3-D Printer Awesomeness

“Printing the future in public”

By Eric Surber

Hear the word “library,” and books come to mind—the warehouse of dead trees, library cards, late fees, shrewd librarians, catalogues and a guarded silence. But digital prototyping, electronic kits and 3-D printers?

Public libraries in Chapel Hill, N.C. and across the United States are introducing new technologies, changing the concept of a library. Many libraries now offer 3-D printers, futuristic Makerbots and Cube Pros, capable of printing the future in ABS plastic—a library card is all it takes. 

Students and staff at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can print 3-D projects in “Maker Space,” which opened last year as part of a Research Hub Initiative in the Kenan Science Library. A grant allowed the library to purchase three MakerBot 3-D printers that students can use for free.

“We’ve had a lot of people request print jobs, both students, faculty and staff,” science librarian David Romito said. “They mostly print off models of molecules for their classes. It’s prototype equipment.”

Romito pulled out a “bag of tricks” he uses to demonstrate the printers. He showed small and colorful plastic figurines; there was a molecule model that looked like a deformed plastic brain, a free hydrogen atom, a small grizzly bear and a green tree frog. Romito’s finale was a working prosthetic hand.

“This is a prototype of a hand prosthesis that was developed by a father for his son,” Romito said. “Their insurance would only pay for one prosthesis a year, so he came up with this solution. Every time his son would grow another inch, he would print this at a larger size.”

Strings knotted to a lever and fingers allow the user to grasp objects. Romito described how 3-D printers could change research disciplines, specifically medicine and archeology. Doctors can now print prosthetic limbs and archeologists can study tangible replicas using a 3-D scanner and printer instead of fragile artifacts.

Cutting-edge technology is to be expected at a major research university with a $2.5 billion operating budget. But 50 miles away in Greensboro, N.C., a government-supported public library is experimenting with 3-D printers.

Glenn McNairy Public Library opened in August and offers e-books, a collaboration center, iPad rentals and a Cube Pro Duo. The library is the second in North Carolina to develop a 3-D printing service.

“We are setting a precedent on how to use it with customers,” Jenella Little, a librarian at Glenn McNairy Public Library said.

The library has a demo model, and it will be several weeks before they receive a permanent printer with a real user interface. They’ve yet to devise a system of payment and method for submitting print projects.

Little said the print projects have mostly been test figures, like frogs and chess pieces. The latest print job was a detailed castle, a purple fortress, which sits guarding the print station.

“It’s still a work in progress,” Little said.

Libraries across the country, mostly in major cities like Sacramento, Chicago, and New York, have successfully established 3-D printing labs. Westport Library in Westport, Conn. opened a Maker Space in July 2012. Since then, thousands of people, from youth to adults, and entrepreneurs to dabblers, have printed their 3-D creations and inventions.

Executive Director Maxine Bleiwise told NPR that the library digitized a portion of their book collection, freeing up space for new technology. The October 2012 cover of “Library Journal” shows how the Connecticut library actually placed several 3-D printers and a space-age metal enclosure smack in the middle of their bookshelves. It’s a jarring visual of the library’s change; no longer a place of just books and silence, libraries are hubs for and conversation and collaboration. 

“Libraries are here to support what people can do with information,” Bill Derry, the library’s director of information said. “The library used to be like a grocery store of information and now it’s a kitchen.”

The digital age is changing the landscape of libraries, but their mission has remained constant. Derry explained that libraries exist to support what people can do with information. They don’t just offer information like a grocery store offers food, but they allow people to make, create and invent exciting “dishes” with knowledge.

Derry said the most interesting invention printed at Westport was a container for mouse brains. A Yale student invented the container, which allowed chemicals to flow over the brains to perform an MRI. The 3-D printer made his experiment possible.

“When I was in library science school, I had only one course on main frame IBM,” Margie Freilich-Den, a Westport reference librarian said. “The computer has totally changed my job.”

In those days, simple math problems and basic word processing on green computer screens revolutionized the library experience. Then free Internet access ignited several legal, ethical and safety problems. The uncharted territory for 3-D printers is raising ethical safety concerns when, for example, someone designs and prints a weapon.

Westport and UNC policies state that 3-D print jobs must align with state and Federal laws and that library staffs have the first right of refusal. But state and Federal laws haven’t moved as quickly as technology.

Most recently, police seized six fully functional guns from Yoshitomo Imura’s home in Japan. And people have printed guns in the United States. A Wisconsin gun enthusiast made a working firearm with just $25 plastic. The plastic pieces were secured using metal pins and rubber bands, and printed individually, the components wouldn’t resemble a gun. A YouTube video shows .38 caliber bullets firing through the plastic barrel. And it was completely legal.

Giving the public access to 3-D printers enables anyone to create—and anyone can create anything. Creations can be life changing prosthetic limbs or lifesaving body replacement heart valves. They can also be plastic guns that slide through airport security undetected. The project possibilities don’t end with prosthetic limbs and pieces for science experiments.

Thingiverse.com, a website that allows users to share and download creations, demonstrates the endless possibilities from benign “Star Wars” chess pieces and iPhone 6 cases, to bongs that claim to “keep the hot stuff away from the plastic” and even airsoft guns.

More than 6,000 creations are a simple click, trip and library card swipe away. But when people are empowered to create, the future of 3-D printing is unnervingly uncertain.