“Printed” food, etc.?

“3-D Printing” – I’m fascinated by 3-D printing, an additive manufacturing process that allows for “creation” of all kinds of objects, from metal fuel nozzles for GE Aviation to toy cars for kids to working firearms for kids or anybody.

One company I know of boasts that its additive manufacturing is greener and cheaper by the use of up to 90% less materials and 90% less energy.  Another one claims its printed products can come from sand (without a pattern), metal (digital parts materialization), glass (art sculpture) and laser (micro-machining).

Here are several links to information you might find of interest:

Printed food – If you read down far enough, you might find “Windowfarms” to be curious but worthy.

Rocket components – Any rocket scientists on the blog?

Arm casts – Harder to John Hancock one of these, I’d say.

“LEED and the Chemical Lobby”

Headline: “Skanska Drops Membership In U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

Lead: “Skanska USA, an international construction and development firm, announced that it has resigned as a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to protest the organization’s backing of a chemical industry-led initiative to effectively ban the future use of LEED for government buildings.”

So, what’s this piece really about?  In its upcoming v4, LEED (and already in the Living Building Challenge certification program) is asking green building practitioners to try to unearth–make transparent–harmful chemicals used in the manufacturing of goods in order to recommend differing products that don’t contain such known or highly suspected carcinogens, for instance, in their manufacture.

Of course the chemical industry is being pushed to act by manufacturers whose product content is proprietary, and, if revealed, might devalue the product by making it more “open-source-like” or cause it to be discarded completely if there’s a “healthy” alternative.

To read more about it, click here.  More about it here.

“Precipitation, Floods and Drought”  At this link (click here) you’ll find some information and a video on the subject.  The video may be worth 2.14 minutes of your time.