[HN Gopher] New performance materials are coming
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New performance materials are coming
Author : tsungxu
Score : 196 points
Date : 2022-09-04 11:45 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tsungxu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tsungxu.com)
| amd89 wrote:
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| I'm super excited and bullish for manufacturing and I believe we
| are on the cusp of a manufacturing revolution. I believe we will
| get to a point in the next 100 years where many of our physical
| products are created at home, and instead of buying physical
| products, we will buy designs and "print" things at home.
| Distribution of physical goods will enjoy the same freedom the
| music in the 00's and video in the 10's enjoyed, with individuals
| being able to design and develop products and sell online without
| the logistics of distribution. Imagine being able to design a
| fork, spoon, and knife and sell it online for people to print
| out. Imagine being able to design a cup or a comb and offer it to
| people to print out.
|
| 3D Printers and CNCs are still marketed towards hobbyists and/or
| industry professionals similar to how computers were marketed in
| the early 80's. I believe in the next few years we will see the
| Personal Computer version of home manufacturing and a revolution
| will ensue.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: I'm disappointed we put so much effort into
| designing forks, cups, and spoons.
|
| Are any of these things better in 2022 than they were in 1922
| or in 1722?
|
| Let's pick a standard design for forks and only update it when
| we get new classes of materials or new manufacturing processes
| that require or enable a design tweak.
|
| We complain about the amount of human ingenuity that gets sunk
| into ad click rates or tricking people with dark patterns.
|
| What about the amount of human ingenuity that goes into
| redesigning a four-legged wooden kitchen chair that looks like
| a four-legged wooden kitchen chair, or a stainless steel fork
| that looks like a stainless steel fork.
| asah wrote:
| Actually...
|
| My wife just found an amazing set in Thailand that not only
| look unique and cool, but in fact have important new
| features. The dinner knives are sharp enough to cut steak.
| The handles weigh enough that you can satisfied suspend the
| ends off the table, which means they handle brilliantly.
|
| The list goes on...
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| By the way, if you're looking for the perfect fork, may I
| recommend the MSR Alpine tool fork? I bought it out of
| curiosity about reading an article about how it was designed.
| Was skeptical at first, but it does have great mouth-feel as
| well as a couple of other neat quality-of-life things. I use
| it for daily (non-camping) use btw.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| This is true for almost anything, for example bicycle tail
| lights:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
| alias%3Da...
|
| There is an immense variety in the 10-20$ range, with very
| little brand recognition or true transparency on quality or
| attributes. It is likely that new iterations repeat previous
| mistakes or regress.
|
| What we need is to find a robust, simple, sustainable, long-
| lasting, repairable optimum that is truly environmental
| friendly and is produced ethically, and then, as you suggest,
| focus human ingenuity on something else. This will not happen
| in the current economic system, but will require some kind of
| intervention or crisis.
| rhapsodic wrote:
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Design in furniture and certain kinds of cutlery is better
| thought of as art, not industrial design - they are closely
| related to architecture in this way. Sure, the piece has to
| meet some basic engineering needs, but otherwise it's main
| focus is decorative, not functional.
|
| You may not care how you kitchen chair looks, but I assure
| you the vast majority people do care, at least as much as
| they care how their T-shirt or pants look.
| scythe wrote:
| I guess my objection is that when I was younger, we owned an
| actual printer, and now, we don't. They're annoying. I think
| the more likely outcome is that you take your design to the
| "print shop" and get it printed. 3D printers likely require a
| lot of maintenance and calibration.
|
| In my field (medical physics), the technology is constantly
| improving, but the maintenance requirements never go away. High
| precision requires high effort; high complexity, generally,
| requires high precision. That goes triple if you want to eat
| off it.
|
| Plus, you probably want a variety of materials -- are we going
| to eat off of a plastic spoon, or melt metal in our houses?
| Space Kinko's can stock everything from aluminum bronze to
| Zylon composites.
| usrusr wrote:
| The copyshop model might work out really well. Perhaps cross-
| pollinated with the MacDonald's model, ideally not by making
| the entire site run under e.g. Shapeways flag but less
| granular: "Mike's materializers" around the corner might have
| brand A processes x, y and z available, and brand B processes
| w and x, whereas "Jen's stuffmakers" further north has u
| through y from B but only y and z from A. The model
| directories list compatible sites near you with each model.
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| Right, we aren't there yet, but that doesn't mean we can't
| get there.
|
| Growing up we had an Adam computer in the 80's but we got rid
| of it and didn't have anything until years later when we
| purchased an Apple LC II. That's what we need-an Apple
| computer for 3D printing/CNC/Laser. The Shaper Origin is a
| great step forward, but it still requires specific skills,
| but I do think we will get there.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Sure, every home could have its own craft beer brewing kit.
|
| The thing is, unless you're enjoying it as a hobby, it's
| better to just buy it pre-made. You don't need to buy
| materials to have on hand, or guide the process of making
| it. And, you don't have to wait for it to be finished.
|
| Same goes for any number of other hobbies- silk screen
| printing t shirts, candle and soap making, etc.
|
| Would I want enough printable materials on hand to print a
| couch at any given time, or would I want to order them,
| then manually print a couch? Or just order one from a local
| print shop and have it delivered already made?
|
| 99% of people don't want to lose valuable storage space in
| their home to raw materials if they don't have to.
| [deleted]
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I've been dreaming of this for years. You can already see these
| economies starting to open up, like the model market for 3D
| printing.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| In the past there was a lot more local production. It switched
| to centralized production because that was cheaper and people
| valued cheap over custom. I doubt that will change anytime
| soon. Also a lot of the most useful materials are not amenable
| to 3d printing and CNC is non-trivial to operate because you
| have to deal with inventory, setup fixtures, cleanup parts,
| etc. Most people don't want to deal with the hassle and have
| other things they'd rather spend their time on. There are
| definitely a lot of cool things happening in this space, but I
| just don't see it being the revolutionary change other people
| do.
| tsungxu wrote:
| I think the shift to centralized production is not
| necessarily permanent.
|
| Energy generation is decentralizing again. We can make more
| and more manufacturing feedstocks (metals, H2, CO2,
| biomolecules) using more modular processes that can also be
| decentralized.
| tsungxu wrote:
| Agreed! I'm also bullish on more localized manufacturing in
| which we have more control over the function, aesthetic and
| shape of the end products.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I've never really understood the optimism about 3D printing of
| consumer goods. What goods exactly are you buying that can
| conceivably be 3D printed in plastic? Maybe some furniture and
| lighting fixtures, but that's about it, and that's something
| that ideally you would only buy a handful of times in your
| entire lifetime. Perhaps cutlery, plating and things like vases
| would be the same, but even those are extremely rare purchases.
|
| So what are you left with that could possibly justify the cost
| of a 3D printer capable of printing a bed for you? Doodads and
| cheap plastic crap is better no consumed at all, rather than
| printing yourself some thingamajig, and is anyway already so
| cheap that getting it for free would hardly be an improvement.
|
| I do see 3D printing as possibly a major advance for certain
| hobbies, where being able to create your own small parts for
| various uses can quickly justify even thousands of dollars of
| investment. But for someone who doesn't have any construction-
| like hobbies, I think there is really no reason for this
| optimism.
| [deleted]
| vsareto wrote:
| I wouldn't look towards your standard home as a test bed for
| this. I don't need to 3D print cutlery or even most things
| around the house. You just don't use that much stuff. The
| economics don't make sense for me to spend a large amount of
| cash to print household things.
|
| Farms, ranches, and other remote businesses definitely have
| an opportunity for that though, because not only do they need
| a lot of every day things, they are also far away and
| sometimes things aren't in stock.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Sure, industry use is very exciting, and may well propel
| some 3D printer manufacturers to very high hills.
|
| But the commenter I replied to was specifically talking
| about 3D printing in the home, so consumer goods, not
| industrial/business goods.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I don't think 3D printers will ever get that ubiquitous. I
| think more likely modeling tooling will improve to the point
| that 3D prints can be done by 3rd parties for cheaper and
| higher quality than you can do yourself and those vendors can
| post the results to you. Sort of like PCB Way does with
| electronics.
|
| I can imagine all sorts of things I'd like to design and make
| but unless I make it a full time job the amortized cost of the
| equipment will never make it worth while. I don't think 3D
| printers will come down in price enough to change that.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| It depends on the resolution you're looking for but decent 3D
| printers are pretty cheap.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Sort of like PCB Way does with electronics.
|
| PCBWay also[1] has 3D printing (including metals[2]), CNC
| machining, sheet metal fabrication and injection molding
| services[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/
|
| [2]: https://www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/3d-printing/
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Thanks, I did not know that, that is pretty awesome and it
| makes total sense for them to do that.
| WJW wrote:
| I wonder about this often. While I agree that additive
| manufacturing is incredibly exciting and just getting started,
| I don't expect that it will get as much mass market adoption as
| you think. Of my last dozen purchases or so, only a few would
| have been possible to 3d print. Many include microelectronics
| or precision machined surfaces with a finish that 3d printers
| would be hard pressed to match. Several need greasing, and only
| one was made entirely out of the same material. Nobody is
| printing entire washing machines or motorcycles anytime soon on
| house-level printers.
|
| Music, movies and software had the huge advantage that
| basically all the effort is in the up-front design and then it
| can be digitally copied at basically zero cost. A car design or
| washing machine design on the other hand is only a small part
| of the total effort required to fabricate it. They require at
| least a dozen different raw material types, careful assembly,
| electrical certification, programming the microprocessors,
| greasing the bearings, etc. Most people will have neither the
| inclination or the skills to do the required post-processing
| themselves. Anyone living in an apartment will probably also
| simply lack the space for big machinery, especially if it sits
| idle most of the time.
|
| Even apart from whether it could be made at all in a consumer-
| grade printer, some things are just unbeatably cheap with
| modern mass manufacturing methods. Your example of a cutlery
| set is one: a modern hydraulic press will stamp hundreds of
| spoons per minute out of steel plate. That process probably
| won't improve a lot by transporting the raw steel to your house
| first and manufacturing it yourself.
|
| I think there are massive opportunities for additive
| manufacturing in industry, where companies would be willing to
| spend several million on a production grade device and can hire
| dedicated operators to get the most value out of it. You can
| already see that happening in the aerospace industry, and it
| will probably trickle down to almost anything that requires
| complex shapes in their assembly process. I don't think it will
| ever move beyond hobbyist in the home scene, the machinery is
| too expensive, too big and too complex. That said, the type of
| person who in the 80s would have gotten a lathe for their home
| workshop could now get a 3d printer instead (or both!).
| jagiammona wrote:
| Great summary tweet thread here:
| https://twitter.com/tsungxu/status/1565322844418052098
| tsungxu wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the thread!
| dougmwne wrote:
| This was all very new to me and quite awesome. Are there any good
| companies to invest in who are going to be riding the wave of
| this tech?
| mdorazio wrote:
| As someone who invested in Amyris (heavily mentioned in these
| articles) last year with much the same thinking as the author...
| be very careful about betting against incumbent tech.
| rhl wrote:
| If you enjoy this read, you should also read the author's earlier
| masterpiece of a post on the energy and materials transition
| (~1h40 read) : https://www.tsungxu.com/clean-energy-transition-
| guide/
| clairity wrote:
| a quick skim suggests this guide is largely motivated reasoning
| rather than being objective, as it immediately jumps to solar,
| wind, and batteries as its conclusive remedy. that's
| unrealistically simplistic, despite its length. something as
| large and complex as our global energy supply will need us
| pursuing every option simultaneously. and the most immediate
| thing to tackle is coal (being the most polluting, estimated to
| kill millions per year), for which nuclear needs to be a
| significant component (being baseload).
| lossolo wrote:
| I think he is over optimistic about future and not taking
| human factor into consideration (human nature, geopolitics,
| wars, upcoming big crisis around the world because of climate
| change effects, huge human migrations etc). What he describes
| is the best case scenario.
| clairity wrote:
| right, it's the most optimistic possible scenario, if all
| of the assumptions (of which there are a lot) are correct
| and as you point out, all omissions (of which there are a
| lot, despite the length) are negligible. there are some
| citations, but the narrative project a certain future way
| beyond what the meager research suggests.
|
| the article does provide a nice survey of clean tech, but
| the conclusions should be disregarded.
| tsungxu wrote:
| Nuclear is very important. It's just not scaling fast
| enough.
|
| I don't see a future where next-gen SMR nor fusion gets
| to cost parity with renewables quickly or easily. They
| will have to scale up via beachhead markets adjacent to
| existing electricity demand sources.
|
| Long term, I do think economically viable fusion will
| supplant renewables, but that's decades away.
| clairity wrote:
| nuclear is not scaling fast enough because it's been
| subject to 40 years of negative mediopolitical narrative
| reinforced by poor market and technical regulation.
| nuclear easily gets to cost parity with renewables when
| you consider the needed storage for baseload usage and
| the more advanced grid control variable generation
| requires.
|
| in the US, had we continued to build nuclear at the rate
| we were between the 70s and 90s, we'd be at over 50%
| nuclear for electricity generation, which would have
| knocked coal completely out of the equation, leaving only
| nuclear (baseload), gas (variable demand), and renewables
| (opportunistic generation). over 70 years, fission-based
| nuclear has caused 99+% fewer human deaths than fossil
| fuels have.
|
| and yes, there's no need to pin any hopes on fusion right
| now, which is decades away at best.
| pixl97 wrote:
| If we wanted to build nuclear out like it was the 70's we
| needed to ensure that 3MI didn't happen in '79. This was
| the death of the industry in the US. Chernobyl buried it
| in a lead coffin 6 feet deeper, and Fukushima topped it
| with concrete. On top of that in the war in Ukraine with
| fighting around the nuclear power plants has made us that
| much more aware that the stable political environments
| that nuclear requires cannot be guaranteed.
| cma wrote:
| We're now seeing nuclear plants in a conventional warfare
| warzone for the first time in history.
|
| Creators of a Texas plant thought it would never freeze (or
| that if it did it wouldn't matter with the government's gift
| of a an extremely small liability cap on nuclear), so they
| didn't put enough safety stuff for that scenario and had to
| shut down a reactor unplanned.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Wind, solar and batteries dominating electricity generation
| isn't a 'jump', why would you think that? That's been the
| consensus for about a decade.
|
| Only the relative dominance has changed, with 80% being
| commonly accepted for a few years and 100% now broadly
| accepted as reasonable.
| k8wk1 wrote:
| There are many different consensuses. In this case the most
| important consensus is what is the opinion shared by the
| operators of electricity grids and the like, because
| ultimately they will need to match energy supply and
| demand.
|
| Their consensus is that specifically batteries are
| completely nonviable for long-term balancing of
| intermittent energy sources. Physics simply do not add up.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Batteries aren't used for long term balancing, so that
| bit is correct. They are great at short term balancing
| though.
|
| So they'll still use mostly wind/solar/batteries. This is
| what grids are rolling out right now around the world.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Batteries are not produced at a scale nearly large enough
| to be impactful. The world consumes 2,500 TWh of
| electricity per hour. And that's set to increase as less
| wealthy countries develop and start demanding A/C, street
| lights, etc. And on top of that, electricity production is
| only ~40% of carbon emissions.
|
| By comparison, the world produces 300-400 GWh of batteries
| each year. Most of which is going to electronics and
| electric vehicles. Battery production has been increasing,
| but it's unclear if the supply of input materials can keep
| up. The price of lithium jumped 400% last year:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
|
| In short, the chart on the right is not something to be
| taken for granted: https://www.tsungxu.com/content/images/s
| ize/w1600/2022/01/so...
|
| Moore's law is the exception, not the norm, because making
| chips faster works by making transistors smaller. This
| doesn't apply to most products, as even zero manufacturing
| costs cannot bring cost below input materials. Imagine the
| cost of a car went from $500,000 in 1910, $50,000 in 1920,
| and $5,000 in 1930. Is is safe to assume that a car would
| cost $5 in 1960 and $0.50 in 1970?
| tsungxu wrote:
| Thanks for sharing!
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I have been looking for "what do I do now software seems to no
| longer be able to chnage the world"
|
| I might be pessimistic today. But this seems like a new eye
| opener
| tsungxu wrote:
| Thanks, that's how I largely felt too. Software is a key part
| of developing biomaterials too, but deep tech is so much more.
| nikanj wrote:
| Dall-E et al are going to radically change the world.
| capableweb wrote:
| Software keeps being able to change the world, you just have to
| look for it :) Many changes have been for the worse, but there
| are changes none-the-less.
| tsungxu wrote:
| Agreed! It is and will play a big role in current and future
| innovations in the world of atoms.
| kennyworkman wrote:
| if you like software and want to work with companies building
| biomaterials, check out latch.bio and shoot me an email if you
| are good at programming - kenny@latch.bio
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Robotics is a lot of fun! You can pivot from pure software to a
| software/hardware job. Lots of process automation, or hardware
| test engineer jobs at robotics and manufacturing companies
| require basic familiarity with hardware stuff and a focus on
| software. This can be a good way to pivot away from pure
| software. A good way to get started is to get a basic arduino
| kit, blink some LEDs and move some servos, then get a raspberry
| pi and make a little robot (without the arduino, for variety).
| Get a 3D printer and do a little CAD.
|
| All these skills will become useful once it is time to build a
| motor test stand for a robotics startup's assembly production
| line. After every assembly step they need to run a hardware
| test cycle that checks all the sensors. Pure software engineers
| don't always know how to handle hardware, but with a little
| practice you can build up those skills.
|
| Once you've taken on one role like this professionally, you can
| pivot even further to hardware as desired. Good luck!
| tester756 wrote:
| but then you're switching to less paid career path, don't ya?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| This probably depends a lot on where you are in your
| software career path, but in Silicon Valley robotics skills
| are in high demand. Most software engineers have trouble
| crossing the gap in to any kind of hardware interaction, so
| you ought to be able to charge a premium for this skill
| set.
|
| I personally am more concerned with doing work I care
| about, so I've never been too focused on getting paid the
| maximum, so I don't have the most expertise here. But I
| worked at Google X Robotics as a hardware test engineer. I
| was a contractor so I don't really know what the pay
| packages were like, but I would say that even the people
| who were primarily software engineers on that team pretty
| much all had hardware skills too. When you're working in
| robotics, you tend to at least play with all the stuff I
| mentioned above, and I would expect this experience to
| factor in to hiring decisions. And the people working at
| Google writing software for robotics seemed like they were
| all highly paid engineers, though I never asked anyone
| specifics.
|
| But if someone feels like software is a dead end job for
| them, moving in to robotics is a great way to make things
| more interesting. At one of my jobs I wrote C++ to help a
| researcher implement some of his ideas around locating
| specific individuals in a room, and I basically got to play
| hide and go seek with a Toyota HSR robot all day long.
| Working with robots is way more fun and interesting than
| writing web forms all day.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I've been thinking of this topic for so long but never found
| where to look. Any other venues to read about this ?
| tsungxu wrote:
| Not any blogs that I know of specifically on performance
| biomaterials.
|
| But this podcast with 6 episodes is great:
| https://open.spotify.com/show/5ldzwDpvUsaaQVVjMLRlLA?si=33fb...
|
| Also SynBioBeta has some great content as well:
| https://synbiobeta.com/read/
| agumonkey wrote:
| Thanks a lot.
| tsungxu wrote:
| Very welcome.
| bradly wrote:
| This part two of a series. Be sure to read
| https://www.tsungxu.com/materials-paradigm/ as well.
| tsungxu wrote:
| Thanks for sharing!
| technobabble wrote:
| I used to do work with chitosan, synthetic nacre, and keratin-
| based biomaterials. While they will have their direct uses we
| will need a cultural shift if they are to substantially replace
| petroleum-based materials.
| vsareto wrote:
| >This is a classic example of high value, low volume which often
| serve as beachheads for nascent technologies.
|
| There's a link for "often" that's broken. It's set to
| https://www.tsungxu.com/performance-
| biomaterials/biomanufactured%20chemicals/
|
| but leads to a 404.
| tsungxu wrote:
| Thanks, fixed.
| kache_ wrote:
| The future is now, things keep on improving, and it isn't even
| hardware.
| tsungxu wrote:
| Agreed. Still very early in the adoption of these materials,
| and biomaterials in particular
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The graphene too, when it was hard to make the handful of
| experiments on it were already showing odd electrochemical
| properties. Now that it is less expensive to obtain, I
| suspect we'll start bumping into all sorts of strange things.
| One particularly interesting one was apparent high temp
| superconduction in the presence of certain classes of
| hydrocarbons.
| tsungxu wrote:
| I've not seen that research or finding. It seems we're
| super early in the potential of 2D materials, especially as
| you say, as they come down the cost curve.
| carapace wrote:
| Check out "Mistletoe viscin: a hygro- and mechano-responsive
| cellulose-based adhesive for diverse material applications"
| https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/1/pgac026/65494...
|
| You can make a kind of plastic out of milk:
| https://plastics.syr.edu/page.php?id=/materials/casein It's
| biodegradable.
| tsungxu wrote:
| Thanks, I'll take a look!
| srathreya wrote:
| Awesome vision by Tsung here. Excited about the possibilities
| with new biomaterials
| tsungxu wrote:
| Thank you!
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