Dr. Jason Jones was an AM researcher on a project that expanded in scope and got very complicated. Miraculously it resulted in a company called Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies. This firm makes print heads and equipment that turns CNC machines into DED machines. The company’s machines are used to make parts, repair parts and add new material to older parts. They also have inspection heads to enable parts to be build right and checked the first time. I really think that Hybrid is an amazing combination of Additive and CNC and criminally underused. Jason gave us a wonderful tour of his companies advantages and the specific advantages of 3D printing and subtractive manufacturing in one machine. Really worth your time!

Podcast (podcast-audio): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe:

Given the compounding human-caused, ecological crises facing life on earth at the moment, I’ve been interested in speaking to experts to understand what role, if any, 3D printing and technology can play in stalling, mitigating and/or reversing those crises. Among them is Manfred Lenzen, Professor of Sustainability Research at Integrated Sustainability Analysis (ISA) in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.

Prof. Lenzen has a PhD in Nuclear Physics and has spent 15 years dedicated to renewable energy, including passive solar architecture. Having focused also on input-output analysis and lifecycle assessment, Lenzen has also developed a deep understanding of the intertwined relationship between human activities and their impacts on the larger ecosystem.

A 3D printed heat exchanger like this one could be used to optimize temperatures in a direct air capture system. Image courtesy of GE Research.

Most recently, Prof. Lenzen co-authored a report, along with other leaders in the sustainable energy and economics space, which questioned the feasibility and potential negative impacts of many of the technological solutions being proposed by the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and others to address ecological breakdown, such as negative emissions technologies like direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Instead, the authors urge a “post-growth” approach, particularly aimed at high-income countries, in which societies’ economic growth is redirected toward social welfare.

In this article, we’ve provided the full transcription of our interview with Prof. Lenzen. In a follow-up article, we will discuss the role of 3D printing and technology more specifically as it relates to the ongoing ecological crisis.

GE Aviation’s 3D printed fuel injection nozzle.

I began by telling Prof. Lenzen about the paragon of 3D printing case studies: the 3D printed jet fuel nozzle by GE-Safran joint venture CFM International. This component not only demonstrates the ability of additive manufacturing (AM) to improve labor and production efficiency by reducing the part count of an assembly from 12 to just one, but also fuel efficiency. The nozzle is meant to cut fuel consumption by about 15 percent, in turn reducing greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft by 15 percent. This served as a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging conversation that began as follows:

Prof. Lenzen: I need to make a few qualifications. The first one is, of course, that I’m not an expert in 3D printing. I have no idea what can be done with this. Also, I’m not an expert in aircraft fuel efficiency. I’ve read that the options for making planes even better are limited because, for the industry, fuel is a very high proportion of their costs anyway. So, they’ve done quite a bit to reduce your cost. And recently, as far as I’m aware, efforts have gone more to substitute in conventional fossil-based fuels with bio-based fuels or blends.

Anyway, I’m not really an expert on this. But, in the context of the paper that you’ve read, what we have found is, if there are savings that are brought about by technological means—if they save costs by using, for example, as you described less fuel in an aircraft—if they reduce cost, they have been so far invariably accompanied by subsequent increases in the volume of consumption.

That means, in other words, the money that has been saved because of technological progress has been spent elsewhere, [which results in] more greenhouse gas emissions occurring elsewhere through other consumption channels. This effect is called the “rebound effect”.

An illustration of the rebound effect. Image courtesy of Energy Central.

3DPrint.com: Is that rebound effect specific [to a given company that reduces cost savings]? Are you talking about specifically one company or one industry or the global energy usage in this case?

Prof. Lenzen: What I mentioned is more globally relevant because that’s what the scope of our study was. There are reviews out there on the rebound effect and it’s accepted that the rebound effect exists and is strong. For example, I can remember one study that was done quite a while ago. The authors analyzed emissions reductions associated with reducing military defense spending, if the money was recycled into households by giving them a bigger tax break.  The result was that greenhouse gas emissions would increase because households would then re0spend that money on things that are more greenhouse gas intensive than national defense.

These studies normally do not focused on a specific company, but are specific to the sector. For example, I can send you a paper that I’ve done for Australia, where we looked at, for example, [fossil fuel-derived] hot water versus electric hot water, or meat versus vegetables, and so on and so on. It doesn’t need to be necessarily so that the rebound gobbled up all the savings in emissions that have been achieved, but it is often so that the actually savings effect is greatly diminished because this money is spent elsewhere.

3DPrint.com: That’s interesting because there are a lot of progressive people in the United States, for instance, that talk about cutting defense spending for various reasons, including the fact that the U.S. military emits the most carbon dioxide of any institutional user, supposedly, in the country. And, so, you’d think that if you cut the defense budget, that could lessen the amount of emissions there, but then it just pops up elsewhere, which I guess is what you’re getting at in this latest paper.

Could you discuss how it’s the lifestyle overall more than the specific usage of the energy that causes these emissions? I know you that’s not the case entirely. As you said, the rebound effect is stronger in some industries than others, but maybe you could discuss how it’s that society itself in the developed world that is creating the emissions and not necessarily one aspect of that society.

Prof. Lenzen: Well, there’s quite a large body of literature that links lifestyle to emissions. And this is summarized in a recent paper in Nature is a review of environmental and social impact in trade. Also, there’s a recent paper out that is a scientists’ warning on affluence. The second one is probably more relevant in this context and that shows—and it ties in with the rebound effect—simply the tendency of people to consume more as time goes on is what is really at the heart of the problems of keeping emissions down. Now the mainstream reaction to this is to throw technology at this problem. But the issue is that the increase in personal consumption has, for the last four decades, completely outrun any technological progress.

It’s quite a simple calculation. Emissions are driven up by two factors: affluence and population. This is related to the concept of which nations have driven emissions down by technology—that’s the carbon intensity of production. So, population has increased emissions by about half a percent per year on and it’s a declining effect. Technology has driven emissions down by about 2% per year. But affluence has driven emissions up by itself by about 3%. So, that’s affluence up at 3% per year, population up half a percent per year, and technological progress is down 2% per year. And you get you know a net effect of one and a half percent up every year. And that’s the rate that we see emissions growing.

This consumption and affluence paradigm is driving emissions and we haven’t been able to outrun this. It doesn’t look like we will get the technological progress that we need to make. At least there is no evidence for this.

So, what the de-growth people then conclude is that we need to activate an additional lever, which is consumption. And that is tying back to the rebound effect. That means consumption is somehow [taken away] and not replaced with something else. It’s the same argument to say, “We can’t use coal. Even if we have it in the ground, we just need to live in the ground.”

Having said this, I’d like to stress that the notion of foregoing consumption doesn’t mean foregoing quality of life. It’s a fallacy to equate living standards with quality of life, but they are actually not related. And there’s a lot of evidence to show that consuming less doesn’t mean your wellbeing declines—quite the opposite in many cases. Having more income does not increase your wellbeing. It’s really flattens out to what’s high incomes. And, in many societies, like in the U.S., for example, well-being has even been declining as income increases.

3DPrint.com: I have a couple of follow-up questions. The first one is what is the proposed solution to enact that limit on consumption? How would you propose going about doing that?

Prof. Lenzen: That’s a great question. It’s a hard question. I guess it’s the million-dollar question. You can see it permeating throughout the paper that you’ve read. We think that to ramp up technology or to decouple growth from emissions—which is typically tied to negative emissions technologies, such as DACCS or BECCS—is becoming increasingly unrealistic. And it’s increasingly risky because it’s a gamble because if we gamble on those technological solutions and they don’t work, then we’re in trouble. And that’s why I was suggesting an additional lever.

So, the question is, is this additional lever any more realistic than the existing technological leaders like expanding renewables or decoupling or DACCS or BECCS?. That’s a good question.

An infographic describing bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Image courtesy of one earth.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who say it isn’t. They say, “It’s just not in human nature not to consume and no politician would touch it because, as soon as the nation just scaled down a little bit, that politican would be voted off in the next election.”

So, this is very difficult. It could be framed in a way that you say that scaling down is actually good for you. For example, at work, and think about what people ask you to do and why you’re doing them and think about the things you buy and then make a list of those that you think that you could do without, but you don’t really need. I need you to cross them off the list. How much less money would you spend an hour? Much less money. Now that’s crucial because what you need to earn to lead the life that you would lead. Then, if needing to earn less money results in less stress, that’s the mechanism [we need to focus on].

It needs to be framed, of course, and it’s very difficult to frame because any loss or any reduction is viewed with negativity, according to human psychology. The avoidance of loss is so much a stronger objective in humans. Economists have showed this in many case studies that we must be careful how to frame degrowth as a gain of quality of life rather than as a loss of material living standards.

Still, even having thought about it, it’s still hard to do this. And it may well be unrealistic, as well, but even if it is unrealistic, the point that we’re still not even talking about a degrowth scenario in the IPCC’s scenario suite. So, at the very least we could add another scenario to the already-unrealistic or increasingly-unrealistic levers considered by the IPCC.

3DPrint.com: I know some people who are familiar with and proponents of degrowth are concerned that degrowth will be deployed as a strategy, but that it will be done in a way that’s not equitable or benevolent to people. You could say that for the last year or so, we have been in a period of minor degrowth imposed by all the restrictions and everything associated with COVID-19 and the supply chain issues. Is there a concern that economic shrinkage could be inequitably imposed?

Prof. Lenzen: That’s another good point you’re making. If you have any fiscal policy that is aimed at curbing carbon emissions, that is already a restrictive measure that is imposed top-down onto everybody. Whether it’s a carbon price or carbon tax, it is a top-down fiscal measure that is imposed on people. So, that’s not anything new. Of course, COVID is much more. COVID was responsible for a 6.4 percent drop in global carbon emissions in 2020. That should tell you something about the extent to which we’d have to restrict economic activities if we were to reach the necessary GHG reductions.

And I doubt that this can be done. At the moment in Australia, we see this feature that if you don’t motivate these restrictions, you don’t get people’s buy-in. You go to great lengths in “Look, the reason we are staying at home in is to save lives.” They get nurses from COVID wards up on stage for the COVID briefings and tell the public how our lives depend on staying home.

So, I agree with you that that is not what the degrowth proponents want to do this impose restrictions. However, if we don’t get on that track with technology or with the growth, then these things will be imposed—not necessarily by force. At some stage, and it depends on the temperature trajectory, the restrictions will be imposed because of extreme weather events where you simply cannot travel because those means of travel are temporarily or permanently disrupted and so on and so on.

You mentioned equity, which is actually a game changer in this debate because as you know there are large parts of the world’s population that have these those low levels of per-capita emissions. We cannot ask to reduce even further because they have real needs to improve, not just their material living standards, but their quality of life. We’re talking about the electrification of villages and so on. Of course, they can leap-frog us to avoid the bad technology developments, but that takes climate finance, from the global north to the south itself. And it takes additional reductions in the developed world because, at the moment on a per capita basis, emissions are so much higher and so much above the current global average. So,  the financing and the reductions have to come from high-income nations.

3DPrint.com: It seems that economic growth is inherent to the global capitalist system. The firms that run things will have a pretty serious problem with trying to shrink instead of continuing to grow. Would we have to basically up-end capitalism in order to enact sustainable measures?

Prof. Lenzen: To what extent would we have to upend the current system? To me, one thing is clear: we have to upend the notion of growth because, clearly speaking, the way we’re doing it now, we are able see the adverse effects of growth in just about every way. Global information flows mean that just about every person in every corner of the world knows what the Western notion of luxury and success and happiness is and are striving for this, which is I think a tragedy because traditional systems have a lot going for them. But if this continues, we simply do not have the biodiversity or the idle land or the the water to sustain such unchecked growth.

Perhaps, it can be reframed into the growth of subjective well-being, if you look at Butan. They say that GDP is not a good measure of a country doing well. We’ve known this for a while and there are alternatives, like a “genuine progress indicator” or something. Butan has shown us how a central government can be behind such as such trends.

How much would that impact on a company’s operations? I don’t know, but I could mention that there are ways of producing and maximizing employees’ subjective wellbeing. And how do you do this? Not by giving them more money and letting them work more so they can buy more, but by changing to a business model where decision-making is more inclusive and people have more leisure time. All of these things have been shown to increase the subjective wellbeing. And that, to me, is what it’s all about.

3DPrint.com: I think it’s interesting how you managed to answer that question without saying we do need to upend capitalism. People who are following degrowth are very good linguistically at reframing the conversation in a more palatable way so that people are more willing to accept its conclusions. One thing I did want to go back to is: do you think that technology does have a role to play in getting us under control in terms of emissions and ecological destruction?

Prof. Lenzen: Yes, absolutely. I mean, in the paper on degrowth we’ve written, it is very clearly the message is that degrowth is not something we need to consider instead of technological solutions that we’re embracing now. But because we’ve grown so much and we need to get to net zero emissions by 2050, we need cut emissions by about a seven to eight percent year on year.

Now technological measures would have a very hard time to achieve this on their own, because so far they’ve only ever done two percent year on year. Now they’re being asked to do seven to eight percent year on year—and that is net. If consumption continues to grow three percent and then you achieve a cut of minus seven percent duty, you have technology doing minus 10%. It’s never done this. There’s no evidence that it can do this.

So, of course, we need technology to do that two or more percent and hopefully more in the future year on year. I believe that we need to talk about degrowth as an additional strategy to add to that. Because this portfolio in which we need to achieve a net minus-seven or eight percent year on year decline in emissions, we cannot afford to leave any of the options that we have out of consideration.

In a follow-up article, 3D printing and technology as it relates to the ongoing ecological crisis will be discussed in more depth.

The spread of blueprints for DIY gun manufacture has been one of the most infamous developments in 3D printing’s recent history. But this is, of course, far from the only overlap between weapons production and 3D printing. Across the planet in the most economically advanced nations, money is pouring into the industry from defense programs; a recent post on 3Dprint.com PRO describes the state of affairs quite succinctly in its assertion that AM “is quietly revolutionizing the defense industry.”

It’s this overlap that causes alarm when I see something like a recent article published in Science Robotics, “Self-reconfigurable multilegged robot swarms collectively accomplish challenging terradynamic tasks.” One of the co-authors of the article, robotics engineer Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin, an electrical engineering professor at Notre Dame University, based it around testing the premise that “…a physical connection between individual robots could enhance the mobility of a terrestrial legged collective system.” For the study, Ozkan-Aydin, who co-authored the paper with Georgia Tech professor Daniel Goldman, 3D printed four-legged robots, 6 to 8 inches in length, that are powered by lithium polymer batteries and guided by microcontrollers. Each robot was also given three sensors—a light sensor in the front and two magnetic sensors in the back.

“You don’t need additional sensors to detect obstacles because the flexibility in the legs helps the robot to move right past them. They can test for gaps in a path, building a bridge with their bodies; move objects individually; or connect to move objects collectively in different types of environments, not dissimilar to ants,” Ozkan-Aydin said in a press release.

Swarm 3D printing itself isn’t exactly new. The Pentagon was already announcing work on 3D swarm printing surveillance and attack drones back in 2016. What is, new, however, is bringing the sophistication of the technology in its airborne form back down to the ground. Rather ingeniously, Ozkan-Aydin based her study on the real-life behavior of collective biological systems like honeybees, ants, and birds. This is reminiscent of a project announced by a team at Harvard back in February 2021, which worked on a school of robotic fish.

Ozkan-Aydin commented, “Legged robots can navigate challenging environments such as rough terrain and tight spaces, and the use of limbs offers effective body support, enables rapid maneuverability and facilitates obstacle crossing. However, legged robots face unique mobility challenges in terrestrial environments, which results in reduced locomotor performance.”

So, what does this have to do with weapons? Directly, perhaps nothing, but it’s certainly ominous to read about this in the same atmosphere in which stories keep coming out from scientists who work in the field, warning humanity about the incalculably destructive potential of autonomous robot weapons systems. Considering all of the research in a highly scientific field such as this one ends up getting cross-pollinated (pun, as always, intended), it’s by no means a stretch to think that as soon as the technology is proven viable, it’s going to start being weaponized. In this case, whatever anyone’s concerns were about easy access to 3D printed guns, multiply that exponentially regarding the implications of widespread swarm 3D printing.

Even if they’re not explicitly armed, one shudders at the thought of what dystopian conclusions could be drawn from applying collective behavior research to humans. Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, once said in his 1950 book, The Human Use of Human Beings, “If man were to adopt [the ant community] as a pattern, he would live in a fascist state, …[whereby] each individual is conditioned from birth for his proper occupation” (p. 51). Towards the end of the same book, Wiener mentions how much better off we might be if, on all the science and research boards dominated by engineers and technicians, we also put a philosopher or an anthropologist to constantly ask whether the projects being worked on would produce truly benevolent outcomes for humanity as a whole. Posing a question like this seems more timely than ever.

In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, Launcher announced a successful hot fire test of its 3D printed rocket engine at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. BCN3D Technologies has released its new cloud software for 3D printing fleet management, and Dyndrite released a new advanced toolpathing API. Finally, there’s a new standard for industrial additive manufacturing sites from TÜV SÜD.

Launcher Reaching Milestones at Stennis Space Center

Commercial space company Launcher conducts a hot fire test for its 3D-printed Engine-2 rocket engine in the E Test Complex at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. Credits: Launcher/John Kraus Photography

California startup Launcher, a small satellite launch company, is working to develop the most efficient rocket in the world to deliver small satellites to orbit around Earth, and knew that NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi would be the ideal testing location because of its highly secure facilities, expertise in testing full-scale rocket engines and components, and more. Thanks in part to a US Space Force Small Business Innovation Research (Phase II) award, the first testing campaigns of Launcher’s 3D printed E-2 liquid rocket engine at the premier rocket propulsion test facility were funded two years ago, and the startup has been reaching important milestones at Stennis ever since. The latest was a successful thrust chamber assembly hot fire test of the 22,000-pound-thrust engine in August, following successful testing of its E-2 liquid oxygen turbopump in April and the first full-scale test fire of the E-2 engine injector and combustion chamber last year.

“The opportunity to work with a world-class team and facility at Stennis has allowed us to achieve major milestones in the development of E-2. The Stennis team works hard to meet our testing needs, and the facility can provide us with large quantities of high-pressure gases and propellants, as well as a data acquisition system,” said Launcher Lead Engineer Andre Ivankovic. “These capabilities have been critical for us to achieve multiple test campaigns within the first year of becoming a commercial tenant.”

By the middle of 2022, Launcher hopes to conduct full-scale, full-duration testing of the 3D printed E-2 engine, with its integrated turbopump, at the Stennis Space Center.

BCN3D Releases New Cloud for 3D Printing Fleet Management

Barcelona-based 3D printing solutions manufacturer BCN3D has announced the release of its new web-based BCN3D Cloud platform, which will give companies the ability to manage their 3D printing fleets in real-time. The company spent the last few years focusing on its hardware offering, and decided to create software that would level up to their hardware solutions, which is how the new BCN3D Cloud came about. Built on IP by 3D cloud solutions developer Astroprint, which was acquired by BCN3D this year, this new on-demand, enterprise-grade solution centralizes all aspects of remote printer and resource management, which will make workflows more controlled and efficient and allow clients to scale up their AM operations through their choice of three different plans—Standard, Teams, and Private.

“For BCN3D’s current clients, the integration of AM processes in their business is becoming more critical as the applications are more demanding, an indicator of the tendency is that BCN3D machines are currently printing more than 12h a day on average,” said Daniel Arroyo, Chief Software Officer of BCN3D. “With such increasing printed part volumes, more people, and more machines interacting, the workflow needs to be robust and seamless. To support those customer needs, the vision of BCN3D is to provide software layers that add effective value on top of hardware, closing the circle of an enterprise-level solution.”

Dyndrite Releases New Advanced Toolpathing API

Speaking of releases, Dyndrite, a solutions provider for next generation AM hardware and software with its Accelerated Computation Engine (ACE), announced that its enhanced Raster and Vector Toolpathing API is now available. The API allows machine OEMs and advanced end-users to create and share print recipes for raster- (DLP, binder jetting, LCD) and vector-based AM processes ( SLM, SLS, DMLS) that were either difficult or impossible before now, without having to hire advanced software development teams or reveal their IP. In addition to the 3D Volumetric Part Segmentation capability, which uses the GPU-based voxel engine to enable true 3D geometric queries into any part, the new Dyndrite Toolpathing API enables quick qualification of new materials, machines, and geometries and allows for much more detailed assignment of parameters through the AM workflow, including offsetting outer contours and zones, machine tiling, merging, sorting, and filtering, and more.

“Generating toolpaths, or instructing a machine on exactly how to build your part, is critical to that part’s ultimate success, especially as the types of parts, materials, and machine capabilities advance,” explained Dyndrite’s CEO Harshil Goel. “Machine makers and their customers require more sophisticated tools to be able to consistently deliver quality parts, especially, for example, heat exchangers, turbines, and other difficult-to-print geometries, at faster speed. The innovations being delivered by Dyndrite far surpass the capabilities of even the most advanced OEM-developed software offered today, and is only the beginning of a much requested and long overdue industry shake up.”

TÜV SÜD’s New Standard for Industrial AM Sites

Finally, the Product Service of TÜV SÜD, which supports users, customers and manufacturers in AM quality assurance, has announced a new certification for industrial additive manufacturing sites in accordance with the new ISO/ASTM 52920 standard. Component stability can be poorly affected by even small deviations in machine calibration or feedstock, and as such, ISO/ASTM 52920 defines quality-related factors in the process chain, as well as processes at manufacturing sites. The standard is divided into three aspects: “Qualification of the additive system operations,” “Verification of the part requirements,” and “Quality assurance,” and TÜV SÜD’s new certification describes quality-assurance requirements. It adopts an integrated approach, rather than a product-specific one, which works for regulated sectors like aerospace and automotive and applies to all the methods included in the scope of the ISO/ASTM 52900 standard.

“Using the new standard, component manufacturers can streamline supplier audits to an enormous extent. This facilitates the auditing process and ensures the quality of industrial-scale additive manufacturing throughout the supply chain,” said Simon Schlagintweit, Lead Auditor Additive Manufacturing at TÜV SÜD.