Maria Jeansson 0:00 As part of a series around 2020 in science speculation, we are revisiting presentations from academics that spoke at Tech foresight conferences in the past eight years. So today I will speak to Dr. Billy Wu, who in 20 16%, that his vision for 2036 on additive manufacturing. He's a senior lecturer in the Dyson School of Design engineering at Imperial College London. And in 2016, he shared a really powerful perspective on why what might be next in this space. So firstly, welcome back, Billy. And thank you for joining me in this short reminiscing conversation also, and also a future gazing conversation. Great. Thanks for having me. Great. So looking back at your presentation in 2016, you mentioned the main future research areas to the new material techniques and the promise of atom scale precision with with beyond state of the art solution chemistry methods, what happened in this area of research has it progressed further and what didn't happen. Dr Billy Wu 1:02 And so in the in the area of atomic level, 3d printing, there's definitely been progress there. But it's mostly stayed within the research element where we've done some really cool science with it, where it hasn't quite progressed towards commercial developments where we found application, I think some of the more near term predictions that we've made around the utility of 3d printing, finding new applications, with mature technology techniques, such as plastic 3d printing, and more industrial metal 3d printing, that definitely has come true. And the cost has come down. I suppose that kind of fits into the timeline that we weren't expecting this technology to just happen overnight. Definitely, it's okay to talk about some of those more near term prediction a little bit more. Yeah. So in the tech four side talk, we presented a Gartner hype cycle of the different technologies for 3d printing, and where we kind of saw them. So in in regards to the relatively mature 3d printing technologies, such as plastic 3d printing, and polymer sintering, and direct metal laser sintering, we put, we put them initially on the slope of enlightenment, where they were starting to find applications for use. And really, that's kind of mature, we've seen a lot of automotive companies, which have used 3d printing for tooling of their factories, which we always saw is the next step, as we try to make manufacturing, a lot more agile with the maker community. So basically, and small maker communities like in universities, they really taken up 3d printing, and as opposed to development dares, that the technology has become a little bit smarter, in terms of the printers that we have, are more IoT connected. And we want to make better use of all our print forms where we have thousands or hundreds of printers working together in tandem. Fantastic. And were there areas that you didn't think of in 2016, that actually now are becoming more important for the space than what you originally imagined? Yeah, so we talked about. So again, on the Gartner hype cycle, we have technologies like bioprinting, which was at the peak of, of expectation that people thought we would be free to printing hearts and different body organs. And I think that was quite a lofty ambition. And I suppose that prediction was true. Again, in terms of we haven't, we still don't have 3d printed hearts, or livers or anything like that. So I suppose that's kind of in line with what we expect. I suppose your question is, is there any sort of surprising applications right now. And off the top of my head, I think everything we predicted was pretty much in line. We've just seen an increase uptake of 3d printing technologies in these applications. So I wouldn't say they're surprising. Maria Jeansson 3:57 Are there any new new really exciting areas of research that you weren't imagining emerging at that point that now you've seen new interest in? Dr Billy Wu 4:08 So there have been so the core challenge around 3d printing centre, the law around speed, which we mentioned, and there has been some really impressive developments in really rethinking how we do 3d printing, 3d printing as a technology is a bit misleading as a phrase because it's actually just one D printing where you have a single point, and you extrude that material out. And it's actually quite slow. To do that. We've seen companies like Google and carbon 3d, who have pushed the boundaries of that towards 2d printing, where you simultaneously print a layer of material at the same time. And then there was some recent work from MIT, which achieved what we call volumetric printing, almost like Star Trek way. You create an object all at the same time. And I think that was quite impressive, and that technology I've seen Dr Billy Wu 5:00 is beginning to be commercialised. And I think that could really open out. And if you can print at a much higher rate of speed, then that really opens up the applications or way you can use this technology in different industries. So I think that's quite exciting. And it's still experimental, because the quality isn't quite there. And the cost is still quite high. But I'm hopeful that that will progress rapidly in the future. Sounds fantastic. And then your main vision for 2036? You mentioned the idea of allowing most electronic devices to be fully recycled. Do you still think this might happen in 50 years? And if so, how come? Dr Billy Wu 5:39 I'm still hopeful partly because there's an increased focus on sustainability now. So at the biggest level, and no doubt, you see in announcements by various governments that we want to be net zero emission by 2050. So that's related to carbon emissions, but we also care about the circular economy and the material circularity. No doubt, as the world progresses and populations increase and material requirements increased, recycling of materials will become increasingly important, and I think, and electronic goods are on the top of a lot of people's agendas, because we're becoming so the devices are becoming so cheap that we end up just disposing of them. So increasingly, the European Union and other governments are talking about putting in new legislations that enforce this. So no doubt, wants those legislations come in, we'll have to develop the technologies which allow us to recover the materials from these devices. In a lot of the research we do on electric vehicles, this has been a big agenda point, in terms of making electric vehicles more sustainable by recovering the precious metals that we put into these devices. Maria Jeansson 6:50 Sounds great, and what might be some of the the current barriers in place for reaching that? Dr Billy Wu 6:56 So with recyclability, one of the main challenges is essentially, can you separate the parts. So in the presentation I gave, we just showed some of the elements that went into a battery. So you've got a range of plastics, you've got a range of different types of metals, from copper, gold, and so on. And the problem with recycling is that we need to use a certain process for a certain type of material. And actually, when you look at a phone, it's got all sorts of things, and also is quite difficult to take apart. You've got components which are glued together. So these aren't really designed to be taken apart. Because often that incurs additional costs. I think there were some projects in the past which have tried to design that sustainability in so Google had a project called Project error, where they tried to make a modular smartphone where if your phone camera was out of date, you could just buy a new camera module and instal that in. And that, in theory makes it easier to recycle because it's more modular, and you can separate out the components. But ultimately, arguably, people didn't want that modularity. And the project ultimately wasn't successful from an economic perspective. So I think whenever we develop these new techniques and new approaches, we do need to think about the economic landscape, and whether people will actually follow through with the promise of the technology as well. Dr Billy Wu 8:20 Right? So we have to balance both the promise of sustainability with economical aspects as well. It's really interesting. We also need to be very agile in our approach, because there's a lot of emerging economies which are growing rapidly. And when we design things, we often perceive things from, you know, right now in a Western perspective, but China, as an example, has grown rapidly. And designing for China and designing for maybe Africa, who is still emerging is very different in terms of how to go about the different systems that we have in place. So just to kind of highlight that we need that global perspective and new new people coming in to make sure that we're not repeating problems that we have in the past. Maria Jeansson 9:11 I guess that's works quite well over the last question around as text tech for us, I will always want to think what might be next in the space. So if you were giving a future vision for 2014, what would you be the most excited about now? Or what would you want to include in that vision? Dr Billy Wu 9:29 That's really good question. So I think since the last tech for science, and there's been a lot of talk about space travel, and one of the applications that I mentioned that we could use 3d printing is if we travel to remote areas like Mars or the moon, can we use the resources we carry more efficiently so I said with our metal 3d printer, can you freely print a spanner and then recycle it by dissolving it back in and reconstructing it? Dr Billy Wu 10:00 To another device, I suppose as people talk about, you know, SpaceX, SpaceX going to Mars. And there's a real exciting proposition around using local resources that I think we've seen here in on Earth, how people have using local materials to make buildings for instance, and equally people are looking at could you use and Martian land to basically repurpose into buildings, but also can you extract minerals from that in 3d printing process as well? So I suppose my extension to that vision is and using local resources, all the materials around is more intelligent intelligently, which also fits into that circular economy approach. Maria Jeansson 10:44 Fantastic. Thank you so much for taking part in this conversation. I really enjoyed hearing your thoughts about the past the next couple of years and the more far reaching futures. I look forward to keeping a close eye on what will be next for your research and additive manufacturing.