Dutch Ambassador Yvette van Eechoud tells Umer Nangiana her country has

hit big time with 3D printing and how Qatar could benefit from its wider reach, too

Ever imagined your bones, jewels, shoes, cars, blood vessels, buildings or even your food coming from a printer?

It is already happening!

Since its inception almost three decades ago, 3Dimensional (3D) printing has been making headway in revolutionising industries.

Besides contributing to a better lifestyle, the technology has even gone on to save lives. An entire human skull can be designed with the help of 3D printing. On the mechanical side, it helps reduce industrial waste, thus contributing to an efficient manufacturing mechanism and minimising environmental pollution.

Where lifestyle is concerned, 3D printing has revolutionised the way people would like to make a fashion statement. You can get exclusive and custom made designs in your preferred shapes and colours. Designs can be sent as gifts and products to the other side of the world for instant printing.

The Netherlands is one country where 3D printing has taken off seriously since its inception in the US back in 1983. In The Netherlands, it is common to design and print your own exclusive objects like jewelry in print shops, ‘Shapeways’ and ‘3Dhubs’, for instance.

“The 3D Printing revolution began in The Netherlands two years ago. We now have a 3D printing factory that prints 3D parts and objects,” Dutch Ambassador Yvette van Eechoud tells Community on the sidelines of a ceremony at Concept Space, Katara Art Centre (KAC) to formally open Dutch Design in Doha: The future of 3D Printing, an exhibition of 3D designs by two young Dutch designers Mark Brand and Ralph Zoontjens. 

The designs are displayed with some designs of VCU Qatar and Texas A&M students. It will remain open till November 13.

The opening ceremony was attended by a large number of people including the HE Minister for Culture, Arts and Heritage Dr Hamad bin Abdul Aziz al-Kuwari.

“It is a revolutionary concept. I think for countries like Qatar where you have a limited number of inhabitants but a good purchasing power and an exquisite taste, this concept will really take off,” enthuses the ambassador.

“People will have their own furniture designed or cufflinks designed or printed on the material they want. And since it is not mass scale, it is cheap to do so. Also, you do not need to export it. You can just have it designed here and printed somewhere else (wherever printing can be done),” she adds.

She credits the huge success and popularity of 3D printing in The Netherlands to the country’s innovative spirit. She says the Dutch people are always trying to push the boundaries to look beyond what they have and what they do.

“People are generally very curious and we have invested a lot in education and in the technical universities that are involved in designing,” the envoy elaborates.

Among other fields, the 3D technology has made important contribution in the medical field. The ambassador refers to a case of a woman, who recently received a skull implant.

“She had a bone disease which thickened her bones, resulting in severe headaches and problems with vision. So in March, this year they (doctors) implanted a plexiglass printed skull — matching her skull’s shape. They made that skull from her scan. It basically saved her life because she could not go on with the thickening bone of her skull,” the envoy points out.  

Elaborating its advantages, she says the 3D technology offers environment friendly technique when used mechanically because you do not (end up with) a lot of waste material. As it happens, you have used exactly the material you want, the rest you can re-use and you don’t have cutting waste because you are not cutting something out of the strip. You use exactly the material you want.

“(The) 3D printing is 3Dimensional printing of objects and it always happens in layers. Imagine 2-dimensional papers’ layers, if you stack them on top of each other you get a pack of papers which is 3Dimensional. If you shape every layer in a certain way you can make the shape of 3D objects in the end,” visiting Dutch designer Mark Brand tells Community.  

The realistic shape, he says, comes through the resolution of printers so that is actually the size and height of the layers. The smaller the height, the smoother and realistic the shape becomes.

Describing its working, the designer says he generates his designs using codes. “I am not designing the objects in the computer-aided designs but I am designing the codes that can help generate the prints,” explains Brand.

But how does it work?

“What happens is that you press a button and an object is generated. Again, you press the same button and a new object is generated, but if I apply some randomisation in the codes, it would look different. There are some variations and we get two different products,” the designer alludes.

“If we do it the normal way, it starts all over again to generate a new object and that would take a lot of time. Right now, I can just click a button thousand times and I get thousand objects, and then, I can just select 10 that I like the best and make a series out of it,” he reminds.

It is a mathematical language. What Brand does inside the language is that he places dots, for instance, and these dots have an X, Y and Z axis. He can calculate different ways and using these calculations a shape emerges.

Ralph Zoontjens, the other visiting Dutch designer, while sharing his views on the concepts and future of 3D printing, says production this way is now major league. People can have unique personalised items for every person. It does have a lot of influence on how people use products and how they experience life.

“It would be possible in the new future that you would be able to determine the size of the collar, for example, for your shirt and fitting on the arms and on the waist and you can have an influence on how clothing can fit your body,” explains Zoontjens.

“There can be tools made available through internet or an application that can take your body measurements and you can basically shape your own products,” the designer points out.

In medical science, to print out a living tissue is an upcoming development, he says. “Right now, enrichments are being done in liver cells and the division is that, for example, in some years from now it will be possible to create with the help of bio printers a printout of an entire working human liver,” claims the designer.

Technology is already being used by the automotive industry where they are not just creating prototype parts but also using it for small parts that can be optimised in terms of structure.

“The automotive industry is picking up on it and this quality of making parts lighter is feasible because you can cut away material from where you do not need so where you need structural support, for example, you have material but you can take away material from wherever you want because 3D printing offers this freedom in the geometry,” says Zootjens.

He feels the consumer products and jewelry is an upcoming, but slightly smaller market. Both designers have several of their designs and concepts on display at KAC’s Concept Space.