Most people who design 3D printed objects want them to keep their shape as closely as possible after printing, but an emerging field known as 4D printing aims to make objects that can reconfigure themselves after fabrication.

In episode 8 of the Digital Factory Podcast, we speak with Kristina Shea, professor of Engineering Design and Computing at ETH Zürich, on why self-assembly and 4D printing could be foundational design technologies in the very near future, with applications from aerospace to medical devices.

(Kristina Shea is a keynote speaker at The Digital Factory Conference in Munich on May 14. Join executives and technical experts from companies like GE, BMW, Henkel, Carl Zeiss, Deloitte, EOS, HP, and SAP to learn strategies for digital transformation in manufacturing. Visit https://digitalfactory.xyz/ to see the program, and use the code PODCAST for a 10% discount.)

In this episode:
– What goes into 4D printing, which is able to produce reconfigurable 3D-printed objects
– How computational design contributes to 4D printing, and how it’s changing the role of human designers
– Potential practical applications of 4D printing

Read more on the Formlabs blog:
http://bit.ly/2GYCNM4

See Kristina Shea's work at ETH Zurich's Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory:
http://bit.ly/2HcoHEO

See the full Digital Factory Munich conference program, and register using the code PODCAST for a discount:
https://digitalfactory.xyz/