Improving 3-D Printing By Copying Nature 128
An anonymous reader writes "Biologist Janine Benyus is excited about the 3-D printer revolution and she thinks it can be improved by modeling natural processes. 'Benyus, who wrote Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature and co-founded the institute Biomimicry 3.8, would like to see a transition in manufacturing—from big, smoke-belching factories to small, clean desktop printers. The key to making it truly sustainable, she said, lies in mimicking how a natural ecosystem functions. "Nature uses life-friendly chemistry, which is nontoxic and water-based, and which does not require high heat," said Benyus. In contrast, most of the products people use today have been forged in industrial-size furnaces, with a plethora of toxic solvents. A potato chip bag may seem like a simple item, but it is actually made up of several thin layers of different materials, one to make it strong, one to make it airtight, and so on.'"
Re:More important than using recycled stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
thermoplastics do that. Thermosetting compounds don't. Sometimes you can get away with a thermoplastic, sometimes not. Then there's the problem of miximg them in the recycling stream, especially when people add all sorts of things to the thermoplastics like metals and colors and stuff. Also, the big move has been to make plastics that don't last forever...in landfills, they tell us. UV light breaks them down. No recycling then!
Sometimes you just have to burn the stuff. Then use the atmosphere and the sun and the ocean to make it back into the really basic material.
"Natural" manufacturing is material-limited (Score:4, Interesting)
Mother Nature doesn't do much manufacturing of metals of any kind, much less ferrous alloys.
She only works with ceramics in a few limited ways.
Those giant, hot, smog-belching factories were built specifically because we can't build starships out of wood and stone, or semiconductors out of sandstone and clay. Show somebody how to plant, fertilize, water, and grow a SSTO launch vehicle or a billion-plus transistor CPU, we'll be all over that. Until then, we'll do it with steel and silicone, and those materials have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere isn't a garden.
Re:Non-toxic? (Score:5, Interesting)
The nontoxic part doesn't really make sense even taking adaptation into account. There are plenty of natural toxins that are toxic to us and other organisms. Nature sometimes "invents" them specifically for their toxicity, as in the case of reptile venom or mycotoxins.
And as for natural vs. unnatural chemistry: chemical-weapons programs use "unnatural" chemistry, while biological-weapons programs use "natural" chemistry. But does that distinction mean anthrax is the earth-friendly "green" alternative to mustard gas?
Re:More important than using recycled stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
We could fix a lot of this by engineering stuff to be recyclable. Imagine assembly with connectors designed to come apart in easy to create environments. Maybe the rivets release all ABS parts at 75C, and all aluminum parts at 90C.