One of the biggest misconceptions about 3D printing – the notion that it doesn’t suit the production of goods in high volume – has been put to bed by brands such as Adidas, which has turned heads in the footwear industry with its striking midsole designs. Virtual reality (VR) is similarly misunderstood and sometimes dismissed as a gimmick. But put VR and 3D printing together, and you have a rapid prototyping dream team that’ll be the envy of your competitors.

And don’t think that you need to spend north of US $3000 on an Apple Vision Pro to reap the rewards. The benefits of combining VR and 3D printing can be realized with an affordable headset such as the Quest 3 – released in 2023 – or even a Quest 2, which is now available at a lower price point and with a software speed up.

Iterate faster

A big fan of having designers use VR to iterate designs in 3D is Jared Goldman – VP of Design at New Balance (another footwear company at the bleeding edge of manufacturing). And there are some compelling reasons to back up his thinking.

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By Goldman’s estimation, physical samples have a turnaround time of around 45 days – once you’ve added up sending the tech package, production of the prototypes in Asia, and shipping of the shoes back to the US. However, it’s possible to produce photoreal samples of the same designs in seven days, or maybe less, in a virtual environment.

Decision makers can see the shoes from all angles in a virtual environment and have confidence in their feedback that compares with handling physical samples. Plus, headset-wearing team members can collaborate easily and in real-time, no matter where they are across the globe – provided that they have an internet connection.

“The better you can express your idea, so that somebody who is a non-designer can understand it, the more successful you’re going to be,” Goldman comments in a case study shared by Gravity Sketch – a developer of VR design software that is increasingly becoming part of 3D printing product workflows.

Example of a VR and 3D printing toolchain

• Gravity Sketch – for virtual product creation
• Blender – to add materials appearance for final design validation
• Ultimaker Cura – for slicing and 3D printing production preview
• 3D printers – to produce the finished goods

Today, there are numerous online tutorials showing how to combine VR and 3D printing to go from first idea to finished product. Beginning with a rough sketch created using handheld VR controllers, the next step is to add virtual form to the digital design, with lighting effects making the output appear all the more realistic.

Slicing software will prepare the model for 3D printing, where it’s possible to adjust support material and preview the build to double-check that all’s well before committing fabrication time and materials to the job.

And it’s not just about keeping sneakerheads happy with a stream of new and exclusive trainers, VR and 3D printing can be combined to deliver progress in areas such as medical visualization too.

Materialise – a pioneer in the field of 3D printing – points out that the number of hospital-based 3D printing facilities has increased exponentially to help with tasks such as patient-specific surgical planning.

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On TechHQ, we’ve written about how beneficial VR can be to medical training and upskilling hospital staff. And 3D-printed anatomical models take that tactile experience to the next level.

Construction is another area that’s taking a keen interest in additive manufacturing – this time using giant 3D printers to build homes layer by layer. Here, VR can be used by designers and home buyers to experience what it’s like to move around a digital render of the building prior before nozzles start squirting out cement.

“We see this tool as an exciting way the get clients, designers, and contractors up to speed on the inner workings of how a 3D construction printing project actually works,” commented Marchant Van Den Heever, CTO of HTL.tech – a distributor of 3D construction printing technology in the UK and Ireland.

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3D printed shoes are a great example of where additive manufacturing absolutely lives up to the hype. And following the progress made by sneaker designers such as Adidas, which has built up considerable experience in using 3D printers to make trainers, reveals much about how future products could be manufactured.

In the early days, 3D printing was badged as a rapid prototyping tool. Use cases were one-off parts or mock-ups to double-check that all was well before pulling the trigger on expensive injection molding tooling. But, as Adidas and other leading lights have discovered, the appeal of 3D printing for making shoes and other mass-produced goods goes much further.

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One of the biggest misconceptions about 3D printing is that it cannot be used to make products at scale. However, the progress made by Adidas and its additive manufacturing partner Carbon in developing 3D printing shoes for the mass market challenges that.

The rise of printer farms – sometimes referred to by operators as ‘warehouses where the shelves make the product’ – makes it possible for 3D printing to compete with injection molding at high volume. And customers will be surprised by just how many parts that modern 3D printing facilities can deliver.

Naturally, the design should play to the strength of the additive manufacturing process and suit speed-ups – such as having the 3D printer automatically eject the part after completing each build – to hit big numbers.

Today, manufacturing experts will recommend 3D printing to customers wanting up to a million parts a year, and the reasons are more than just cost-parity with injection molding. And this is where it’s useful to pick up a pair of 3D printed Adidas 4DFWD shoes to see the manufacturing appeal up close.

Forward thinking: the 3D printed midsole used in the Adidas 4DFWD features a variable stiffness bow tie lattice that compresses forward to improve running efficiency. Image credit: Adidas.

Trainers often push the design envelope in terms of the combination of shapes and materials. Sneakerheads view trainers as a work of art, and the lattice-based midsole of the 4DFWD is a thing of beauty. It has attractive mechanical properties too.

Designers of high-performance trainers want to be able to vary the stiffness of the midsole along the length of the shoe – providing comfort upon first strike, but without slowing down the athlete. And having lattice geometries greatly widens the range of mechanical properties that are available from a given material.

What’s more, 3D printed shoes open the door to massive customization – for example, lattices could be tailored to individual runners, factoring in differences in weight and stride length – making products more attractive to customers.

Updatable, updatable, updatable

The customization that goes hand-in-hand with 3D printing helps brands too, as they can update their range whenever they choose. Having to make changes to injection molding tools limits the frequency of product updates to maybe just a couple of times a year. But with 3D printing, it’s done in software – once the new file is loaded, you’re good to go.

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Manufacturing updates can be applied rapidly too. For example, as Carbon’s research and development team discovered ways to produce the 3D printed Adidas shoes more rapidly and efficiently, those process improvements could be sent seamlessly to the manufacturing facility without the need for any personnel to travel or change parts.

And it’s telling that other brands have joined Addidas in 3D printing shoes. Footwear designs have been walked down the catwalk and some firms – such as Vivobarefoot – are exploring how the innovative shoe manufacturing technology can support a circular economy for trainers.

Being able to print locally and on-demand can shorten supply chains and reduce the amount of unsold product that goes to waste. If circular economy ambitions can be realized on top of that, the future of mass-produced footwear and other 3D printed products could become even more attractive.

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The current economic outlook may look bleak, but as businesses both tighten their belts and extend their arms to support customers, industry counterparts and, of course, the heroic global healthcare industry, positive innovation and partnerships are taking place everywhere we look.

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In an example of how that can look, automobile giant Ford has partnered with 3M and GE healthcare to mass produce respirators, ventilators, and face shields with the help of 3D printing to boost production.

In building the equipment, the partnership aims to develop new designs based on parts produced by both companies to meet the demand.

Targets of the partnership include “to build 50,000 ventilators in the next 100 days” and more than 100,000 plastic face shields per week for communities of first respondents, factory workers, and retail workers.

The automaker intends to leverage its in-house 3D printing capability to produce components of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as disposable respirators.

Starting in April, we’re producing a ventilator with @GEHealthcare, leveraging the design of @AironCorp’s FDA-cleared ventilator. It's designed to operate on air pressure without electricity, making it a versatile solution to help those fighting #COVID19. #BuiltFordProud pic.twitter.com/DtsB0fPGe0

— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) March 30, 2020

3D printing an emerging tech in healthcare

3D printing is in the limelight currently as a solution set to help alleviate and accelerate production backlogs, quickly providing healthcare facilities with some of the stock they desperately need.

However, Mike Kesti, Global technical director of 3M’s personal safety division, said “3M’s view is that 3D printing for PPE does not provide the scale we need.”

Ford’s deployment of 3D printing technologies is an innovative move yet, as pointed out by Kesti, will not transform the current supply issue, at least in the short term.

However, current work in the area is showing 3D printing’s open-source potential in a crisis, and how focusing on manufacturing the smallest, simplest of components can also contribute greatly.

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In New York, a team at Northwell Health is releasing a template for 3D-printed nasal swabs for testing kits – a crucial component in tracking and stemming the spread of COVID-19.

The healthcare provider aims to take some pressure off from strained manufacturers by sharing the design with public sectors.

Dr. Todd Goldstein, director of 3D design and innovation at Northwell Health, explained the mass sharing of nasal swab design is a crucial step to ignite widespread testing.

The healthcare organization is now 3D printing about 2,000 to 3,000 nasal swabs a day for frontliners.

“Anyone who has these printers and materials — we’re talking dental labs, university hospitals, high schools, middle schools, universities, engineering schools, even companies that use these printers for prototyping … if they get the correct resin, they can also make these swabs and help with the shortages,” Goldstein told ABC news.

As more organizations in the US are called to help combat the pandemic and production lines face heightened pressure to move in “Trump time,” emerging technologies such as 3D printing may offer some of the help needed in a time of a global crisis.

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3D printers have long captured the imagination, enabling almost anyone (with the right equipment and design files) to create almost any inanimate object they can think of. 

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And while 3D printed houses and food, and even firearms, may grab the headlines, the technology has vast, cross-industry applications for businesses looking to optimize manufacturing methods with low-cost, flexible techniques. 

Commonly using materials such as thermosetting polymers, injection molding, as it’s otherwise known, provides an alternative to using costly materials, allowing users to quickly create bespoke parts in-house without the use of specialized machinery. 

3D printing in medicine

True to form, it has done with many other advanced technologies, the medical industry is pioneering new frontiers in what’s possible with 3D printing. 

Here, technology has life-changing potential. Surgeons can use the technique to replicate patient-specific organs, used for practice and preparation ahead of complicated operations— this can be much more effective than relying on MRI and CT scans or X-rays.  

‘Bioprinting’, meanwhile, is enabling medical professionals to create prosthetic limbs, and now even tissue, skin and organs, tailored for the individual needs of each patient. 

But while this may be limited to a finite batch of patients, for now, the industry is considering ways it can turn the technology to help and personalize treatments for a wider pool of individuals. 

3D printed medicine and pills

3D printers are now being used to create medicines suitable to individuals patients’ needs. 

Pills and tablets have been both saviors and a burden to many patients. With everybody responding differently to medicine and dosage, prescribing the right medicine to patients is a constant challenge faced by doctors. 

According to NBCI, close to 9,000 people die per year in the United States due to wrong prescriptions. For children, the risk of choking is another nightmare faced by parents. This statistic could be cut down if doctors had a way to ensure they prescribed medicine personalized to their patients’ needs. 

But every medicine is created to a certain standard, and making pills smaller means reducing the dosage. If creating one medicine can cost billions in big pharma, making two variants would be an extremely difficult and costly process. 

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Using a 3D printer allows pharmacists and manufacturers to rapidly design and create pills to different specifications; small or large, longer absorption or slower to meet the patient’s needs. 

Once printed, robotic systems can fill up capsules to the right dosage. Doctors and pharmacists could also combine several drugs into one pill. This allows patients to just take one pill as opposed to a cocktail of drugs, which can be difficult to take, and a burden to carry around. 

The medical industry is already employing 3D printed medicine. In 2015, Aprecia Pharma produced Spritam, a tablet to treat epilepsy with their patented 3D printing technology— it was the first 3D printed medicine in the world to be approved by the FDA.

The ‘Polypill’, meanwhile, has since been tested among diabetic patients. The application deals with medication dosage and solves issues of a diverse drug interaction. Patients can avoid exhaustive monitoring of drug intake when medications have different schedules. 

3D printed pills also makes non-invasive internal diagnosis possible. As reported recently, a group of researchers from Tuft university made an indigestible pill that can pass through the gastrointestinal system and sample gut bacteria. 

The manufacturing technique has enabled doctors, surgeons, and pharmacists to better care for their patients by providing them with exactly what they need. With 3D printing, medicines can be customized, allowing children, adults and the elderly to be treated individually with the right dosage.

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