Op-Ed: AI and 3D printing: When technologies collide, and something interesting happens

Keeping track of AI’s latest moves isn’t easy. It’s so much a part of news that a lot of interesting stuff gets drowned out in every 5-second storm in a neurotic teacup. 3D printing is a case in point.

News about AI and 3D printers is always around somewhere, but these are rarely top stories. That fact alone is far stranger than it might seem. If AI is “frontier”, 3D printing has always been “frontier”.  They’re a natural mix.

In a decade or so, 3D printing has gone from limited printing materials and comparatively simple designs to a virtual sector-wide DIY Renaissance.  

3D printing has always needed and will need more contextual space for its ideas, more processing power, more and better materials, etc. This is where AI comes in. Processing and managing high data loads, vectors, and specifications are where the very high-grunt scientific form of AI excels.

These two almost new areas of science are growing up fast, and the future is looking limitless. 3D people, please excuse an unavoidable level of superficiality at this point, because there’s a lot to cover.

At the 3D production level, AI is already making itself very useful. It’s working in areas like managing large numbers of printers, predicting failures, design optimization, and practical things like additive manufacturing.

Realism has definitely taken hold in this area of AI deployment. At the hyper-practical level, there’s already software to manage “unprintable” AI designs, in the form of all things Blender, the famous old go-to for a lot of imagery issues.

Materials science and 3D printing are inseparable. New materials mean new printing options, of course, but they also mean new material stresses, new printing dynamics, new areas for experimentation, and effectively an upgrade in all areas of 3D printing capabilities.

See what I mean about superficial? This very brief rundown of possibilities is almost a euphemism.AI can give creators and designers full control from the original ideas to the production models.

This AI capacity can also let 3D printing off the leash in terms of scale and depth of applications. Anything from live tissue 3D printing and the rest of the health sector’s many needs to designing materials at the molecular level is now truly accessible. Live tissue 3D printing is a good case in point. This is complex, almost beyond belief, and being “productive” is extremely hard mental and physical work. In construction terms, the 3D printing version of the universal spanner is now operational.

This is a strong positive leading into the next major plus in the meeting of AI and 3D printing. Older generation printers, mindsets, and software can struggle with any new tech, and someone has obviously noticed that issue almost immediately. Well done, Blender.

The future is printable

It may sound like a jingle, but “the future is printable” may well become the reality for future humans, and AI can do the work. It could even be the remedy for planned obsolescence, shoddy materials, ridiculous prices, and substandard commercial products.

In Ukraine, in an actual active war zone, 3D printing has become the norm. If you need something, you’re almost self-sufficient if you have the materials. The economics hardly need explaining.

Is it so unlikely that with AI on standby whenever you want, people might want good quality products, control over what they buy, and customization options built in?

Try this scenario:

People will need to be competent with basic AI operations in the future anyway. This is not avoidable.

The ability to save a fortune and time with DIY 3D printing options won’t be overlooked.

The AI tech is always current and up to date.

Obsolescence therefore isn’t an option.

The supply chain can supply materials far better than it can supply millions of products.

You can make what you actually need, not the usual very iffy commercial approximation of what you might need.

Commercial manufacturers can make things at scale to your specifications, with tech support if you need it.

You can 3D print a house and everything in it if you want.

AI can cost any print job.

Terrifying, isn’t it? Imagine 8.3 billion people with the time and space to literally make their own lives.

Wider macroeconomics and AI-boosted 3D printing

One of the greatest and most ruthlessly accurate criticisms of modern macroeconomics is “overproduction”. That’s hardly news to the commercial entities trying to move products through the highly constipated and often liquidity-starved supply chains.

It’s not exactly a revelation to the sellers trying to make profit margins out of whatever cost-based psychosis their suppliers might be suffering, either. Overproduction is a curse. It generates more garbage than value.

You could retune any kind of commerce to custom orders easily enough. Simply upload what you want, get a quote, problem solved at the supply end. Want a singing 2-hectare chandelier that can do Beethoven’s Ninth with full chorale? Easy.

The point here is that this simple fix is the way out of the Industrial Revolution supply and demand straitjacket. Producing vast amounts of things nobody wants and won’t buy anyway doesn’t work.

Imagine no waste. Imagine no endless layers of added cost through the supply chains. AI 3D printing can do that. Sound interesting?