Want to master 3D printing? AI can help!

Hey AI Puppies, 

Is that fresh New Year feeling starting to fade away? The ‘January blues’ are real, but this time around, we have a ton of AI advances to keep us going strong 🫡

This week, we’re even exploring something brand-new to the AI Puppy training program: 3D printing 🤖

If you’ve wanted to break into the fascinating world of 3D modeling, but struggled to…

🐾 Master the math and data

🐾 Make time to perfect your models

🐾 Correct mistakes as you print

… generative AI might be the solution!

But that’s not the only exciting news we’ve been eyeing.

👏This week, OpenAI announced price drops and fixes to the GPT-4! 👏

Keep reading for a closer look at the OpenAI news and a roundup of top takeaways from generative AI + 3D printing ⚡

Major Improvements from OpenAI

If you’ve noticed a slow-down in ChatGPT’s outputs, you’re not imagining things: in December, OpenAI admitted that GPT-4 – the generative AI model behind ChatGPT – was becoming “lazier.” 

More specifically, ChatGPT hasn’t been completing tasks or sending full-scale responses. But finally, after a couple of months of digging…

🙌OpenAI finally announced the release of GPT-4 Turbo 🙌

This means that paid GPT-4 users will start to see better outputs in the coming weeks!

Not a paid user yet? If the cost is holding you back, your time has come – GPT-3.5 will soon see a 25% price reduction 🎉

Oh, and if you’re by chance a developer, API access will also see a price reduction. 

Long story short, it’s a good time to be an AI Puppy 😎

3 Ways AI Helps 3D Printing

With that housekeeping out of the way, it’s time to move on to something a bit different from our usual content: how generative AI is transforming 3D printing. 

If you’ve never dabbled in 3D printing, two knowledge sets are generally needed to design, customize, and print 3D creations:

1. Computer-aided design (CAD) software 

2. Slicer software

Some folks with a STEM background can pick these up relatively quickly, but even the most math-inclined puppies among us may need to dedicate hours and hours to mastering these programs. 

👉That brings us to our first AI-driven impact on 3D printing: generative design.

To overcome the high barrier to entry with 3D printing, enthusiasts have traditionally purchased pre-made designs online instead of designing them from scratch. 

But within the next few years, experts like CNET's Senior Editor, James Bricknell, believe that ChatGPT users will be able to design complex geometries with natural language prompts. 

Think about it: when you combine ChatGPT and Midjourney, what do you get? High-quality, original 2D imagery. It’s not hard to imagine the next step: 3D imagery.

We aren’t quite there yet, though. But in the meantime, if you’re using pre-made designs, there’s another element AI can already help with. 

👉That brings us to our second AI-driven impact on 3D printing: customization.

Despite how helpful pre-made designs can be, altering small segments to customize your print can risk destroying the entire object. 

Enter AI tools like Style2Fab from MIT, a platform that allows 3D designers to personalize existing 3D models using only natural language prompts. 

This video shows off the groundbreaking tool:

Once Style2Fab and similar tools are widely available, they’ll unlock a ton of benefits, like:

✅Welcoming more amateur designers into the field

✅Faster testing and development

✅Customized medical devices created in-hospital 

But design and customization aren’t the only factors holding back 3D printing enthusiasts. As of now, each 3D print is a bit of a gamble; once something starts printing, if something goes wrong, there’s almost no way to alter the design. 

👉That brings us to our third AI-driven impact on 3D printing: error detection.

If you’ve been training with us for a while, you already know that AI, in essence, is an A+ data reader. And, as you now know, 3D printing is also all about data. 

So what if AI could read a 3D object’s data as it’s printing?

Guess what: it already can!

Known as ‘Spaghetti Detection,’ this AI application detects and corrects data failures throughout a print. The models then learn from those mistakes and get better at preventing failed prints in the future. 

Right now, the most popular tool for this is called The Spaghetti Detective, an OctoPrint plug-in that uses a camera to prevent the dreaded spaghetti. If you’re a 3D printing enthusiast, click here to learn more about setting it up!

These are the top 3 reasons 3D printing enthusiasts should prepare for the impact of generative AI, but there are plenty of other predictions we’re eyeing 👀

For example, material selection. Amateur printers don’t have to worry about this as much, but scientists who use 3D printing will eventually be able to rely on AI to research and select optimal materials for research and experiments 🔬

Happy printing, puppies!

Your Next Assignment

Unless you have a 3D printer, you can take this week off! 

If you do have a 3D printer, your assignment is to exercise patience as we wait for these advancements to hit the mainstream market 🧘

For bonus puppy points, we want to hear from you! 

📫Send over any questions, feedback, or topic ideas to [email protected] 📫

As always, we’ll be sharing more AI tips, tactics, and creations throughout the week. If you don’t already, follow along on our socials: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok 📲

That’s it for this week’s newsletter – enjoy the weekend, puppies!

Talk soon,

The AI Puppy