Technical Alchemy

Alchemy -
a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination

In history, a broad goal of Alchemy was to convert materials of little value into materials of great value.

15th Century Nicolas Flamel was thought to have successfully built The Philosopher’s Stone, allowing him to not only transmute base metals into precious gold but also to produce an elixir of life allowing he and his wife to be immortal. He died in 1418 but did have a statistically long life of ~88 years. Sir Isaac Newton is thought to have died from Mercury poisoning, probably as a result of his own experiments in Alchemy in an attempt to better understand the nature of matter.

Fortunately in 2020 we can keep our mercury exposure at a minimum but still achieve a transmutation of sorts and generate something of potential value from seemingly thin-air. 3D Printers aren’t really magic but a person could be forgiven for considering it a form of Technical Alchemy.

The music on this video is from some of Ramin Djawadi’s incredible work on HBO’s Westworld. I thought it would be appropriate given the glimpse of a potential future where human kind’s understanding of biology and material sciences give us the ability to 3D Print a human body. We aren’t in the bio-printing era quite yet but the SARS-COV-2 / COVID-19 pandemic on of Q1-Q2 2020 has seen 3D printers crowd-source deployed for novel healthcare purposes. Everything from making ventilator valves to masks and PPE for front-line healthcare workers.

The printer in the video above has been running about 20 per day printing reusable masks and shield parts.

Each mask costs about $3-$5 in material to complete, on average. The print job above took 8 hours to complete two masks, another 5 hours to run 9 filter frames and about 5-10 minutes to assemble. I’ve so far been able to make and give away about 50 masks. I’m fortunate to have not yet encountered an interruption in income, so I consider this time well spent even though it is slow-going.

If this is something that interests you or you’d like to help out, ask google about maker spaces or maker clubs near you and reach out to them to see how you can help. You can read about my own research and entry into 3D printing on my other hobby blog.

If you are on the Gulf Coast and know of a front-line worker, first responder or essential worker that could use a mask - email me their address and I’ll put them on my list to receive one as they come off the printer. (Within my capability to do so anyway.)