4D Printing: Revolutionizing material form and control

In a collaboration between MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab and Stratasys education and R&D departments, a new process called 4D printing is being developed.

4D PrintingMIT 2013

BioMolecular
Self-Assembly
TED Global, Edinburgh 2012

Self-Assembly Line
TED Conference, CA 2012

Self-Folding Proteins
MIT 2012

Biased Chains
MIT 2010

Decibot
MIT 2009

The results demonstrate a radical shift in rapid prototyping, where objects change over time to perform programmed functions, based simply on material properties.


4D Printing Project

Revolutionizing Material Form and Control with 4D Printing an Academic Project in Collaboration with Stratasys

In a unique research collaboration between Stratasys’ Education, R&D departments and MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, a new process is being developed, known as 4D Printing.

Led by Skylar Tibbits, Self-Assembly Lab Director and trained Architect, Computer Scientist and Artist, this unique research focuses on developing self-assembly technologies for large-scale structures in our physical environment.

Tibbits’ 4D Printing project is enabled by Stratasys’ Connex multi-material 3D printing technology - with the added capability of embedded transformation from one shape to another, directly off the 3D printer.

How it Works

With Stratasys’ Connex technology,

• a single print, with multi-material features, can transform from any 1D strand into 3D shape, 
• 2D surface into 3D shape or morph from one 3D shape into another. 

Objet Connex multi-material 3D printing technology is an important part of his work – and is being used extensively in this new process.

The Connex multi material technology allows the researchers to program different material properties into each of the various particles of the designed geometry and harnesses the different water-absorbing properties of the materials to activate the self-assembly process.

With water as its activation energy, this technique promises new possibilities for embedding programmability and simple decision making into non-electronic based materials. (Imagine robotics-like behavior without the reliance on complex electro-mechanical devices)

Future Applications

Although not commercially available, self-assembly is just a beginning of a whole innovative world of manufacturing with minimum energy. As environmental, economic, human and other constraints continue to fluctuate, we will eventually need dynamic systems that can respond with ease and agility. 4D Printing is the first of its kind to offer this exciting capability. This is truly a radical shift in our understanding of structures, which have up to this point, remained static and rigid (think aerospace, automotive, building industries etc) and will soon be dynamic, adaptable and tunable for on-demand performance.

Watch 4D Printing in Action!
4D Printing: Cube Self-Folding Strand
4D Printing: MIT Self-Folding StrandSkylar Tibbits was recently awarded a TED2012 Senior Fellowship, a TED2011 Fellowship and has been named a Revolutionary Mind in SEED Magazine's 2008 Design Issue.

Additional coverage from TED2013:
MIT’s New Self-Assembly Lab Is Building A Paradigm Shift To 4-D Manufacturing
Stratasys’s Programmable Materials: Just Add Water
Brilliant Robot Scraps Can Form Selves Into Anything
Researchers Unveil World’s First 4-D Printer


ORIGINAL: Stratasys

New MIT 3-D Printing Innovations Create Printable Objects That Assemble Themselves

ORIGINAL: FastCo Exist

With 4-D printing, Skylar Tibbits and the Self Assembly Lab are printing materials that fold, transform, and shape themselves, and could adapt to changing environmental conditions. No assembly required.

When Skylar Tibbits drops a plastic-like rod into a tub of water, it starts to take shape, turning into a cube. It’s a result of what he calls 4-D printing, which adds the fourth dimension, time, to the increasingly popular process of 3-D printing. Over the time dimension, the objects self-assemble. But this isn’t like adding water to shrunken animal-shaped sponges and watching them grow.

This notion of self-assembly seems futuristic, but it’s been researched before, particularly within the field of nanotechnology. And Tibbits, along with collaborators Stratasys Ltd. and Autodesk, sees the potential to use 4-D printed objects to solve larger efficiency problems in disaster relief or the oil and gas industries. 

His Self Assembly Lab is working with engineering firm Geosyntec, to explore programmable water infrastructure. “The idea is these pipes would expand or contract to either pinch water, expand for capacity or potentially undulate to move water,” Tibbits says. Think of it--a water main that knew whether it needed to shrink or expand and could prevent burst pipes and eliminate pumps and valves.

With 3-D printing reaching the mainstream, Tibbits’s vision for 4-D printing isn’t exclusive to large problems either: “We want to try to find more elegant solutions to have smarter systems in interacting and making things on your own.”

Change Generation | Skylar Tibbits from BFD Productions, LLC. on Vimeo.

A cross-disciplinary research lab at MIT composed of designers, scientists and engineers inventing self-assembly technologies aimed at reimagining processes of construction, manufacturing and assembly at all scale-lengths.

Self-Assembly is a process by which disordered parts build an ordered structure through local interaction. We have demonstrated that this phenomenon is scale-independent and can be utilized for self-constructing and manufacturing systems at nearly every scale. We have also identified the key ingredients for self-assembly as a simple set of responsive building blocks, energy and interactions that can be designed within nearly every material and machining process available. Self-assembly promises to enable breakthroughs across every applications of biology, material science, software, robotics, manufacturing, transportation, infrastructure, construction, the arts, and even space exploration. The Self-Assembly Lab is working with academic, commercial, nonprofit, and government partners, collaborators, and sponsors to make our self-assembling future a reality.

For more information, please contact us at sjet at mit.edu

4D Printing
MIT 2013

BioMolecular
Self-Assembly
TED Global, Edinburgh 2012

Self-Assembly Line
TED Conference, CA 2012

Self-Folding Proteins
MIT 2012

Biased Chains
MIT 2010

Decibot
MIT 2009

About the Director
Skylar Tibbits is a trained Architect, Designer, Computer Scientist and Artist whose research focuses on developing self-assembly and programmable material technologies for industrial applications in our built environment. Skylar is currently a faculty member in MIT's Department of Architecture, teaching graduate and undergraduate design studios and co-teaching How to Make (Almost) Anything, a seminar at MIT's Media Lab. Skylar was recently awarded a 2013 Architectural League Prize, The Next Idea Award at Ars Electronica 2013, the Visionary Innovation Award at the Manufacturing Leadership Summit, a 2012 TED Senior Fellowship and was named a Revolutionary Mind in SEED Magazine’s 2008 Design Issue. Previously, he has worked at a number of renowned design offices including: Zaha Hadid Architects, Asymptote Architecture and Point b Design. He has designed and built large-scale installations around the world, including locations in New York, Philadelphia, Paris, Calgary, Berlin, Frankfurt, Long Beach, Edinburgh and Cambridge. He has also exhibited work at prestigious institutions, including; The Guggenheim Museum NY, the Beijing Biennale, Storefront for Art and Architecture and lectured at MoMA and SEED Media Group's MIND08 Conference. He has been published extensively online and in print outlets such as the New York Times, Wired, Nature, Fast Company, various peer-reviewed journals and books including: Fabricate: Making Digital Architecture, Digital Architecture, Testing to Failure, Scripting Cultures and Form + Code. As a guest critic, Skylar has guest lectured at schools around the world including; The University of Pennsylvania, The Institute for Computational Design, The Architectural Association, Pratt Institute and Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Skylar has a Professional. Bachelor of Architecture degree and minor in experimental computation from Philadelphia University. Continuing his education at MIT, he received a Masters of Science in Design + Computation and a Masters of Science in Computer Science under the guidance of advisors; Patrick Winston, Neil Gershenfeld, Erik Demaine and Terry Knight.

Skylar is also the founder and principal of a multidisciplinary architecture, art and design practice, SJET LLC. Started in 2007 as platform for experimental computation and design, SJET has grown into a research-based practice crossing disciplines from architecture, design, sculpture, fabrication, computer science, toys to robotics.

A number of influential collaborations include:

Neil Gershenfeld, Director of The Center for Bits and Atoms | Arthur Olson, Director of the Molecular Graphics Lab at The Scripps Research Institute | Shelly Linor, Daniel Dikovsky and Shai Hirsch of Stratasys | Carlos Olguin, Director of the Bio/Nano Programmable Matter Research Group at Autodesk | Erik and Marty Demaine at MIT, CSAIL | Adam Bly, CEO of SEED Media Group | Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch, Principals of Aranda/Lasch | Matt Trimble, Principal of RadLab | Marc Fornes, Principal of THEVERYMANY | Jared Laucks, Brandon Kruysman, Jonathan Proto and many others....

Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of "4D printing"

ORIGINAL: TED

TED2013

Apr 2013

3D printing has grown in sophistication since the late 1970s; TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits is shaping the next development, which he calls 4D printing, where the fourth dimension is time. This emerging technology will allow us to print objects that then reshape themselves or self-assemble over time. Think: a printed cube that folds before your eyes, or a printed pipe able to sense the need to expand or contract.

Skylar Tibbits, a TED Fellow, is an artist and computational architect working on "smart" components that can assemble themselves.  

Skylar Tibbits, a TED Fellow, is an artist and computational architect working on "smart" components that can assemble themselves.

Why you should listen to him:

Can we create objects that assemble themselves -- that zip together like a strand of DNA or that have the ability for transformation embedded into them? These are the questions that Skylar Tibbits investigates in his Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, a cross-disciplinary research space where designers, scientists and engineers come together to find ways for disordered parts to become ordered structures.

A trained architect, designer and computer scientist, Tibbits teaches design studios at MIT’s Department of Architecture and co-teaches the seminar “How to Make (Almost) Anything” at MIT’s Media Lab. Before that, he worked at a number of design offices including Zaha Hadid Architects, Asymptote Architecture, SKIII Space Variations and Point b Design. His work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum and the Beijing Biennale.

Tibbits has collaborated with a number of influential people over the years, including Neil Gershenfeld and The Center for Bits and Atoms, Erik and Marty Demaine at MIT, Adam Bly at SEED Media Group and Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY. In 2007, he and Marc Fornes co-curated Scriptedbypurpose, the first exhibition focused exclusively on scripted processes within design. Also in 2007, he founded SJET, a multifaceted practice and research platform for experimental computation and design. SJET crosses disciplines from architecture and design, fabrication, computer science and robotics.

"The big idea is to create objects that can change after they are printed, making them self-adapting. The act of printing is no longer the end of the creative process but merely a waypoint."

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Quotes by Skylar Tibbits

“There’s new possibilities for self-assembly, replication, repair in our physical structures, our buildings, machines. … Imagine if our buildings, our bridges, machines, all of our bricks could actually compute.” Watch this talk »