
  
  . gyges3d.com; 2014 edition.

Gebhardt, A. (2012).
  
   Understanding Additive Manufacturing: Rapid Prototyping, Rapid Tooling, Rapid Manufacturing
  
  . Hanser.

Gibson, I., & Rosen, D. (2014).
  
   Additive Manufacturing Technologies: 3D Printing, Rapid Prototyping, and Direct Digital Manufacturing
  
  . Springer; 2nd ed. 2015 edition.

Hatch, M. (2013).
  
   The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of

Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers
  
  . McGraw-Hill Education; 1 edition.

Lipson, Hod, M. K. (2013).
  
   Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing
  
  . Wiley Publishing.

Martinez, S. L. (2013).
  
   Invent to Learn
  
  . Constructing Modern Knowledge Press.

Meybaum, H. (2014).
  
   The Art of Product Design
  
  . Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Wilkinson, K. (2014).
  
   The Art of Tinkering
  
  . Weldon Owen.

Winnan, C. D. (2013).
  
   3D Printing: The Next Technology Gold Rush – Future Factories and How to Capitalize on Distributed Manufacturing
  
   Adventures in 3D Printing: Limitless Possibilities and Profit Using 3D Printers
  
  . Kindle Book.

Yoni Binstock. (2014).
  
   How to Become a 3D Printing

Entrepreneur: The Top eBook on How You Can Make Money With 3D Printing
  
  .

3D Printing Business: How To Start A Successful 3D Printing Business (3D Printer, 3D Printing, 3D Printing Business)
  
  . (2014). ClydeBank Media LLC.

Books on Computer Aided Design (CAD) Learning:

Betoline, G. R., & Eric N. Wiebe. (2004).
  
   Fundamentals of Graphics ., Communication
  
  . The McGraw-Hill.

Leake, J., & Borgerson, J. (2007).
  
   Engineering Design Graphics Sketching, Modeling, and Visualization
  
Lieu, D. K., & Sheryl Sorby. (2016).
  
   Visualization, Modeling, and Graphics for Engineering Design
  
  . Delmar Cengage Learning.

Otto, K., & Wood, K. (2000).
  
   Product Design Techniques in Reverse Engineering and New Product Development
  
  .

Pearson.

Plantenberg, K. (2010).
  
   Engineering Graphics Essentials
  
  (4 Pck Pap/). Schroff Development Corporation.

Books on Design Thinking and Innovation:

Balsamo, A. (2011).
  
   Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work
  
  . Duke University Press Books.

Brown, T. (2009).
  
   Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
  
  . HarperBusiness.

Kelley, Tom, Littman, J. (2005).
  
   The ten faces of innovation
  
   :IDEO’s strategies for beating the devil’s advocate & driving creativity throughout your organization
  
  . Ney York: Currency/Doubleday.

Kelley, T., & Kelley, D. (2013).
  
   Creative Confidence:Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
  
  (9/15/13 ed). Crown Business.

Kelley, T.,

Littman, J., & Peters, T. (2001).
  
   The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
  
  . Crown Business; 1 edition.

Kumar, V. (n.d.).
  
   101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization
  
  (1st ed.). Wiley Publishing.

Martin, R. L. (2009).
  
   The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage
  
  (Third Edit). Harvard Business Review Press.

Mootee, I. (2013).
  
   Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can’t Teach You at Business or Design School
  
  (1 edition). Wiley Publishing.

About the iMBA

Program Details

Get Started

Get Information

Apply

Contact the team

As the saying goes, It takes a village to raise a child.  Similarly, an online course is not a one-person show, and it takes a team of videographers, graphic designers and  instructional designers among others to bring it together. There are more people in the administration helping to bring this course together, and the list would go on forever.  In addition, the delivery and execution of the course has a lot of inputs from the teaching assistants who help with the ground work and behind the scenes research. Finally, once the courses launches, our mentors, who are mostly graduates of the course, play an important role in helping all of learn by sharing their experience and expertise, and mentoring the online learning community. Here is a short list of the people directly involved in the

course.

Instructional Team

Michael Dunne

Colleen Cook

J C Morgan

Glossary

Here
you will find a description of some of the key concepts, organizations, and
technologies that we discuss in this course. If you would like us to add a
description of something that we may have missed, please make a suggestion in
our discussion forum.

A good
list of technical terms relevant across the specialization is available at the
  
   RepRap Project

Additive manufacturing (AM).
  
  A
process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer
upon layer

Advanced
Manufacturing.
  
  Use of technology to
improve products and/or processes, with the relevant technology advanced or
innovative

Computer Numerical Control (CNC).
  
  Automation of machine
tools that are operated by
precisely programmed commands encoded on a storage medium

Digital

scanner.
  
  A
device that generates a digital representation of an image for data input to a
computer

Fabrication.
  
  A Manufacturing process in which an item is made from raw or
semi-finished materials instead of being assembled from ready-made components
or parts.

Lean
manufacturing.
  
  A systematic method
for the elimination of waste within a manufacturing system.

Injection Moulding.
  
  A manufacturing
process for producing parts by injecting material into a mould.

Intellectual
Capital.
  
  A difference between a firm’s market value and
the cost of replacing its assets.

Property (IP).
  
  A term that refers to the creation of ideas that an owner can make
a financial gain off of protected by law.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).
  
  Patents,

copyrights,
trademarks, trade secrets, etc. See Intellectual Property.

Internet
of Things (IoT).
  
  A system
of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects,
animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to
transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or
human-to-computer interaction

MakerSpace.
  
  A Community center that provides
technology, manufacturing, equipment and educational opportunities to the
public.

Photogrammetry.
  
  The science of making measurements from photographs,
especially for recovering the exact positions of surface points. More simply
put, this process can be used for 3D scanning.

Polycarbonate (PC).
  
  A type of strong, impact resistant
thermoplastic.

Polyphenylsulfone (PPSU or

PPSF).
  
  A high performance polymer often used in
rapid-prototyping or rapid-manufacturing processes.

Production System.
  
  A manufacturing subsystem that includes all
functions required to design, produce, distribute, and service a manufactured
product.

Rapid Manufacturing.
  
  A process of Building parts out of plastic or metal one
layer at a time using a method of additive fabrication such as 3D printing.

Rapid Prototyping
(RP).
  
  A group of techniques used to quickly fabricate
a scale model of a physical part or assembly using three-dimensional computer
aided design (CAD) data.

STEM.
  
  A type of educational field including the areas of science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics.

References

Intellectual property. (n.d.). In
  
   Wikipedia
  
  . Retrieved May

18, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

Photogrammetry. (n.d.). In
  
   Wikipedia
  
  . Retrieved May 18, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry

Polycarbonate. (n.d.). In
  
   RepRap
  
  . Retrieved May 18, 2016 from http://reprap.org/wiki/Polycarbonate

Glossary

Here you will find a description of some of the key concepts, organizations, and technologies that we discuss in this course. If you would like us to add a description of something that we may have missed, please make a suggestion in our discussion forum.

A good list of technical terms relevant across the courses is available at the
  
  A process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer

Advanced Manufacturing.
  
  Use of technology to improve products and/or processes, with the relevant technology advanced or innovative

  Automation of machine tools that are operated by precisely programmed commands encoded on a storage medium

Digital scanner.

A device that generates a digital representation of an image for data input to a computer

  A Manufacturing process in which an item is made from raw or semi-finished materials instead of being assembled from ready-made components or parts.

Lean manufacturing.
  
  A systematic method for the elimination of waste within a manufacturing system.

  A manufacturing process for producing parts by injecting material into a mould.

Intellectual Capital.
  
  A difference between a firm’s market value and the cost of replacing its assets.

Intellectual Property (IP).
  
  A term that refers to the creation of ideas that an owner can make a financial gain off of protected by law.

  Patents, copyrights, trademarks,

trade secrets, etc. See Intellectual Property.

Internet of Things (IoT).
  
  A system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction

  A Community center that provides technology, manufacturing, equipment and educational opportunities to the public.

  The science of making measurements from photographs, especially for recovering the exact positions of surface points. More simply put, this process can be used for 3D scanning.

  A type of strong, impact resistant thermoplastic.

Polyphenylsulfone (PPSU or PPSF).
  
  A high

performance polymer often used in rapid-prototyping or rapid-manufacturing processes.

  A manufacturing subsystem that includes all functions required to design, produce, distribute, and service a manufactured product.

  A process of Building parts out of plastic or metal one layer at a time using a method of additive fabrication such as 3D printing.

Rapid Prototyping (RP).
  
  A group of techniques used to quickly fabricate a scale model of a physical part or assembly using three-dimensional computer aided design (CAD) data.

STEM.
  
  A type of educational field including the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

   Wikipedia
  
  . Retrieved May 18, 2016 from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

   Wikipedia
  
   RepRap
  
course

About the Discussion Forums

Expectations

With the large number of learners in this course, no one is expected to read every post made within the discussion forums. Rather, read those that seem interesting to you and reply when you can further the conversation. Above all, you are expected to remain civil and treat all other learners with respect. Failure to do so will result in your removal from the course.

Helpful Tools

Searching for Posts

You can search for a post by using the
  
   search box
  
  at the top of any individual forum or the
  
   All Course Discussions
  
  page. It may be helpful to see if your topic or question has already been covered before posting. If so, you can reply to that thread instead of starting a new one. You can also click on someone's name in the

forums (including your own) to see all of the posts that have been made by that person.

Upvoting Posts

When you view any post, you will see an
  
   Upvote
  
  button under each post. Click the button to draw attention to thoughtful, interesting, or helpful posts. In the course feedback forums, upvoting will ensure that important questions get addressed. The upvoting system is the best way elevate the best posts to be seen by other learners and University of Illinois staff.

Reporting Inappropriate Posts

Please report any posts that are abusive, offensive, that infringe upon copyright, or that otherwise violate
  
   Coursera’s Honor Code
  
  by using the
  
   Report this
  
  option found under the menu arrow to the right of each post.

Following

If you find a particular thread to

be interesting to you, click the
  
   Follow
  
  button under the original post of that thread page to receive email notifications when new posts are made.

Improving Your Posts

The forums are your chance to interact with thousands of like-minded individuals on these topics. Getting their attention is one way to do well in this course. In any social interaction, certain rules of etiquette are expected and contribute to more enjoyable and productive communication. The following are tips for interacting in this course via the forums, adapted from guidelines originally compiled by AHA! and Chuq Von Rospach & Gene Spafford:

Search the other posts to see if your topic is already covered. If it is, reply to that thread instead of starting a new one.

Post in the most appropriate forum for

your topic, and do not post the same thing in multiple forums.

Use a meaningful title for your thread.

Be civil. If you disagree, explain your position with respect and refrain from any and all personal attacks.

Stay on topic. In particular, don’t change the subject in the middle of an existing thread – just start a new topic.

Make sure you’re understood, even by non-native English speakers. Try to write full sentences, and avoid text-message abbreviations or slang. Be careful when you use humor and sarcasm as these messages are easy to misinterpret.

If asking a question, provide as much information as possible, what you’ve already considered, what you’ve already read, etc.

Cite appropriate references when using someone else’s ideas, thoughts, or words.

Do not use a forum to promote

your product, service, or business.

Do not post personal information about other posters in the forum.

Ignore spammers and report them.

For more details, refer to Coursera's
  
    Code of Conduct
   
  .

3D Printing Applications Syllabus

Course Description

In this course, you will learn how 3D printing changes the dominant paradigm of manufacturing with an extensive overview of the industry and a look at concrete examples in some cutting edge areas such as medicine, space and food, and bio printing.  You will also get an in-depth look at the potential of 3D printing in development, with an overview of projects in India, Tanzania, Argentina, and the US.

In Module 1, we get some views on the industry from research done by academics/consulting firms, from experts in intellectual property,  and even from venture capitalists.

In Module 2, we will highlight the potential of 3D printing to revolutionize the process of designing, making, distributing, and selling products and will give you an

opportunity to meet the players creating the ecosystem to make this possible.

In Module 3, we consider the role of 3D printing in revolutionizing education and the role it can play in development in underserved communities in both developing and developed countries.

Finally, in Module 4, you will be introduced to a design thinking framework, which will help you apply the skills you learn in the subsequent courses on software and hardware.

You will get a lot of opportunity to discuss and share your knowledge. We will also bring in experts in hangouts and recordings will be kept in the course as Bonus materials in the relevant modules. Look out for announcements for hangouts.

Course Goals and Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

Describe the ways

in which 3D printing enables a new way of making things.

Describe the trends in the 3D printing industry.

Explain the various applications of 3D printing.

Leverage the ecosystem around 3D printing to start your making journey.

Understand the basics of the design thinking approach, and build a foundation for learning the software and hardware skills in later courses.

Textbook and Readings

There are no textbooks for this course. Individual modules have recommended readings listed.

Course Outline

This course consists of one orientation module and four modules that focus on increasing your understanding of 3D printing applications.

Module 1: 3D Printing – A New Way of Making

Key Concepts:

Complexity and variety is Free

Economies of scope vs scale

Mass customization

Disruptive

innovation

Manufacturing renaissance

Module 2: 3D Printing – On-Demand Manufacturing

Distributed manufacturing

The sharing economy in 3D printing

On-demand production in your neighborhood

Rapid prototyping

Everyone is a maker

Module 3: 3D Printing for Development and Education

Subsistence marketplaces and the role of 3D printing

Maker literacy

Reuse/recycle and print

Distributed, decentralized philanthropy

Empowering individuals to solve local problems

Active learning with 3D printing

Module 4: From Ideas to Objects – A Design Thinking Approach

Design thinking framework

Role of design thinking in making

Elements of This Course

The course is comprised of the following elements:

Lecture Videos.
    
    In each module the

concepts you need to know will be presented through a  collection of short video lectures. You may stream these videos for  playback within your browser by clicking on their titles or by  downloading the videos. You may also download the slides that go along  with the videos.

In-Video Questions
    
    . Some  lecture videos have questions associated with them to help verify your  understanding of the topics. These questions will automatically appear  while watching the video if you stream the video through your browser.  These questions do not contribute toward your final score in the class.

Module Quizzes
    
    .  Each module will include 1 for-credit quiz. You will be allowed 3  attempts per every 8 hours at each quiz. There is no time limit on how  long you take to complete each

attempt at the quiz. Each attempt may  present a different selection of questions to you. Your highest score  will be used when calculating your final score in the class.

Peer Review Assignments.
    
    Each  module will include 1 peer reviewed exercise. You can attempt these  assignments multiple times. Your highest score will be used when  calculating your final score in the class.

How to Pass This Course

To qualify for a Course Certificate, simply start verifying your coursework at the beginning of the course and pay the fee. Coursera
  
   Financial Aid
  
  is available to offset the registration cost for learners with demonstrated economic needs. If you have questions about Course Certificates,
  
   please see the help topics here
  
  .

If you choose not to pay the fee
  
  ,

you can still audit the course. You will still be able to view all videos, submit practice quizzes, and view required assessments. Auditing does not include the option to submit required assessments. As such, you will not be able to earn a grade or a Course Certificate.

The following table explains the breakdown for what is  required in order to pass the class and qualify for a Course  Certificate. You must pass each and every required activity in order to pass this course.

Activity

Required?

Number per module

Estimated time per module

% required to pass

Lecture Videos

Yes

5-10

2 hours

N/A

Yes

0.5 hours

80%

Peer Review Assignments

Yes

1 hour

70%

Use the
    
      Learner Help

Center
     
    to find information regarding specific technical problems. For example, technical problems would include error messages, difficulty submitting assignments, or problems with video playback. If you cannot find an answer in the documentation, you can also report your problem to the Coursera staff by clicking on the
    
Use the
    
    forum to report errors in lecture video content, assignment questions and answers, assignment grading, text and links on course pages, or the content of other course materials. University of Illinois staff and Community Mentors will monitor this forum and respond to issues.

Note: Due to the large number

of learners enrolled in this course, I am not able to answer emails sent directly to my account. Rather, all questions should be reported as described above.

Updating Your Profile

Optionally, please consider
  
   updating your profile
  
  , which can also be accessed by clicking the
  
   Profile
  
  link in the menu that appears when you click on the arrow next to your initials at the top-right corner of this screen. When people find you in the forums, they can click on your name to view your complete profile and get to know you more.

Social Media

Learning takes place not only through course instruction but also through quality interaction with your peers. Research suggests that participating in a learning community around your interests and passions helps you stay motivated to learn. Thus, we encourage you to use our various social media platforms to connect with thousands of your peers from across the world. Learn from others, network, create study groups, discuss interesting course topics, and share your own perspectives about this topic. You can even set up or get notified about physical meetups on so that you can enhance your learning by interacting face-to-face with others who share your interests. The more active these communities are, the more value they will bring to all of us. So, we hope that you take a

leading role in keeping these communities active and of value to all of us, so please join your preferred platform and share your ideas!

Connect to your classmates via the following social media sites related to our 3D Printing courses:

Facebook

Twitter @3dprintingprofs

Google+

LinkedIn

Pinterest

You may also be interested in the following social media sites:

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Facebook

@Illinois_Alma on Twitter

@Illinois Business on Twitter

@Illinois MakerLab on Twitter

Coursera on Facebook

@Coursera on Twitter

If you find another social media page or community related to this course, feel share it in our discussion forums.

NOTE: Please do not post links to copyrighted materials in the Coursera discussion forums or on social networks. Doing so is

Industry 4.0: Global digital operations study 2018
                            
                                PwC's Strategy& 2018 global industry 4.0, Global digital operations study 2018 — Digital Champions, explores how industry leaders build integrated operations...

The Industrial Internet of Things
                            
                                Many manufacturers and industrial product companies have made great strides in connecting their products and appliances to the IoT. But success demands new...

GE Digital
                            
                                The PwC and GE Digital Alliance helps companies across the oil and gas, utilities, industrial, retail, healthcare and transportation sectors harness the power...

Meet founder and CEO Romain Kidd of My Mini Factory, the world's leading curated social platform for 3D Printable objects. The platform features tens of thousands of 3D designs ready for anyone to download for free and print on any desktop 3D printer along with challenges from corporates.
  
   3D Printing Applications
  
  Instructor
  
   Vishal Sachdev
  
  and
  
   3D Printing Revolution
  
  instructor
  
   Aric Rindfleish
  
  chat with
  
   Romain Kidd

View the video at

http://www.3dprintingprofs.com/2018/04/webinar-mini-factory-ceo-interview/

3D Printing Applications
  
Vishal Sachdev
  
  and

3D Printing Revolution
  
Aric Rindfleish
  
  discuss the recent trend in 3D Printing with

Jeremy Pullin
  
  , Director of Additive and Optimized Manufacturing at

Sartorius Stedium Lab.

http://www.3dprintingprofs.com/2016/07/whats-all-the-hype-around-3d-printing-webinar/

This is an audio recording (June 6th at 9:00 am US Central Time), of a chat with
  
   Jeremy Pullin
  
  , with Prof. Vishal Sachdev and Prof. Aric Rindfleisch. He is the director of Additive and Optimized Manufacturing at Sartorius Stedium Lab. Before joining Sartorius, he was Renishaw's Rapid Manufacturing Manager for several years. He was named as one of the world's Top 20 most influential people in additive manufacturing/industrial 3D printing by the readers of leading industry magazine TCT in 2012. We discussed the hype around 3d printing, and got his perspectives on the history and future of 3d printing.

Find out what One Foundation, also known as
  
   Infosys Foundation USA
  
  ,  is doing to spread maker education across America. The foundation’s  focus is to create opportunities for K-12 students to engage in STEM,  arts and design through making.

  and
  
  chat with Ex-Chairperson and President Kaustav  Mitra and Senior Program Fellow Stephanie Santoso who will describe  their work with the foundation as well as more details on their   contest.

http://www.3dprintingprofs.com/2018/04/webinar-maker-movement-education/

Robert (Bob) McCutcheon
  
  and

Thomas Waller
  
  , both leaders at

PwC
  
  . In this webinar,

  discusses McCutcheon’s report, “

3D Printing Comes of Age in Industrial Manufacturing
  
  ” including the results of the study.

View the recording at

http://www.3dprintingprofs.com/2016/07/3d-printing-comes-of-age-webinar/

This  assignment is worth
  
   20%
  
  of the course grade.

Both content and

organization are important  components of a response. Good writing is confident and clearly focused  with relevant details to enrich the content. Good writing also follows  instructions, such as word limits, and offers requested information.

Question 1

The two main ways 3D printing can be used in industry are rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing.

True

False

Question 2

What does the phrase “complexity is free” mean?

New possibilities emerge from the ability to print something free.

You can make complex parts with 3d printing

The marginal cost of adding complex features to an object is zero.

Complex objects are free to print for students enrolled in universities.

Question 3

3D printing disrupts manufacturing. Out of the reasons discussed, which option below is false?

Cost and quality issues in 3d printing lead to adoption barriers.

Printing is useful to print obsolete parts.

Expectations of volume rise in production.

Implementation is too expensive.

Question 4

According to the Wohler’s Associates 2016

report, how many 3D printers were sold in 2015?

About 100,000

About 278,000

About 120,000

About 80,000

Question 5

Which of the following is(are) true about 3D printers? Select all that apply.

3D printing allows for more complexity than traditional methods.

3D printers can print objects larger than themselves.

3D printers get directions from software that interprets design files.

Question 6

What is one problem associated with using 3D printing for manufacturing?

There are no economies of scale

You cannot produce intricate geometries.

There is a lot of waste

Question 7

It is possible to use a 3D printer to create structural airplane parts.

True

False

Question 8

In what way(s) will the job market be affected through 3D printing?

Jobs will be lost.

There will be a shift

from selling products to selling designs.

New startups will be created.

Question 9

An important factor for success in bioprinting is to create an environment that mimics the human body.

True

False

Question 10

What application of 3D printing that we’ve discussed so far do you find the most interesting?

Bioprinting

Zero gravity printing

Printing completely functional objects

Digital materials printing

3D printing food

Overview

You will gain an understanding of the history behind the creation of desktop 3D printers, the different types of desktop 3D printers, how they work, and what they are typically used for. Then we will observe a desktop 3D printer “in the wild,” noting the sequence of components that contribute to the process of fabricating a part. Armed with this experience, we can then examine a number of common perceptions and misperceptions held about desktop 3D printers to provide you with additional context for what desktop 3D printing is, isn’t, and isn’t yet. We will also share details to help you make an informed decision about the class of desktop 3D printer hardware that suits your specific needs and budget.

Time

approximately 3 hours
  
Lessons

Module 1 Overview

10 minutes

Module 1 Lecture Videos

80 minutes

Practice Quiz 1.1

5 minutes

Discussion Question 1

30 minutes

Practice Quiz 1.2

5 minutes

Discussion Question 2

30 minutes

Module 1 Quiz

30 minutes

Explain how “desktop 3D printers” emerges from and continues to extend the thirty+ year history of Additive Manufacturing.

Differentiate between popular types of desktop 3D printing technology, including recognizing limitations and opportunities associated with

each.

Develop a broad, practical overview of the elements involved when a desktop 3D printer produces a printed part.

Recognize the number of ways you might gain access to desktop 3D printers or 3D printing services where you are located.

Review a number of strategies to help guide you should you wish to purchase a desktop 3D printer.

Recognize the reasons that some students of desktop 3D printing build printer kit to better understand how the technology functions.

Solve a few of the common misperceptions frequently cropping up around this topic.

Recognize the passions that attracted a team of designers and engineers to the challenge of building a professional desktop 3D printing company.

Key Concepts

Desktop 3D Printers vs Industrial 3D Printers

Fused Deposition Modeling

(FDM)

Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF)•Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)

Stereolithography (SLA)

Digital Light Processing (DLP)

Rapid Prototyping (RP) and Additive Manufacturing (AM)

Conceptual and Functional Prototypes

Thermoplastic

Design for Manufacture

Industrial Design

Automation Design

Use the
    
    link available on

each topic's page within the Learner Help Center.

Use the
    
    forum to report errors in lecture video content, assignment questions and answers, assignment grading, text and links on course pages, or the content of other course materials. University of Illinois staff and community TAs will monitor this forum and respond to issues.

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3D printing: “Complexity is free” may be costly for some
                        
                            by

Mark Cotteleer

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06 March 2014

3D printing:

“Complexity is free” may be costly for some

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Additive manufacturing (AM)—the proper technical term for 3D printing—is likely to have an enormous impact on all our lives, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be good for every business.

Want to learn more about 3D printing?

Register for our upcoming course

Additive manufacturing (AM)—the technical term for 3D printing—is likely to have an enormously positive impact on all our lives, but for some businesses, it could be devastating. The outlook for many companies will hinge on the ways they respond to

this evolving technology and its competitive implications.

A common additive manufacturing catchphrase helps frame the challenge some companies will face:

“Complexity is free with additive manufacturing.”

When people say complexity is free, they are implicitly recognizing that AM technology can be incredibly versatile. Because it generally produces objects “layer by layer,” it can fabricate items that simply cannot be produced using other means. Many people find this to be one of the most exciting attributes of AM.

This critical attribute could transform the way some manufacturers operate, and it may force others into obsolescence.

Consider that many products are currently assembled out of multiple subcomponents. Often, this is because of constraints imposed by the way they are

designed and manufactured. For example, using traditional methods to machine complex internal structures for automotive or aircraft engine subcomponents requires that those internal structures are generally accessible to machine tools and then assembled into a larger component. Of course, in addition to the multiple subcomponents required to create a final assembly, there are also the many brackets and fasteners (screws, nuts, bolts, clips, etc.) required to hold everything together.

But with AM, such complexity may be “free.” That is, intricate structures may be created without the need for direct machine-tool access, reducing the need for multiple subcomponents. A well-known example from GE Aviation illustrates the point. For its next-generation aircraft engine, GE successfully

engineered a new kind of additively manufactured fuel nozzle that improves fuel economy and eliminates the need for subcomponents; instead of being assembled from 20 different parts, it is manufactured as a single piece.1

Now, eliminating 95 percent (or 67 percent, or 30 percent) of the pieces, brackets, and fasteners required for assembly is almost certainly a good thing for any business, but what are the implications for the producers of each of those lower-level items? Logically speaking, they will not be needed.

The closer you are to producing subcomponents that are not core to the function of higher-level assemblies (e.g., the screw that holds a cover plate on the side of an internally complex subcomponent), the more strategic the uncertainty you may face. Producers of brackets and

fasteners should take note: If the need for assembly is significantly reduced (or eliminated), ancillary components may become unnecessary—and therefore, subject to elimination.

Of course, the die is far from cast. Most companies are still in the very early stages of exploring the impact that AM can have beyond its traditional role as a driver of rapid prototyping. Nonetheless, a shift is underway. Applications of AM to final part production now represent one of the fastest growing segments of the market.

There are a couple of steps that company leaders can begin to take to position themselves for success, rather than possible obsolescence, in an AM-enabled marketplace:

Understand your company’s position in the supply chain. Do your company’s products facilitate the assembly of a

complicated, higher-level assembly? If yes, and especially if your product’s function is incidental to the function of the higher-level assembly, then your business may be at long-term risk from AM diffusion. You might want to think about how subcomponent elimination might affect your position in the chain.

Develop a sense of how your supply-chain partners are approaching AM technology. Are they moving beyond rapid prototyping applications to manufacture for end use? If the answer is yes, then time may be of the essence. Consider how your company will develop the technical capability to match or exceed competitors’ and other supply chain partners’ ability to disintermediate you. If the answer is no, look for opportunities to strike as a first mover to blunt competitors’ future efforts.

Either way, you want to position your company to benefit from possible part consolidations rather than being hurt by them.

It is increasingly possible to imagine an AM-driven shift toward supply chain consolidation, even as the technology is celebrated for democratizing production in other ways. AM technologies are rapidly evolving, and key aspects of their value proposition are increasingly clear. If not free, complexity is, at a minimum, getting less expensive. That may be a generally good thing, but some companies may suffer in the transition.2

I am interested in your other thoughts about how AM will create both winners and losers. It is important for us to separate the reality from the hype. Feel free to join the discussion by leaving a comment below.

Credits

Written by:

Endnotes

"Printing a high performance fuel nozzle," ASME video, December 2013, https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/media/aerospace-defense/video-printing-high-performance-fuel-nozzle. View in article

For a full discussion of the strategic paths that companies might follow on their AM journey, please see: Mark Cotteleer and Jim Joyce, “3D opportunity: Additive manufacturing paths to performance, innovation, and growth,” Deloitte Review, January 2014, http://dupress.com/articles/dr14-3d-opportunity/. View in article

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Topics in this article

Manufacturing
                        ,

Smart manufacturing
                        ,

Emerging technologies
                        ,

Additive Manufacturing

,

3D Opportunity
                        ,

3D Printing

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Managing Director | Center for Integrated Research

Mark is a managing director in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Supply Chain and Network Operations practice with a specialization in Digital Supply Networks and Industry 4.0. He has 25 years of consulting experience leading teams in technology-enabled reengineering, supply chain strategy, business analytics, and process design. Mark’s experience with clients includes manufacturing, supply chain, business analytics, healthcare, and service industries.

mcotteleer@deloitte.com

+1 414 977 2359

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Module 1 Readings

Required Readings

When Complexity is Free
  
  by Friedman, T. L.

The Ten Principles of 3D Printing
  
  by Lipson, H. and Kurman, M.

  by Cotteleer, M. J.

3D Printing comes of age in US industrial manufacturing
  
  by McCutcheon B., Pethick, B., and Bono, R.

Wohlers Report 2016 Published: Additive Manufacturing Industry Surpassed $5.1 Billion

Suggested Additional Resources

The Big Picture

Future of Making Excerpt from SXSW
  
  video starting at 19:10, and ending at 28:43.

The Questions Executives Should Ask About 3D Printing
  
  by Flynn, C.

Interesting Use Cases

https://3dprintingindustry.com/3dp-applications/

Summary of Trends

2015 Roundup Of 3D Printing Market Forecasts And Estimates
  
  by

Columbus, L.

Feel free to find other readings or resources and share them in the forums.

Home

Press Releases

/ Wohlers Report 2016 Published: Additive Manufacturing Industry Surpassed $5.1 Billion

Industry Grew by $1+ Billion for the Second Consecutive Year

FORT COLLINS, COLORADO, USA, April 5, 2016—Wohlers Associates, Inc., recognized widely as the leading consulting firm and preeminent authority on additive manufacturing and 3D printing worldwide—terms that are used interchangeably—today announced the publication of the Wohlers Report 2016. The 2016 edition marks the 21st consecutive year of its availability.

According to Wohlers Report 2016, the additive manufacturing (AM) industry, consisting of all AM products and services worldwide, grew 25.9% (CAGR) to $5.165 billion in 2015. The

CAGR for the previous three years was 31.5%. Over the past 27 years, the CAGR for the industry is an impressive 26.2%.

The annual state-of-the-industry report is highly anticipated by industry insiders and knowledgeable observers because its analysis is based on more than 20 years of data from companies in the AM industry. For Wohlers Report 2016, input was collected from 51 industrial system manufacturers, 98 service providers, 15 third-party material producers, and many manufacturers of low-cost desktop 3D printers.

The effort also included contributions from 80 experts in 33 countries. No other published analysis of the AM industry is supported by two decades of hard data, or the knowledge gained from it, as the basis for computing growth, analyzing trends, and forecasting the

future.

Wohlers Associates reports that, despite challenges, growth continued in many segments of the diverse industry, particularly in metal AM and the desktop 3D printer segments. In 2015, 62 manufacturers sold industrial-grade AM systems (valued at more than $5,000), compared to 49 in 2014, and twice as many as the 31 companies that sold industrial systems in 2011. All of these companies, and many others, are profiled in Wohlers Report 2016.

Wohlers Report 2016 is an excellent educational tool and a powerful reference. It provides an in-depth review and analysis of the industry worldwide. It includes growth, competitive products and services, and the future outlook for the industry. The report covers the technology’s history, applications, processes, materials, and equipment

manufacturers. It thoroughly documents developments in R&D, investment and collaborative activities in government, academia, and industry. The report brings to light the rich range of technologies, markets, and business models that are emerging within the industry.

The principal authors of the report are Tim Caffrey, senior consultant, Ian Campbell, associate consultant, and Terry Wohlers, principal consultant and president—all of Wohlers Associates. The company is fortunate to have developed the largest network of colleagues and contacts in the industry. This access and trust has resulted in a report that offers an unparalleled window into AM and 3D printing.

The 335-page Wohlers Report 2016 includes 35 charts and graphs, 68 tables, and 322 photographs and illustrations. It also

includes more than 160 pages of supplemental online information that is available to the buyers of the report.

Wohlers Associates is an independent consulting firm that provides technical, market, and strategic advice on the new developments and trends in additive manufacturing, 3D printing, and rapid product development. Wohlers Associates has completed consulting projects for more than 240 client organizations in 24 countries around the world. The company has also provided detailed advice to more than 150 companies in the investment community. For more information, visit https://wohlersassociates.com.

Access

Wohlers Report 2023

Technical, market, and strategic advice on Additive Manufacturing 3D Printing Rapid Product Development

See Report

Related Press & News

Congratulations on completing the course! At
  
   Gies College of Business
  
  , one of our strategic priorities is to democratize education.

Through our online degree programs, we're committed to creating life-changing access to a business education through a powerful, engaging online experience. Gies faculty experts engage with students from around the world, face-to-face in a digital classroom.

We invite you to learn more about our digital classroom and five ways you can access our online degree programs:
  
   https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/graduate-hub/online/

3d Printing In Education

I attended a conference at Duke University in June 2017. A great list of educators in 3d printing can be found at

https://construct3d2017.sched.com/directory/attendees

Many of the educators there contributed a great list of resources and updates from the conference. Some of them are given below

https://educationcloset.com/2017/06/01/20-education-3d-printing-resources/

https://karenblumberg.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/notes-from-day-3-of-construct3d-cant-wait-for-the-next-event-makered-stemed-steam/

Several printer manufacturers have provided good resources and lesson plans to help educators get started. Here are few relevant to the K-12

educators

https://www.makerbot.com/education/

http://www.stratasys.com/industries/education

https://www.seemecnc.com/pages/seemeeducate

Design Thinking + 3d Printing curriculum  for K-12 (We discuss this later in the course) :

http://www.cityxproject.com/

Module 3 Readings

Required

3D Printing in education: from eLearning to eMaking

Suggested Additional Readings

3D Printing for Development in the Global South: The 3D4D Challenge
    
    by Birtchnell, T. and Hoyle, W.

Indian Child Gets New Life Because Of 3D Printing

Can 3D-Printing Help the Refugee Crisis?
    
    by Khalil, J.

West African Woelab is Creating 3D Printers and Robots from E-Waste
    
    by Koslow, T.

Resources

Education

List of Teachers on Thingiverse

Thingiversity (curriculum/groups/software tutorials/Ebook
    
    )

Development

Recordings from a workshop in 2013 on Low-cost 3D Printing for Science, Education and Sustainable Development

A free book associated with this conference

Overview

In this module, we will consider the role of 3D printing in revolutionizing education and the role it can play in development in underserved communities in both developing and developed countries.

Time

   approximately 3.5 hours
  
Lessons

Lesson 1: 3D Printing for Development

90 minutes

Lesson 2: 3D Printing in Education

30 minutes

Module 3 Quiz

30 minutes

Module 3 Discussion Assignment

List several uses of

3D printing in education.

Describe the potential for 3D printing in development.

Use the
    
Use the
    
    forum  to report errors in lecture video content, assignment questions and  answers, assignment grading,

text and links on course pages, or the  content of other course materials. University of Illinois staff and  community TAs will monitor this forum and respond to issues.

NOV
		
		APR
		
		    May
		
               2
	       
                   2013
               
               2015
	       
                   2016
               
           13 captures
           2 May 13 - 2 Apr 15

Close
       Help

ICTP Science Dissemination Unit

ICTP Website

Contact

Workshop

Home page

Timetable and videos

Photogallery

the Book

Other Resources

3D Scans

Documenti in ITALIANO

Open Book on "Low-cost 3D

Printing for Science, Education and Sustainable Development"

Low-cost, three-dimensional (3D) desktop printing, although still in its infancy, is rapidly maturing,
            with seemingly unlimited potential. The hope is that this cutting-edge 3D technology will open new dimensions
            to science and education, and will make a marked impact in developing countries.
This book gives a reasonable, first overview of current research on 3D printing. It aims to inspire curiosity and
understanding in young scholars and new generations of scientists to motivate them to start building up their own
3D printing experiences and to explore the huge potential this technology provides –with the final goal of putting
learning literally in their hands.

Spanish, Russian, Korean and Italian

translation of the book are also available.

Download the PDF (Low-resolution, 10MB) 
			Download the PDF (High-resolution, 150MB)

Download the ePub (black & white, 13MB) 
			Download the mobi (black & white, 24MB)
			Converted to ePub and mobi by Marco Rainone.

Download the ePub (full color, 15MB) 
			Download the mobi (full color, 28MB)

Get the iBook version for iPad (from Apple iBook Store)
			Note: the iPad version contains enhanced multimedia contents 
			not available in the other versions (e.g. videos, interactive 3D objects, etc).

Leave your comments on Thingiverse

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Low-cost 3D Printing for Science, Education and Sustainable Development by Enrique Canessa

3D Printing: Glossary

Low-cost

A Practical Guide to Your First 3D Print by Carlo Fonda

The Role of Open Source Software and Hardware in the 3D Printing Revolution by Marco Zennaro

Plug-n-Play, Do-It-Yourself Kits and Pre-assembled 3D Printers by Gaya Fior

Reprap, Slic3r and the Future of 3D Printing by Alessandro Ranellucci

3D Modeling with OpenSCAD - Part 1 by Sebastian Büttrich

3D Modeling with OpenSCAD - Part 2 by Marius Kintel

Low-cost 3D Printing for Science

Illustrating Mathematics using 3D Printers by Oliver Knill, Elizabeth Slavkovsky

Science and Art: Periodic Tessellations by Gian Carlo Ghirardi

Printable ALICE 3D Models at CERN by Stefan Rossegger

Large Scale 3D Printing: from Deep Sea to the Moon by Valentina Colla, Enrico Dini

Trabecular Bone Modeling with Support of 3D Printing of

Physical Replicas by Waldir L. Roque

Low-cost 3D Printing for Education

Using 3D Printers at School: the Experience of 3drucken.ch by Gregor Lütolf

Prehistoric Collections and 3D Printing for Education by Louise Leakey, Tatjana Dzambazova

3D Printing in Art Installations by Daniel Pietrosemoli

From Math to Jewel: an Example by Gaya Fior

Low-cost 3D Printing for Sustainable Development

3D Printing in the Developing World: Learning from Techfortrade’s 3D4D Challenge by William Hoyle

3D Printed Anatomic Replicas for Medical and Educational Purposes in Dental Surgery: Practical Projects from a Sustainable Development Point of View by Paolo Rossi, Carlo Campana

Perpetual Plastic Project by Jonas Martens, Laura Klauss

© 2013 by the The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical

Question 1

The Marketplace Literacy Project uses a bottom-up approach, geared towards understanding how people live, what their life circumstances are, and how they engage as consumers.

True

False

Question 2

According to Professor Madhu Viswanathan, what are the keys to marketplace literacy?

Skills, entrepreneurship, self-confidence

Entrepreneurship, self-confidence, awareness of rights

Skills, self-confidence, agency

Skills, self-confidence, awareness of rights

Question 3

There is a unique need for 3D printing in low-income, low-literacy populations.

True

False

Question 4

Learning does not benefit from physical manipulation.

True

False

Question 5

What does Protoprint do?

Improves the lives of waste pickers in India

Takes recycled plastics and turns them into printer

filament

Employs grassroots employees

Works with governmental organizations to clean up landfills

Question 6

The Enable Project does not have a central facility where prosthetics are created. They are mostly created and distributed by the virtual community of volunteers .

True

False

Question 7

Anyone can join the Enable Project and start designing and printing prosthetics right away.

True

False

Question 8

What is the major difference between the Enable Project and the Exiii Project?

The Enable hands are motorized; Exiii hands are not.

The Enable hands are open sourced; Exiii hands are not.

The Exiii hands are motorized; Enable hands are not.

The Exiii hands are open sourced; Enable hands are not.

Question 9

What is the goal for Makergirls?

Provide a space for young girls

to explore their creativity

Expose young girls to 3D printing

Introduce young girls to 3D modeling

Introduce young girls to STEM fields, through 3D printing

Would you be interested in working with the Enable Project or the Exiii Project?

Enable

Exiii

Both

Neither

Question 1

Shapeways is a global fulfillment company. Is it possible to run a business with them?

Yes

No

Question 2

3D Hubs is a network of 3D printers operated by individuals.

True

False

Question 3

How is the Maker Revolution different from the Industrial Revolution?

The Industrial Revolution gave us access to the means and tools needed to create.

The Maker Revolution gives us access to the means and tools needed to create.

The Maker Revolution sanctions the means and tools necessary to create.

They are the same.

Question 4

What is the mission of the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab?

Allow community access to tools and resources

Promote creativity

Foster education, boost research, inspire entrepreneurship, promote art

None of the above

Question 5

TechShop offers

training and classes so that makers can start creating right away.

True

False

Question 6

According to Jeff Ginger, there are approximately how many functional Fab Labs in the world?

50-100

100-200

200-250

300-350

Question 7

You do not need to use supports when using an SLS printer.

True

False

Question 8

What is the distinction that John Hornick made between intellectual property (IP) and IP rights?

IP rights are the fruits of someone’s imagination while IP is legal documentation – copyrights 	     and patents – behind the idea.

People in the maker movement do not care about IP.

People in the maker movement are quite knowledgeable about IP rights.

IP is the fruit of someone’s imagination while IP rights are the legal documents –copyrights 	     and patents – behind the

idea.

Question 9

The concept of printing “away from control”  suggests that firms cannot enforce IP in such cases.

True

False

There is a difference in patent law when it comes to repair versus reconstruction.

True

False

Overview

In this module, we will discuss examples of how 3D printing enhances product customization as well as the development of on-demand manufacturing. We will look at how individuals, entrepreneurs, and businesses can leverage the ecosystem to turn ideas into objects. Finally, we will consider the importance of intellectual property issues in 3D printing.

Time

Lessons

Lesson 1: Everyone Can Be a Maker

60 minutes

Lesson 2: 3D Printing and Intellectual Property

30 minutes

Module 2 Quiz

30

minutes

Module 2 Peer Review Assignment

Identify resources available to make things in your local area.

Explain the issues in intellectual property in 3D printing.

Use the
    
    link available on each topic's page within the

Learner Help Center.

Use the
    
    forum  to report errors in lecture video content, assignment questions and  answers, assignment grading, text and links on course pages, or the  content of other course materials. University of Illinois staff and  community TAs will monitor this forum and respond to issues.

Module 2 Readings

3D Scanning: The Achilles Heel of IP Protection for 3D Printing
  
  by Hornick, J.F.

Understanding the 3d Printing Ecosystem
  
  by Andreas Bastian

MySolidWorks: new Dassault Systemes platform pushes 'manufacturing as a service'
  
  by  Andrew Zaleski

UPS and SAP launch an on-demand manufacturing network for 3D printing
  
  by Hope Reese

United States: IP Strategies For The Rise Of 3D Printing
  
  by Pierce, J. E., & Schwarz, S. J.

3D printing and intellectual property: What you need to know about copyright, designs and models
  
  by Cassaignau, A.

Let’s look closer at 3D printing and IP issues
  
  by Eckstein, M. M.

Feel free to find other readings or resources and share them in the

forums.

Resources

Makerspaces/Hackerspaces

Fab Labs

List of Hacker Spaces

Service Providers

http://3dp4e.com/service_providers

3D Printing 
Trend Report 20231 / 30
EU +31 85 888 7380
US +1 845-402-8321press@hubs.com
www.hubs.com3D Printing  
Trend Report 2023
www.hubs.com
Market insights and forecasts  
in additive manufacturing

docs/3d-printing-applications/020 3DP Trend report 2023_DEF_BB.pdf

Trend Report 20232 / 30
www.hubs.com2 / 30Key findings
The uptake of 3D printing in manufacturing is continuing to grow, with more engineers using 
3D printing more frequently and for higher volume orders. This signals that its evolution from 
a hobbyist technology to an industrial manufacturing solution is only gaining momentum. 
Further fueling its mainstream adoptions, new innovations in composites, AI and shape-morphing  
systems are presenting new potential applications.
Trend Report 2023EU +31 85 888 7380
www.hubs.com83%
of respondents believe 3D printing 
helped them save substantial costs  
in their manufacturing pipeline$19.9bn
in predicted 3D printing market growth 
in

2023, an increase of 17%
56%
of survey participants named FDM 
the most frequently used additive 
technology
of businesses produced 10+ parts 
in their production runs, up from 
49% in 202176%71%
of businesses surveyed  
used 3D printing more  
in 2022 than in 2021

Trend Report 20233 / 30
www.hubs.comTable of contents
From fiction to fabrication: A brief history of 3D printing 4
Recent technology trends and advances in 3D printing 6
3D printing market growth and predictions 8
3D printing's impact on key industries 11
Five industries 3D printing is driving forward 15
Future of 3D printing 17
Green by design: Additive manufacturing and sustainability 22
The shape of things to come 24
How we created this report 25
References 28

Trend Report 20234 / 30
Our 2023 report explores the latest trends and advancements in 3D printing technology, 
touching upon the market growth and future projections. We will also discuss the current 
applications of additive manufacturing (AM), identify the key industries that rely on this 
technology, and delve into its future prospects. Furthermore, we will examine the impact 
of 3D printing on sustainability. But first, let’s take a brief journey through the history that 
has shaped this innovation.
Many scientific innovations have roots in science fiction, and 3D printing is no exception. 
The earliest concept resembling modern additive manufacturing appeared in a 1945 short 
story by William Fitzgerald

Jenkins (pen name Murray Leinster) called “Things Pass By.” 
The tale described a machine that created objects from magnetronic plastics, planting  
the seeds of 3D printing in the minds of the general public.
Several decades later, in the early 1970s, Johannes F. Gottwald filed the first patent for 
a process called liquid metal recorder.[01] The concept involved producing objects from 
liquified metal, which solidified layer by layer.
In 1980, Dr. Hideo Kodama expanded upon Gottwald's idea by proposing the use of 
thermosetting polymers instead of metal.[02] He also suggested using ultraviolet (UV) light 
to cure photopolymers, a process now known as stereolithography (SLA). Dr. Kodama 
filed a patent application for his UV curing-based rapid prototyping technique in Japan, 
but was

unable to secure a patent internationally.
Hideo Kodama's early patent of a house fabricated by 3D printer, image via IEICEFrom fiction to fabrication
A brief history of 3D printing

Trend Report 20235 / 30
www.hubs.comCharles Hull later filed a patent for SLA in 1986. His company, 3D Systems Corporation, 
released the world’s first commercially available 3D printer, the SLA-1.[03] In addition to this 
landmark achievement, Hull also invented the STL file format still in use today.
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, 3D printing began to demonstrate potential in various 
industries including bioengineering. What made 3D printing truly mainstream, however, 
was Adrian Bowyer’s RepRap Project, which launched in 2005.[04] Short for Replicating 
Rapid Prototyper, RepRap’s objective was to develop a machine capable of building most 
of its own parts, making the technology more accessible and affordable.
The

outcome was the RepRap 1.0 Darwin machine, which could print several of its own 
components required for the assembly. This breakthrough made 3D printing accessible  
to hobbyists, researchers, and small businesses alike.
The expiry of key 3D printing patents, starting with Fused Deposition Modelling  
(FDM) in 2009 and followed by Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and SLA in the 2010s,  
led to accelerated growth and development in the additive manufacturing industry.  
The elimination of licensing fees reduced printer development and production costs, 
allowing more companies to enter the market and spurring competition and innovation.
As ownership of desktop 3D printers grew, Bram de Zwart, Brian Garret, and Filemon 
Schöffer founded 3D Hubs in 2013.[05] The online platform connected

people requiring 
3D printing services with local printer owners. Users could upload their 3D models to the 
platform and have them produced at affordable prices. As more professional engineers 
used the platform for product development, the business rebranded as Hubs and pivoted 
to connecting mechanical engineers with a qualified network of manufacturing partners 
to provide broader capabilities.
Today, additive manufacturing is a mature technology, with steady growth in consumer 
interest and industrial applications. Recent advancements in 3D printing focus on 
refinements such as speed, scale, efficiency, cost reduction, and sustainability,  
which we will cover in the next section.
Hubs ' distributed manufacturing network is made up 
of 240+ suppliers, spread across 4 continents

Trend Report 20236 / 30
www.hubs.comRecent technology trends and advances  
in 3D printing
Starting with hardware advancements, there have been significant developments in  
the large-format metal AM space. For instance, SLM Solutions is building a laser-powder 
bed fusion (LPBF) system with a 1.5-meter Z-axis[06] for the US Air Force, which will use 
multiple lasers to produce large-scale metal parts and could become the largest laser 
fusion-based printer. Large-scale composite specialist Caracol is also developing a near-
net-shape metal wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) system, which uses metal wire 
feedstock and a robotic welding arm to create large structures or repair metal parts.[07]
There are also new

developments in extrusion technologies; Belgian startup Sculpman  
has patented a variable nozzle. It uses a rectangular nozzle hole, which can be adjusted  
to control the layer width throughout the build, resulting in faster deposition rates without 
compromising quality.[08]
Looking next at materials, there is an ever-growing variety of engineering thermoplastics 
and resins, composites, polymer powders, and metal powders. Electrostatic discharge 
(ESD) resins are opening up applications in electronics, damping elastomer resins in 
wearables, and flame retardant materials in transport and other industries.WAAM 5-axis wire arc additive manufacturing for large metal parts, image via GEFERTEC

Trend Report 20237 / 30
www.hubs.comSoftware developments are driving forward many of the major technology milestones  
in 3D printing. In FDM, there have been breakthroughs in non-planar printing, with 
GCODE generation software enabling the printing of curved lines to minimize ladder 
effect, eliminate supports for overhangs, and improve vertical strength.[09]
In an industrial context, automation is top of mind. Print speed, quality, and consistency 
are advancing thanks to greater process automation, including slicer optimization, smart 
part orientation, batch layouts, and post-processing. Workflow automation is also vital 
and there are a growing number of software solutions that link and automate the various 
stages in

the 3D printing production chain. A fully automated workflow ultimately enables 
lights-out 3D printing, with factories that require little to no human supervision.
Broadly speaking, 3D printing has experienced something of a reverse evolution of sorts; 
starting off as a mostly hobbyist and DIY technology, the technology is now maturing and 
realizing its industrial potential.
Direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) is capable of 3D printing complex and organic part geometries in a range  
of metal materials

Trend Report 20238 / 30
www.hubs.comIn 2022, the average estimated market size, which included revenue from 3D printing 
systems, software, materials, and services, reached $17 billion at an annual growth 
rate of 13%. Our previous report had predicted a market size of $18.3 billion with an 
annual growth rate of 21%, based on our internal intelligence and averages of the CAGR 
projections from the industry's top 10 market analyst firms.
Bear in mind that most market analyst firms do not report data on an annual basis.  
As a result, their 2023 predictions still rely on a CAGR of 21%. However, considering  
that the growth in 2022 was less robust than we initially anticipated, we have adjusted  
our 2023 predictions to

reflect a revised annual growth rate of 17%. Based on our 
calculations, we now forecast a market size of $19.9 billion for 2023.
Our most recent survey from February 2023, involving 1,035 participants, highlights the 
market growth. The majority of respondents, 71%, revealed they 3D printed more parts  
in 2022 than they did in 2021, while only 8% printed fewer parts during the same period.3D printing market growth and predictions
Figure 1: Quantity of parts 3D printed in 2022
Q: How many 3D printed parts did you source/produce in 2022? 
Source: Hubs survey, conducted February 2023, n=1035
 More parts than in 2021
 Fewer parts than in 2021  
 Same as in 2021
71%21%8%

Trend Report 20239 / 30
www.hubs.comPolymer and metal 3D printing updates
According to the latest report from AM Power, the industrial metal additive manufacturing 
market experienced a growth of over 20% in 2022 and was valued at more than €3 billion.[10] 
The technology is predicted to grow even further in the coming years with a compound 
annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 30% until 2027.[11] Meanwhile, the polymer AM 
market is expected to grow at an annual rate of approximately 13%, with a starting value  
of EUR 6.5 billion in 2022.
Despite the faster growth in the metal AM market, the polymer AM market still generated 
over twice the revenue compared to its metal counterpart. This trend is reflected in our 
survey as

well, with polymer 3D printing processes clearly taking the lead over metal  
3D printing technologies.
Within each of these printing technologies, the advancement of post-processing options 
is helping drive adoption. Polymer 3D printing, including SLA and SLS, often requires  
a process like vapor smoothing to improve the surface finish. An additional post-processing 
step is also often critical in metal 3D printing. In a recent survey, global digital manufacturer  
Protolabs  learned more than two-thirds of DMLS customers required some level of 
surface finishing on their parts. Protolabs acquired Hubs in 2021 to offer an even more 
comprehensive online manufacturing solution to engineers, including a variety of post-
processing options.  
Figure 2: Most favored 3D printing method
Q:

Which 3D printing method do you primarily use for part manufacturing?                                             
10%20%56%
8.8%
2.8%
1.7%
0.7%SLSSLAFDM
MJF
SLM
DMLS
EBM

Trend Report 202310 / 30
www.hubs.com“3D printers have evolved to accommodate large part sizes, fast speeds and a growing 
library of materials that fit a variety of applications, but post-processing is often a necessary 
step to strengthen or improve the cosmetic appearance of parts,” Protolabs Applications 
Engineer, Eric Utley said. “Fortunately, the innovation we are seeing in these downstream 
processes is becoming both more effective and automated, greatly increasing the scale  
of the additive industry.”
3D printer market updates
Market analysis firm CONTEXT reported a notable increase in 3D printer revenue, 
even though global shipments declined by 4% during the same period.[12] The research 
organization attributes

the 14% rise in system sales revenue during Q3 2022 to inflationary 
pressures that led to price increases across all categories, bolstering revenue. In contrast, 
the firm discovered that unit shipments, particularly sub-$2,500 “personal” 3D printers, 
dropped significantly due to demand and supply chain issues. Despite the overall growth 
in revenue, CONTEXT reported only a modest 2% increase in industrial shipments between  
Q3 2021 and Q3 2022, with metal units rising by 4% while polymer machines declined by 
2%. This trend of high revenue and low-volume sales is predicted to persist through 2023.
SLS printers at Protolabs' additive manufacturing facility in the U.S.

Trend Report 202311 / 30
www.hubs.com3D printing's impact on key industries
This section highlights the primary applications of 3D printing and the key industries 
that have embraced this innovative technology. By examining how various sectors have 
integrated 3D printing into their operations, we can better understand its versatility  
and potential for future growth. 
 
Main applications for 3D printing
 
1. Prototyping
Developing a sample product to assess design and functionality before full-scale 
production was the first real use for 3D printing, and still represents a significant share.  
In our survey, 66% of respondents said they use 3D printing for prototyping because  
it helps speed up product development times.

New designs or features can be iterated, 
tested, and validated with greater agility.
2. Tooling
Tooling involves creating specialized equipment for production. With its ability to produce 
tools, jigs, fixtures, and assembly aids on demand, 3D printing can enhance conventional 
production lines by minimizing machine downtime, increasing production agility, and  
unlocking custom solutions. At its facility in Poland, for example, Toyota has reaped the 
benefits of using AM for tooling, citing agility, faster lead times, and design freedom  
as the three main benefits.[13]
Figure 3: Top 3D printing applications
Q: What’s your main use for 3D printing?                                            
21%66%
6.4%
6%
0.3%
0.3%End-use

Trend Report 202312 / 30
www.hubs.com3. Low-volume production
When producing a limited number of units meant for niche markets, 3D printing presents 
an economically viable method. It empowers manufacturers to offer limited-edition products  
and spare parts production, all while minimizing costs typically associated with inventory 
and storage. Toyota also uses HP 3D printing to print replacement parts on demand as 
well as short-run end-use components.[14] 
4. Mass customization
For mass customization, where products are tailored to individual customers without 
compromising high output levels, 3D printing is the ideal manufacturing method.  
CAD files can be modified depending on customer needs and printed in batches for

efficient and custom production. Dental aligner molds are a perfect example of this.[15] 
Tech startup Formify also uses 3D printing to produce custom ergonomic computer  
mice based on images of the customers’ hands.[16] 
 
4. Serial production
Serial production is a process of creating multiple identical products, in succession,  
for high efficiency. As workflows are increasingly digitalized and automated, it is easier  
for manufacturers to produce parts round-the-clock. In 3D printing, serial production  
is especially viable for small parts because several of them can fit into a single build.  
For example, Protolabs leverages a fleet of 150 3D printers, turning out as many as  
1 million parts per year for its clients.
Figure 4: Size of 3D printing production runs
Q: What was the

size of your 3D printing production runs in 2022?                                              
24%
27%
24%
20%
5%1-10 parts
11-50 parts
51-100 parts
101-1000 parts
1001+ parts

Trend Report 202313 / 30
www.hubs.comPrimary industries
 
1. Aerospace
Aerospace was among the first adopters of additive manufacturing. The technology’s 
propensity for low-volume production as well as its design freedom have created 
opportunities for aerospace OEMs over the years. One of the primary reasons aerospace 
manufacturers have been so enthusiastic about 3D printing is that it allows them to produce  
more lightweight components, which improve aircraft fuel efficiency. Jet engines, structural  
aircraft parts, and interior cabin components are just some of the parts that 3D printing  
is used for today.
Aerospace components can undergo design optimization, and larger assemblies can be 
consolidated into fewer

parts. 3D printing also empowers aerospace OEMs to accelerate 
development and production cycles, eliminating the need for tooling by directly producing  
functional end-use parts in metal or engineering-grade polymers. 
Aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) providers are also turning to AM  
to improve operations. In 2022, GE Aviation’s Loyang facility in Singapore became the first 
MRO site to receive approval for using metal additive manufacturing to repair commercial 
jet engine components, reportedly cutting repair times in half.[17]  
Metal 3D printers line the factory floor at Protolabs

Trend Report 202314 / 30
www.hubs.com2. Automotive
The implementation of additive manufacturing in the automotive industry has evolved 
substantially over the last three decades. Today, various 3D printing processes are used 
for rapid prototyping, tooling, customization, spare-part manufacturing, and series 
production.
Automotive manufacturers, including BMW, GM, Ford, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz, 
have benefited from 3D printing. Some have found revenue opportunities by bringing to 
market exclusive luxury products. The Cadillac CELESTIQ, unveiled in late 2022, is an 
“all-electric, ultra-luxury flagship” that integrates 115 3D printed end-use components. It 
is hailed by GM as its most technologically advanced Cadillac

vehicle.[18] Bentley Motors 
recently became the first automotive brand to 3D print solid gold details for the Batur.[19]
There is also a growing automotive trend to explore 3D printing for serial mass production. 
This is enabled by advances in digitalized workflows and automation. BMW participated 
in the IDAM project, which successfully built fully automated production lines driven by 
metal 3D printing. These production lines are capable of turning out 50,000 components 
per year.[20] The successful pilot project demonstrates AM’s potential for industrial, high-
volume production for automotive.
3. Medical
3D printing has helped to advance diagnostic and treatment solutions in the medical 
sector. Today, the technology is used in the production of patient-specific implants,

prosthetics, surgical guides and instruments, anatomical models, dental products, and  
more. Additive manufacturing allows for easy customization (with a patient’s medical scans  
being translated into printable models) and can be used for point-of-care production. 
The technology provides a high degree of agility. In Ukraine, for instance, there are 
efforts underway to deliver much-needed 3D printed custom implants, suture anchors 
(used for re-attaching soft tissue, like tendons or ligaments, to bone), and other medical 
instruments to hospitals on the front line.[21]
In the dental segment, 3D printing is now well integrated–particularly vat polymerization, 
which accounts for 60% of the dental 3D printing share.[22] Dental and orthodontist labs 
rely on technology to produce custom

crowns and bridges, dentures, implants, surgical 
guides, and more. Many of the leading clear aligner brands use 3D printing to create 
custom molds for their clients’ aligners rapidly.[23]

Trend Report 202315 / 30
www.hubs.comFive industries 3D printing is driving forward
There is potential for 3D printing in all industries, but some have been keener adopters 
than others. Here are five industries that are exploring 3D printing and are on the cusp  
of transformation. 
 
1. Food
3D printed food has been around for quite some time: printed pizzas, chocolate, and 
candy laid the groundwork for what is happening in the field today. The technology,  
which is being adapted for printing meat substitutes as well as cultivated meat, has 
enormous potential for reducing reliance on intensive animal farming. Printed food could 
also be embedded with custom nutrient profiles to benefit medical patients or the elderly.
2.

Fashion
3D printing’s impact on fashion is gaining traction, particularly in footwear. Adidas famously  
brought running shoes with 3D printed midsoles to market,[24] but they are not the only 
company pushing the boundary. At Paris Fashion Week 2023, multiple 3D printed shoes 
were featured on the runway (Reebok x BOTTER [25], Maison Dior [26]). Beyond footwear, 
there are also explorations of 3D printed textiles led by designers like Julia Koerner, Anouk 
Wipprecht, and Bastian Müller. In fashion, 3D printing enables greater design freedom, 
customization, local production, and less material waste.
The Met Gala 2019 featured a 3D printed dress by Zac Posen in collaboration with Protolabs and GE Additive

Trend Report 202316 / 30
www.hubs.com3. Motorsports
Speedier production cycles, low-volume capacity, and design freedom are driving  
3D printing’s adoption in motorsports. Teams from NASCAR, Formula 1, and MotoGP 
are printing prototypes, tools, and end-use components with the aim of creating more 
lightweight and aerodynamic cars. Many motorsport teams are now using 3D printing 
in some capacity. Stratasys recently signed a partnership with NASCAR [27] and has also 
worked extensively with F1 team McLaren, while composite 3D printing company Roboze 
supported Ducati throughout the 2022 MotoGP season.[28]
4. Healthcare
Point-of-care 3D printing in healthcare settings will transform the industry, providing  
more

customization, efficiency, and better patient outcomes. Bioprinting is another 
avenue that is poised to disrupt healthcare. Bioprinting human cells in hydrogel will help 
tissue engineering evolve, particularly in regenerative medicine and drug development 
testing. While bioprinting is still very much in R&D, there is notable interest from 
pharmaceutical companies, who could benefit from accelerated drug testing.[29]
5. Aerospace
3D printing is linked to the aerospace industry in many ways. It is used in space to produce 
spare parts, in the production of satellites, to explore the possibility of printing lunar and 
Martian habitats and to produce rocket engines. In the case of the latter, AM is helping 
space launch startups, such as Relativity, to accelerate rocket production thanks

to part 
consolidation and optimized design. Relativity’s first fully 3D printed rocket, the Terran 1, 
is set to have its first launch in 2023.[30]
Exo Prosthetic Leg, image via William Root

Trend Report 202317 / 30
www.hubs.comFuture of 3D printing
The future of 3D printing is unfolding layer by layer, much like the objects it produces.  
In this section, we explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and smart materials 
on the additive manufacturing industry. To get insights into how these advanced 
technologies are simplifying design and production workflows, improving efficiency,  
and enabling the creation of adaptive products, we reached out to experts in the industry. 
Here are their insights on where the industry’s heading.
AI-assisted 3D printing
 
Additive Manufacturing (AM) and AI are revolutionizing their respective fields.  
3D printing has transformed manufacturing and design, while AI tools

like ChatGPT, 
MidJourney, and Stable Difusion are changing the media landscape by generating art, 
articles, and stories with simple text input. The potential for innovation is limitless when 
3D printing and AI converge.
Quality control
Even small defects in components can lead to catastrophic consequences in the 
aerospace industry. The answer is AI-enabled 3D printers, which can detect errors  
and correct them before they occur.
According to Jacob Wilson, Regional Manager at Bcn3d.com, “In-print monitoring has 
huge potential for AI integration. We’re already seeing things like “Spaghetti Detection” 
[utilizing computer vision and ML to detect print failures] becoming increasingly popular 
among desktop FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) systems.”
Machine learning model for detecting

Trend Report 202318 / 30
www.hubs.comGenerative design
The democratization of manufacturing capabilities has been made possible by the 
widespread accessibility of consumer 3D printers and distributed manufacturing 
platforms such as Hubs. Nevertheless, the design process still requires a working 
knowledge of both CAD and slicer software, which can be complex and challenging  
to learn.
James Bricknell, CNET’s Senior Editor, envisions AI tools breaking down the barriers 
to entry in 3D printing. He says, “The significant AI advancement will be 3D model 
generation using technologies like ChatGPT. I believe that in the coming years, we’ll 
witness programs enabling the creation of intricate geometries simply through voice

commands.”
Print optimization
Achieving the right print efficiency and quality demands meticulous fine-tuning of  
a variety of parameters, such as layer height, infill density, path planning, and support 
structures. Mark Lamkin, co-founder of FYR Medical, thinks AI can ace this process. He says,  
“This could be something simple, such as improving layer fidelity, or more complex, like  
exploring novel combinations of manufacturing methods. Humans are very good at 
recognizing patterns, but we are slow compared to the speed of a computer.”
Medical industry
3D printing has already proved its value in healthcare with customized prosthetics and 
medical implants. However, the existing methods can be both time-consuming and 
resource-intensive.
Robin Brockötter, Hubs’ resident 3D printing

expert, believes AI-assisted automation can 
speed things up. He states, “Specialized AI tools are set to reduce the complexity of the 
design process, making it easier for doctors and other healthcare professionals to be more 
involved in the undertaking.”
Looking at the significant transformations that AI has brought about in various fields like 
art, literature, and software development, it’s reasonable to assume it can also accelerate 
the developments in 3D printing technology. In addition to making AM faster and more 
efficient, AI will hopefully make it more accessible and user-friendly, to the point where 
it’s as easy to use as your everyday office inkjet printer. For further insights, head over to 
this page to access the full article .

Trend Report 202319 / 30
Shape-morphing systems (4D printing)
 
Shape-morphing systems, also known as 4D printing, add the dimension of time to 
3D printing. By using responsive materials that react to external elements like heat, 
light, moisture, electric current, or pressure, 4D printed objects can change shape or 
properties. Imagine a smart textile that adjusts its breathability based on humidity or 
a plumbing system that expands or contracts in response to temperature fluctuations. 
While 4D printing is still in its infancy, it’s easy to envision the huge impact it could have  
on various sectors.
Healthcare
Traditional implants often face limitations due to their inflexible structures. However, 
4D

printing could change that, allowing implants to adapt to a patient’s body over time. 
Robert Jones, a manufacturing engineer at Nissha Medical Technologies, believes  
4D printing’s benefits will extend beyond implants, saying, “This technology can be  
used for controlling the release of a drug in the body with extreme precision.”
Researchers are already creating 4D printed hydrogels for stimuli-responsive, targeted 
drug delivery. These hydrogels can detect changes in a patient's vitals, such as body 
temperature, pH levels, blood pressure, or enzyme presence, and release medication 
accordingly. For heart patients requiring timely access to medicine, this technology  
could be a lifesaver.
Aerospace
Shape-morphing components can enable aircraft to adapt to various flight conditions,

reduce air drag, and enhance performance and fuel efficiency. As highlighted by Concordia  
University research, 4D printed drone wings, which can bend up to 20 degrees in response  
to stimuli, can significantly improve efficiency.[31] Beyond that, 4D printed materials can help  
develop lightweight, flexible structures for satellites and spacecraft, ultimately lowering 
the costs and complexity associated with space missions.
4D printed self-folding protein, image via Self-Assembly Lab

Trend Report 202320 / 30
Adrian Nordtomme, Director of APAPTA LTD, claims that 4D printing’s benefits will impact  
other transportation industries as well. “I believe 4D printing could be particularly intriguing  
in applications where an electric current is applied to the object, instead of heat or light,” 
says Nordtomme. “This is especially relevant for the automotive, aerospace, and maritime  
industries, where there’s a keen interest in manipulating structures for aerodynamic purposes.”
Furniture
4D printing technology introduces the possibility of self-assembling furniture. In future, 
consumers can simply watch as their new piece of furniture takes shape, rather than spending  
hours following

instructions and fumbling with tools. This streamlined assembly process 
not only saves time and effort but also makes household goods more accessible.
Francesco Rivalta, Mechanical Engineer at Hubs, thinks shape-morphing systems could  
revolutionize the furniture industry. “This could be the next big thing after the concept 
of flat-pack furniture. Imagine assembling a chair by using nothing but heat from a hair dryer.”
Packaging
Using 4D printing tech, it is possible to develop packaging capable of protecting the contents  
from external elements such as rain, extreme cold, or heat. Additionally, this technology 
can automate the packaging process by enabling it to adapt to external factors.
Drawing from his experience in manufacturing at Nissha Medical Technologies, Jones 
explains,

“It could be possible to make a type of packaging material that is stored in flat 
sheets, but when a product is placed on it and exposed to either light, heat, or some other 
stimuli, it would self-wrap and reduce the amount of labor, cost, and time spent packaging 
goods that may not fit easily into the standard box.”
 
3D printed wood robots respond to external cues and change shape, image via Self-Assembly Lab

Trend Report 202321 / 30
www.hubs.comApparel
Shape-morphing systems enable designers to create adaptive clothing and accessories 
that respond to both environmental factors and wearer preferences. Brands like Adidas 
are currently developing 4D printed shoes that adapt to users’ foot shape and movement 
patterns, providing superior fit, cushioning, insulation, and breathability, giving athletes  
a competitive edge.
Resident 3D printing expert at Hubs, Robin Brockötter, highlights how 4D printed textiles 
will push the boundaries of design and functionality in the fashion industry. He explains, 
“Imagine a coat that adapts to the cold by becoming thicker or hiking gear that increases 
its breathability when exposed to

sweat.”
The research surrounding shape-morphing systems is spearheaded by the MIT Self-
Assembly Lab, in collaboration with Stratasys and Autodesk. In recent years, numerous 
breakthroughs have been made in developing self-assembling and shape-shifting materials,  
with a wide range of possible applications. The current innovations are just the tip of the 
iceberg. As technology matures, even more possibilities will unfold.
Programmable textiles, image via Self-Assembly Lab

Trend Report 202322 / 30
www.hubs.comGreen by design
Additive manufacturing and sustainability
As we chart the path towards a sustainable future, we must consider the environmental 
impact of 3D printing technology. While the technology could always be more optimized 
for sustainability, particularly in terms of energy consumption, there are a number of reasons  
it is continually linked with green initiatives. Here are six of them:
1. Less waste
As an additive process, 3D printing generates less material waste than subtractive 
manufacturing processes, like CNC machining. For powder-based 3D printing technologies,  
it is also possible to reuse and recycle unsintered powder for future builds. AI-powered 
software tools are

also helping to reduce additive waste by minimizing the risk of failed prints  
and optimizing CAD designs for the printing process.[32]
 
2. Local production
The ecological impact of manufacturing extends beyond the process itself. Transport 
emissions are also an important factor. As a digital fabrication method, 3D printing can  
produce parts locally, eliminating the need for complex logistics and transport. Distributed  
manufacturing networks such as Hubs can facilitate local 3D printing, by providing access  
to qualified manufacturers all over the world.
3. Recycling
It is possible to use recycled materials for more and more 3D printing applications.  
There are commercial filaments made from recycled PLA, PETG, HIPS, ABS, and more. 
There have also been a number of creative

recycling projects for 3D printing.  
Recycled plastic in filament form, image via Refil

Trend Report 202323 / 30
www.hubs.comItalian startup Krill Design has successfully 3D printed decorative objects made from 
materials derived from oranges, lemons, and coffee scraps.[33] Forust, a startup acquired 
by Desktop Metal, has developed a binder 3D printing technology that uses sawdust as  
its base material.[34]
4. Optimized parts
3D printing is giving industries, particularly aerospace and automotive, the ability to 
achieve greater fuel efficiency thanks to intelligent part design. By lightweighting an 
increasing number of components, aircraft and vehicles can become more efficient  
and consume less fuel. Reducing an aircraft’s weight by 20% can lead to 10% better  
fuel efficiency.[35]
5. Extending end-of-life

3D printing’s ability to produce replacement parts can help extend the life of products, 
such as appliances, machines, or vehicles. People can 3D print spare parts at home or 
businesses can print them on demand, leveraging digital inventories or, for obsolete 
components, reverse-engineer parts. For example, many vintage vehicles have been 
brought back to functioning status with the help of 3D printed replacement parts.[36]
6. Circular economy
In a circular economy, waste is eliminated by finding ways to reduce material  
consumption and transform products into new materials. Support-free 3D printing 
is a key way to reduce material consumption, as is a made-to-order production ethos.  
There are also efforts to keep 3D printed products from landfill. For example, HP and  
Ford have

partnered to recycle printed dental aligner molds and use the material for 
injection-molded fuel-line clips.[37]

Trend Report 202324 / 30
“3D printing is poised for growth as refinements in technology 
and reduced costs continue to make it an increasingly attractive 
alternative to injection molding for a wide range of applications. 
Its potential to mass-produce bespoke products will appeal to 
several industries. Looking forward, emerging innovations such as
AI-assisted 3D printing and shape–morphing systems are set to  
unlock new possibilities.”
– Alex Cappy, CEO of Hubs3D printing has come a long way from its beginnings as sci-fi star-gazing. The technology 
has matured over years of innovation and progress, but it is still only on the precipice of 
what may one day be achieved.
Additive manufacturing has already

revolutionized numerous sectors, including aerospace,  
healthcare, fashion, and food. As highlighted in our report, there has been a significant 
increase in the number of businesses producing 10 or more parts during their production 
runs, with the figure rising from 49% in 2021 to 76.24% in 2022. Our latest survey revealed 
that the primary reasons for choosing 3D printing over other manufacturing techniques are  
its fast lead times, ability to produce complex geometries and easy access to the technology.
At present, 20.72% of the survey participants utilize 3D printing for the production of 
end-use parts. However, as the technology continues to evolve towards improved efficiency,  
speed and accessibility, we expect a steady growth in the adoption of 3D printing as a full-
fledged

manufacturing method.
The tale of 3D printing is characterized by ongoing evolution. Moving forward, we can 
expect new layers of this agile technology that will reshape our world and the way we 
interact with it.The shape of things to come

Trend Report 202325 / 30
www.hubs.comTo create this report, we collected information from three primary sources:
 • A survey sent to our global engineering community
 • A deep dive into 3D printing news and related media
 • A side-by-side analysis of reports from well-respected analysts and consultants 
We’ve taken insights from a survey featuring hundreds of industry innovators, a thorough 
review of news and media, and market research to develop a complete understanding of 
where the 3D printing market stands today and where it’s heading. 
Since our goal was to provide perspectives of those directly involved, the survey encompasses  
insights from engineers, designers, manufacturers, and other major players in the industry.

The data collected in 2022 and 2023 paints a detailed picture of the driving forces and 
economic factors that are molding the future of 3D printing technologies and their 
applications.How we created this report

Trend Report 202326 / 30
www.hubs.com3D printing: The complete guide
Read online guide  Further reading
Gain more insights and practical tips within the manufacturing space
CNC machining: The complete guide
 
Read online guide How to master 3D printing
Watch video series 
Supply chain resilience  
in manufacturing report
Read report  3D printing trend report 2022
Read report

Trend Report 2023 27 / 30EU +31 85 888 7380
www.hubs.comAbout this report
Editorial:
Chandrakant Isi & Merritt Gurley (Hubs)
Design:
Barbara Bartkova (Hubs)
About Hubs
Hubs  is an online manufacturing platform that provides engineers with on-demand access 
to a global network of manufacturing partners. Users can easily upload their design, 
instantly receive a quote, and start production at the click of a button. 
 
Founded in Amsterdam in 2013, Hubs was acquired by Protolabs in January 2021. To date, 
Hubs has produced more than 10 million parts, using various manufacturing technologies, 
including CNC machining , 3D printing , injection molding  and sheet metal fabrication . 
 
About Protolabs
Protolabs is the fastest and most comprehensive

digital manufacturing service in the 
world. Its digital factories produce low-volume parts in days while its digital network of 
manufacturing partners powered by Hubs unlocks advanced capabilities and volume 
pricing at higher quantities. The result? One manufacturing source–from prototyping to 
production–for product developers, engineers, and supply chain teams across the globe. 
See what's next at protolabs.com .
Disclaimer
The information in this report is provided for informational purposes only. This report 
was based on certain assumptions and information available to Hubs at the date of 
publication. Hubs does not give an express or implied warranty regarding the correctness 
or completeness of the information contained in this report. This report may contain 
forward-looking

statements. There is no guarantee that future results, levels of activity, 
performance or achievements will be realized. You should not place undue reliance on 
these forward-looking statements. Hubs expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to 
update any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. 
The information provided by collaborating companies has not been verified by Hubs. 
The image rights remain with the respective originator at any time. Hubs expresses 
disclaims any and all liability and will not be liable for any loss or damage arising directly 
or indirectly (including special, incidental or consequential loss or damage) from your use 
of this report, howsoever arising, including any loss, damage or expense arising from, but 
not limited to,

any defect, error, imperfection, fault, mistake or inaccuracy in this report, 
its contents or associated services.
For report enquiries, please contact press@hubs.com.Hubs
April 2023

Trend Report 202328 / 30
www.hubs.com3D Printing 
Trend Report 2023 28 / 30EU +31 85 888 7380
www.hubs.comReferences

Trend Report 202329 / 30
www.hubs.com[01] https://historydraft.com/story/3d-
printing/johannes-f-gottwald-patented-the-
liquid-metal-recorder/711/16385
[02] https://historydraft.com/story/3d-
printing/hideo-kodama-of-nagoya-municipal-
industrial-research-institute-invented-two-
additive-methods/711/16387
[03]  https://www.3dsystems.com/our-story
[04]  https://reprap.org/wiki/About
[05] https://www.hubs.com/about/
[06] https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/
slm-solutions-to-develop-worlds-largest-
metal-3d-printer-for-the-us-air-force-215010/
[07] https://www.voxelmatters.com/caracol-
teases-new-waam-capabilities-for-large-size-
metal-parts/
[08] http://sculpman.com/technology
[09]

https://www.fabbaloo.com/news/an-
easy-way-to-start-non-planar-3d-printing
[10] https://additive-manufacturing-report.
com/metal-additive-manufacturing-
market-2023/
[11] https://additive-manufacturing-report.
com/polymer-additive-manufacturing-
[12] https://www.contextworld.com/blog/-/
blogs/quarterly-3d-printer-revenues-rise-
unit-shipments-slow-as-worldwide-markets-
react-to-inflation?blogLang=
[13] https://zortrax.com/blog/how-toyota-
factory-works-with-zortrax-3d-printers/
[14] https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/
toyota-and-solize-unveil-automotive-spare-
part-3d-printing-project-powered-by-hp-
technology-212084/
[15] https://www.voxelmatters.com/3d-
printing-orthodontic-aligners/
[16] https://www.hubs.com/blog/formify-
case-study/  [17]

https://www.ge.com/additive/press-
releases/ge-aviation-singapore-first-offer-
metal-additive-engine-component-repair
[18] https://media.cadillac.com/media/us/
en/cadillac/celestiq.html
[19] https://www.bentleymedia.com/en/
newsitem/1405-ground-breaking-3d-printed-
gold-process-used-in-bentley-mulliner-batur
[20] https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/
global/article/detail/T0392573EN/successful-
industrialisation-and-digitalisation-of-
additive-manufacturing?language=en
[21] https://www.prweb.com/
releases/2022/09/prweb18905992.htm  
[22] https://www.rootsanalysis.com/
reports/dental-3d-printing-market.html  
[23] https://reinvent.hp.com/us-en-3dprint-
smiledirect  
[24] https://all3dp.com/2/adidas-3d-printed-
shoes/
[25] https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/
reebok-botter-sneaker/
[26]

https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/dior-
3d-printed-shoes/
[27] https://www.businesswire.com/news/
home/20220531005115/en/
[28] https://www.roboze.com/en/news/3d-
printing-and-motorsport-roboze-supports-
ducati-corse-for-the-2022-motogp-season.
html
[29] https://www.voxelmatters.com/the-
state-of-bioprinting/
[30] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/04/
inside-relativity-spaces-monster-factory-3d-
printing-reusable-rockets.html
 [31] https://www.concordia.ca/news/
stories/2022/05/10/4d-composite-printing-
can-improve-the-wings-of-drones-according-
to-new-concordia-research.html[32] https://www.azom.com/article.
aspx?ArticleID=21252
[33] https://www.3dnatives.com/en/
krill-design-3d-printing-furniture-food-
waste-180120224/#
[34] https://www.forust.com/
[35]

https://www.3ds.com/make/solutions/
industries/3d-printing-aerospace
[36] https://all3dp.com/1/reverse-
engineering-3d-printing-classic-car-parts/
[37] https://media.ford.com/content/
fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2021/03/25/
leading-a-sustainable-revolution.html
  
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www.hbr.org June 2008
	60		The	Secrets 	to	Successful 	Strategy 	
Execution
Gary L. Neilson, Karla L. Martin, and Elizabeth Powers 
	72	 The 	Next 	Revolution 	in	Productivity
Ric Merrifield, Jack Calhoun, and Dennis Stevens 
	84	 Design 	Thinking
Tim Brown 
	96		The	Contradictions 	That 	Drive 	Toyota’s 	
Success
Hirotaka Takeuchi, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu 
	106	 The 	Multiunit 	Enterprise
David A. Garvin and Lynne C. Levesque 
	22	 Forethought
	41	 hBr	Case 	study
Why 	Are	We	Losing 	All	Our	Good 	People?
Edward E. Lawler III 
	53	 First 	Person
Business 	Basics 	at	the	Base 	of	the	Pyramid
Vikram Akula 
	123	 M anaging	 yourse LF	
How 	the	Best 	of	the	Best 	Get	Better 		
and	Better
Graham Jones 
	129	 B ig	PiCture	
Patent 	Sharks
Joachim Henkel and Markus Reitzig 
	138

exeCutive 	suMMaries 	
	144	 Pane L	disCussion…page 60
june	2008		|		the	seCrets	to	suCCessFuL	strategy	exeCution |   volume 86, number 6   |Paradox at toyota …page 	96       clarity at ideo …page 	84
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deLiver 		
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84   Harvard Business Review  |  June 2008  |  hbr.org
Art Credit Art Credit
Design

Art Credit Art Credithomas E Dison  created the electric light -
bulb and then wrapped an entire indus -
try around it. The lightbulb is most often 
thought of as his signature invention, but  
Edison understood that the bulb was little more 
than a parlor trick without a system of electric power 
generation and transmission to make it truly useful. 
so he created that, too.
Thus Edison’s genius lay in his ability to conceive 
of a fully developed marketplace, not simply a dis -
crete device. he was able to envision how people 
would want to use what he made, and he engineered 
toward that insight. he wasn’t always prescient (he Thinking like a designer 
can transform the way 
you develop products, 
services, processes  – and 
even strategy.
by Tim BrownThinking
hbr.org  |  June 2008   |

86   Harvard Business Review  |  June 2008  |  hbr.orgoriginally believed the phonograph would be used mainly 
as a business machine  for recording and replaying dictation), 
but he invariably gave great consideration to users’ needs and 
preferences.
Edison’s approach was an early example of what is now 
called “design thinking”  – a methodology that imbues the 
full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered  
design ethos. By this I mean that innovation is powered by a 
thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what 
people want and need in their lives and what they like or dis -
like about the way particular products are made, packaged, 
marketed, sold, and supported.
Many people believe that Edison’s greatest invention was 
the modern R&D

laboratory and methods of experimental 
investigation. Edison wasn’t a narrowly specialized scientist 
but a broad generalist with a shrewd 
business sense. In his Menlo Park, New 
Jersey, laboratory he surrounded himself 
with gifted tinkerers, improvisers, and 
experimenters. Indeed, he broke the 
mold of the “lone genius inventor” by 
creating a team-based approach to in -
novation. Although Edison biographers 
write of the camaraderie enjoyed by this 
merry band, the process also featured 
endless rounds of trial and error  – the 
“99% perspiration” in Edison’s famous 
definition of genius. His approach was 
intended not to validate preconceived hypotheses but to help 
experimenters learn something new from each iterative stab. 
Innovation is hard work; Edison made it a profession that

blended art, craft, science, business savvy, and an astute under -
standing of customers and markets.
Design thinking is a lineal descendant of that tradition. Put 
simply, it is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and 
methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically 
feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into cus -
tomer value and market opportunity. Like Edison’s painstaking 
innovation process, it often entails a great deal of perspiration.
I believe that design thinking has much to offer a business 
world in which most management ideas and best practices are 
freely available to be copied and exploited. Leaders now look 
to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and com -
petitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate

design 
thinking into all phases of the process.
Getting Beneath the Surface
Historically, design has been treated as a downstream step in 
the development process  – the point where designers, who 
have played no earlier role in the substantive work of in -
novation, come along and put a beautiful wrapper around 
the idea. To be sure, this approach has stimulated market 
growth in many areas by making new products and technolo -gies aesthetically attractive and therefore more desirable to 
consumers or by enhancing brand perception through smart, 
evocative advertising and communication strategies. Dur -
ing the latter half of the twentieth century design became 
an increasingly valuable competitive asset in, for example, 
the consumer electronics, automotive, and consumer pack -
aged

goods industries. But in most others it remained a late-  
stage add-on.
Now, however, rather than asking designers to make an 
already developed idea more attractive to consumers, compa -
nies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consum -
ers’ needs and desires. The former role is tactical, and results 
in limited value creation; the latter is strategic, and leads to 
dramatic new forms of value.
Moreover, as economies in the developed world shift from  
industrial manufacturing to knowl-
edge work and service delivery, inno- 
vation’s terrain is expanding. Its ob-  
jectives are no longer just physical 
products; they are new sorts of pro -
cesses, services, IT-powered interac-  
tions, entertainments, and ways of  
communicating and collaborating  –  
exactly the kinds of

human-centered 
activities in which design thinking 
can make a decisive difference. (See 
the sidebar “A Design Thinker’s Per -
sonality Profile. ”)
Consider the large health care provider Kaiser Permanente, 
which sought to improve the overall quality of both patients’ 
and medical practitioners’ experiences. Businesses in the ser -
vice sector can often make significant innovations on the front 
lines of service creation and delivery. By teaching design think -
ing techniques to nurses, doctors, and administrators, Kaiser 
hoped to inspire its practitioners to contribute new ideas. 
Over the course of several months Kaiser teams participated 
in workshops with the help of my firm, IDEO, and a group of 
Kaiser coaches. These workshops led to a portfolio of innova -
tions, many of which

are being rolled out across the company.
One of them  – a project to reengineer nursing-staff shift 
changes at four Kaiser hospitals  – perfectly illustrates both the 
broader nature of innovation “products” and the value of a holis -
tic design approach. The core project team included a strategist 
(formerly a nurse), an organizational-development specialist,  
a technology expert, a process designer, a union representative, 
and designers from IDEO. This group worked with innovation 
teams of frontline practitioners in each of the four hospitals.
During the earliest phase of the project, the core team col -
laborated with nurses to identify a number of problems in the 
way shift changes occurred. Chief among these was the fact 
that nurses routinely spent the first 45 minutes of each

shift at 
the nurses’ station debriefing the departing shift about the sta -
tus of patients. Their methods of information exchange were 
The surgeons 
described a 
new device for 
sinus surgery. one designer 
grabbed a marker, a film 
canister, and a clothespin and 
taped them together. “Do you 
mean like this?” he asked.

hbr.org  |  June 2008   |  Harvard Business Review   87different in every hospital, ranging from recorded dictation to 
face-to-face conversations. And they compiled the information 
they needed to serve patients in a variety of ways  – scrawling 
quick notes on the back of any available scrap of paper, for 
example, or even on their scrubs. Despite a significant invest -
ment of time, the nurses often failed to learn some of the 
things that mattered most to patients, such as how they had 
fared during the previous shift, which family members were 
with them, and whether or not certain tests or therapies had 
been administered. For many patients, the team learned, each 
shift change felt like a hole in their care. Using the insights 
gleaned from observing these important times of

transition, 
the innovation teams explored potential solutions through 
brainstorming and rapid prototyping. (Prototypes of a service 
innovation will of course not be physical, but they must be 
tangible. Because pictures help us understand what is learned 
through prototyping, we often videotape the performance of 
prototyped services, as we did at Kaiser.)
Prototyping doesn’t have to be complex and expensive. In 
another health care project, IDEO helped a group of surgeons 
develop a new device for sinus surgery. As the surgeons de -
scribed the ideal physical characteristics of the instrument, 
one of the designers grabbed a whiteboard marker, a film 
canister, and a clothespin and taped them together. “Do you 
mean like this?” he asked. With his rudimentary prototype in 
hand, the

surgeons were able to be much more precise about 
what the ultimate design should accomplish.
Prototypes should command only as much time, effort, and 
investment as are needed to generate useful feedback and 
evolve an idea. The more “finished” a prototype seems, the less 
likely its creators will be to pay attention to and profit from 
feedback. The goal of prototyping isn’t to finish. It is to learn 
about the strengths and weaknesses of the idea and to identify 
new directions that further prototypes might take.
The design that emerged for shift changes had nurses pass -
ing on information in front of the patient rather than at the 
nurses’ station. In only a week the team built a working pro -
totype that included new procedures and some simple soft -
ware with which nurses could call

up previous shift-change 
notes and add new ones. They could input patient informa -
tion throughout a shift rather than scrambling at the end to 
pass it on. The software collated the data in a simple format 
customized for each nurse at the start of a shift. The result 
was both higher-quality knowledge transfer and reduced prep 
time, permitting much earlier and better-informed contact 
with patients.
As Kaiser measured the impact of this change over time, it 
learned that the mean interval between a nurse’s arrival and 
first interaction with a patient had been more than halved, 
adding a huge amount of nursing time across the four hospi -
tals. Perhaps just as important was the effect on the quality 
of the nurses’ work experience. One nurse commented, “I’m 
an hour ahead, and I’ve

only been here 45 minutes. ” Another A Design Thinker’s  
Personality Profile
Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need 
weird shoes or a black turtleneck to be a design 
thinker. Nor are design thinkers necessarily cre -
ated only by design schools, even though most 
professionals have had some kind of design train -
ing. My experience is that many people outside 
professional design have a natural aptitude for 
design thinking, which the right development 
and experiences can unlock. Here, as a starting 
point, are some of the characteristics to look for 
in design thinkers:
Empathy.  They can imagine the world from mul -
tiple perspectives  – those of colleagues, clients, 
end users, and customers (current and prospec -
tive). By taking a “people first” approach, design 
thinkers can

imagine solutions that are inherently 
desirable and meet explicit or latent needs. Great 
design thinkers observe the world in minute 
detail. They notice things that others do not and 
use their insights to inspire innovation.
Integrative thinking.  They not only rely 
on analytical processes (those that produce 
either/or choices) but also exhibit the ability to 
see all of the salient  – and sometimes contra -
dictory  – aspects of a confounding problem 
and create novel solutions that go beyond and 
dramatically improve on existing alternatives. 
(See Roger Martin’s The Opposable Mind: How 
Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative 
Thinking .)
optimism.  They assume that no matter how 
challenging the constraints of a given problem, 
at least one potential solution is better than

the 
existing alternatives.
Experimentalism.  Significant innovations don’t 
come from incremental tweaks. Design thinkers 
pose questions and explore constraints in cre -
ative ways that proceed in entirely new directions.
Collaboration.  The increasing complexity of 
products, services, and experiences has replaced 
the myth of the lone creative genius with the 
reality of the enthusiastic interdisciplinary col -
laborator. The best design thinkers don’t simply 
work alongside other disciplines; many of them 
have significant experience in more than one. At 
IDEO we employ people who are engineers and 
marketers, anthropologists and industrial design -
ers, architects and psychologists.

88   Harvard Business Review  |  June 2008  |  hbr.orgsaid, “[This is the] first time I’ve ever made it out of here at 
the end of my shift. ”
Thus did a group of nurses significantly improve their pa -
tients’ experience while also improving their own job satis -
faction and productivity. By applying a human-centered  
design methodology, they were able to create a rela -
tively small process innovation that produced an 
outsize impact. The new shift changes are being 
rolled out across the Kaiser system, and the ca -
pacity to reliably record critical patient infor -
mation is being integrated into an electronic 
medical records initiative at the company.
What might happen at Kaiser if every 
nurse, doctor, and administrator in every 
hospital felt empowered to tackle problems 
the way

this group did? To find out, Kaiser 
has created the Garfield Innovation Center, 
which is run by Kaiser’s original core team 
and acts as a consultancy to the entire or -
ganization. The center’s mission is to pur -
sue innovation that enhances the patient 
experience and, more broadly, to envision 
Kaiser’s “hospital of the future. ” It is intro -
ducing tools for design thinking across the  
Kaiser system.
How Design Thinking Happens
The myth of creative genius is resilient: 
We believe that great ideas pop fully 
formed out of brilliant minds, in feats of 
imagination well beyond the abilities of 
mere mortals. But what the Kaiser nursing 
team accomplished was neither a sudden 
breakthrough nor the lightning strike of 
genius; it was the result of hard work aug -
mented by a creative

human-centered discov -
ery process and followed by iterative cycles of 
prototyping, testing, and refinement.
The design process is best described meta -
phorically as a system of spaces rather than a pre -
defined series of orderly steps. The spaces demar -
cate different sorts of related activities that together 
form the continuum of innovation. Design thinking 
can feel chaotic to those experiencing it for the first 
time. But over the life of a project participants come to 
see – as they did at Kaiser  – that the process makes sense 
and achieves results, even though its architecture differs 
from the linear, milestone-based processes typical of other 
kinds of business activities.
Design projects must ultimately pass through three spaces 
(see the exhibit at right). We label these

“inspiration, ” for the 
circumstances (be they a problem, an opportunity, or both) 
that motivate the search for solutions; “ideation, ” for the pro -inspiration
Put customers in 
the midst of every -
thing; describe their 
journeysTell more stories (they 
keep ideas alive)Communicate  
internally  – don’t work 
in the dark!
Build creative frameworks 
(order out of chaos)Apply integrative 
thinking
Make many sketches,  
concoct scenarios
Brainstorm
2
Prototype, test,  
prototype, test…
3Move on to the  
next project – repeat
Make the case to  
the business  –  
spread the word
Help marketing  
design a communi-
cation strategy
Execute the Vision  
Engineer the experience
ideationPrototype some more, 
test with users, test 
internally Design Thinking
implementation

hbr.org  |  June 2008   |  Harvard Business Review   89inspiration
Have a project room 
where you can share 
insights, tell stories
What are the business con -
straints (time, lack of resources, 
impoverished customer base, 
shrinking market)?Involve many disciplines 
from the start (e.g., engi -
neering & marketing)
Are valuable ideas, as -
sets, and expertise hiding 
inside the business?How can new  
technology help?
Organize information and 
synthesize possibilities 
(tell more stories!) Pay close attention to 
“extreme” users such as 
children or the elderly
1
Build implementation 
resources into your plan
Expect success
What’s the business prob -
lem? Where’s the oppor -
tunity? What has changed 
(or soon may change)?
Look at the world:  
Observe what people do, 
how they think, what

they 
need and want
cess of generating, developing, and testing ideas that may 
lead to solutions; and “implementation, ” for the charting of a 
path to market. Projects will loop back through these spaces  –  
particularly the first two  – more than once as ideas are refined 
and new directions taken.
Sometimes the trigger for a project is leadership’s recogni -
tion of a serious change in business fortunes. In 2004 Shimano, 
a Japanese manufacturer of bicycle components, faced flat -
tening growth in its traditional high-end road-racing and 
mountain-bike segments in the United States. The com -
pany had always relied on technology innovations 
to drive its growth and naturally tried to predict 
where the next one might come from. This time 
Shimano thought a high-end casual bike that ap

-
pealed to boomers would be an interesting area 
to explore. IDEO was invited to collaborate on 
the project.
During the inspiration phase, an inter -
disciplinary team of IDEO and Shimano 
people  – designers, behavioral scientists, 
marketers, and engineers  – worked to 
identify appropriate constraints for the 
project. The team began with a hunch 
that it should focus more broadly than 
on the high-end market, which might 
prove to be neither the only nor even 
the best source of new growth. So it 
set out to learn why 90 % of American 
adults don’t ride bikes. Looking for new 
ways to think about the problem, the 
team members spent time with all kinds 
of consumers. They discovered that nearly 
everyone they met rode a bike as a child 
and had happy memories of doing so. They 
also

discovered that many Americans are 
intimidated by cycling today  – by the retail  
experience (including the young, Lycra-clad ath -
letes who serve as sales staff in most independent 
bike stores); by the complexity and cost of the bikes, 
accessories, and specialized clothing; by the danger 
of cycling on roads not designed for bicycles; and by 
the demands of maintaining a technically sophisticated 
bike that is ridden infrequently.
This human-centered exploration  – which took its insights 
from people outside Shimano’s core customer base  – led to 
the realization that a whole new category of bicycling might 
be able to reconnect American consumers to their experi -
ences as children while also dealing with the root causes of 
their feelings of intimidation  – thus revealing a large

un -
tapped market.
The design team, responsible for every aspect of what was 
envisioned as a holistic experience, came up with the concept 
of “Coasting. ” Coasting would aim to entice lapsed bikers into implementation

90   Harvard Business Review  |  June 2008  |  hbr.organ activity that was simple, straight -
forward, and fun. Coasting bikes, built 
more for pleasure than for sport, would 
have no controls on the handlebars, no 
cables snaking along the frame. As on 
the earliest bikes many of us rode, the brakes would be applied 
by backpedaling. With the help of an onboard computer, a 
minimalist three gears would shift automatically as the bicy -
cle gained speed or slowed. The bikes would feature comfort -
ably padded seats, be easy to operate, and require relatively 
little maintenance.
Three major manufacturers  – Trek, Raleigh, and Giant  – de-
veloped new bikes incorporating innovative components from 
Shimano. But the design team didn’t stop with the bike itself. 
In-store

retailing strategies were created for independent bike 
dealers, in part to alleviate the discomfort that biking novices 
felt in stores designed to serve enthusiasts. The team devel -
oped a brand that identified Coasting as a way to enjoy life. 
(“Chill. Explore. Dawdle. Lollygag. First one there’s a rotten 
egg. ”) And it designed a public relations campaign  – in collabo -
ration with local governments and cycling organizations  – that 
identified safe places to ride.
Although many others became involved in the project 
when it reached the implementation phase, the application 
of design thinking in the earliest stages of innovation is what 
led to this complete solution. Indeed, the single thing one would have expected the design team 
to be responsible for  – the look of the 
bikes

– was intentionally deferred to 
later in the development process, when 
the team created a reference design to 
inspire the bike companies’ own design teams. After a success -
ful launch in 2007, seven more bicycle manufacturers signed 
up to produce Coasting bikes in 2008.
Taking a Systems View
Many of the world’s most successful brands create break -
through ideas that are inspired by a deep understanding of 
consumers’ lives and use the principles of design to innovate 
and build value. Sometimes innovation has to account for 
vast differences in cultural and socioeconomic conditions. In 
such cases design thinking can suggest creative alternatives 
to the assumptions made in developed societies.
India’s Aravind Eye Care System is probably the world’s 
largest provider of eye care.

From April 2006 to March 2007 
Aravind served more than 2.3 million patients and performed 
more than 270,000 surgeries. Founded in 1976 by Dr. G. Venka -
taswamy, Aravind has as its mission nothing less than the erad -
ication of needless blindness among India’s population, includ -
ing the rural poor, through the effective delivery of superior 
ophthalmic care. (One of the company’s slogans is “Quality is 
for everyone. ”) From 11 beds in Dr. Venkataswamy’s home, Ara -A SKETCH  (left, seat plus helmet 
storage) and a ProToTyPE (middle) 
show elements of Coasting bicycles. 
shimano’s Coasting WEBSITE  (right) 
points users to safe bike paths.
Begin at the beginning.  
Involve design thinkers at the 
very start of the innovation pro -
cess, before any direction has 
been set. Design

thinking will 
help you explore more ideas 
more quickly than you could 
otherwise.Take a human-centered  
approach. Along with busi -
ness and technology consider -
ations, innovation should factor 
in human behavior, needs, and 
preferences. Human-centered 
design thinking  – especially 
when it includes research 
based on direct observation  – 
will capture unexpected in -
sights and produce innovation 
that more precisely reflects 
what consumers want.Try early and often.   
Create an expectation of rapid 
experimentation and prototyp -
ing. Encourage teams to create 
a prototype in the first week  
of a project. Measure progress 
with a metric such as aver -
age time to first prototype or 
number of consumers exposed 
to prototypes during the life of 
a program.seek outside help.

Expand the innovation  
ecosystem by looking for  
opportunities to co-create  
with customers and consum -
ers. Exploit Web 2.0 networks 
to enlarge the effective scale  
of your innovation team.How to Make Design Thinking Part of the Innovation Drill

hbr.org  |  June 2008   |  Harvard Business Review   91vind has grown to encompass five hos -
pitals (three others are under Aravind 
management), a plant that manufac -
tures ophthalmic products, a research 
foundation, and a training center.
Aravind’s execution of its mission and 
model is in some respects reminiscent of Edison’s holistic con -
cept of electric power delivery. The challenge the company 
faces is logistic: how best to deliver eye care to populations far 
removed from the urban centers where Aravind’s hospitals are 
located. Aravind calls itself an “eye care system” for a reason: 
Its business goes beyond ophthalmic care per se to transmit 
expert practice to populations that have historically lacked ac -
cess. The company saw its network of hospitals as a beginning

rather than an end.
Much of its innovative energy has focused on bringing both 
preventive care and diagnostic screening to the countryside. 
Since 1990 Aravind has held “eye camps” in India’s rural ar -
eas, in an effort to register patients, administer eye exams, 
teach eye care, and identify people who may require surgery 
or advanced diagnostic services or who have conditions that 
warrant monitoring.
In 2006 and early 2007 Aravind eye camps screened more 
than 500,000 patients, of whom nearly 113,000 required surgery. 
Access to transportation is a common problem in rural areas, so 
the company provides buses that take patients needing further treatment to one of its urban facilities 
and then home again. Over the years it 
has bolstered its diagnostic capabilities 
in the field with

telemedicine trucks, 
which enable doctors back at Aravind’s 
hospitals to participate in care decisions. 
In recent years Aravind’s analysis of its screening data has led 
to specialized eye camps for certain demographic groups, such 
as school-age children and industrial and government workers; 
the company also holds camps specifically to screen for eye 
diseases associated with diabetes. All these services are free for 
the roughly 60 % of patients who cannot afford to pay.
In developing its system of care, Aravind has consistently 
exhibited many characteristics of design thinking. It has used 
as a creative springboard two constraints: the poverty and 
remoteness of its clientele and its own lack of access to expen -
sive solutions. For example, a pair of intraocular lenses made 
in

the West costs $200, which severely limited the number of 
patients Aravind could help. Rather than try to persuade sup -
pliers to change the way they did things, Aravind built its own 
solution: a manufacturing plant in the basement of one of its 
hospitals. It eventually discovered that it could use relatively 
inexpensive technology to produce lenses for $4 a pair.
Throughout its history  – defined by the constraints of poverty, 
ignorance, and an enormous unmet need  – Aravind has built  
a systemic solution to a complex social and medical problem.
ArAvInD’S outreach to rural  
patients frequently brings basic   
DIAgno STIC  ToolS (left and  
center) and an advanced satellite-
linked  TElEMEDICI nE TruCK  
(right) to remote areas of india.
Blend big and small  
projects. Manage a

portfolio 
of innovation that stretches 
from shorter-term incremental 
ideas to longer-term revolu -
tionary ones. Expect busi -
ness units to drive and fund 
incremental innovation, but be 
willing to initiate revolutionary 
innovation from the top.Budget to the pace of  
innovation. Design thinking 
happens quickly, yet the route 
to market can be unpredictable. 
Don’t constrain the pace at 
which you can innovate by rely -
ing on cumbersome budgeting 
cycles. Be prepared to rethink 
your funding approach as proj -
ects proceed and teams learn 
more about opportunities.Find talent any way you can.  
Look to hire from interdisci -
plinary programs like the new 
Institute of Design at Stanford 
and progressive business 
schools like Rotman, in Toronto. 
People with more-conventional

design backgrounds can push 
solutions far beyond your 
expectations. You may even be 
able to train nondesigners with 
the right attributes to excel in 
design-thinking roles.Design for the cycle.   
In many businesses people 
move every 12 to 18 months. 
But design projects may take 
longer than that to get from 
day one through implementa -
tion. Plan assignments so 
that design thinkers go from 
inspiration to ideation to imple -
mentation. Experiencing the full 
cycle builds better judgment 
and creates great long-term 
benefits for the organization.

92   Harvard Business Review  |  June 2008  |  hbr.orgGetting Back to the Surface
I argued earlier that design thinking can lead to innovation 
that goes beyond aesthetics, but that doesn’t mean that form 
and aesthetics are unimportant. Magazines like to publish 
photographs of the newest, coolest products for a reason: They 
are sexy and appeal to our emotions. Great design satisfies 
both our needs and our desires. Often the emotional connec -
tion to a product or an image is what engages us in the first 
place. Time and again we see successful products that were 
not necessarily the first to market but were the first to appeal 
to us emotionally and functionally. In other words, they do 
the job and we love them. The iPod was not the first MP3  
player, but it was the

first to be delightful. Target’s products 
appeal emotionally through design and functionally through 
price  – simultaneously.
This idea will grow ever more important in the future. As 
Daniel Pink writes in his book A Whole New Mind, “Abundance 
has satisfied, and even over-satisfied, the material needs of 
millions  – boosting the significance of beauty and emotion 
and accelerating individuals’ search for meaning. ” As more of 
our basic needs are met, we increasingly expect sophisticated 
experiences that are emotionally satisfying and meaningful. 
These experiences will not be simple products. They will be 
complex combinations of products, services, spaces, and infor -
mation. They will be the ways we get educated, the ways we 
are entertained, the ways we stay healthy, the ways we

share 
and communicate. Design thinking is a tool for imagining 
these experiences as well as giving them a desirable form.
One example of experiential innovation comes from a finan -
cial services company. In late 2005 Bank of America launched 
a new savings account service called “Keep the Change. ” IDEO, 
working with a team from the bank, helped iden -
tify a consumer behavior that many people will 
recognize: After paying cash for something, we put 
the coins we received in change into a jar at home. 
Once the jar is full, we take the coins to the bank 
and deposit them in a savings account. For many 
people, it’s an easy way of saving. Bank of America’s 
innovation was to build this behavior into a debit 
card account. Customers who use their debit cards 
to make purchases can now

choose to have the total 
rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference 
deposited in their savings accounts.
The success of this innovation lay in its appeal to 
an instinctive desire we have to put money aside in a 
painless and invisible way. Keep the Change creates 
an experience that feels natural because it models 
behavior that many of us already exhibit. To be sure, 
Bank of America sweetens the deal by matching 
100% of the change saved in the first three months 
and 5 % of annual totals (up to $250) thereafter. This 
encourages customers to try it out. But the real pay -
off is emotional: the gratification that comes with monthly statements showing customers they’ve saved money 
without even trying.
In less than a year the program attracted 2.5 million custom -
ers. It is

credited with 700,000 new checking accounts and a 
million new savings accounts. Enrollment now totals more than 
5 million people who together have saved more than $500 mil -
lion. Keep the Change demonstrates that design thinking can 
identify an aspect of human behavior and then convert it into 
both a customer benefit and a business value.
Thomas Edison represents what many of us think of as a 
golden age of American innovation  – a time when new ideas 
transformed every aspect of our lives. The need for transfor -
mation is, if anything, greater now than ever before. No mat -
ter where we look, we see problems that can be solved only 
through innovation: unaffordable or unavailable health care, 
billions of people trying to live on just a few dollars a day, 
energy usage that outpaces

the planet’s ability to support it, 
education systems that fail many students, companies whose 
traditional markets are disrupted by new technologies or de -
mographic shifts. These problems all have people at their heart. 
They require a human-centered, creative, iterative, and practi -
cal approach to finding the best ideas and ultimate solutions. 
Design thinking is just such an approach to innovation.  
Tim Brown  (tbrown@ideo.com) is the CEO and president of 
IDEO, an innovation and design firm with headquarters in Palo 
Alto, California. His designs have won numerous awards and 
been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the 
Axis Gallery in Tokyo, and the Design Museum in London.
Reprint R0806E
“It’s good to finally meet you after all  
those years of trying to avoid

you.”
P.C. Vey
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