3D打印之未来设想

风轻云淡

       Designed by Richard Hague and his students at the Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Research Group at the University of Nottingham, UK, this prosthetic arm shows how 3D printers can create a strong structure, mobile joints and delicate sensors – like spiral metal touch detectors – all in one process.
       （这条假肢由英国诺丁汉大学的“Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Research Group”的Richard与他的学生共同设计并制造完成的，它展示出3D打印机所创造出坚固的结构、灵活的关节和精巧的传感部件——如同螺旋金属触碰探测器，这些过程和细节只需要一步就能够。）

    The ability to 3D-print a variety of materials – using electron beams to fuse metals as well as laser beams to melt and fuse PLAstics – suits the process well to making tough knee implants that can take the daily punishment dealt by human locomotion.
（能3D打印多种材料——可用电子束熔融金属，用激光束融化塑料——适用于制造坚韧的、能承受日常运动损耗的膝关节移植体。）

        Scanning a skull damaged by injury or ravaged by diseases like cancer allows precision replacement bone to be printed, as here with these maxillofacial implants. One of the first such implants saw a woman get a whole new jawbone.
       (通过扫描被外伤或类似癌症的疾病侵蚀的受损人类头骨，借助3D打印技术能得到精准的移植骨骼，如同这里看到的上颌骨移植体。其中这类移植物首次成功移植：让一妇女得到一个全新的颌骨---另见报道http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/02/3d-printer-provides-woman-with.html。)

        If you can encourage cells to be deposited by a 3D print head you can make biomaterials too. Here, animal cells have been printed in the shape of a bladder and a blood vessel – giving us hints of a future in which people will be tissue-typed and given replacement organs on demand.
        (如果能把细胞沉积在3D打印头上，你也可制备生物材料。如图，用动物细胞3D打印出膀胱和血管——这不禁让人遐想：未来人们将会把组织类型化，并且按人们的不同需求来生产替代器官。)

        Find an antique blueprint and a 3D printer can bring history to life. Here engineer Peter Nicholson, based in Swindon, UK, has recreated the Bristol Mercury, the gorgeous radial engine that powered the Gloster Gladiator biplane in the 1930s and the Bristol Blenheim light bomber in the second world war.
       (只要有了古董图纸，3D打印机能把历史带进我们的现实生活。来自英国斯文顿的工程师Peter，重现了“布里斯托水星”。这是一台呈放射状的引擎，曾在30年代效力于Gloster Gladiator双翼战斗机，二战时期应用在布伦亨氏轻型轰炸机上。)


图片来源：(Image: Jennie Hills/Science Museum, London)  整理：风轻云淡