3D printing machines

Imagine the day when you no longer purchase a chair in a shop or via a traditional online retailer but instead buy the design for the chair, created on a computer software package, via the internet. You would be able to customise this digital blueprint however you chose and then email the file to a local rapid-manufacturing store where the finished item would be produced, ready for collection. This futuristic scenario describes the potential of 3D printing, a form of the cutting-edge technology known as Additive Manufacturing.

'We are at a tipping point in history where profound and radical changes in how we make things will revolutionise our lives,’ the New York gallerist Murray Moss says. Moss is curating a show at the V&A which explores this technology. 'All the objects I’ve selected are key early examples of 3D printing,’ he explains. 'These are not “futuristic” objects but everyday items – lamps, chairs, tables, shoes, hats – produced today but signalling tomorrow’s processes.’ It is the first time any of these works has been exhibited in Britain and, in most cases, anywhere in the world.

So what is 3D printing and how does it work? The process is part of a group of rapid-manufacturing technologies that translate digital designs into objects that are 'printed off’, three-dimensionally, by a machine. In the same way that a domestic inkjet printer hovers over a sheet of paper placing ink on the page, the 3D printer adds layer upon layer of epoxy to build objects from the base up. Products are created with all the inside and outside parts complete. There is no assembly required.

'This technology has huge potential,’ the British designer Michael Eden says. His latest 3D-printed vessels will be shown by Adrian Sassoon at the Pavilion of Art & Design show in October. 'We’re on the brink of a new industrial revolution.’

One advantage of the process is its flexibility. Conventional mass manufacturing uses moulds to make identical components, and any deviation – in size or shape, for example – requires a new mould. This is an expensive process. But because 3D printing requires no mould, it costs no more to produce 100 different objects than it does to make 100 identical ones. This means that products can be generated for a mass audience, but customised for, or by, each user.

For designers, it is nothing short of revolutionary. The London-based studio BarberOsgerby uses 3D printing to make prototypes. 'It’s cost-effective, a tenth the cost of conventional tooling, and very fast,’ Jay Osgerby says. 'It’s a great way to visualise complex forms like our Olympic Torch design, whose 8,000 perforations would have been difficult to replicate during model-making.’

Eden says, 'It allows me to make objects that couldn’t be made in any other way. It removes the constraints of manufacturing because conventional tooling is irrelevant. You have complete freedom in terms of form and don’t have to consider how the design will be made.’ As the technology develops, it is likely to transform design, production, distribution and consumption in radical ways. If local, print-on-demand stores become commonplace, then the need for transportation and warehousing is eliminated, with knock-on effects for jobs and the environment.

Materialise also has an online division, i.Materialise, which offers a 3D printing service to anyone with a suitable design. But anyone interested in buying a personal 3D printer might contact Amsterdam-based Freedom of Creation, a product design company which earlier this year gave live 3D printing demonstrations at Wallpaper magazine’s Handmade 2 exhibition during the Milan Furniture Fair. Its 3D printers (£795 to £2,320) will print simple plastic objects such as trays, toys or jewellery up to about 275 x 27 x 210mm.

Home owners anticipating the day they can print furniture should heed Moss’s caveat, though. 'The machines used to make the objects in the V&A show are very complicated, hugely expensive, state-of-the-art equipment,’ he says. 'Mathias Bengtsson’s Cell chair, which we commissioned for the exhibition, took two weeks to produce in the machine and, according to Materialise, is the most advanced furniture piece printed to date.’

Still, the technology is sparking wonderfully innovative ideas. A 3D printer developed by Exeter University researchers uses chocolate instead of resin; Markus Kayser’s Solar Sinter project employing a 3D printing process that combines natural energy (sunlight) and raw materials (sand) with hi-tech production technology to produce glass objects, was displayed a few months ago at the Royal College of Art 2011 graduate show.