20 - 021 3D Manufacturing Process leading to Digital Treatments

 

So in nanometer (nm) terms we want to discuss here something very large but it can still potentially float down the inside of a human hair. It is a tug boat, yes because it has been made to look like a tug boat, which measures 0.03 mm long. That is 30,000 nm so it is enormous compared with the things we normally view at an atomic scale like viruses or a helium atom at 0.06 nm.

What is really significant was it was created using 3D printing. So it was manufactured. Significantly it has been designed to propel itself along using a chemical reaction.

The Times article (281020) by Tom Knowles describes the detail below.

 This article does not focus upon what I see as the real significance of the boat, which is not so much the size because this has been achieved before by many research laboratories, but the fact that it is manufactured by a computer program. Not by the manual manipulation of tiny atoms but by a manufacturing process. The computer code defines this process linked to a 3D printer manufacturing machine. The computer code has been written to drive the 3D Printer to build the boat up in defined layers using an advanced 2PP (two-photon polymerisation) process utilising extremely accurate lasers. The other significant step is the inclusion in this process of a chemically driven “engine” to propel the boat along. Be it just a chemical reaction it is still generating power. It is not static and inert but a dynamic creation obviously like a battery with a finite life. This along with the tiny walking robots produced by Cornell University in America mark the trend towards developing “machines” that can operate within our bodies undertaking removal or repair work.

So not only will be defined fully as a “digital human” but all the processes to care for us will be defined as “digital treatments”. The tool kit is repair us will be written up in digital program code driving specialist devices to manufacture and install them. Although these devices would initially be hospital laboratory based it does not take much imagination it envisage home based devices with the code to drive them downloaded from the internet.