Hello, so my name's Jennifer Loy, I'm a professor of product design and I'm a research theme
leader in advanced manufacturing and digital fabrication, which is one of the initiatives
that Charles spoke about, so thank you very much, that was a really good lead-in.
We look at technology in terms of what it can do, what the possibilities are in terms
of manufacturing.
The digital technologies that have come together over the last 10 years are having a huge impact
on what we can do.
But more importantly, we're interested in its transformative potential on how we work,
how we interact with our built environment, and what that means for the future.
So I just want to give you a really quick snapshot of understanding what I mean by that.
So I'm just going to talk about 3D printing in particular.
Over the last 100 years we've developed systems of production that dictate how everything
around us looks, how it's manufactured, how we buy it, how we consume, and really, the
push has always been towards mass production.
Whether it's changes in assembly line production or whether it's to do with the actual technology
itself, it's really about trying to create things cheaper, and to create more of them.
But we know, in the last sort of twenty years really, the impact that that's having, and
everything really does have to change.
But how do we change it?
We know now that mass production over the last 100 years has led us into a corner, and
we're producing things that are having a terrible impact on the environment, and also on societies,
and how we urbanise to create factories.
And if you think about Ford and the impact on Detroit, and what's happened there, we
should be absolutely horrified.
There was no understanding of what that was going to create.
So what's happening now is that 3D printing - 3D printing is a catalyst for all these
digital technologies around data generation and communication - how we interact, how we
distribute things.
3D printing allows us to do things completely differently, and it's a paradigm shift.
We've gone from that to now, I can create a lamp for you with your fingerprint on it.
So we've gone from mass production to mass customisation with this technology.
This is great.
If you think about it, if we could redesign our production systems now and look on the
last 100 years as a blip, we would want to go to a system where we were only creating
what it was we actually wanted to use.
And that's where this technology comes in.
It means that, yes, we can create amazing things - some of my third year students actually
created these - and this is a completely new way of doing jewellery.
So we can 3D print with wax, and also we can 3D print directly in gold if we want to.
This guitar is a one-off piece created by this student for the Blues on Broadbeach festival.
But more importantly, they can sell them online.
They can sell to somebody in Norway, they can send the file over, have it printed over
there.
So it's changing the way that we do business, and that's a really interesting area of research.
And it's had implications on remote regions - this in particular was a project that we
did with Oxfam, this is a whole slew of projects around working in humanitarian logistics where
you create site-specific parts for particularly difficult situation.
Instead of having to order something and have it take three months to get there, you can
create something on-site.
The big industries are really embracing this.
Airbus has invested billions in this, and as well, you look at GE, they've created GE
Additive, or HP has split their entire working practice so that there's a whole new company
HP Additive, which is working in this technology.
Airbus here is a lovely example of a part for an aeroplane which was done by traditional
CNC routering at the back, additive manufacturing at the front...it saves them over $1 million
a year in fuel on the planes that they're on.
There are a thousand of these on the Airbus A380.
What that means is, it saves money, but also it saves the environment.
You can create things as a single piece.
This dress here was printed, it has over 20,000 components.
This is...one of my students did this piece here, and it comes off the machine literally
all in one go.
So it changes how factories organise...so that means we can customise products completely
differently.
From a medical point of view, it means that not only can we create new things - this is
a scoliosis back brace.
They've done a scan of someone's back and worked out their prescription, so they can
bend in one way and not in the other.
But more importantly, we can actually rethink how we do surgery.
If anyone wants to know about Ziggy you can ask me afterwards.
It actually changes how we do surgery, which means we can move into a different way of
providing healthcare, which feeds into a whole shift in paradigm in healthcare, from the
way we do things at the moment to proactive, personalised healthcare and rehabilitation.
This technology is only part of a whole range of digital technologies where 3D printing
is the catalyst that brings it together.
We've got electronics, online communication that allows us to push and pull and change
objects to be bespoke.
And it means that we can monitor things going forward.
It really does change how we work, how we operate, what products we make, and how we
use them.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing what comes out of this research theme in the future.