这是我们系列的来宾帖子，研究了3D打印的未来。为了庆祝有关3D印刷行业的5年报告，我们邀请了行业领导者和3D印刷专家为我们提供了未来5年的观点和预测，并深入了解了添加剂制造的趋势。雷电竞充值
Dr Matthew Partridge is a research fellow within the克兰菲尔德大学工程光子学中心in the UK. His primary research area is in fiber optic chemical sensors that are used for inspecting conditions in substances and even in patient diagnostics. As previously reported on 3D Printing Industry, some of his researchhelps to promote the study of microfluidics through 3D printing.
3D打印The Next Five Years by Dr. Matthew Partridge, Research Fellow at Cranfield University
We bought our first 3D printer a little under three a years ago. It was part of a project to make a sensor that needed to be held inside a flow tube, so I used the argument of a complicated diagram and the words “3D printer” flashing on a slide to convince the powers-that-be to spend some grant money on one. In reality I, like most people, was just amazed at all the things 3D printers seemed to make and jumped at an opportunity to play with one.
Like all research grants, the budget was limited, so we opted not for an all-singing all-dancing £100,000 3D printer, but for a much more affordable £900 consumer grade printer. The kind of printer that you’d see in schools and in small hobbyist workshops.
The very first thing I printed back in early 2014 was a Hello Kitty Darth Vader head. We have sincepublished our first paperbased around technology developed with that 3D printer. We obviously learnt a lot in the intervening 3 years.
不仅仅是玩具
While we may have started playing with 3D printing because it was an ‘interesting’ idea, within a few short months our printer stopped being a fun toy and started producing useful parts and even spawned entire projects.
起初，我们正在制作我们计划专业制作的事情的模型。快速设计Sketchup然后打印出来。或更实际:打印ed, thrown away, fixed and re-printed. It greatly improved our own talent for designing parts and cut down the number of expensive versions we kept having to have made.
雷电竞app下载3D打印机被销售为出色的原型制作工具，但许多打印机都带有警告，称它们不应被用来制作最终部分。但是，在制作原型和测试框或看台时，我们开始发现它们非常有用。因此，专业制作的零件的订单不断越来越进一步延迟，直到最终，我们才停在3D印刷部分。
Then we started to get bolder and began printing things that we’d never considered making out of plastic, such as sensor holders and even some reaction housing. The parts were cheap and quick to produce, and thanks to being made of a plant based plastic, mostly guilt free.
Since then they have become a fundamental part of our research. If we have a laser setup that is very slightly out of alignment then we 3D print new mounts. If I was running an experiment which required 7 samples of material to be carefully prepared, I’d print a 7-hole tube rack with embossed labels to reduce the risk of making mistakes in the process. If a beaker needs to be 4.3 cm higher to match up to a tube, I print a 4.3 cm high stand.
24/7实验室技术员
Having a 3D printer is like having instant access to a technician who works nights, rarely complains and likes to be well oiled about once a month. They need some setting up and an understanding of their foibles, but once they are settled in they are crazy productive at solving innumerable lab problems.
雷电竞app下载3D打印机还在教学中找到了作用。正如任何新的讲师都会告诉您的那样，有一个巨大的动力来使教学风格多样化，以便更好地吸引学生。经常使用的示例正在寻找改善学生互动或向他们展示动画和视频的方法。现在，我有许多大规模的物理模型的光纤和蛋白质，这些模型在讲座期间经过。能够处理和看在物体内部似乎确实吸引了学生。
Some of these models I have taken the time to design, some are models that other researchers have made available through open access 3D model repositories.
Better than even that is that all of this technology is available to anyone wanting to try it out. Pushing what is possible on 3D printers means that something we developed in our university labs could be instantly and cheaply made and used in a school. From racks to complex sensors, anyone can download and make scientific equipment and in all likelihood do things with it we never even imagined.
通过所有这些示例，我试图设定3D打印的广度，才开始在我们的实验室中提供帮助。越来越多的研究人员和学者开始看到3D打印在研究和教学方面的可能性。如果在未来5年内没有发生3D打印，那么我仍然希望它在研究实验室中的使用只会随着人们意识到其有用性而增长。但是，随着质量和降低成本的提高，实验室中3D打印的上升将迅速而改变。
Thisis a guest post in our series looking at the future of 3D Printing, if you’d like to participate in this series thencontact usfor more information. For more insights into the 3D printing industry,注册我们的时事通讯andfollow our active social media channels。
Don’t forget that you can投票现在在第一年度3 d印刷行业啊ards。
More information about 3D printing research at Cranfield University is在这里可用。
＃未来3dprinting
特色图像是马修博士的插图Partridge的漫画系列错误的科学。您还可以在Twitter上找到他的定期更新@MCeeP。
