• Question: Would it be possible to 3-D print an entire human body?

    Asked by FaZe Paragon to Dawn, James, Sarah, Sylvain, Tomas, Vaanu on 7 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Sylvain Jamais

      Sylvain Jamais answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      There already are examples of printing large things out there, so size should not be a problem for much longer. the catch is how much of the details would you also want to render. Tiny details and large sizes don’t always mix well.

    • Photo: Sarah Hampson

      Sarah Hampson answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Hmmmm… it depends on if you mean out of flesh, or out of materials like plastic, ceramic or metal

      If you wanted to print an entire human body out of stuff like plastic it’s definitely do-able: you could 3D print each part (bones, organs etc.) separately and fit them all together. You can scan someone’s body part and print a copy- people have recently printed hearts (http://tinyurl.com/gpbl5wd), and here at Loughborough Uni we have a 3D-printed exact copy of Richard III’s skeleton.

      If you wanted to print a 3D-printed body out of flesh (so like, cells)…. There is already a lot of research being done on printing body tissues (it’s a lot harder than printing in plastics, of course). A famous one is this: http://tinyurl.com/jtvp4fq These people managed to 3D print an ear!

      Maybe eventually scientists & engineers will work out how to 3D print all body parts. But then it’d be a challenge fitting them all together into a working human… hmm… & then what would you do about its brain- it would like.. have no “soul” o__O

      Maybe I’m thinking too hard about this XD

    • Photo: Dawn Gillies

      Dawn Gillies answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Maybe on West World! The 3-D printing of an ear is amazing, so maybe in the future it will be reality but that might be a bit scary! It is great fun 3-D printing something you have designed though, it’s so exciting to see it become a reality!

    • Photo: Vaanathi Sundaresan

      Vaanathi Sundaresan answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      I am not much of an expert in this, But I think might be possible. BY precision might be problem and diversity in shape and structure of features might make rendering challenging from person to person.

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