I Can’t Sleep - 3D Printing | Gentle Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Drift off with this calm bedtime reading as it guides you toward sleep and helps ease insomnia. This calm bedtime reading brings gentle focus to 3D printing while supporting sleep and reducing insomnia. As you listen, discover how this innovative technology works while staying completely relaxed, letting the steady rhythm of Benjamin’s voice carry you into a peaceful state. There’s no whispering or hypnosis here—just soothing, fact-filled narration that helps calm stress, quiet anxiety, and soften the edges of sleeplessness. Settle in, press play, and let your mind wander into rest as you learn. Happy sleeping! Read with permission from 3D printing, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox Media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch. I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause.

With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I help you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. And today's episode is about 3D printing. 3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, is a construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model.

It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined, or solidified under computer control. With the material being added together, e.g. plastics, liquids, or powder grains being fused, typically layer by layer. In the 1980s, 3D printing. techniques were considered suitable only for the production of functional or aesthetic prototypes, and a more appropriate term for it at the time was rapid prototyping. As of 2019, the precision, repeatability, and material range of 3D printing have increased to the point that some 3D printing processes are considered viable as an industrial production technology. In this, context, the term additive manufacturing can be used synonymously with 3D printing.

One of the key advantages of 3D printing is the ability to produce very complex shapes or geometries that would be otherwise infeasible to construct by hand, including hollow parts or parts with internal truss structures to reduce weight while creating less material waste. Fused deposition modeling, FDM, which uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material, is the most common 3D printing process in use as of 2020. The umbrella term additive manufacturing, AM, gained popularity in the 2000s, inspired by the theme of material being added together in any of various ways. In contrast, the term subtractive manufacturing appeared as a retronym for the large family of machining processes

was material removal as their common process. The term 3D printing still referred only to the polymer technologies in most minds and the term AM was more likely to be used in metalworking and end-use part production contexts than among polymer, ink-ched, or stereosography enthusiasts. By the early 2010s, the terms 3D printing and additive manufacturing evolved senses in which they were alternate umbrella terms for additive technologies, one being used in popular language by consumer maker communities and the media, and the other used more formally by endowment. industrial end-use part producers, machine manufacturers, and global technical standards organizations.

Until recently, the term 3D printing has been associated with machines low in price or capability. 3D printing and additive manufacturing reflect that the technology shares a theme of material addition or joining. a 3D work envelope under automated control. Peter Zelensky, the editor-in-chief of additive manufacturing magazine, pointed out in 2017 that the terms are still often synonymous in casual usage. But some manufacturing industry experts are trying to make a distinction whereby additive manufacturing comprises 3D printing plus other technologies,

or other aspects of a manufacturing process. Other terms that have been used as synonyms or hypernims have included desktop manufacturing, rapid manufacturing, as the logical production-level successor to rapid prototyping and on-demand manufacturing, which echoes on-demand printing in the 2D sense of printing. The fact that the application of the adjectives rapid and on-demand to the noun manufacturing was novel in the 2000s reveals the long-prevailing mental model of the previous industrial era

during which almost all production manufacturing had involved long lead times for laborious tooling development. Today the term subtractive is not replaced the term machining, instead complementing it when a term that covers any removal method is needed. Agile tooling is the use of modular means to design tooling that is produced by additive manufacturing or 3D printing methods to enable quick prototyping and responses to tooling and fixture needs. Agile tooling uses a cost-effective and high-quality method to quickly respond to the technology. to customer and market needs. Many can be used in hydroforming, stamping, injection molding, and other manufacturing processes. The general concept of and procedure to be used

in 3D printing was first described by Murray Leinster in his 1945 short story, things pass by. But this constructor is both sufficient and flexible. I feed magnotronic plastics, the stuff they make houses and ships of nowadays, into this moving arm. It makes drawings in the air, following drawings it scans with photo cells. But plastic comes out of the end of the drawing arm, and hardens as it comes, following drawings only. It was also described by Raymond F. Jones in his story, Tools of the Trade. published in the November 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. He referred to it as a molecular spray in that story.

In 1971, Johannes F. Gottwald patented the liquid metal recorder, U.S. patent 3.966285A, a continuous inkjet metal material device to form a removable metal fabrication. on a reusable surface for immediate use, or salvaged for printing again by remelting. This appears to be the first patent describing 3D printing with rapid prototyping and controlled on-demand manufacturing of patterns. The patent states, As used herein, the term printing is not intended in a limited sense,

but includes writing or other symbols, character or pattern formation with an ink. The term ink as used is intended to include not only dye or pigment-containing materials, but any flowable substance or composition suited for application to the surface for forming symbols, characters, or patterns of intelligence by marking. The preferred ink is of a hot melt type. the range of commercially available ink compositions which could meet the requirements of the invention are not known at the present time however satisfactory printing according to the invention has been achieved with the conductive metal alloy as ink but in terms of material requirements for such large and continuous displays if consumed at theretofore known rates but increased in proportion to increase in size

the high cost would severely limit any widespread enjoyment of a process or apparatus satisfying the foregoing objects it is therefore an additional object of the invention to minimize use to materials in a process or apparatus satisfying the foregoing objects it is therefore an additional object of the invention to minimize use to materials in a process of the indicated class. It is a further object of the invention that materials employed in such a process be salvaged for reuse. According to another aspect of the invention, a combination for writing and the like comprises a carrier for displaying an intelligence pattern

and an arrangement for removing the pattern from a carrier. In 1974, David E.H. Jones laid out the concept of 3D printing in his regular column Ariadne in the journal New Scientist. Early additive manufacturing equipment and materials were developed in the 1980s. In April 1980, Kideo Kodama of Nagoya, Municipal Industrial Research Institute, invented two additive methods for fabricating three-dimensional plastic models with photohardening thermoset polymer where the uv exposure area is controlled by a mask pattern or a scanning fiber transmitter He filed a patent for this XYZ plotter, which was published on the 10th of November 1981. His research results as journal papers were published in April and November 1981. However, there was no reaction to the series of his publications.

His device was not highly evaluated in the laboratory, and his boss did not show any interest. His research budget was just $60,000 yen or $545 a year. Acquiring the patent rights for the XYZ plotter was abandoned, and the project was terminated. A U.S. 4322756 patent method of fabricating articles by sequential deposition, granted on the 6th of April, 1982, Terathion Technologies Corp, describes using hundreds or thousands of layers of powdered metal and a laser energy source and represents an early reference to forming layers

and the fabrication of articles on a substrate. On the 2nd of July, 1984, American entrepreneur Bill Masters filed a patent for his computer automated manufacturing process and system. US 466-5492. This filing is on record at the USPTO as the first 3D printing patent in history. It was the first of three patents belonging to Masters that laid the foundation for the 3D printing patent. printing systems used today. On the 16th of July 1984,

Alon Lomerte, Olivier de Vitte and Jean-Claude-André, filed their patent for the stereolithography process. The application of the French inventors was abandoned by the French General Electric Company, and Silas, the Laser Consortium. The claimed reason was for lack of business perspective. In 1983, Robert Howard started R.H. Research, later named Howtech Inc. in February

1984 to develop a color inkjet 2D printer, Pixelmaster, commercialized in 1986 using thermoplastic, hot melt plastic ink. A team was put together, six members from Exxon Office Systems, Danbury Systems Division, an inkjet printer startup, and some members of Howtech Inc. group, who became popular figures in the 3D printing industry. One Howtech member, Richard Holinsky, patent U.S. 5136515A, method and means for constructing three-dimensional articles by particle deposition. Application November 7, 1989, granted August 4th, 1992, formed a New Hampshire company, Cadcast, Inc., named later changed to Visual Impact Corporation, VIC, on August 22, 1991. A prototype of the VIC 3D printer for this company is available with a video presentation showing a 3D model printed

with a single nozzle inkjet. Another employee, Herbert Menhanna, formed a New Hampshire company, H.M. Research in 1991, and introduced the Howtech Inc. Inc.Jet technology and thermoplastic materials to Royden Sanders of SDI and Bill Masters of Ballistic Particle Manufacturing, BPM, where he worked for a number of years. Both BPM 3D printers and SPI 3D printers use Howtech Inc. Yachttiex style ink jets and Howtech ink style materials. Royden Sanders licensed the Hellency patent prior to manufacturing the Model Maker 6 Pro at

Sanders Prototype Inc. SPI in 1993. James K. McMahon, who was hired by Howtech Inc. to help develop the inkjet, later worked at Sanders' prototype and now operates layer-grown model technology, a 3D service provider specializing in Houtek single-nauzle inkjet, and SDI printer support. James K. McMahon worked with Stephen Zoltan, 1972 Drop-on-demand inkjet inventor at Exxon, and as a patent in 1978 that expanded the understanding of the single-nauzle design ink jets, alpha-jeds, and helped perfect the Howtech Inc. HotMelt InkJets. This How-Tek Hot Metal Cermoplastic Technology is popular with metal investment casting,

especially in the 3D printing jewelry industry. Sanders SDI First Model Maker 6 Pro customer was Hitchner Corporation's Metal Casting Technology, Inc, in Milford, New Hampshire, a mile, from the SDI facility in late 1993 to 1995, casting golf clubs and auto engine parts. On the 8th of August, 1984, a patent US 457 533 assigned to UVP Inc, later assigned to Chuck Hole of 3D Systems Corporation,

was filed with his own patent for a stereolithography fabrication system in which individual laminy or layers are added by carrying photopolymers with impinging radiation, particle bombardment, chemical reaction, or just ultraviolet light lasers. Hull defined the process as a system for generating three-dimensional objects by creating a cross-sectional pattern of the object to be formed. Hull's contribution was the STL file format and the digital slicing and infill strategies common to many processes today. In 1986, Charles Chuck Hull was granted a patent for this system, and his company 3D Systems Corporation was formed,

and it released the first commercial 3D printer, the SLA-1, later in 1987 or 1988. The technology used by most 3D printers to date, especially hobby-host and consumer-oriented models, his fused deposition modeling, a special application of plastic extrusion, developed in 1988 by S. Scott Crump and commercialized by his company Stratis,

which marketed its first FDM machine in 1992. owning a 3D printer in the 1980s cost upwards of $380,000, or $650,000 and 2016. AM processes for metals sintering or melting, such as selective laser centering, direct metal laser centering, and selective laser melting, usually went by their own individual names in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, all metal working was done by processes that are now called non-additive, casting, fabrication, stamping, and machining. Although plenty of automation was applied to those technologies, such as by robot welding and CNC,

the idea of a tool or head moving through a 3D work envelope, transforming a massive raw material into a desired shape with a tool path, was associated in metal working only with processes that removed metal rather than adding it, such as CNC milling, CNC EDM, and many others. However, the automated techniques that added metal, which would later be called additive manufacturing, were beginning to challenge that assumption. By the mid-1990s, new techniques for material deposition were developed at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon University, including microcasting and sprayed materials.

Sacrificial and support materials had also become more common, enabling new object geometries. The term 3D printing originally referred to a powder bed process, employing standard and custom inkjet printheads, developed at MIT by Emmanuel Sox in 1993, and commercial Socialized by Soligen Technologies, Extrude Hone Corporation, and Z Corporation. The year 1993 also saw the start of an inkjet 3D printer company, initially named Sanders Prototype Inc. and later named SolidScape, introducing a high-precision polymer jet fabrication system

with soluble support structures categorized as a dot-on-dot technique. technique. In 1995, the Fraunhofer Society developed the selective laser melting process. In the early 2000s, 3D printers were still largely being used just in the manufacturing and research industries, as the technology was still relatively young and was too expensive for most consumers to be able to get their hands on. The 2000s was when larger-scale use of the technology you began being seen in industry, most often in the architecture and medical industries, though it was typically used for low accuracy modeling and testing,

rather than the production of common manufactured goods or heavy prototyping. In 2005, users began to design and distribute plans for 3D printers that could print around 70% of their own parts, The original plans of which were designed by Adrian Bowyer at the University of Bass in 2004. The name of the project being RepRap, replicating rapid prototyper. Similarly, in 2006, the Fab At Home project was started by Evan Malone and Hod Libson. Another project whose purpose was to design a low-cost and open-source fabrication system that users could develop on their own and post feedback on,

making the project very collaborative. Much of the software for 3D printing available to the public at the time was open source, and as such was quickly distributed and improved upon by many individual users. In 2009, the Fused deposition modeling FDM printing process patents expired. This opened the door for a new wave of sales. startup companies, many of which were established by major contributors of these open-source initiatives, was the goal of many of them being to start developing commercial FDM 3D printers that were more accessible to the general public. As the various additive processes matured,

it became clear that soon metal removal would no longer be the only metal working process done through a tool or head, moving through a 3D work envelope, transforming a mass of raw material into a desired shape layer by layer. The 2010s were the first decade in which metal end-use parts, such as engine brackets and large nuts, would be grown either before or instead of machining, in job production, rather than obligately being machined from barstock or plate. It is still the case that casting, fabrication, stamping, and machining are more prevalent than additive manufacturing and metalworking, but AM is now beginning to make significant inroads, and with the advantages of design for additive manufacturing, it is clear to engineers that much more is to come. One place that AM is making a significant inroad is in the aviation industry. With nearly 3.8 billion air travelers in 2016,

the demand for fuel efficient and easily produced jet engines has never been higher. The large OEMs, original equipment manufacturers like Pratt and Whitney, P.W., and General Electric, GE, This means looking towards AM as a way to reduce cost, reduce the number of non-conforming parts, reduced weight in the engines to increase fuel efficiency, and find new, highly complex shapes that would not be feasible with the antiquated manufacturing methods. One example of AM integration with aerospace was in 2016, when Airbus delivered the first of GE's leap engines. This engine has integrated 3D printed fuel nozzles, reducing parts from 20 to 1, a 25% weight reduction, and reduced assembly times.

A fuel nozzle is the perfect in-road for additive manufacturing in a jet engine, since it allows for optimized design of the complex internals, and it is a low-stress, non-rotating part. Similarly, in 2015, P.W delivered their first AM parts in the pure power PW-1500G to Bombadier. Sticking to low-stress, non-rotating parts, P.W selected the compressor staters and sink ring brackets to roll out this new manufacturing technology for the first time. While AM is still playing a small role in the total number of parts in the jet engine manufacturing process, the return on investment can already be seen by the reduction in parts, the rapid production capabilities, and the optimized design in terms of performance and cost. As technology matured, several authors began to speculate that 3D printing should aid in sustainable development

in the developing world. In 2012, Philibod developed a system for closing the loop with plastic, and allows for any FDM or FFF 3D printer to be able to print with a wider range of plastics. In 2014, Benjamin S. Cook and Manos M10 Series demonstrated the first multimaterial vertically integrated printed electronics additive manufacturing platform, Viper, which enabled 3D printing of functional electronics operating up to 40 gig. As the price of printers started to drop, people interested in this technology had more access and freedom to make what they wanted. As of 2014, the price for commercial printers was still high, was the cost being over $2,000. The term 3D printing originally referred to a process that deposits a binder material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads. jet printer heads layer by layer.

More recently, the popular vernacular has started using the term to encompass a wider variety of additive manufacturing techniques, such as electron beam additive manufacturing and selective laser melting. The United States and global technical standards use the official term additive manufacturing for this broader sense. The most commonly used 3D printing process, 406. as of 2018 is a material extrusion technique called fuse deposition modeling or FDM. While FDM technology was invented after the other two most popular technologies,

stereolithography SLA and selective lasering centering, SLS. FDM is typically the most inexpensive of the three by a large margin, which lends to the popularity of the process. As of 2020, 3D printers have reached the level of quality and price that allows most people to enter the world of 3D printing. In 2020, decent quality printers can be found for less than $200 for entry-level machines. These more affordable printers are usually fused deposition modeling FDM printers. In November 2021, a British patient named Steve Verse received the world's first first one. fully 3D printed prosthetic eye from the Morfield's Eye Hospital in London.

In April, the world's largest 3D printer, the factor of the future 1.0, was unveiled at the University of Maine. It is able to make objects 96 feet long. In 2024, researchers used machine learning to improve the construction of synthetic bone and set a record for shock absorption. In July 2024, researchers published a paper in Advanced Materials Technologies, describing the development of artificial blood vessels using 3D printing technology, which was strong and durable as natural blood vessels.

The process involved using a rotating spindle, integrated into a 3D printer, to create graphs from a water-based, gel, which were then coated in biodegradable polyester molecules. Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is rapidly gained importance in the field of engineering due to its many benefits. The vision of 3D printing is design freedom, individualization, decentralization, and executing processes that were previously impossible through alternative methods. Some of these benefits include enabling faster prototyping, reducing manufacturing costs, increasing product customization, and improving product quality.

Furthermore, the capabilities of 3D printing have extended beyond traditional manufacturing, like lightweight construction, or repair and maintenance with applications and prosthetics, bioprinting, food industry, rocket building, design and art, and renewable energy systems. 3D printing technology can be used to produce battery energy storage systems which are essential for sustainable energy generation and distribution. Another benefit of 3D printing is the technology's ability to produce complex geometries with high precision and accuracy. This is particularly relevant in the field of microwave engineering,

whereas 3D printing can be used to produce components with unique properties that are difficult to achieve using traditional manufacturing methods. Additive manufacturing processes generate minimal waste by adding material only where needed, unlike traditional methods that cut away excess material. This reduces both material costs, material costs and environmental impact. This reduction in waste also lowers energy consumption

from material production and disposal, contributing to a smaller carbon footprint.