3D printing

Interesting.

I'd definitely like having this available. I've spent cumulative hours cutting and patching gear to get it the way I want it.

So... Have they begun putting 3D printers at campus grounds? Because I've been to one campus where they had 3D printing as a service.

Is the military brass looking at 3D printing at all? Because this is exactly the sort of thing you guys should be spending money on. You'll spend umpty billion dollars figuring out how to print a tank out of sand, and in the process come up with tons of fun civilian uses of the technology.

They're already looking into it for several applications, one of which is to give to special forces teams. One of their main missions is to train the indigenous population of a country to be guerillas, so one of the ideas is that you can drop a bunch of green berets with a 3D printer and some materials into a village, and someday print an arsenal of firepower for rebels to train them on.

I mean I don't see us 3D printing vehicles or armor anytime in the near future, but there are tons of applications. Even just little things, like some of our standard field gear. From a logistical standpoint as an Air Force guy at a Mobility Command base(cargo planes), this would free up so much space.

Everyone immediately thinks of printing guns, but what we could just pack printers and materials and we could print all of our plastic shit on-site at a country we make landfall on? Imagine not having to bother with shipping tons and tons of canteens, fuel cans, buckets, etc. What if we could make hard plastic shovels from 3D printers? What about replacement parts for guns, for the parts that are made of plastic? Different types of plastic medical equipment? Hell, there's talk of learning how to 3D print food someday.

We could hit a point where we cut our logistics of the shit we have to fly over to a country in half. Just get a bunch of 3D printers dropped with your initial security team and some engineering dudes trained to start cranking out necessary gear, and you suddenly just freed up half of your airlift logistics to do other shit.

So yeah, you can bet the military will be pouring billions into this technology, and that all sorts of nifty civilian benefits will happen as a result. Being able to make 3D printers interface with food will be a big one. Imagine being able to feed starving countries this way?

We're heading for 40k territory, STC's baby!

Barkey: And remember how that went wrong in 40k? I prefer we not go that route.

3d printing has also been looked at for freeing up space on naval ships.

Who watches the watchmen?

STC's weren't part of the problem, though. Sure, the cogboys treat them like religious artifacts and kill planets over them, but they do that with everything.

I was mostly joking about the printing vehicles thing, but I'm glad the army is looking into this. I didn't even think of all the plastic you guys use; that's something that could be done with the current technology, as I understand it.

I think right now the idea there is just to turn edible base material into something more aesthetically pleasing. Which might be important if you're running a fancy restaurant, but probably less so if you're just trying to feed some soldiers holed up in a middle eastern village somewhere.

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There were other bad things that came out of the STC's

Printable rations pretty much. Not too much different then processing it and sticking in a package.

edited 22nd May '13 7:09:31 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

^

Long as we don't start printing Men of Iron, I don't see any problems arising from it.

I have a feeling if we end up in a Robot War, it won't be the military's fault. Despite the incompetence seen in movies, they generally know what they're doing when it comes to things like that. Plus, replacing all the grunts with robots will piss off a lot of people—most of whom will be armed.

Honestly, we won't be at a level of technology where we could get machines to function at the level of a soldier in terms of judgement for a long time to come.

I'd be totally down for a "Surrogates" style soldier though. Let a few green berets parachute in and start printing combat bodies, then connect a bunch of soldiers at home into the bodies. Instant force multiplier.

they had those in TMNT 2K3 in the remote-piloted karaibots designed by dr. chapman

i wonder if a printed crossbow/dartgun would be more effective than a printed gun

Until we get machines capable of transmuting dirt to metal or something, they would have to bring the raw materials with them, plus the weight of the 3D printer, so I don't think that would be a useful application of the technology (since they'd be better off just bringing the robots with them).

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

It would probably be a lot easier to bring in the materials then actuall equipment, if nothing else you can probably pack the powder in a much more efficient way, no dead space. Plus once 3D printing becomes widespread you will be able to source the materials locally, along with them being much harder to control, you can stop a truck full of guns, stoping a truck full of plastic power is going to be a whole other story.

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

If you bring the robots with you, they're ready to work straight away.

If you bring in the materials + 3D printer, you've got to wait for at least several hours.

You'd maybe save a bit of space, but I don't think it would make up for the additional weight (raw materials to make robots + printer vs. the robots) and complexity. It would also save space to have soldiers sew together their backpacks on site, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

It will probably be a useful addition to a base's machine shop, as it will for machine shops generally.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

^

A few hours isn't that big of a deal when it comes to a "drop in and train guerillas" kind of operation, that usually involves being embedded for months.

Regardless, there will be uses for such things. On the whole, the "big army" will probably start having engineers with 3d printers as being part of their toolset soon enough. So that resource will become available at major bases and even smaller FOB's.

edited 23rd May '13 6:21:33 PM by Barkey

I'm curious about the implications of this technology for replacing organs. Isn't it effectively the same as cloning, meaning the DNA of the replicated tissue is essentially the same as your own?

Swordplay and writing blog. Purveyor of weeaboo fightin' magic.

Wouldn't be surprised if it would lead to cloning.

Organs can hardly be considered persons. Also, it wouldn't neccesarily lead to cloning. We could just make a bunch of chimeras to harvest organs from, which are cheaper to take care of.

edited 28th May '13 9:07:13 AM by Xopher001

Yeah, I don't see it going past synthesizing organs out of tissue, but that's still really awesome.

No, what I mean is that someone a while back in the thread mentioned biological immortality due to potentially being able to just replace whatever organs wore out indefinitely. Isn't aging just the result of your DNA's inevitable degradation over time that would still carry over to printed tissue cultures?

Swordplay and writing blog. Purveyor of weeaboo fightin' magic.

I think we don't really know enough about that to tell, at least not until we've figured out how to print organs for a while.

So theoretically, that may be true, but science could also possibly find a way around that.

There's a bunch of organisms whose DNA doesn't wear out, like jellyfish, turtles, and lobsters

Don't know about jellyfish and lobsters, but turtles have pretty long lives.

And even if we can print replacement organs indefinitely, it's just a little bit harder to replace the brain, whether you can print out a new one or not. So I don't think "clone organs with no chance of rejection" automatically means immortality.

Lobsters can live forever and have only been seen to die from outside circumstances (plus one assumes, starvation).

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran