The thing a lot of people don't get about 3d printing right now is that it is still in its infancy. We are basically at the point where cell phones were the size of bricks. Give it a decade or two and we might look at 3d printers and their current price / resolution as laughable.
I truly hope we hear more stories of hospitals acquiring 3d printer technology so it becomes as ubiquitous as an MRI.
The thing a lot of people don't get about 3D printing is that it has been around since the early 80s. And unlike semiconductors which follow Moore's Law, not much has changed in the past 30 years except some of the earlier patents have expired. So the printers good for printing cheap plastic junk, like figurines, now only cost about $1K.
SOURCE: My company has been using $1-500K 3D printers for the past 15 years.
I'm 30. I grew up when a Discman was normal. Yes, a CD that spins in a portable device. It even had skip protection! Now? My children will laugh at such a notion.
"Daddy, what was it like when someone else had to make the stuff you used?"
Am I the only one who's not all that surprised or inspired by this? We know we can print arbitrary 3d objects of different sorts of plastics, so if any human being needs something of that kind we can print it. That it saves a life is a cool and inspiring coincidence for sure, just like I was amazed when I heard about bad software causing deaths of real people, but it's not like any conventional tool couldn't have done the same.
As bad as it may sound, it's remarkable that there are medical teams out there who employ "new" techniques such as 3D printing. It may be an old hat for us, but the medical community has always been a little ...reluctant when it comes to applying new technologies.
I can't imagine the people I went to medical school with considering or even knowing about such a thing, if it hasn't already been well-established. Also, there is an amazing amount of modeling that went into this particular piece. It's not just a matter of printing out a structure, it also has to fit the patient - and in this case it was a fairly complicated shape.
Medicine has been using 3d printing for well over a decade. The most common being invisiline which is a significant improvement over braces. But, also bone replacements as well as soft tissue.
You're not unreasonable for it. Really, I want medical professionals to be inspired by it. As Udo points out, the medical field is very cautious, and won't just jump on something like this without proof it works. As in a proven track record for a decade or so (yeah, there's a bootstrap problem in there, I bet).
It may be worth being impressed by the printable medium, though. The stuff isn't you regular ABS off a Cupcake CNC. It's biocompatible and will slowly be re absorbed into the body. That itself is something I hadn't known existed before, and that material is likely the real innovation here.
This ScienceDaily website badly needs a re-design. Over two-thirds of this page is smothered in related articles, social network buttons, ads, other news, banners etc. Ridiculous!
The article itself is actually just being reprinted from U of M's own site, which is much less ad-congested and even includes video. Would've been a much better choice for OP to post.
I (and I'm sure many other internet users) don't even take account of that stuff - I automatically hone into the content (typically, in a column somewhere near the left of the page) and ignore the ads to the sides.
Still, ads everywhere and a very busy content layout detracts from the usability of the site.
Clearly ( http://evernote.com/clearly/ ) does a really good job at scrubbing the page and changing the text to be more readable.
There was a TEDx talk in 2011 covering a very similar innovation: a custom-made "corset" for his ascending aorta, built using CT imaging, CAD modeling and "rapid prototyping" (which I suspect was 3D printing).
This almost brought joyous tears to my eyes. Through the muddy waters of the negative media shines hope! Why can't things of this nature catch traction more often?
What was metalsmithing used for first? Warfare and farming. Why would 3D printing be any different?
What scares me are the people who are going to start foaming at the mouth to ban 3D printing because you could print a gun. I'm afraid our best-case scenario is "heavily regulated", so I fully support anything that democratizes the technology, even if it is just printing stupid chochskies.
I think that's probably better phrased as, "the existing weapons industry has a lot of incentives to stop this development". Just because someone like defense distributed isn't an established arms manufacturer doesn't mean they aren't "in the industry". Same goes for other startups. The "payment industry" seems to have been greatly affected by an upstart named paypal. The "finance industry" probably doesn't like kickstarter very much. etc.
Remember it's technology - it'll get used for anything of value. Heck, the awesome bit is that eventually it'll be used for _everything_ applicable! Think of it like the Internet: today all you have to do is ask a question and someone somewhere probably has asked it and been answered. Also porn. And cat GIFs. And hundreds of apple pie recipes. And everything else. _And the medium's not even saturated yet_!
Just imagine when _stuff_ is like that. Expect some nasty things, but also expect cheap, easily reproducible miracles. I'd take that trade.
The same could be said of any technology -- anything can be used for good or evil. Immediately labeling them idiots because they're doing something you don't like is a bit ignorant, no?
I think their (the ones who post Youtube videos about it anyways) goal isn't to make gun parts, but to show how laws that restrict some magic block (that can be milled, carved, or printed) have nothing to do with making anyone safe.
They probably see that 3D printers are too widespread and too economically game-changing to be banned, effectively at any rate, and thus that by showing how printers enable production of something, they can show that regulating that thing at the historical source is going to be ineffective.
I imagine these people are your allies more than you think.
What I don't get is why is this just coming to light now? In the article it says that this happened February 9, 2012. It's been over a year since this happened why are we just hearing about it now?
Academia moves slowly. You want to make sure that your innovation actually had a net positive effect (does the patient actually survive?), you need clearances, you need to do the write-up, the journal needs publication space; honestly, I'm surprised that it's just a year. Novel techniques are attempted every day. You don't hear about them instantaneously because a majority of them don't work.
They don't want it to last longer, that is one of the reasons they chose this specific biopolymer.
The splint provides a structure for the airways to grow in/around/within, making sure they don't collapse in the meantime. Once the airways are properly developed the splint is no longer required.
From the article:
"The material we used is a nice choice for this. It takes about two to three years for the trachea to remodel and grow into a healthy state, and that's about how long this material will take to dissolve into the body," says Hollister.
You're right, a metal one would last longer, and made of something like titanium it wouldn't even rust.
But for a small child developing, the goal is to brace it long enough for the child's body to grow out of it, and then it's reabsorbed. That way the body can use it as supportive scaffolding, but eventually heals away. Which isn't as snazzy as a cyborg kid, but pretty cool that after a few years the child is running on their own support!
I wonder if something similar would be made for eye-sight correction. Most of nearsightedness, and farsightedness cases are caused by irregular size of cornea.
A 3D generated cushion from the outside, would be able to perhaps make a groundbreaking change in eye care services.
the muscles will eat into the cushion, in 2-3 years, enough for eyes to get rehabilitated and re-accustomed to the shape.
Imagine a future, without specs! No laser surgery, that cost hundreds and thousands of dollars.
I truly hope we hear more stories of hospitals acquiring 3d printer technology so it becomes as ubiquitous as an MRI.