3D Printing Covered on NPR

3D printing has been getting a fair amount of mainstream media attention lately. While not all of that attention has been positive, it’s still good to see the info get out there. One problem with most media coverage is that of depth. You get a blurb here or a three-minute discussion there, but not really enough to get a full picture of the technology.

Receiving, as it does, most of its budget from government grants or membership drives, National Public Radio (NPR) can, literally, afford to spend more time on specific subjects than other news organizations. People that listen to NPR are probably more likely to stick with a story that interests them for the duration as well, as opposed to TV media where commercial breaks can give folks an easy opportunity to walk away or turn the channel.

NPR’s program, Science Friday recently invited Terry Wohlers of Wohlers Associates, Bre Pettis of MakerBot and Hod Lipson, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University in for a chat about 3D printing.

Among the topics covered were some usual suspects (such as how 3D printing works), but it also covered the use of additive manufacturing (AM) in such fields as automotive, aerospace, consumer and medical. You don’t hear the media talk about useful end-use products beyond gimmicks like toys or iPhone cases very often.

Lipson also talked about bioprinting:

“Yeah, so we’ve been quite a while working on this area which we call bio-printing, together with Larry Bonassar and Jonathan Butcher at Cornell, where we actually print with live cells. It’s not printing a scaffold on which you put cells but actually taking the cells, putting them in a hydrogel ink and actually printing the final constructs out of live cells.”

That is really just the tip of the iceberg. I think the program was a fantastic look at 3D printing, but don’t just take my word for it. Listen to the program for yourself.

Source: NPR