Is 3D Printing the Future of Disaster Relief? 88
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Advocates for the technology say that it's only a matter of time before we're shipping raw materials and 3D printers instead of medical supplies to the site of a disaster. 3D printers are already being used in the medical field to create customized tracheal valves, umbilical cord clamps, splints, and even blood vessels. A group in Haiti is already using the umbilical cord clamps to show locals the potential for the technology. And it's only a matter of time before they get deployed in a disaster scenario, according to Thomas Campbell, a Virginia Tech professor and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council."
you guys are nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:you guys are nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
In a real disaster the most important things are going to be food, water and shelter. I can't see 3D printers helping with the first two and I'm not sure I want to wait days for the 3D printer to make me up a tent.. assuming I have the power to run it...
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So are medical supplies.
Additive manufacturing ... (Score:2)
While the idea behind utilizing the additive manufacturing technology in helping out emergency medical cases right inside the disaster area sounds probable, the title of TFA ( " Is 3D Printing the Future of Disaster Relief? " )is totally bonker.
Whoever wrote TFA had never worked in disaster relief --- else the writer would know that the logistic requirement in association with the additive manufacturing (clean room, electricity supply, et cetera) is hard to come by in a true disaster scenario.
That is wh
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I think the real advantage of 3D printing here is the simple nightmare of logistics. How many different little medical bits and bobs are there? Are you going to ship a huge load of everything you might need to wherever the doctors are attending? Probably not.
So what's the options? At the moment you either tie up your helicopters on courier duty to get the goods where they're needed on demand, or the operation's going to have to wait until the next delivery is due, or you're going to have to send a car out o
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wrong. the most needed medical supplies can't come out of a printer. the urgently needed tools are metal and can be sterilized for re-use. And ubilical clamp? cut me a fucking break, you can fit more in your pocket than will ever be needed at a site per square hundred miles. of course, the clamps aren't even necessary but let's not poop on the tard's parade I guess.....
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Medical supplies are rather uselss to someone who dies of thirst, too. What's your point?
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Medical supplies are rather uselss to someone who dies of thirst, too. What's your point?
He may be thinking that additive manufacturing technology can print out a water fountain ?
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do you have any idea how many ubilical cord clamps would fit in the volume of a 3D printer and its supplies? more than needed by d babies produced right after a tsunami and reactor meltdown, I can tell you. also, dirty little secret of the trade, the clamps are unnecessary.
The most needed medical supplies can't come out of a printer anyway. you won't be printing antibiotics. Unless we want to be like the tard that mentioned 3D printers can print food (if stoked with food)
It can ALREADY print food. (Score:1)
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What's the point printing food with food?
BS
Missing the Point about Printing Food by stating.. (Score:2)
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Interesting post. Yes, 3D Printing is very promising. But this need correction...
> What's more expensive, set up a kitchen, or a printer?
A kitchen is way cheaper to setup and run -- whether feeding a few, or a crowd. Its going to stay that way - kitchen technology is not going to stay static.
Think of kitchens as food printers that have been improved thousands of years :D If printers *will* be everywhere, kitchens *are* everywhere - they are way more important for us than printers.
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Hmm... All those print-head nozzles, heating elements, food containers, refrigeration requirements, loading of raw materials.
And I dread the washing up :D At the very least, dishwashers will need to be totally reinvented. Or you'll have to print out a 'cleaning run' after printing food - which may not clean hygienically enough.
No, I think food printing will remain a niche technology; maybe, used in molecular gastronomy. Elements may be incorporated into modern cookery, but Star-Trek like food synthesisers
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http://www.psfk.com/2013/10/3d-printed-bread-pasta.html
Takes a day to "print" food in unmentioned quantities, social media enabled, input is already food. Not sure how this will be better than emergency rations that can be made available in large volume in minutes.
http://3dprintingindustry.com/2012/11/18/video-3d-printing-chocolate/
That is revolutionary, it produces chocolate turtles from molten chocolate, the worlds hunger problems are solved /sarcasm
Neither of these inventions actually produce food in a way that would help in a disaster unless your disaster fits into /r/firstworldproblems.
Re:It can ALREADY print food. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't print food. It prints with food. If your kitchen printer can make a printed chocolate bar, you already had edible chocolate. If you can print pasta, you already had flour and water and could have made a passable flatbread with nothing more than a mixing bowl and a hot skillet.
In a disaster zone, the shape of the food is not the priority. Just having calories and vitamins, in any form, will do.
Re:It can ALREADY print food. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, we can make edible food with just flour and water even blindfold,
If it's edible, we survive the disaster. Isn't that the point here?
but automated manufacturing systems (3D printers are just one, and will evolve)
It's a disaster. Exactly how many "automated manufacturing systems" are you planning to magically have available (with the power to run them)?
With flour, water, some fire source, and a flat surface that can survive heating, I can make flatbread in a matter of minutes. Your solution depends on complex technology being available and power to run it.
can in principle create vastly more complex products using large numbers of ingredients or components and with microscopic precision.
Umm, again, it's a freakin' disaster. Does anyone really give a crap about doing anything with "microscopic precision"? We're looking to survive, not do a lab experiment.
This would be totally beyond the capability of humans to reproduce in any reasonable span of time.
Anything that's "beyond the capability of humans to reproduce in any reasonable span of time" is probably not needed in a disaster scenario.
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The dire circumstances don't last long. The event happens, then there is a disruption in local processes and supply chain. For a few days, a printer might be somewhat beneficial.
But rapid repair of supply chain is key. Simple calories won't do the job for long. Fresh potable water and cholera prevention comes next, with decent nutrition; calories are only a part of it.
Printing pasta is simply silly. If you have a disaster, power availability is unlikely. Alchemy still requires magic, something also unavaila
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Example 1: http://www.psfk.com/2013/10/3d-printed-bread-pasta.html [psfk.com]
What a ridiculous argument. This isn't even an article. It's 2 paragraphs which just say that in future, we might be able to print pasta or dough.
You're wasting your time with this crap.
Re:It can ALREADY print food... not so much (Score:3)
Regarding your first example, it is a machine that makes bread (I guess in various shapes) out of dough, but if you have the dough, a regular bread machine would be more efficient, and a regular oven would be even more efficient as long as you have a human available to kneed the dough. And many kinds of ovens work without electricity.
Regarding the second example, it is a machine that makes shaped chocolates, which will be poorly tempered compared to molded chocolates, and once again, you have to have the ch
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Regarding your first example, it is a machine that makes bread (I guess in various shapes) out of dough, but if you have the dough, a regular bread machine would be more efficient, and a regular oven would be even more efficient as long as you have a human available to kneed the dough. And many kinds of ovens work without electricity.
Just to clarify, I would imagine the first example would be targeted more to specialized pasta shapes. So if you have to have your "bowtie" or "corkscrew" pasta in the middle of a disaster, you could make it, I guess.
On the other hand, most people in the world don't mind eating dried pasta (which is probably about the quality this thing will put out anyway), and dried pasta stores about as well as the flour you'd need to make the pasta dough anyway. So why not just store your bowtie pasta for the emerge
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Everybody RUN!!!! Three-D Printers are going to be the future of disaster relief!!!! In a wierd ironic way, our leaders are so messed up, that I think that this headline -- which ends in a questionmark, and thus should be a instant "No", is instead an instant "yes".
Re:you guys are nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
probably not nuts, just hype / pump-and-dump.
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In a case of disaster, you'll probably not have unlimited energy even if otherwise you'd have.
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for spare parts, obviously.
or creating moulds for mass producing something.
not really that energy inefficient though.. even if a bit slow.
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you aint thinkin, there are MASSIVE opportunities for curtain rings and chess pieces in a disaster zone, sheesh
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I take it feedstock for 3D printers is weightless, then? Or does it just happen to be lying around on the ground when and where mother nature does her worst?
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your ignorance is astounding. emergency operations are performed with very small amount of reusable tools. I have a retired friend who does improvised operations in mexico for the poor as part of mission work, all he uses fits in trunk of a small car. All the bulky things needed, anesthesia and antibiotics and medications and bandages, don't and won't come out of a printer. although using logic by the tard's who are the subject of this article they'd send in an automatic loom to weave bandages from c
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a 3d printer and raw supplies are not weightless and you have to wait hours before getting one produced good out of them, meanwhile for the same space and weight you could send thousands of any of the items listed in the summary
Electricity: This is for hospitals (Score:2)
They also need electricity, which is by no means guaranteed at a disaster site.
But the current idea is to 3d-print medical supplies, which in theory should be used by medical teams, which are supposed to have some level of self-sustainability in case of emergency.
Most hospitals are designed to be able to run unaffected under almost all circumstences, except only the harshest. And even then, they not completely shut down, they route power to the most critical part. (The TVs in the patient room may not be operationnal, but the surgery department is supposed to still be able to operate i
economics (Score:2)
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But dried babies don't make good child soldiers when they get older. The guns for which will come hot off the 3d press :)
Just 3D print the babies pre-dried.
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The umbilical chord clamp: Teach people they can just leave the baby attached to the placenta till it dries out, or tie it of with string or anything else they have at hand before cutting the chord.
AIUI, there is a notable risk of the baby being deprived of oxygen due to blood being diverted to the placenta, not to mention the fact that the plancenta is fragile and presents a vulnerable spot which could result in bleeding out. For the peak of the evolutionary ladder, us humans are pretty defective animals. (Although I think the traditional way of dealing with this was just to tie a knot in the cord itself by hand.)
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Ever touched one? When you were old enough to remember it, I mean.
They're really thick and gristly; the vein inside is like a nylon rope. It'd be very difficult to knot it tight enough to seal it.
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what could happen is
Hey bob crates number 345d and 765f didn't make it
anything useable??
no some of the stuff we can grind for raws but its all trashed
okay check the manifest and see what we need to print off.
Im going to tell our interns they have to peddle double time until we get the generators up
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There's a disaster and people are only concerned with profits? Despicable!
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Can you make those with a 3D printer?
At least you could stack them up for shelter (straw's a great insulator) or burn them to keep warm. Protip: Don't mix those two approaches.
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It's not clear from the article, but I think the 3d printed device goes inside the trachea and holds it open, rather than being used to create a new airway via an incision.
Still, when you've hundreds of patients to treat you're going to do the simple basics to keep them alive first. Tidying up can come later.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? If it is disaster you just want to rip open a bag and have the item you want right there and then.
Not have to depend on a 3D printer that may or may not have been damaged, materials that may or may not have been contaminated, electricity supply that may or may not work and operator who may or may not be available. You just want to grab a sealed bag and use its contents straight away.
Furthermore, Haiti only needs to print these clamps because its entire social structure is so corrupt that money that was send to buy these clamps did not arrive and any medical supplies get stolen. How long do you think it will be before 3d printers go missing same as emergency generators have gone missing? The Haiti disaster is NOT the earth quake anymore it is the total corruption of its society and funneling in expensive toys will not fix it.
Ten to one within a month this 3d printer will have sprouted legs and walked out of the building.
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Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
It would take a fair bit of work to get current printers to the point where they'd be useful in that situation, though. You don't necessarily have access to power or a laptop on the ground, so the whole package they'd have to drop would need to be self-contained and have a built-in list of shapes it could print. It would also have to print reasonably quickly and with reasonably good precision.
Maybe a bit useful (Score:1)
Lots of uses.
3D printers are slow and require a lot of arcane (Score:2)
knowledge to get a good result. They are fine for doing 1-off custom parts where you can afford to wait for the result, but they don't make any sense at all in a disaster relief situation where you need many identical items quickly. Take umbilical cord clips as the example- there is no need for customization, no need to wait for a 3D printer to produce them. It is MUCH simpler to send a bunch of them in a bag.
Where is the printer going to get power in a disaster zone? Now you're talking about flying in
Long-term/Short-Term (Score:1)
It is a question of term, nothing more (Score:2)
Today, the answer is no. It would be dumb. Do some statistical analysis, figure out what you're most likely to need, stock as much as possible and have a line on more in case of an emergency.
Tomorrow, for some value of tomorrow, the answer will be yes. Because 3D printers will be a proven technology and every hospital will have several on hand to make custom-sized artificial limbs and all the kinds of crap discussed in this article.
In between, the answer will be mostly no.
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We are the gray goo...
Please stop saving the world (Score:1)
I spent three years working in refugee camps in Africa. I also spent a year as with the Army at a remote firebase in Afghanistan. FWIW. And I agree that this really is delusional. This is the last thing I would want to have to deal with, for all the reasons cited above.
On a more general note, this article is Exhibit A of a certain bizarre phenomenon of current tech culture. It seems that many people feel they have to justify the worth of novel innovations by showing that they are a benefit to big-H Hum
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The One Laptop Per Child program struck me in a similar way. The idea of giving laptops to kids who don't have basic stuff like running water and decent medical care always struck me as a pretty bizarre use of resources.
Grand unrealized visions (Score:2)
Maybe it's just me but I get the sense that 3D printing in the near term is going to be the next dotcom crash. Why? Well, in my own research on the product offerings that are out there, they just don't live up to the hype. Sure the companies are great at showing you tiny trinkets and endless variations of cellphone bumpers. So what? I looked into this to see if printing electronics enclosures on demand would be a viable method of manufacture. Most machines couldn't print anything big enough (exceeding
Slashvertisement (Score:2)
ISO containers of ready-to-use supplies won't require time to produce onsite because they are, wait for it, ready to use.