3D Printing Stainless Steel with Giant Robot Arms

At Autodesk's Pier 9 workshop in San Francisco -- and no, this isn't an ad, pull down the description for more! -- there are giant robot arms using welders to 3D print with stainless steel. Which seemed like a good place to talk about programming abstractions, high-level languages, training pendants, and just how safe something like a robot arm needs to be.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Autodesk were good enough to cover my travel to San Francisco, but they haven't paid me and they had no control over the script, the content or the final cut! You can see more about Pier 9 at www.autodesk.com/pier-9/
And you can see what the Applied Research Team's up to, along with all the other stuff that Autodesk makes, on Facebook at / autodesk
Video edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin)
Camera by Andy Westhoff
I'm at www.tomscott.com/
on Facebook at / tomscott
on Twitter at / tomscott
and on Instagram and Snapchat as tomscottgo

[@seancpp]

"A computer will do whatever you ask it to, even if it's not what you meant." as a programmer, this is painfully true

[@TomScottGo]

As with my last video: this happened because Autodesk paid for my travel to San Francisco! But as with everywhere I've worked with recently, they had no control over content, script or final cut: they just asked if I wanted to film stuff at their Pier. (And given what's in the Pier, it didn't take me long to say yes...)

[@GilesWells]

If only news programs were this transparent. Great stuff again as usual.

[@mattdanfg]

Tom Scott Wow! You can pin messages!

[@GaminGit]

Great work as always sir! Keep it up! Thanks! GG

[@TheNexustoby]

Tom Scott auto desk are the people who made Maya correct?

[@TomScottGo]

Yep, they make Maya, AutoCAD, 3DS Max, Flame, 123D Catch and basically a LOT of other stuff. (They also own Instructables...!)

[@Bienfurion]

knock knock open up the door it's real with the non-stop robot doing stainless steel

[@TOASTEngineer]

FedEx gonna give it to ya No time to wait for you to get it on your own FedEx gonna delivrit to ya

[@gwenynorisu6883]

Autodesk gon' give it to ya

[@DuncanEllis]

you are a better than I - I would have made a joke about bare metal programming.

[@TomScottGo]

I specifically rejected that joke because it might be confusing!

[@drabberfrog]

​@@TomScottGo no Tom, that information isn't too much to bear.

[@zachdemand4508]

This reminded me of the day my machine tool class visited a local technical trade school. One of the things we were suppose to do is see how robotic arms are programmed. While the instructor was talking a student was demonstrating. To this day I still haven't figured out how he managed to do this but the arm did the exact opposite of what he wanted and destroyed a brick wall. Why it was that close to the wall, I have no idea, but last I heard they decided not to rebuild the wall.

[@anna-flora999]

It could be as easy as forgetting to include a single "-", tbh

[@AceSkates]

this is how sponsored content should look!

[@ciaranreed91]

Agreed!

[@CJT3X]

definitely better than what happened to Atlas Obscura :(

[@nateshrager512]

Most products by sponsors are not nearly this entertaining though

[@zappyapp]

It's not sponsored though

[@dougalbadger4918]

@@zappyapp it is sponsored though look at the pinned comment from Tom

[@seahawk124]

I'm not liking this new member of Daft Punk.

[@neonlemurs4865]

seahawk124 tomnologic

[@vackwa4508]

I love Daft Punk

[@RinSyuveil]

Welp sorry but it looks like this is the last member of Daft Punk

[@drakonyanazkar]

You, sir, have a talent to find nerds all around the world, it seems.

[@ishashka]

You know, when the point of the whole company is to make nerdy stuff, you can assume there are some nerds there.

[@simonsmith1455]

We still use assembler for many different applications. Because it is down at the register level, where you have to tell the processor to send information to and from the memory, there are a lot of little tricks we can do to save time on certain processes that you can't do with C or higher level languages. It might only be a few micro seconds per cycle of the program/subroutine, but in situations where you need to go down to assembler it will be doing hundreds of cycles a second. So yeah, high level languages are great for programming some things, don't count out good old assembler just yet!

[@TomScottGo]

There's a reason I said [checks subtitles] "most programmers". I don't envy those of you who work at the bare metal :)

[@tallatech]

Tom Scott I do hope that pun was unintentional...

[@andyowens5494]

Yep, I used to program code in satellites - we used old proven chips so they didn’t fail in launch (remember the Z8000 and 8080??), low memory (weight is everything, so even a couple of grams was worth saving), and assembler was: - more reliable. Less unexpected events coming from code someone else wrote, with associated errors that then need trapping etc. - more efficient. Why use 100 bytes when a Mb will do :) - faster. Much, much faster! Some highly abstracted systems today could do with a dose of efficiency building back in. Assembler definitely has its place, and its not just in the bin (no assembler, no higher level coding tools).

[@geryon]

Mamma Mia, an ABBA robot. Gimme gimme gimme.

[@hansolavtalg4560]

+

[@maxwittelsbach5475]

geryon This looks for me like a Kuka robot, but I'm not sure.

[@Spirit532]

It's an ABB IRB 6700 robot.

[@AvailableUsernameTed]

SOS

[@asmo1313]

@@maxwittelsbach5475 its not a kuka, they have different teach panels. also they would have kuka in big letter on them

[@alistairrothwell3986]

Toms smile at 0:40 : D

[@mgntstr]

They added an A to their ABB robots? :)

[@MegaVidFan1]

only Tom Scott can get a sponsored video that doesn't conflict with his channel at all. I'm really enjoying these, Tom!

[@MinecraftTestSquad]

When he said ‘assembly language’ I went “ohhh nooo” aloud, since I tried learning some assembly language a while back, and gave up when I realized that you store values and call the kernel or some crap like that to do functions. Hello world suddenly got a lot more complicated.

[@MinecraftTestSquad]

@Heads Mess And now I've actually been able to write a "Hello, World!" program in NASM. Two years does a lot. Don't worry, C++ makes me want to scream too, sometimes. I use it for robotics, but thank goodness I can mainly just use the API that we have and hardly have to touch the C++ libraries.

[@KingJellyfishII]

dword txt "hello, world", 0 mov rax, txt mov magic_register, "just print out the damn thing will you?!" call magic ;easy, right?

[@andyowens5494]

Heads Mess 48 65 6C 6C 6F 20 57 6F 72 6C 64

[@billyswong]

Well, the string "Hello world" itself can't know which pixels to light on and which pixels to switch off in your screen by magic. So of course there are a lot of code or circuits behind the scene. If the computer is running the screen in "text mode" like in DOS days, then maybe those operations are all offset to the GPU without OS interference. Or if you are running an embedded device without any GPU in-between, you code which pixels to light on directly by tweaking individual signal output. Else if you are running a windowed interface like what we almost always do nowadays, then there are a lot of works for the OS to coordinate. Edit: I said "or circuits" because around 1980's to 1990's, there were a number of "Chinese cards" for one to buy and plug into PCs for Chinese text display acceleration.

[@Primu]

Feels like this video is just for advertising Autodesk. The technologies discussed are old news, machines today are capable of being aware of their environments through sensors.

[@newenglisharchitecture1012]

The world's first 3-D printing Swedish pop band. Amazing.

[@sswpp8908]

Even if you have the kill switch, would you have enough time to react if the robot swung at you unexpectedly?

[@Spirit532]

Yes. When you press that e-stop, the robot stops dead, makes extremely expensive noises, and the controller has a chance of releasing the magic smoke. That is a very "E" stop. The regular cycle pause button is on the front. That, and the controller itself is a "dead man" switch - you have to hold the controller tightly to depress a button within the handle. If you let go, the robot stops normally and then yells at you with colorful errors.

[@IMDRock]

most robots have a manual control speed that is limited to 250 mm/s (/W deadman) so there is time to react if something goes wrong. if the machine is in automatic mode then the robot has no speed limit and people need to be clear of the robot

[@Spirit532]

IMDRock These can be overridden on almost any system if you are an admin. That means a regular operator(factory worker) can't go in and pin themselves to the cage before they can notice, but the integrator/owner of the machine can easily run it at full speed in manual mode. I know for a fact that older KUKA and Fanuc controllers allow for that, not sure about new stuff.

[@IMDRock]

***** normally to switch to the full speed mode you need to have pendant switch and the controller key switch in the same state.(robot control or pendant control) I'm not aware of any system variables that let you bypass that (at least on the newer FANUC robots). how long ago was it possible?

[@Spirit532]

IMDRock I've seen it done on KRC2-controlled robots. Weird.

[@TimGremalm]

Trivia: The robot is a Swedish robot from the vendor ABB. The robot's name is ABBA which is an old Swedish pop group from the 70's. So the robots name is pretty much a far fetched joke about Swedish stuff.

[@baylinkdashyt]

All right. That's what they were doing. I knew that was ASEA Brown Boveri* logo, but I didn't know where the extra A came from. * my phone doesn't know how to spell that, and apparently I don't either anymore.

[@secularmonk5176]

1:31 Tom pulls down his welding mask and his voice quality doesn't change. I call shenanigans! Also, *PINK ASTRODROID!*

[@PurpleNinjaPower]

It's sometimes mind boggling when you think about all the millenia of human ingenuity that has let to the point where we have robots 3D welding metal structures. Incredible minds in this video.

[@idontremembermylogin]

Of course, I meet Matt when I go out and about and when I get home Tom's uploaded. This has been a good day.

[@idontremembermylogin]

No... Matt Gray... Tom's partner in crime

[@alwinpriven2400]

Wait did you actually go out and saw him on the street?!

[@idontremembermylogin]

Well, I saw him on the bridge to the Dubai Metro from Dubai Mall... so not a street... But still great!

[@alwinpriven2400]

Wait he was in Dubai?

[@idontremembermylogin]

Matt seemingly has come out a few times, but I don't think Tom is or ever has.

[@neilsiebenthal9569]

As a professional welder I find this absolutely fascinating! I've seen a few types of robot welders but nothing like this.

[@Croz89]

I've occasionally done something similar with laser welding in my lab, but we've just been building walls, nothing fancy. We don't have any closed loop feedback on our robots, though I sometimes use a software plugin that can generate robot code from complex parametric paths for our more complex stuff.

[@elisadhanger1493]

Thank you! As a robot obsessed, welder, programmer and lover of 3d printing this is awesome!

[@hebl47]

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that a working jet engine has been 3D printed...

[@xWood4000]

Hebl von Heblowitz And rocket engines too!

[@rockydo2307]

As a mechatronics engineering student at university we've had lectures from some companies explaining that some are starting to be able to 3D print houses

[@hebl47]

***** I know that's impressive, but printing a jet or rocket engine! That stuff has to withstand meganewtons of force and not give even a slight hint of failure after thousands of hours of use. And it's just "welded" together. So it's the robustness of 3D metal printing I'm most impressed with. Of course other 3D printing is robust as well, but I kind of got used to 3D plastic printing - but metal ... crazy times we live in :D

[@volundrfrey896]

Koenigsegg 3d prints their turbos. They say it allows them to make them more complex and have lower tolerances than with traditional manufacturing.

[@Mordewolt]

Technically, you can make a pulse jet with a sheet of steel, a mallet, a drill, a saw, sleight of hand and some spare time. It's just a u-shaped tube with 3 holes punched through it, a bulge at one end and a trumpet at the other end. And you can sure mass 3-d print it in no time on cheap equipment

[@Sev826]

We tom scott fans are so lucky. Tom posts so much content and its all top notch.

[@antivanti]

Someone has been a bit cheeky with the ABB logo on that robot :D At least both are Swedish. (ABB is part Swiss also though)

[@starry_lis]

After welding theory course all I can think about od the shitload of energy it wastes.

[@HorzaPanda]

Whereas having done a materials science course I'm wondering what the final lattice structure is, and how the multiple heat affected zones affect each other O_O Induction melting a little bit of metal at a time does sound a lot less efficient than say, melting all at once than die casting :X

[@starry_lis]

PhilfreezeCH it depends on the perspective. On industrial scale everything that could be obtained using less energy is a waste. The only point in this i see is in making prototypes or few copies of objects in specialised areas.

[@Simon-nx1sc]

@@starry_lis Yes, I think that's the application they have in mind as well. Almost every form of 3D printing is only relevant in prototyping after all.

[@brianartillery]

Fascinating stuff! 3D printing in metal - the applications are possibly endless.

[@lu4414]

AutoDesk is an amazing company! They support students with free software and developed powerful tools for industries! You rock Autodesk

[@Breakfast221]

This was really cool. Thanks, Tom.

[@RodrigoVzq]

What a pice of work Congratulations on your excellent quality videos Tom. You are getting so much better

[@devjock]

No worries about the disclosure dude, Autodesk and Lincoln Electric are both amazing companies, and definitely on the cutting edge of fabrication science. No shame in giving them the spotlight for a bit. This is the future. We CAN have a car 3d printed in about 10 years. Thanks for sharing!

[@ByteMe619]

1:53 gimme gimme gimme a robot after midnight

[@JamesJesseGTA]

I can see so many applications for this in the aviation industry. Imagine parts of the aircraft or even engines being made this way. It would still require years of fine-tuning before that can be practical and safe to ensure quality control but the possibilities are almost limitless.

[@Spirit532]

Structurally inferior, complex. A lot easier to machine the "old" way.

[@JamesJesseGTA]

*****​ currently that is true. That's why I said it still requires years of fine tuning. Perhaps on non-structural parts of aircraft.

[@greenfire61]

I've played with that UR robot (the one with the blue elbows) before. They are indeed fun!

[@MarcusRitland]

Love the video, Tom! Hope there's more coming from Pier 9 :)

[@zegaskmask5659]

Now we're that much closer to downloading and printing cars

[@jasonwalker2655]

ZeGaskMask aye just stick this in your garage

[@NickiRusin]

But... you wouldn't download a car.

[@endorsedbryce]

CONTRA I mean, you have to ship materials either way, this would just cut labor cost.

[@gabrielxavier2676]

But you could choose which car to print with "basically the same"* materials, and these materials have NOT to be used only for cars, it is your choice to do whatever you want with them.

[@vatablous]

ZeGaskMask can I get a Corolla V8?

[@michaelbianchi22]

I'm suddenly reminded of Robot Wars. Anyone remember that old show, where people would battle homemade robots? Watching that was a highlight of my childhood.

[@Mattedatten]

Just throwing it out there that BBC did a "revival" of Robot Wars earlier this year, that ran for 6 episodes. Quite a bit of nostalgia kicking in. :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Wars_(TV_series)#Revival

[@keithfrost1268]

Cool, glad to see Lincoln doing 3D printing.

[@Izandaia]

It's weird to rewatch these years-old videos about people on the leading edge of science and technology. I often wind up wondering where they and their research are at now.

[@luckygozer]

When it comes to robots and ai etc there is always that part in my mind that goes this is how the terminator starts that stops me from fully enjoying just how amazing some of these things are.

[@CarlisleMaritime]

Thanks, Tom!

[@wiiza4ever]

Autodesk has made some of my favourite software. I had no idea they had robots too.

[@TomOConnor-BlobOpera]

Two of my favourite things, programming and welding.

[@mennonis]

Really cool stuff!

[@Beateau]

I've seen the avoid human behavior in self-driving floor cleaners at my local grocery store.

[@Erik_The_Viking]

Tom - excellent video as always. I had a personal experience with a robot failure some years ago. I was working at a company doing surgical robotics when the robot arm (much smaller than the one shown - could easily fit on a small table) suddenly moved at full speed, missed my head by 3 inches and slammed into a wall making a huge hole in it. That was caused by a division by 0 error in the robot controller, which was using assembly code. We switched to another robot that used C/C++ and had much better fail-safe mechanisms in place to prevent that from happening in the first place. Having written assembly many years ago, it's a real bitch. You only use it when absolutely necessary.

[@michaelwinter742]

That. Was. AWESOME!!

[@smalltime0]

As far as I know they are commercial systems now, but about 6 years ago (when I started uni) the head of materials engineering there had a 3D printer that printed things in aluminium. He basically did as many public demos as possible in order to justify printing his own (quite big) chess set. Seems amazing that we've advanced this far so quickly. That system was bounded to objects being about 2x2x2 metres, and required a tonne of maintenance to operate. Even then it required everything to be painstakingly planned out.

[@radomane]

Having the pivot control is required to do welding, as you usually need to apply the weld at specific angles.

[@JasperJanssen]

Rado yeah, but still: isn't XYZ pretty much the definition of 3D, or at least 3 degrees of freedom? Now granted the way a FDM printer works can be called 2.5D in that it's very much layer-based, but the Cartesian or Delta platforms themselves operate in 3D space. Theoretically, it's possible to add rotational DOFs to delta printers by controlling the individual sides of each arm separately...

[@Croz89]

XYZ is for *position*, for *orientation* you need 3 more variables, typically (and conveniently) called ABC.

[@Spirit532]

Conventionally it's called pitch, yaw, and roll. Welcome to geometry 101.

[@radomane]

Jasper Janssen Their printer is not 3D vs 2.5D, it's not like a 4 axis cnc is 3,5D

[@Spirit532]

Rado The definition you're thinking of is six degrees of freedom.

[@McRocket]

I love fun sites like Unbox Therapy - that have millions of subscribers. But I love Tom Scott's video's WAY more. Not because of the host's - they are charming in their own way. But the subject matter Mr. Scott covers is FAR more varied and fascinating to me then what Unbox Therapy (and other 'fun' sites) covers. So why does Tom Scott have only 700K subscribers and Unbox Therapy (and other very popular but essentially light/fun sites) has many millions of subscribers? I don't get it. I have been watching tons of Tom Scott's videos over the past few days...and I have learned a ton and been entertained as well.

[@607]

Very, very cool!!!

[@twitertaker]

That's cool to see here. From the intitute I work at a start up was initiated from, that works on learning robots to move the way wanted by letting a human wearing a special jacket and glove do the movement. The trained robot then copies it.

[@Everest314]

Wow! 3D printing (actual 3D) with steel and on those size scales must be many engineers' wet dream! :D

[@sgguitarfan7]

I would love to work on this project as I am a programmer and a weldor And working for Autodesk would be my top achievement since I love all their software.

[@BluishGreenPro]

Any other time-lapse videos of that thing "printing" sculptures? Sort of like what you had at the end of the video, but I'd love to see a finished product.

[@JackEvans]

The big one's called Ash? Groovy!

[@HugeWolf1]

Great presentation on programing robots. But as your video title stated, 3D printing stainless steel, I would suggest you visit the GE factory where they make complicated 3-d turbine blades using a more sophisticated method.

[@aries_9130]

This is so freaking cool.

[@JackT13]

Anyone know of other youtube channels on par with Tom's informative and interesting videos? I'd love to see more like this

[@powder-phun949]

applied science, Vsauce

[@commajoe8669]

love ya Tom

[@willparry]

there's a pink r2d2

[@TomScottGo]

That's R2-KT. Standard R2 astromech droid with a different colour scheme and a wonderful behind-the-scenes story!

[@buck1t1er]

R2-KT was built by the R2D2 builders group (forgot their actual name) as a tribute the the founder of the 501st Legion after his daughter sadly passed away. The droid was featured in the Force Awakens. More information can be found at www.r2kt.com

[@willparry]

star wars was never my thing, but thanks for the info, you learn something new everyday!

[@TMWriting]

What exactly is the purpose of whatever that robot was 3D printing? Was it just art or a way of proving/testing the machine's capabilities? Or does it have a practical industrial purpose?

[@TheNaz01]

Tom Morgan it's more about testing what's possible, it can also serve as simply a test print for what they are working on: like awareness of failure and people

[@TomScottGo]

I think that was the stand for a lamp! (But yes, it was also a test print with a lot of interesting curves in it.)

[@TMWriting]

***** Of all the curves I've seen in my life, they were definitely some of the more interesting ones

[@klaxoncow]

Whilst Tom Scott is an undeniably sexy man, you should stop publicly harassing him like this with your sexual objectification of his body.

[@klaxoncow]

"Laser scan me and 3D print me like one of your French girls"

[@andrewjeisenman]

AMAZING!

[@ApaulSaid]

When I saw the thumbnail I thought Tom was wearing a Daft Punk helmet. Awesome video Tom!

[@gaarajeffri1512]

tom loves your videos and your projects always enjoy them and learn a lot :D just curious what are your thoughts of the Investigatory Powers Act?? do you think that we will be safe ?

[@JoshIdstein]

I. Want. That. Pink. R2.

[@enoughofyourkoicarp]

That's pretty cool.

[@coalsauce4457]

soo cool!

[@TheTrueRandomness]

I love the cheeky little additional "A" on the robot.

[@Yonatan24]

Autodesk? Instructables? That was a nice surprise!

[@kylenetherwood8734]

I wasn't sure about you getting money but this is damn cool.

[@steamcastle]

Did you get to play with the special feature of the universal robots robot arm. the button on the back of the control panel, if you press it, you can move it just by taking a hold of the robot and move and simply by applying a small amount of force to the robot arm. Each joint know how much force to expect by talking to the other joints, so it can feel you trying to move it, and when the button it pressed it follow along. so it takes the same force from you to move it up as down.

[@DaveGamesVT]

This is really awesome. Makes me wonder where 3D printing will be in 5 or 10 years.

[@petehepple]

Wonder no more! Was it everything you hoped for? 😃

[@trzykawki]

ABBA! ABB Autodesk, I presume? Quite a geeky word play there! Awesome content!

[@Spirit532]

Cheeky reference to a swedish band.

[@trzykawki]

And swedish brand :-)

[@bgl11]

Lincoln Electric jacket - nice

[@smoker_joe]

Use an ABB irb6600 to do this is like asking to a body builder to do sewing. There is a lot of other light weight arc-welding models to do that.

[@GryffDavid]

I'd be very interested to see what the print quality is like for that and I'd like to know what the spanning abilities are if any.

[@fulwell1]

+Tom Scott - how have you not been snapped up by the likes of Nat Geo? I recently stumbled over one of your videos, and I am well and truly hooked (and subscribed, of course!); Please keep your videos coming, and please don't change your style - I am yet to see a dud video from you. Thank you :)

[@fulwell1]

Good point - still excellent videos though :)

[@awkwardauntie1978]

Is this the same Autodesk that makes apps for smart devices? If so I love working with the Pixlr app! And thank you for making it free!

[@theKobus]

nice video, Cyberman Tom

[@douro20]

An orbital launch vehicle made with technology developed at Pier 9 should have its debut flight soon.

[@bluesquare23]

Come to Pittsburgh take a ride in a driverless uber.

[@TomScottGo]

I tried, a few weeks ago when I was there! (As did a couple of friends.) None of us got allocated one :)

[@bluesquare23]

Thats unfortunate. They're really really neat. I hope you enjoyed Pittsburgh nonetheless.

[@AllenLeland]

I thought this was really cool looking :D

[@GENeric08]

No mention of material properties after a print is complete? Or even what types of loads these can take, or what this can be used for right now. I can't imagine that this style upholds the tensile and compression strength, like rolling does do to tempering processes. I imagine the shear capabilities of the metal drop dramatically since it is no longer homogeneously formed.

[@JackCarver10]

What about the magnetic fields of welding? Does the robot know how to direct the current and adjust to the magnetic fields?

[@cristian-ionutapostol8018]

This autoplaying after the "Automated Weapons" video is... prophetic.

[@davidrees4063]

I do hope you stopped by and saw Norm while you were over there. :) oh and great video.

[@TheOleYeller]

Are you going to have a meet up in SF?

[@TheAdaaamski]

3m Speedglas- best hoods out there!

[@J0rdanXYZ]

this stuffs cool !!!

[@maxhill9254]

thx

[@AlaskaSkidood]

When do we get to see what ASH was making?!

[@nikomo]

You had me at 3D.

[@russianbot4418]

Too bad autodesk lost me at being 64 bit system compatible only.

[@CalvinHikes]

4:10 sooooomebody got a haircut!

[@hungrymusicwolf]

3D printing for metal, I had never thought of that before.

[@TheStrictlyAwesome]

I have used auto desk in school its quite a good program

[@matt09ward]

RossHouston autodesk isnt a program its a company that makes programs like Microsoft. im assume autocad?

[@TheStrictlyAwesome]

Matt Ward no its auto desk inventor.

[@vengefulenigma]

i prefer solidworks over inventor :D

[@Faroacces0]

I'm graduating in materials and nanotechnologies engeneering and i'm doing a research about metal additive manufacturing right now.... what a coincidence!