3D printing and Lego houses
3D printing and Lego houses
I recently watched the latest post-death documentary on Steve Jobs. The early days of the first Apple computers and its origins in a Californan garage got me thinking about another company that operates in New York called MakerBot Industries.
Makerbot Industries are the first company to successfully develop and manufacture ‘personal’ 3d printers. Up until recently 3d printers have been expensive and out of reach of the general public, similar to the days before Jobs and Apple.
How 3d printer works.
3D printed flute:
The Makerbot's design essentially puts the manufacturing process into the hands of the consumer. Imagine a whole factory worth of tooling and fabricating condensed into a foot cubed. Users could effectively design an object on a computer, print it on a MB and use it all in the same day.
MakerBot in action:
The reflections of the people in the Jobs documentary expressed his true vision for making the world a better place. A tool like the MakerBot has the potential to do the same. Third-world communities without the infrastructure required to manufacture building materials and construct sustainable houses could use the machine to significantly improve their living conditions.
Yesterday I saw a news report about communities in the Philippines constructing classrooms out PVC soft drink bottles.
It made me wonder if the there was a way to efficiently refine the plastic used in waste into something that could be fed through a Maker Bot. Socially minded industrial designers could design a ‘brick’ system to house the third world. The bricks could be robust, durable, insulating. The bricks could be dismantled and reconstructed to cope with the unstable nature of the 3rd world. A MakerBot in the hands of these communities could mean they could effectively ‘print’ sustainable housing for themselves.
The possibilities of new technology like MakerBots are infinite and are only limited by the ideas of the people who use them. Connecting design and an easy way to manufacture, could mean that plastic bricks might come out of the toy box and into the real world.
