Pioneer: Buzz catches up finally to 3D printing

5/12/2015

There’s been a lot of of ink devoted to three-dimensional printing recently, with people marveling about its revolutionary potential in all sorts of business sectors.

The stories amaze Doug Neckers — not because he finds the process unbelievable, but because he can’t fathom it’s taken this long for people to notice.

“This whole thing in 3D-printing has caught me totally off guard. We’ve been doing it for so many years and suddenly you have things appearing on the front page of the newspaper,” Mr. Neckers said Monday after a speech to the Rotary Club of Toledo.

An organic chemist who founded — and for a number of years directed — the Center for Photochemical Sciences at Bowling Green State University, Mr. Neckers was an important early player in the development of three-dimensional printing. Some of the work Mr. Neckers was doing in the mid-1980s at Bowling Green centered on using light to turn liquids to solids.

That expertise turned out to be valuable for inventors who were working on early versions of what we would today think of as 3-D printers. One such inventor was Charles Hull, who developed the first stereolithography machine. Shortly after Mr. Neckers started the Center for Photochemical Sciences, Mr. Hull asked him to come to California to help him troubleshoot his invention.

The company that Mr. Hull founded, 3D Systems, is now a publicly traded firm that had revenues in excess of $650 million last year.

By 1989, Mr. Neckers had used MRI data paired with a stereolithography system to make a plastic model of a human heart. He claims to be the first person to make a true, three-dimensional image of a human body part.

Shortly thereafter Mr. Neckers founded Spectra Group, which specialized in making medical images that would give surgeons a preview of exactly what they would be dealing with before going inside a patient.

Three-dimensional printing is now being used to make exact copies of hips and kneecaps, though Spectra has transitioned away from medical imaging. Now the company works more on research, developing materials and processes. The company remains locally based, with offices in Millbury. 

“We are worldwide now, from one guy in a garage not too long ago,” he said. “It’s growing quite a bit.”

Though 3-D printing is now widespread — a 3-D printed car drew lots of eyeballs earlier this year at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit — the ideas behind many of the applications were around years ago.

The possibility of having an electronic inventory of parts that could just be printed when needed? Mr. Neckers said that was looked at in a 1992 military proposal. It was nixed because of costs.

Today, both the machines and the materials they need are less expensive, opening up more opportunities.

What’s next? First and foremost, Mr. Neckers said there needs to be a strong focus on outstanding universities and their research. “Without great universities, you don’t get anything,” he said.

Beyond that, he believes some day we might be able to print new body parts — not out of plastic, but out of flesh.

“In 10 years it could happen. We’ve got stem cells, we’ve got templates, we’ve got shape, we’ve got color,” he said. “Can we make flesh that will function? Not now, but that’s with an enthusiastic question mark in the future. It’s exciting.”

Contact Tyrel Linkhorn at tlinkhorn@theblade.com or 419-724-6134 or on Twitter @BladeAutoWriter.