Gizmodo’s3D Printing Week , a collaborative project with GE that come to a close this evening , would only be partially complete without a look at the use of animals as living 3-D printers . They are sentient printheads , we might say : biologic sources of stuff , whether it ’s silk and honey or credit card and even , as we ’ll see below , concrete .
Animal Printheads
Spiders , silkworms , and honeybees are already 3D printers — and biotechnology is rapidly get to that more than just a poetical metaphor . These beast are organic illustration of depositional manufacture , and they have been domesticated and used throughout human history for specific originative end .
Just this week , for deterrent example , we learned that , give a extra dieting , silkworms can produce colored silk , readymade for use in textiles , and other examples are not intemperate to follow by . Indeed , using bees as 3D printing machine is already something of anaccepted artistic process .
https://gizmodo.com/silkworms-fed-dyed-mulberry-leaves-to-produce-colored-s-1476655497
Perhaps the most wide seen late exploration of the animate being - as-3D - printer concept was done in the beginning this class for , of all things , apublicity stunt by Dewar ’s , in which the company “ 3D printed ” a bottle of Dewar ’s using nothing but especially shaped and crop beehives .
The picture tell the floor understandably enough : using a magnanimous glass bottleful as a clay sculpture in which the bees could create new hive , the process then ended with the removal of the glass and the disclosure of a consummate , bottle - shape , “ 3-D - printed ” hive .
As Dewar ’s joked , it was 3B - print .
Images courtesy of Dewar ’s , viadesignboom .
Or , for example , take theSilk Pavilion , another late projection you ’ve probably see , in which researchers at MIT , lead by Neri Oxman , 3D - publish a room - sized dome using cautiously guided silkworm as living printheads .
The Silk Pavilion was an architectural experiment in which , as the designers explicate , “ the silkworm itself [ was ] deploy as a biological pressman in the creation of a subaltern structure . ”
The primary structure , meanwhile , that the silkworm used as a sort of depositional substratum , was a continuous thread envelop around a metal scaffold like a labyrinth , seen in the range of a function below .
At that point in the operation , “ A swarm of 6,500 silkworms was positioned at the bottom rim of the scaffold spin flat non - woven silk patches as they locally reinforced the spread across CNC - deposited silk fibers . ”
The “ CNSilk ” method acting resulted in this gossamer , woven dome that looks more like a swarm than a building .
paradigm courtesy ofMIT .
What both of these examples show , despite the fact that one is a somewhat tongue - in - cheek media ploy by an alcohol company , is that animal bodies can , in fact , be guided , disciplined , or otherwise regulated to bring forth with child - scale structures , from objects to whole buildings .
In both typeface , however , the animals are plainly depositing , or “ printing , ” what they would ordinarily ( that is , by nature ) grow : silk and honey . After all , things get considerably more interesting , on the other hand , when we count at somewhat more alien biological materials .
Bee Plastic
Several years ago , textile scientist Debbie Chachra at New England’sOlin College of Engineeringbegan explore what ’s known as “ bee plastic ” : a cellophane - same biopolymer give rise by a coinage aboriginal to New England called Colletes inaequalis .
Image courtesy of Deb Chachra .
These bee produce tiny , cocoon - like structures in the soil — one can be seen in the pic , above — using a special gland unique to the species . The leave , non - fossil - fuel - based natural polyester not only resists biodegradation , it also survives the temperate extremes of New England , from the area ’s sweltering summers to its subzero winter storms .
More intriguingly , however , the cellophane - like bee plastic “ does n’t come in from petroleum , ” Chachra explain to me for a 2011 end - of - twelvemonth article inWired UK . “ The bee are moderately much just eating pollen and produce this plastic , ” she proceed , “ and we ’re trying to understand how they do it . ”
Bee plastic , Chachra justifiably speculates , could perhaps someday be used to manufacture everything from office supply to auto bumper , acting as an oil - innocent choice to the plastics we habituate today and perhaps kickstarting a homegrown bio - industry for New England , where the coinage thrives .
But even this , of track , is a imagination of animate being - based fabrication that rely on the already - existent excreting of living creature . Could we — temporarily putting aside the honorable implications simply to talk about the material possibility — perhaps genetically qualify bees , silkworms , spiders , and so on to acquire considerably more robust biopolymers , something not just substantial enough to withstand biodegrading but that could be produced and used on an industrial scale ?
Recall , for example , that the U.S. Army was successful in its attempt togenetically organise a goat to create spider silk proteinsin its Milk River . Their ultimate goal is to produce an unbreakable super - fibre that can be used in conflict gear , include “ lightweight body armor made of artificial spider silk , ” and other military equipping .
Not unlike Dewar ’s bee - printed nursing bottle , then , augmented cousins of Chachra ’s charge plate - producing bee could thus 3D - print whole car bodies , kitchen counters , architectural parts , and other casual products .
These possibility become even more strange and promising when we move to material like concrete .
Concrete Honey
For an ongoing collaborative project , New York - based designerJohn Beckerand I have been look at the possibility of using bee that have been genetically modify to print concrete as architectural printheads .
ab initio inspiredby a moderately headstrong misreading of a projection published by the CCA in Montréal under the deed of conveyance “ Bees Make Concrete Honey , ” we ’ve imagined and illustrate a serial of science - fabricated scenario in which a new bee species , called Apis caementicium — cementum bees — could be deploy throughout the city to repair statue and fix architectural decoration , and even to raise whole , detached - stand structures , such as cathedrals .
Like the process survey for the Dewar ’s bottle , seen above , the bees would be given an initial manakin to act upon within . Then , buzzing by inside this mildew or cast , and additively depositing the ingredients for bio - concrete on the walls , frames , or structures they ’re attached to , the bee could 3D - print raw architectural forms into existence .
This includes , for example , in the image below , the iconic stone lions outside the New York Public Library , damaged by picture and human contact , but now limit from within by concrete bee . You could conceive this as a kind of constitutional caulk .
But , of course , respectable plot such as these invariably spin out of ascendency and things do n’t go as planned .
Feral Printers
The bee , of course of instruction , eventually escape : first just a few here and there , but then an upstart colony lead clutch . Within a few years , as they reproduce and boom , and as the settlement grow , the metropolis becomes aware of the scale of the job : rogue 3D - print bee have infested various component part of the city .
They print where they should n’t print and , without the commission of their cautiously made formwork and molds , what the bee print often make believe no sentience .
They impress on signs and phone poles ; they take over parks and garden where they print strange descriptor on flowers , seal orchid and rosiness in Freemasonry shells .
Tiny fragments of concrete can soon be see on plants and threshold frames , beneath car and on concatenation - tie fence , coiling up and consuming the side of structures where they were never meant to be , like kudzu ; and , of course , strange bee torso are found now and again , little concrete - laden corpses lie in the grass of backyard , in parking lots , and on rooftop .
Striking brute , augmented and extraordinary , dot the very city they ’ve also embellish and improved , where they once print church steeples and flat ornament , where they fixate cracked walls , statue , and pavement .
Of course , other , more adventurous or just disoriented bees make their room further , hitching inadvertent rides in the cargo deck of airplane and loading ships , mistakenly joining other hives then ship around the human beings .
The bees are soon recover in Europe , China , and , especially — for reasons never quite clear to material scientists — India , where , in the ikon adopt below , they can be seen add up unnecessary ornamentation to a temple in Rajasthan . Swarming and uncountable , they busily speck the outside of the building with bulbous and tumid additions no architect would ever have planned for .
As the bee speciate yet further , and their concrete itself mutates — in some cases , so hard it can only be removed by the tough drills and demolition equipment , other clip more like a slow - dry sandstone incapable of achieving any structure at all — this experiment in animal printheads , these living three-D printers producing computer architecture and industrial object , come to stop .
A Bee Amidst The Machines
Designers learn from the , in retrospect , obvious mistake that led to these feral printers , turning back to their more well controlled inorganic factories and industrial processes . But , even then , on quiet fountain days , a midget buzzing sound can from time to time be heard from inside the machines , and whole gathering lines come shuddering to a halt . There , within the gears , just doing what it ’s used to — what we made it do — a tiny 3D - print bee has taken tooth root , leaving errant clumps of concrete wherever it alights .
All image not otherwise credited are byJohn Becker .
3d print weekArchitecturebioengineeringConcreteFictionInsects
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