Watch the world's largest 3D printer print a 25 foot boat

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By Matthew Griffin Industrial Revolution 17th October 2019

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

3D printing improves sustainability, lets us print products on demand and eliminate global supply chains, and revolutionises manufacturing. Now it’s scaling.

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Boeing said many years ago that one day they’d like to 3D print an entire plane, Dubai want to 3D print a 80 storey skyscraper, and increasingly car manufacturers, like General Motors, are licking their lips in anticipation of being able to use AI’s to design cars and then 3D print the finished product out, but we knew that scaling up the desktop sized technology would take a while – for a host of reasons. But this week the biggest 3D printer in the world just printed a 25 foot, 5,000 pound boat, which is the largest object that has ever been printed.

The feat achieved by the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center (UMaine) snagged no less than three Guinness World Records for the world’s largest prototype polymer 3D printer, as well as the largest solid 3D printed object, and the largest boat which has ever been produced by a 3D printer.

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You can see the printing process in the video, and, frankly, it’s a really quite remarkable achievement by the folks over at UMaine.

The 3D printer can actually go bigger though and is capable of printing objects that are as long as 100 feet, 22 feet wide, and 10 feet high, and forget pages per minute, this thing can print up to 500 pounds of solid object per hour!

Watch the printer in action

UMaine’s eventual goal is to eventually commercialise this sort of large scale 3D printing for the benefit boat builders everywhere, and because the printer uses bio-based wood materials to print the objects the university also hopes it will benefit the local Maine economy as well. As Senator Angus King commented:

“Maine is the most forested state in the nation, and now we have a 3D printer big enough to make use of this bountiful resource. Today marks the latest innovative investment in Maine’s forest economy, which will serve to increase sustainability, advance the future of bio-based manufacturing and diversify our forest products industry.”

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Moving forward UMaine will be partnering with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in a $20 million research collaboration to develop it further and produce new bio-based materials that are suitable for the 3D printing of large objects.

So who knows, one day soon we might actually see Boeing make a large flying wooden plane using this same technology – it’s like the 1900’s are about to make a come back! Who knew?!

Source: Maine Public

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.