Have you ever watched little kids blow bubbles? Isn’t it interesting that when they blow the bubbles they start out real small, and grow larger until they disembarked on their journey through the room or into the open air? The art of blowing bubbles can be explained mathematically, and as a former business owner of a car wash company I can attest to the fact of the need to understand the properties of liquid and soaps. In fact, just the other day I was explaining to the owner of a car wash the need for foaming agents and hang time of the soap on the car so that it does the most efficient work before the rinse.
Now then, since there are little nozzles at car washes which blow bubbles, and allow foam to form it seems as if we could actually build objects using mathematical modeling, special foam tips, and just the right chemically engineered molecule. Did you know NASA makes a special type of foam which is lighter than almost any other type of material, but once it hardens it is also extremely strong for its weight? Knowing this, shouldn’t we be making foam structures as part of the composites we use for light weight car bodies, aircraft wings, and other uses and applications?
What if we could use a 3-D printer and NASA foam type materials to build things? Most foam is over 90% to 95% air or gas of some type, and only 5 to 10% solid. What if we could get that up to 97% and 3%? And what if we could get it to harden once we had the exact shape we were looking for or use molecules that conducted electricity to allow us some material memory attributes?
What if the 3-D printer could then in the final process, trim the foam, and then put on the next layer of material? Is it possible that we could create ultra and super light-weight materials in a composite form anywhere on earth or anywhere in the solar system and perhaps in a space colony?
Did you know that in the auto industry they are finding ways to recycle and remanufacture the used foam which occupy space behind the dashboard and in the car panels of the doors? If the innards of such structures are already filled with air, it’s almost as if you have an airbag which has been pre-made into the composite material.
It would seem to me that we need to be able to 3-D print NASA foam type materials in the future. It also appears to me that the number of applications for such a manufacturing process would be nearly unlimited. Please consider all this and think on it.
