From the army to the big city, 3D printing can be a real game changer

3D printing has great practical potential for the supply chain, as shown by the US army. Jerry Castanos saw its military application on his tour of duty in Afghanistan. That inspired him to open his own 3D printing business in New York City, 3D Heights, which offers 3D printers, related accessories, and lessons in using them. His goal is to be "the first" successful 3D printing retail store in the city. I spoke to about the confluence of his army experience with supply chain management and the uses for 3D printing.

Car with 3D printed metal body photographed by Ariella Brown at the Javits Center

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Army to Big City: 3D Printing Reshapes the Supply Chain

Seeing stones for military, rescue, and security operations

What do JRR Tolkien, JP Morgan Chase, the military, and rescue workers have in common? Palantir.

"The Palantír" is the title of the 11th chapter of Tolkien’s The Two Towers. The name refers to the "seeing stones" that allow one to view what is happening elsewhere. In 2004, the name was also taken on by a company that develops software organization to extract meaning from various streams of data to combat terrorism, fraud, and disaster damage.

Palantir distinguishes its approach from data mining by calling it "data surfacing." Read more at 

From Sorcery to Surfacing Data

For more on big data used by the army, see  

National Safety in Big Numbers

 "You can't have a data Tower of Babel" in which each system keeps its data isolated from other systems, Patrick Dreher, a senior technical director at DRC, told Military Information Technology.His company worked with the US Army on the Rainmaker cloud-based intelligence system, which integrates different data models used by the intelligence community. "For example, when Afghan drug lords finance Taliban insurgents, data from one database can be combined with Taliban financing data from an Army database inside the cloud, allowing analysts to make timely, critical connections and stay one step ahead of insurgents."