The 4D Technology Is Revolutionizing Engineering!!

Under such developments, one massive shift in the technology has been introduction of ‘4D Printing’. The concept of 4D technology was first introduced by a research team Led by Skylar Tibbits, Self-Assembly Lab Director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the firms Stratasys and Autodesk Inc.

The 4D technology came into existence as an advanced step to 3D technology when the research team was trying to create objects on 3D printers—objects that can be printed after adding the concept of ‘time’ (4^thdimension) to the 3D printing process.   

Incorporation of ‘time’ can be interpreted as a 3D object that is capable of shape shift when heated or cooled to a specific temperature, or subjected to different environmental conditions. This would require 4D printing techniques to create structures capable of acting (and reacting) in different ways to different stimuli- change shape and transform on their own (self-assembly).

Tibbits describes this technology in his Ted Talk as “Today at the micro- and nanoscales, there’s an unprecedented revolution happening. And this is the ability to program physical and biological materials to change shape, change properties and even compute outside of silicon-based matter. There’s even a software called cadnano that allows to design three-dimensional shapes like nano robots or drug delivery systems and use DNA to self-assemble those functional structures”.

[“Source-techstory”]