Would there be a future in somehow 3D-printing body armour that was lightweight and manoeuvrable using plates or links like the plate mail and chain mail of the past?
Past armor used plates and links because the threats were arrows and swords and spears and junk. Today's primary threats are bullets, and I believe they have more luck stopping those with sheets of flexible, fibrous materials. Current 3D printing technology cannot create those.
I doubt that older designs would help with losing a leg to a roadside bomb, either, but someone more qualified than I am would be in order to answer this.
Ceramics can be 3D-printed [1]. The printed product is a paste of ceramic powder + binder that must be sintered (heated so the organic binder burns away and the ceramic particles fuse together into a strong, dense body). The as-printed part shrinks a bit during sintering, so you've got to account for that as well.
Typical sintering temperatures are around 1000 to 1300 degC. Usually about 2/3 the melting point of the ceramic; enough to promote ionic motion leading to fusing of the powder in a reasonable amount of time (one-two hours for my lab-sized samples).
Various techniques for lowering the sintering temperature are:
- Increase the sintering time. The time required to achieve a given density (say, 95%) increases somewhat rapidly as you decrease the temperature
- Add a glass to the ceramic powder. The glass melts and essentially lubricates things so there is sufficient motion at lower temperature.
- Start with finer ceramic powder. This has higher surface area for a given amount, which is an energetically unfavorable state (the fused state has lower surface energy and is thus more favorable).
- Apply pressure while sintering [3]
- Live with less density. Pottery needn't be 95+% dense. Clay (or playdough) can be useful for some situations (not bullet-proof vest I imagine) if just let to air dry.
- Other clever things I don't know about.
I know there are metallic substances that can survive sintering processes, as in multi-layer ceramic capacitors, where a sandwich of ceramic/electrode/ceramic/electrode is sintered, but these tend to be the expensive metals that don't react with oxygen [1].
The polymer with the highest melting point I know of is Kapton [2], melting around 400 degC, which is quite a way from the 800 or so degC you might see after adding glass to your ceramic powder...
All that said, most ceramics are not that tough in that they shatter when impacted. If you must 3D print bullet-proof armor, and are sure you can't print some kind of Kevlar-reinforced thing, then I'm not really sure what the best option is.
>Today's primary threats are bullets, and I believe they have more luck stopping those with sheets of flexible, fibrous materials.
Those sheets stop lower power bullets, all the body armor that stops high power weapons has large ceramic panel inserts.
Besides ceramics there are things like metal–graphene nanolayered composites that hold the promise tipping the armor/firepower balance back in the favor of armor.
I don't know about armor for police and military - other commenters are covering that - but this could be pretty great for weapon-based martial arts competitions.
My wife practices German longsword, and it's hard for her to find padded armor that fits precisely - men's jackets aren't cut right, and women's jackets are too small. Women's gloves are too small, and men's gloves are too big.
If she could get a full-body kit printed out of metal that would be strong enough to stop a sword thrust, she'd be all set. (A few thousand dollars poorer, probably, but all set.)
Have you tried getting something custom from whoever makes the padded armor? Seems likely they would be making most stuff by hand anyway (but I don't know anything about it).
It hasn't been a very high priority yet, but we'll look into it; I think it might be prohibitively expensive, but then again, can't really spar without it.
Yeah, it's not bad. Are you put off by the little flare at the bottom? Remember a "bodice" has different constraints than something designed to be worn on the outside.
so when am I going to be able to walk into a shop, go into a change room, strip to my underwear, and get a 3D laser scan of my body, that then gets used by clothing companies X Y and Z (of my choosing) to custom-cut clothing that fits me precisely?
It's not that the technology doesn't exist yet, it does.
Is the bottleneck at the factories? Too expensive to incorporate/replace existing mass production equipment?
Whoever jumps first, is going to have a huge 1st mover advantage.
It seems like the technology does exist, but it would still require a bit of manual intervention in the sewing step.
For example, a cnc fabric cutter could cut all the panels out of stock kept on site, and a person could then sew the panels together into an actual outfit. Would require quite a bit of initial outlay for the materials (less if the pattern on the material is printed on-site), and the hourly wages of a sewer on site, but I think it would certainly be doable.
This is the first time I've ever seen the written word "sewer" in reference to "one who sews" rather than "a sewage system". Perfectly correct of course, I just had to re-read that sentence!
Who would own the data? let's say that your body measures and proportions gets linked to your credit card number, this data could be used to target advertising to you in websites where you have used the same credit card.
If you are overweight it could show ads of gyms/treatments/diet-food; not that there is anything wrong with that, BUT think about the new industry that opens up for penis enlargenment spammers.
Living the joke behind, I think is worth to think about the implications if/when something like this gets implemented.
When will I be able to pay Google and other ad-sources to weight the targeting algorithms toward the virtues I want, not just the virtues and vices others can profit from? When are my ethics going to be allowed a seat at the negotiating table for purchases of my attention?
What is the going CPM rate for an extremely low CTR user base these days? Between what little I know of that and my browsing rate, seems to me like I could set a purchasing limit of $100/year for bidding on my own eyes, probably win enough to almost never see anything but my own small/short "be a good person" reminder/ad on any of the Google ad networks that do CPM bidding, and still not hit the limit each year.
Truly bizarre that given all the TSA-hate on HN this is the top comment. We (society) all too often get exactly what we ask for. We don't want pervasive surveillance, but we want Google glass and Google web history and personalized search. We don't want full body scanners, but we want perfectly-fitting clothing based on full body scans. Is it really hard to predict that these technologies are going to be used inappropriately?
Applying preferences/phobias to an aggregate group like HN is going to lead to widely inconsistent results (i.e., meaningless).
Example: I don't want Glass or personalized search, nor do I want body scanners, and I am completely fine without custom-clothes tech. My preferences shouldn't apply to all HNers.
Brooks Brothers calls theirs "Digital Tailoring", but apparently it is from an industry-sponsored company [TC]², and first offered by Levi's.
If anything being sponsored by its industry, like a technology standards authority, should make it less likely to make exclusive agreements.
However, some of the examples I've seen of the clothes include issues that a tailor would have fixed, like a roll between your neck and shoulders. Maybe it works like a Flowbee does for haircuts, and it just applies a consistent offset from your body, rather than understanding which areas should be close fitting or loose. That the descriptions talk about precision to fractions of a millimeter makes it sound naive about what matters to a skilled tailor.
However, it doesn't sound like there is anything preventing multiple users from using the same measurements, whether they make suits, jeans, undergarments, or wetsuits.
The cut is only one aspect of fit. There is also stitching, fiber orientation, and stretch. Most people can't articulate what they like and do not like about a fit, let alone choose fabrics and stitch types that they like for different body locations and clothing purposes. This is the reason top quality bespoke tailors make orders of magnitude more money than the guy down the street.
Production is also a problem. Small Batch production is typically 5-10x more expensive than the long lead time Large Batch production. Individual production can be up to 100x more expensive. The cut isn't the problem; a master tailor might allocate 5-10% of the 10-30 hours of making a bespoke suit to matters of cut. Cut is also one of the few areas where small batch manufacturers have cost parity with large batch manufacturers. Assembly is what makes custom production so difficult. Even with super-precision robotics, dexterity is a huge problem. Most large batch manufacturers only automate 5-10% of the total stitches for a garment...the rest is done by high-dexterity human hands.
Its a hard problem. A more solvable problem would be to drastically expand the number of possible size options, and use state of the art supply chain techniques to bring them to cost parity with larger companies and their smaller size selections. I'd be interested in doing quite that if I found the right co-founder...but that itself is a problem of its own :)
While it is scanning me, can it also go ahead send a copy of the skin coloring to a dermatologist so they can diff it against the last scan or whatever, so as to check for anything I should be worried about?
Wonder how comfortable this is? If it's designed to go up against the skin, then I imagine sprue marks (or whatever the 3d printing equivalent is), and material texture, would be a BFD.
PS, kudos to the designer for being willing to model something so revealing.
The 3D printed stuff I've handled had a very unpleasant grain - rather like rough wood. I could feel the sub-millimeter layers that it was built up in, and they're not quite perfectly lined up. I don't know how difficult it is to 3D print stuff that feels pleasantly smooth.
31 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 80.3 ms ] threadI doubt that older designs would help with losing a leg to a roadside bomb, either, but someone more qualified than I am would be in order to answer this.
Seems like something where advances in 3d printing in different materials would benefit.
[1] http://robocasting.net/index.html
Typical sintering temperatures are around 1000 to 1300 degC. Usually about 2/3 the melting point of the ceramic; enough to promote ionic motion leading to fusing of the powder in a reasonable amount of time (one-two hours for my lab-sized samples).
Various techniques for lowering the sintering temperature are:
- Increase the sintering time. The time required to achieve a given density (say, 95%) increases somewhat rapidly as you decrease the temperature
- Add a glass to the ceramic powder. The glass melts and essentially lubricates things so there is sufficient motion at lower temperature.
- Start with finer ceramic powder. This has higher surface area for a given amount, which is an energetically unfavorable state (the fused state has lower surface energy and is thus more favorable).
- Apply pressure while sintering [3]
- Live with less density. Pottery needn't be 95+% dense. Clay (or playdough) can be useful for some situations (not bullet-proof vest I imagine) if just let to air dry.
- Other clever things I don't know about.
I know there are metallic substances that can survive sintering processes, as in multi-layer ceramic capacitors, where a sandwich of ceramic/electrode/ceramic/electrode is sintered, but these tend to be the expensive metals that don't react with oxygen [1].
The polymer with the highest melting point I know of is Kapton [2], melting around 400 degC, which is quite a way from the 800 or so degC you might see after adding glass to your ceramic powder...
All that said, most ceramics are not that tough in that they shatter when impacted. If you must 3D print bullet-proof armor, and are sure you can't print some kind of Kevlar-reinforced thing, then I'm not really sure what the best option is.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_capacitor#Multi-layer_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapton
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_isostatic_pressing
Those sheets stop lower power bullets, all the body armor that stops high power weapons has large ceramic panel inserts.
Besides ceramics there are things like metal–graphene nanolayered composites that hold the promise tipping the armor/firepower balance back in the favor of armor.
My wife practices German longsword, and it's hard for her to find padded armor that fits precisely - men's jackets aren't cut right, and women's jackets are too small. Women's gloves are too small, and men's gloves are too big.
If she could get a full-body kit printed out of metal that would be strong enough to stop a sword thrust, she'd be all set. (A few thousand dollars poorer, probably, but all set.)
It's not that the technology doesn't exist yet, it does.
Is the bottleneck at the factories? Too expensive to incorporate/replace existing mass production equipment?
Whoever jumps first, is going to have a huge 1st mover advantage.
For example, a cnc fabric cutter could cut all the panels out of stock kept on site, and a person could then sew the panels together into an actual outfit. Would require quite a bit of initial outlay for the materials (less if the pattern on the material is printed on-site), and the hourly wages of a sewer on site, but I think it would certainly be doable.
If you are overweight it could show ads of gyms/treatments/diet-food; not that there is anything wrong with that, BUT think about the new industry that opens up for penis enlargenment spammers.
Living the joke behind, I think is worth to think about the implications if/when something like this gets implemented.
I have a feeling that the data would be more likely to be peddled to McDonald's than 24 Hour Fitness.
When you have enough money to pay them more than the brands and retailers who are buying their ad services.
Example: I don't want Glass or personalized search, nor do I want body scanners, and I am completely fine without custom-clothes tech. My preferences shouldn't apply to all HNers.
If anything being sponsored by its industry, like a technology standards authority, should make it less likely to make exclusive agreements.
However, some of the examples I've seen of the clothes include issues that a tailor would have fixed, like a roll between your neck and shoulders. Maybe it works like a Flowbee does for haircuts, and it just applies a consistent offset from your body, rather than understanding which areas should be close fitting or loose. That the descriptions talk about precision to fractions of a millimeter makes it sound naive about what matters to a skilled tailor.
However, it doesn't sound like there is anything preventing multiple users from using the same measurements, whether they make suits, jeans, undergarments, or wetsuits.
Production is also a problem. Small Batch production is typically 5-10x more expensive than the long lead time Large Batch production. Individual production can be up to 100x more expensive. The cut isn't the problem; a master tailor might allocate 5-10% of the 10-30 hours of making a bespoke suit to matters of cut. Cut is also one of the few areas where small batch manufacturers have cost parity with large batch manufacturers. Assembly is what makes custom production so difficult. Even with super-precision robotics, dexterity is a huge problem. Most large batch manufacturers only automate 5-10% of the total stitches for a garment...the rest is done by high-dexterity human hands.
Its a hard problem. A more solvable problem would be to drastically expand the number of possible size options, and use state of the art supply chain techniques to bring them to cost parity with larger companies and their smaller size selections. I'd be interested in doing quite that if I found the right co-founder...but that itself is a problem of its own :)
PS, kudos to the designer for being willing to model something so revealing.