Here at Crendon Insurance Ltd we often cover topics on 3D printing and artificial intelligence. Reporting on the progress of the 3D printing industry and how it is modernising many sectors including manufacturing, construction and automotive has taken our interest for some years now. Whilst in addition, over more recent months, we have begun highlighting the expansion of AI (artificial intelligence) and how it too, is changing the way in which humans will engage with products of the future. Over the last few years, 3D printing has demonstrated as real'gamechanger' in the world of manufacturing. Offering the ability to produce several copies of the same component at a much lower cost, cutting out the middle man to save transportation cost and time and allowing new and innovative entrepreneurs to realise their designs more independently by installing much lower cost 3D printers on-site, has provided just some of the benefits to the growth of the 3D printing industry.

The printing industry is growing and evolving at a fast pace because of technological advances and print businesses looking ahead to trends and customer needs. According to the Printing Industries of America, by the end of 2019, the print industry should see up to a 2-percent increase in revenues. Even with the growing trend to go paperless and the increase in e-books and other digital publications, the printing industry has been seeing yearly growth since 2011. The continued growth for digital printing Printing digitally does not require printing plates and the setup time that traditional offset printing requires. Because of this, digital printing continues to grow in popularity for printers and customers.

The printing industry is growing and evolving at a fast pace because of technological advances and print businesses looking ahead to trends and customer needs. According to the Printing Industries of America, by the end of 2019, the print industry should see up to a 2-percent increase in revenues. Even with the growing trend to go paperless and the increase in e-books and other digital publications, the printing industry has been seeing yearly growth since 2011. The continued growth for digital printing Printing digitally does not require printing plates and the setup time that traditional offset printing requires. Because of this, digital printing continues to grow in popularity for printers and customers.

A method of machine learning has proven capable of turning 2D images into 3D models. Created by researchers at multi-million-dollar GPU manufacturer NVIDIA, the framework shows that it is possible to infer shape, texture, and light from a single image, in a similar way to the workings of the human eye. "Close your left eye as you look at this screen. Now close your right eye and open your left," writes NVIDIA PR specialist Lauren Finkle on the company blog, "you'll notice that your field of vision shifts depending on which eye you're using. That's because while we see in two dimensions, the images captured by your retinas are combined to provide depth and produce a sense of three-dimensionality." Termed a differentiable interpolation-based renderer, or DIB-R, the NVIDIA rendering framework has the potential to aid, and accelerate various areas of 3D design and robotics, rendering 3D models in a matter of seconds.

The 3D printing industry in South Korea has just received a significant boost, with the announcement of a new state initiative. The government has released details of an evaluation and compensation system soon to be established in the medical device industry, which will provide particular incentives for the use of newer, innovative technologies. Medical devices that make use of 3D printing, as well as artificial intelligence and robotics, will be evaluated more effectively and partially funded by the new government scheme. In 2016 South Korea's 3D printing industry was worth around $75 million, under 2 percent of the global 3D printing market, and increasing its 3D printing footprint has been a priority of the South Korean government for a number of years now. We reported before on efforts to improve use and development of 3D printing in the country, with initial discussions around the easing of regulations and various tax breaks starting last year.

Breakfast is no longer just the most important meal of the day - it is also the most entertaining. What began as a Lego creation and became a Kickstarter hit is now a working robot that uses 3D printing technology to transform boring round pancakes into various designs and characters. Users can upload images into the machine with an SD card, then using a robotic nozzle, the PancakeBot draws their creation with batter on an electrically powered griddle. Breakfast is no longer just the most important meal of the day - it is also the most creative. PancakeBot is equip with user-friendly software that allows you to design your own pancake by tracing any image right on your computer.

People often ask me about the impact of 3D printing on jobs. Will the technology be a job creator or destroyer? The short answer is, it will take more jobs than it makes -- and 3D printing is not alone. Technology will eventually make work obsolete. Our big problems are going to be figuring out how to survive the transition, then figuring out what to do with all that free time. About 10 years ago, inventor, futurist and now Director of Engineering at Google Ray Kurzweil famously embraced the concept of "the singularity" -- that moment in time when machine intelligence surpasses our own. Kurzweil predicted the singularity would occur by 2045, and man and machine would become inseparable.