[skookumchuck]

While an amazing new technique, I'm a bit disappointed that it was used to create an "art" bridge. As an engineer, I'd be more interested in what a bridge would look like if it was pure utilitarian - the only material on it is what must be on it, not what is required by machining costs and stock material shapes.

Before anyone scoffs that this must result in nerdy and ugly shapes, airplanes are beautiful shapes and none of that is for aesthetics or artistic purposes. It's simply the best shape for flying. As manufacturing techniques improve, the airplane shapes get more subtly flowing forms, and get even more beautiful.

[reneherse]

Hard to look at the history of aircraft and think aesthetics have nothing to do with the shapes designers choose. Aesthetics may not be the driver, but it's definitely an input in the process, to varying degrees.

[skookumchuck]

> Hard to look at the history of aircraft and think aesthetics have nothing to do with the shapes designers choose.

In my reading about the history of aircraft, aesthetics have nothing to do with it. Performance and cost are everything.

For example, the elliptical wing of the Spitfire is often mentioned as a big part of the beauty of the design. But the elliptical planform is the most efficient wing design (the Mitsubishi Zero had one, too, for the same reason). Giving your pilots every edge possible is everything in those designs. And yet look at the beauty that resulted.

The downside of the Spitfire shape was it took twice as many hours to produce as the Me-109, which was designed to be easy to manufacture.

I can't think of a single successful airplane design that was designed to be beautiful - from the Wright Flyer to the Sopwith Camel to the Spitfire to the DC-3 to the Concorde to the Blackbird. Not one. Yet they're all beauties.

[devilshaircut]

A bridge designed on purely utilitarian principles would not be 3D printed.

Art makes us think about what could be - and imagine a future of solutions that are utilitarian in new ways, or address needs we didn't know we had.

There is beauty in engineering. There is also beauty in pure imagination.

[jacquesm]

I actually think that the organic look shows off the fact that it was 3D printed in a very original way. If it ended up being a utilitarian 'boring' construction then there would be no point in 3D printing it in the first place. But there is no other way that I'm aware of short of a huge cast (and that's a big if given the hollow spaces) to make this bridge in any other way.

[skookumchuck]

> If it ended up being a utilitarian 'boring' construction then there would be no point in 3D printing it in the first place.

There's a great deal of point to it - saving money in material and fabrication costs.

[adkaplan]

Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtYRfMzmWFU could be a happy medium. Shapes that must be 3d printed but forms that are less fluff and more function.

[jacquesm]

This is pioneering work, saving money in material and fabrication costs is something that will happen in the longer term when the tech is more mature.

This is a technology demonstration, not an example of super high efficiency. It also took much longer to make than it would have taken to make it in a more traditional way.

That said it still came in rather competitive compared to the alternatives, which says quite a bit about how manufacturers of such structures normally charge.

[ofrzeta]

Having a welding robot run for 6 months straight will hardly reduce fabrication costs. Given the price of MIG welding wire it's also dubious if you could reduce material costs.