So now can we be just a little more outward with our love of 3-d printing

    So I have covered the revolution of 3-d printing that is beginning in the medical field for humans. Well how about animals they cannot be possibly be left out of the 3-d printing revolution can they. You would be right in thinking that aloud, because today a 3-d printed foot was created for a duck. (Please see my twitter @unkeiqo for a link to the story) Not only will this duck benefit but we also will be able to observe how tough 3-d printing stands up to the rigors of nature. If we are looking to mold and bend nature shouldn't we first look to it for inspiration. The emerging field of biomimcry does just that. Bio-mimcry can meld with 3-d printing in ways that help us bend toward nature for it's clearly innovative design that has gone through many more years of prototyping than we use before manufacture.

    At the introduction of the biomimcry doctorate degree at the University of Akron I learned that there is a spider that can throw it's web across the amazon river. It shames me to say as a civil engineer our bridges do not have near the tensile strength to complete this feat. But who's to say we cannot mimic another one of this spider web's characteristics which is being bird resistant. Yes, once again I bringing it back to saving birds because while plenty of insects are caught by these webs, birds eyesight is a different range which allows them to avoid the webs altogether. Wouldn't being able to print these same characteristic onto building windows make us more environmentally friendly in the future?