3D Printing Flies High now. Articles on three-dimensional printers are popping up everywhere these days. And nowadays there are many 3D printer products. Some are small enough to fit in a briefcase and others are large enough to print houses.
Everything you ever wanted to know about 3D printing article tells that 3D printing is having its “Macintosh moment,” declares Wired editor -in-chief Chris Anderson in cover story on the subject. 3D printers are now where the PC was 30 years ago. They are just becoming affordable and accessible to non-geeks, will be maybe able to democratize manufacturing the same way that PCs democratized publishing.
Gartner’s 2012 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies “Tipping Point” Technologies That Will Unlock Long-Awaited Technology Scenarios lists 3D Print It at Home as important topic. In this scenario, 3D printing allows consumers to print physical objects, such as toys or housewares, at home, just as they print digital photos today. Combined with 3D scanning, it may be possible to scan certain objects with a smartphone and print a near-duplicate. Analysts predict that 3D printing will take more than five years to mature beyond the niche market. Eventually, 3D printing will enable individuals to print just about anything from the comfort of their own homes.Slideshow: 3D Printers Make Prototypes Pop article tells that advances in performance, and the durability and range of materials used in additive manufacturing and stereolithography offerings, are enabling companies to produce highly durable prototypes and parts, while also cost-effectively churning out manufactured products in limited production runs.
3D printing can have implications to manufacturers of some expensive products. The Pirate Bay declares 3D printed “physibles” as the next frontier of piracy. Pirate Bay Launches 3D-Printed ‘Physibles’ Downloads. The idea is to have freely available designs for different products that you can print at home with your 3D printer. Here a video demonstrating 3D home printing in operation.
Shapeways is a marketplace and community that encourages the making and sharing of 3D-printed designs. 3D Printing Shapes Factory of the Future article tells that recently New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg cut the Shapeways‘ Factory (filled with industrial-sized 3D printers) ribbon using a pair of 3D-printed scissors.
The Next Battle for Internet Freedom Could Be Over 3D Printing article tells up to date, 3D printing has primarily been used for rapid commercial prototyping largely because of its associated high costs. Now, companies such as MakerBot are selling 3D printers for under $2,000. Slideshow: 3D Printers Make Prototypes Pop article gives view a wide range of 3D printers, from half-million-dollar rapid prototyping systems to $1,000 home units. Cheapest 3D printers (with quite limited performance) now start from 500-1000 US dollars. It is rather expensive or inexpensive is how you view that.
RepRap Project is a cheap 3D printer that started huge 3D printing buzz. RepRap Project is an initiative to develop an open design 3D printer that can print most of its own components. RepRap (short for replicating rapid prototyper) uses a variant of fused deposition modeling, an additive manufacturing technique (The project calls it Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) to avoid trademark issues around the “fused deposition modeling” term). It is almost like a small hot glue gun that melts special plastic is moved around to make the printout. I saw RepRap (Mendel) and Cupcake CNC 3D printers in operation at at Assembly Summer 2010.
There has been some time been trials to make 3D-Printed Circuit Boards. 3D Printers Will Build Circuit Boards ‘In Two Years’ article tells that printing actual electronics circuit boards is very close. Most of the assembly tools are already completely automated anyway.
3D printing can be used to prototype things like entire cars or planes. The makers of James Bond’s latest outing, Skyfall, cut a couple corners in production and used modern 3D printing techniques to fake the decimation of a classic 1960s Aston Martin DB5 (made1:3 scale replicas of the car for use in explosive scenes). The world’s first 3D printed racing car can pace at 140 km/h article tells that a group of 16 engineers named “Group T” has unveiled a racing car “Areion” that is competing in Formula Student 2012 challenge. It is described as the world’s first 3D printed race car. The Areion is not fully 3D printed but most of it is.
Student Engineers Design, Build, Fly ‘Printed’ Airplane article tells that when University of Virginia engineering students posted a YouTube video last spring of a plastic turbofan engine they had designed and built using 3-D printing technology, they didn’t expect it to lead to anything except some page views. But it lead to something bigger. 3-D Printing Enables UVA Student-Built Unmanned Plane article tells that in an effort that took four months and $2000, instead of the quarter million dollars and two years they estimate it would have using conventional design methods, a group of University of Virginia engineering students has built and flown an airplane of parts created on a 3-D printer. The plane is 6.5 feet in wingspan, and cruises at 45 mph.
3D printers can also print guns and synthetic chemical compounds (aka drugs). The potential policy implications are obvious. US Army Deploys 3D Printing Labs to Battlefield to print different things army needs. ‘Wiki Weapon Project’ Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home. If high-quality weapons can be printed by anyone with a 3D printer, and 3D printers are widely available, then law enforcement agencies will be forced to monitor what you’re printing in order to maintain current gun control laws.
Software Advances Do Their Part to Spur 3D Print Revolution article tells that much of the recent hype around 3D printing has been focused on the bevy of new, lower-cost printer models. Yet, significant improvements to content creation software on both the low and high end of the spectrum are also helping to advance the cause, making the technology more accessible and appealing to a broader audience. Slideshow: Content Creation Tools Push 3D Printing Mainstream article tells that there is still a sizeable bottleneck standing in the way of mainstream adoption of 3D printing: the easy to use software used to create the 3D content. Enter a new genre of low-cost (many even free like Tikercad) and easy-to-use 3D content creation tools. By putting the tools in reach, anyone with a compelling idea will be able to easily translate that concept into a physical working prototype without the baggage of full-blown CAD and without having to make the huge capital investments required for traditional manufacturing.
Finally when you have reached the end of the article there is time for some fun. Check out this 3D printing on Dilbert strip so see a creative use of 3D printing.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
MakerBot Just Laid Off 20 Percent of Its Staff
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/makerbot-just-laid-off-20-percent-of-its-staff
When MakerBot, the Brooklyn-based 3D printing company, became a subsidiary of 3D printing giant Stratasys, Inc. in 2013, everyone expected there would be changes.
Today, MakerBot has fired roughly 20 percent of its staff.
The reasoning for the layoffs, the employee told Motherboard, is that MakerBot is looking to integrate further with Stratasys, its parent company, and is streamlining its operation to further that end.
MakerBot was founded in 2009 by Bre Pettis and quickly rose to prominence as one of the few companies pushing 3D printing to market. The company was purchased by Stratasys for $403 million in 2013
Tomi Engdahl says:
Makerbot axes ‘scores of staff’ – 3D printing just doesn’t pay the bills
Morale hits new low for troubled kitchen-table factory pioneer, Reg source claims
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/17/makerbot_staff_redundancies/
3D printing pioneers Makerbot has culled roughly 80 employees at its Brooklyn headquarters, abolished three divisions, and closed three of its shops.
The five-year-old upstart is one of the most high-profile 3D printer manufacturing firms; we described its Replicator 2 model as the TRS-80 of 3D printers. Makerbot had lofty goals, including a plan to put its hardware in every school in America. But these aspirations appear to have foundered on some grim realities.
A source close to the company told The Register morale at the biz has been in the dumps for a long time now. Staff have been leaving all year and haven’t been replaced. The finances are so tight that Makerbot’s suppliers are still waiting for payments from the firm, it is claimed.
According to our source, staff were told customer approval ratings for its 3D printers were stuck at 10 per cent and showed no signs of rising.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disney Research’s new 3D printer can print in fabric
http://www.cnet.com/news/disney-researchs-new-3d-printer-can-print-in-fabric/
Disney Research has had a second go at creating a 3D printer capable of creating flexible objects made of soft fibres.
3D printing is getting better at printing in flexible material, but fabric is still a little on the tricky side. Disney Research is hard on the case; after its “3D printing” needle-felting machine a year ago, the film company’s research arm has revealed, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, another fabric “3D printer” that taps into additive manufacturing.
The so-called “Layered Fabric 3D Printer” works along principles similar to those used in polymer deposition.
Rather than being laid down by an extruder nozzle, the Layered Fabric 3D Printer uses a laser to cut the outline of each layer from a roll of thick felt. This layer is then deposited onto the print bed, where a layer of heat-sensitive adhesive is activated by a warm disc on the print head.
This process is then repeated until the object is fully “printed,” whereupon the excess fabric can be removed, revealing a yet soft and flexible layered object.
The printer is also multimaterial, and can integrate two types of fabric into a single object. This allows, for example, conductive fabric to be embedded in a print, creating a capacitive touch input, or embedded circuit paths. This, Disney Research said in the paper, allows the printer to create custom objects on demand that are also interactive electrical objects.
Obviously the technique has its drawbacks compared to selective laser sintering or fused deposition modelling. Firstly, it produces a fair amount of waste material. Secondly, the individual layers are much more visible — the felt used is around two millimetres thick, compared to the 0.1-millimetre layer thickness for a high-resolution FDM 3D printer.
A Layered Fabric 3D Printer for Soft Interactive Objects
http://www.disneyresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/A-Layered-Fabric-3D-Printer-for-Soft-Interactive-Objects-Paper.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bridging the Gap: Flight-Based Evaluations Soar to New Heights with Advanced Manufacturing
https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1062050
Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is being heralded as a disruptive technology in aerospace, and for good reason – it’s literally changing the way aircrafts are being manufactured.
“Additive manufacturing has completely changed the way we design aircraft,” says Nicholas Alley, CEO of Area-I. “We used to shy away from certain complex designs, opting for more basic structures. Additive manufacturing has allowed us to design and build mechanisms and structures we wouldn’t be able to make with any other manufacturing method.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 10 3D Printing Projects on Kickstarter
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1326401&
3D printing has captured the hearts, and pocketbooks, of technologists all over the world. Here are some Kickerstarter success stories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 10 3D Printing Projects on Kickstarter
http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=3219&doc_id=277274&&elq=093b2bc92bf542bda570010c8f9b9706&elqCampaignId=22665&elqaid=25495&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0485c6a3e5e04d73b9aa9efe02a741f5
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alternative PCB fabrication tools
http://www.edn.com/design/pc-board/4439221/Alternative-PCB-fabrication-tools?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150422&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150422&elq=093b2bc92bf542bda570010c8f9b9706&elqCampaignId=22665&elqaid=25495&elqat=1&elqTrackId=10dbb38a5b6348cfbc020c1a7c340567
Designing and producing your own circuit board can be daunting to say the least. Most of us turn to tried and true processes to get them made. Just soldering up perf boards and shopping out PCB fabrication are both beyond time consuming. Of course, we want professional-grade prototypes at every stage of the dev process. It’s certainly getting easier now, with a plethora of new alternative PCB fabrication tools and services available.
Needless to say, it doesn’t have to be an ordeal to DIY your own board, and plenty of alternative methods are out there that can simplify the process. In this roundup, we feature some of the prominent methods of making your own circuit boards that will help to alleviate some of the issues that entail the manufacturing process.
Alternative PCB Fabrication Methods: Tools to Know
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326234
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robottermilk Pancakes
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/23/robottermilk-pancakes/
Truly a hack, this pancake making robot was built in under 24 hours. [Carter Hurd], [Ryan Niemo], and [David Frank] won the 2015 Ohio State University Makethon with the project.
It wasn’t just the printer being hacked together. The team also built an iPhone app that lets you draw your desired pattern and push it to the machine via WiFi.
Pancake Robot Build
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uO716e4Okw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uO716e4Okw
Tomi Engdahl says:
The World of 3D Portraiture
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/04/27/0338249/the-world-of-3d-portraiture
By now we’re familiar with tales of 3D-printed marvels, from guns to duck prosthetics. But when I traveled to a physics conference in March, I wasn’t expecting to end up with a full colour printout of myself.
‘We print people’: The world of 3D portraiture
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32387587
By now we’re familiar with tales of 3D-printed marvels, from guns to duck prosthetics. But when I travelled to a physics conference in March, I wasn’t expecting to end up with a full colour printout of myself.
However, at a small stall that popped up on Industry Day at the American Physical Society’s March meeting – that is precisely the service that was being offered.
It’s not strictly a selfie, of course, because I didn’t “take” it (or make it) myself. I was scanned on a turntable in San Antonio, Texas, and then a colourful 3D rendering of me was uploaded to the company’s headquarters in Emeryville, California, for manufacturing on their industrial-grade, colour 3D printers.
The company behind this set-up is Twindom. And its co-founder Richard Berwick tells me that over time, he found that the key to the market was not, in fact, 3D selfies.
“To be honest, that market is extraordinarily small. Because it’s just a tchotchke; it really doesn’t mean much to people.”
Instead, Mr Berwick says the business now targets families, parents and pet owners – people who want a keepsake of someone dear to them.
“It’s not usually the people in the frame that have the print. It’s always their friends and family, eventually,” he says.
“Try to hold the same pose without moving. Your head should be square with your shoulders and you should try to keep your eyes looking straight as well. Smile.”
“It’s not 100%. The skin colour is not going to be perfect – it’s a developing technology,” he said. “But it’s pretty good, as you can see. This is me.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New 3D Printing Techniques at AMUG 2015
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/27/new-3d-printing-techniques-at-amug-2015/
AMUG 2015 — the Additive Manufacturing User Group conference in Jacksonville, Florida.
Operating in its 27th year, the Additive Manufacturing User Group is a volunteer organization dedicated to bringing industry professionals, educators, and even students together who all share a passion for 3D printing. The group was originally limited to just stereolithography back in the 90’s — but as the industry continued to grow, they opened it up to all companies and technologies in the additive realm with the goals: encourage information exchange among all equipment owners and operators, propose solutions that involve basic modification to hardware or software, and provide a forum for technology exchange.
Stratasys was one of the biggest sponsors of this year’s event, with a huge booth showcasing their technologies with almost no emphasis on sales — just engineers showing off the machines, and some of the projects they’ve made.
a new subsidiary of Stratasys — Stratasys Direct Manufacturing. It’s a one-stop-shop for almost every kind of manufacturing technology, additive and subtractive combined.
Beyond the big companies at the expo, we also got to see some of the little guys. Even Formlabs had a booth — which probably had the most affordable machine at the event coming in at about $3000 — unlike the $300,000 norm.
I got to see the 3D printed speaker in person!
Another of the “little guys” at the tradeshow was 3DP Unlimited, a massive 3D printer that utilizes a lot of the opensource software and technology that RepRaps use — it even features Marlin firmware. It’s a bit more expensive, coming in at about $20,000 — but seemed to be a very capable machine. Still too expensive for most hackerspaces, it’s a far cry from the equivalent industry FDM’s which go for hundreds of thousands.
The second secret is beer.
Not to drink — but to use instead of hairspray on the borosilicate glass bed. I was just as surprised as you are now. For some reason that combination of low content alcohol and maybe some of the starch, creates a perfect slightly sticky surface for plastic to stick to. They swear by it.
By far the most popular tech been shown off are the new machines capable of manufacturing metal parts. The level of detail and accuracy is absolutely amazing. Just take a look at this titanium sample part that print3d4u.com was handing out.
It’s printed using the laser sintering process, and no post processing.
Repliform
By being able to coat 3D printed parts with a layer of metal (they can go pretty thick too!) you open up a world of possibilities.
The industry has been working on tangentially related techniques for some time now, like combining 3D printing with mold making.
Yazaki has become an expert in 3D printing master parts, and then casting them in silicone with Nylon to produce parts that are representative of production grade material properties
Tomi Engdahl says:
Could 3D Bioprinted Rhino Horn Alternative Save the World’s Rhinoceros Population
http://3dprint.com/47469/3d-printed-rhino-horns/
We have a problem. Human beings are greedy. Perhaps it is Charles Darwin’s ‘Survival of the Fittest’ playing out in a real world scenario. Whatever it is, it is leading to many species of wildlife becoming extinct and others becoming critically endangered. One of these animals is the rhinoceros, a mammal which is hunted exclusively for its horns.
The demand for rhino horns has led to many species becoming critically endangered, with some species unfortunately becoming totally extinct. Rhino horns serve many different uses, including their use as handles for jambiya daggers, which are given to Muslim boys in Yemen when they turn 12-years-old. Rhino horns are also commonly used for intricate carvings which are coveted by wealthy individuals around the world. In some cultures the horns are ground up into a powder which is believed to be a ‘cure all’ for various ailments and diseases. Science has proven this to be completely and utterly ridiculous, but in some cultures traditional supersedes science.
Co-founded by Matthew Markus and George Bonaci, the idea is based on bioengineering rhinoceros horns in a lab.
So far the company has been successful in creating an imitation rhino horn powder, which they have plans to market as a substitute for the medical uses the horns are utilized for.
We’ve previously reported on a company called Modern Meadow that plans to 3D print meat and leather, using specialized bio-printers. Other companies, such as Organovo are working on 3D printing working human organs for implantation. If these things can be done, there is no reason to second guess the possibilities of 3D printing biological replicas of rhinoceros horns.
What do you think about the possibility of 3D printing rhino horns? Would this be a solution to solving some problems for the world’s endangered species of rhinoceros, or will greed still conquer all and society ignore the synthetic for the genuine thing?
Company looks to perhaps 3D Print Rhino Horns to Prevent Poaching
http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.php?10968-Company-looks-to-perhaps-3D-Print-Rhino-Horns-to-Prevent-Poaching
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printering: Laser Cutting 3D Objects
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/30/3d-printering-laser-cutting-3d-objects/
3D printing can create just about any shape imaginable, but ask anyone who has babysat a printer for several hours, and they’ll tell you 3D printing’s biggest problem: it takes forever to produce a print. The HCI lab at Potsdam University has some up with a solution to this problem using the second most common tool found in a hackerspace. They’re using a laser cutter to speed up part production by a factor of twenty or more.
Instead of printing a 3D file directly, this system, Platener, breaks a model down into its component parts. These parts can then be laser cut out of acrylic or plywood, assembled, and iterated on much more quickly.
You might think laser-cut parts would only be good for flat surfaces, but with techniques like kerf bending, and stacking layer upon layer of material on top of each other, just about anything that can be produced with a 3D printer is also possible with Platener.
Fast Fabrication of 3D Objects by Substituting 3D Print with Laser-Cut Plates
https://hpi.de/de/baudisch/projects/platener.html
Platener is a system that allows quickly fabricating intermediate design iterations of 3D models, a process also known as low-fidelity fabrication.
Speed-fidelity: Setting this slider all the way to “fidelity” (Figure 4a) produces an object that is all 3D printed, which trivially preserves fidelity, but obviously at the expense of having no speed-up.
Curved surfaces: Platener also provides options for handling curved plates. When the curved plate option is deactivated, Platener approximates curved plates using individual plates connected by finger joints (Figure 4c). Activating the curved plate option causes Platener to convert cylindrically curved regions in the 3D model to one plate that can be laser-cut and bent.
Curved plates come in two styles: The first option bend acrylic fabricates a flattened version of the respective surface using the laser cutter that can then be bent using a heat gun.
The second curved plate option uses a wooden living hinge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
There’s a Way to Control Phones With Sound, Not Electronics
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/theres-way-control-phones-sound-not-electronics/
Gierad Laput thinks the future of smartphone interaction could look a lot like playing the flute. For his most recent project, Acoustruments, Laput, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon’s Future Interfaces Group and Eric Brockmeyer, from the Disney Research Lab, have developed a series of phone accessories that function less like the electronic gadgets you see at Best Buy and more like simple, tiny woodwind instruments.
Gierad Laput thinks the future of smartphone interaction could look a lot like playing the flute. For his most recent project, Acoustruments, Laput, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon’s Future Interfaces Group and Eric Brockmeyer, from the Disney Research Lab, have developed a series of phone accessories that function less like the electronic gadgets you see at Best Buy and more like simple, tiny woodwind instruments.
To make Acoustruments work, Laput and his colleagues built each accessory so that a hollow tube connects runs between the phone’s speaker and microphone. The speaker emits a high-frequency sound (imperceptible to you and me but maybe not to your dog) which the microphone measures. On its own, this signal flows through the tube like water through a freshly cleaned pipe. But make a change—add a hole, thicken the plastic walls, pinch the tube, lengthen the tube—and that signal gets disrupted. Like plugging a valve on a flute to make a note, you can control your phone’s actions by physically altering how that signal flows.
The appeal of this sort of interaction is apparent. A simple 3-D printed accessory could add an element of tangible interaction to smartphones without much cost or complexity.
Acoustruments: Passive, Acoustically-Driven Interactive Controls for Hand Held Devices
http://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/acoustruments/
We introduce Acoustruments: low-cost, passive, and powerless mechanisms, made from plastic, that can bring rich, tangible functionality to handheld devices.
Acoustruments can achieve 99% accuracy with minimal training, is robust to noise, and can be rapidly prototyped. Acoustruments adds a new method to the toolbox HCI practitioners and researchers can draw upon, while introducing a cheap and passive method for adding interactive controls to consumer products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How 3-D Printing Is Saving the Italian Artisan
Italy’s craftsmen turn to a new tool in their competition with cheap products from China
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-05-05/how-3-d-printing-is-saving-the-italian-artisan
In the 1960s, farmers in the region began setting up small family-owned businesses, each specializing in just one small part of a finished product. Within a generation, many of these companies became world leaders in their respective fields, and small Italian cities thrived as manufacturing hubs. The town of Montebelluna, north of Venice, once produced about three-quarters of the world’s ski boots, with different companies specializing in buckles, plastic shells, and foam linings. About 70 percent of Europe’s chairs were designed and manufactured by the 1,200 small outfits centered around Manzano, near Italy’s eastern border with Slovenia—with each part of the production process handled by a different highly specialized company.
Like much of the rest of the country, however, the region has fallen on hard times. Italy’s craftsmen have been undermined by competition from China and other parts of Asia.
A few years ago, in an effort to diversify his company’s offerings, Pomini teamed up with Selvaggia Armani, an artist and designer. The two began working on a series of lamps designed by Armani and manufactured to order on Pomini’s 3D printers.
The project was a surprising success: Pomini now works with more than a dozen designers; he introduced 3Dprinted jewelry in 2012. “This is the beauty of this technology,” says Armani, 47. “You can build things that are impossible.”
Techniques such as the 3D printing used by Pomini and Armani have helped turn northeastern Italy into an unlikely hothouse of innovation. Last year growth in the region was positive for the first time since 2007, at 0.5 percent. Exports rose by 3.5 percent in 2014 and are expected to keep climbing.
Zago and Cinti still use the old Heidelberg presses, but they’ve integrated them into a manufacturing process that includes modern marketing, design, and computer-controlled production. “What the printers of Verona never understood is that in this world, it is no longer enough to work hard,” Cinti says. “You have to understand the new market, the new dynamic.”
New production processes are not the only technologies leveling the playing field for Italy’s small-scale producers. The connecting power of the Internet opens the possibility for small manufacturers to rapidly find new markets, even as Italian demand remains low.
Recently, Segalin introduced a decidedly more modern technology, at a cost of €15,000: laser foot scanners. Using them, Segalin can create a 3D computer model of a customer’s foot, providing him with exact measurements to work from.
Back in Trento, Pomini recently introduced customizable sunglasses, round frames with interchangeable accessories that can be clipped on and off.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Cody Wilson, inventor of the 3D printable gun, files countersuit against US State Department claiming the blueprints are protected free speech
3-D Printed Gun Lawsuit Starts the War Between Arms Control and Free Speech
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/3-d-printed-gun-lawsuit-starts-war-arms-control-free-speech/
This week marks the two-year anniversary since Cody Wilson, the inventor of the world’s first 3-D printable gun, received a letter from the State Department demanding that he remove the blueprints for his plastic-printed firearm from the internet. The alternative: face possible prosecution for violating regulations that forbid the international export of unapproved arms.
Now Wilson is challenging that letter. And in doing so, he’s picking a fight that could pit proponents of gun control and defenders of free speech against each other in an age when the line between a lethal weapon and a collection of bits is blurrier than ever before.
Wilson’s gun manufacturing advocacy group Defense Distributed, along with the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department and several of its officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry.
the group’s lawsuit now argues that whether or not the Liberator is a weapon, its blueprints are “speech,” and that Americans’ freedom of speech is protected online—even when that speech can be used to make a gun with just a few clicks.
“The internet is available worldwide, so posting something on the internet is deemed an export, and to [the State Department] this justifies imposing a prior restraint on internet speech,” says Alan Gura, the lawyer leading the lawsuit, using the legal term “prior restraint” to mean censorship of speech before it’s published. “That’s a vast, unchecked seizure of power over speech that’s…not authorized by our constitution.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 3D printing projects on Kickstarter
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/the-workbench/4439259/10-3D-printing-projects-on-Kickstarter-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150513&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150513&elq=96c5efec559f4eaa94fa28ec0ca8aa40&elqCampaignId=22954&elqaid=25837&elqat=1&elqTrackId=4e1651468c13436bb49f1c48306f1d29
From home enthusiasts to workers on the manufacturing floor, everyone’s imagination is captured by the potential of 3D printing. Prototyping, spare parts creation, art delivery, human organ creation, and even mass product production are all being targeted as current and potential uses for the technology.
Although analyst predictions differ, all are in agreement that the 3D printing industry is growing and likely will continue to grow at a notable pace. Wohlers Report 2014, for example, puts the worldwide 3D printing industry at $3.07 billion in 2013 and anticipates that figure will reach $12.8 billion by 2018 and over $21 billion by 2020.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An interesting technique to get nice image on the the surface of your 3d printed object:
Printing Photorealistic Images on 3D Object
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/13/printing-photorealistic-images-on-3d-objects/
Hydrographic Printing is a technique of transferring colored inks on a film to the surface of an object. The film is placed on water and activated with a chemical that allows it to adhere to an object being physically pushed onto it. Researchers at Zhejiang University and Columbia University have taken hydrographic printing to the next level (pdf link). In a technical paper to be presented at ACM SIGGRAPH 2015 in August, they explain how they developed a computational method to create complex patterns that are precisely aligned to the object.
The physical setup for this hack is fairly simple: a vat of water, a linear motor attached to a gripper, and a Kinect. The object is attached to the gripper. The Kinect measures its location and orientation. This data is applied to a 3D-scan of the object along with the desired texture map to be printed onto it. A program creates a virtual simulation of the printing process, outputting a specific pattern onto the film that accounts for the warping inherent to the process. The pattern is then printed onto the film using an ordinary inkjet printer.
They illustrate just how complex the surface patterns can get using single or multiple immersions, respectively.
Computational Hydrographic Printing (SIGGRAPH 2015)
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~cxz/publications/hydrographics.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlUhPrAqiY0
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Little 3-D Printed Robot Cracks Combination Locks in 30 Seconds
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/little-3-d-printed-robot-cracks-combination-locks-30-seconds/
Careful what you leave in your lockers, high school students and gym-goers. An invasion of 3-D printed robots may be coming, capable of popping one of the world’s most ubiquitous brands of combination locks in as little as half a minute.
On Thursday, well-known hacker Samy Kamkar published on his website the blueprint and software code for a 3-D-printable Arduino-based lock-opening robot he calls the “Combo Breaker.” Attach it to any of millions of Master Lock combination locks, turn it on, and it can take advantage of a Master Lock security vulnerability Kamkar recently discovered to open the lock in a maximum of five minutes with no human interaction. “The machine pretty much brute-forces the lock for you,” says Kamkar. “You attach it, leave it, and it does its thing.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultrasonic Misting Vapor Polisher for 3D Printed Parts
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/16/ultrasonic-misting-vapor-polisher-for-3d-printed-parts/
If you’ve ever seen 3D printed parts form an extrusion type printer, one of the first things you’ll notice is the texture. It’s caused by the printer laying down its plastic layer after layer. This surface texture isn’t always desirable, so people have found a few ways to smooth the 3D printed part out. For example if you are using ABS, you can rinse or “paint” the part with acetone. Another method of smoothing is heat up some acetone in a container, and let the acetone vapors do work to smooth the finished part.
[Mike] from engineerdog.com thinks he may have found a more elegant solution using an inexpensive ultrasonic humidifier
Ultrasonic Misting 3D Print Vapor Polisher
http://www.instructables.com/id/Ultrasonic-Misting-3D-Printing-Vapor-Polisher/?ALLSTEPS
Tomi Engdahl says:
Not Just a Floor Wax but an Embossing Powder!
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/16/not-just-a-floor-wax-but-an-embossing-powder/
The embossing process used in the creation of some of your fancier wedding invitations and business cards is an interesting one. It’s often called thermography or thermographic printing. Slow-drying, wet ink is applied to a substrate. The ink is dusted with a thermoplastic polymer called embossing powder, and a heat source raises the ink while drying it.
Commercial embossing powder costs about $10 an ounce. As [Ken] discovered, its manufacture is quite closed-source to boot. He set about creating his own embossing powder, and succeeded
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA Announces the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge For Moon and Mars Bases
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/05/17/1417206/nasa-announces-the-3d-printed-habitat-challenge-for-moon-and-mars-bases
NASA Challenges Designers to Construct Habitat for Deep Space Exploration
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-challenges-designers-to-construct-habitat-for-deep-space-exploration
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Open Source, DIY Digitizer
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/19/an-open-source-diy-digitizer/
When you look at the current methods of scanning 2D and 3D objects available today, you’re basically looking at an imaging process. Either you take a picture of a 2D object, or you grab a blob of point clouds with a 3D scanner and make a 3D object that way. It wasn’t always like this
[Nikolaj Møbius] needed a way to record points in physical space, and not wanting to deal with the problems of images, he made an open source DIY digitizer. It’s basically a laser cut arm with rotary encoders at each joint.
http://fablab.ruc.dk/diy-digitizer/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printering: Maker Faire And Resin Printers
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/22/maker-faire-resin-printers/
Of course Maker Faire was loaded up with 3D printers, but we’re no longer in the era of a 3D printer in every single booth. Filament-based printers are passé, but that doesn’t mean there’s no new technology to demonstrate. This year, it was stereolithography and other resin-based printers. Here’s the roundup of each and every one displayed at the faire, and the reason it’s still not prime time for resin-based printers.
The folks at Formlabs displayed the only functional print of all the resin-based 3D printing companies – a tiny, tiny Philco Predicta stuffed with an LCD displaying composite video. The display is covered by a 3D printed lens/window.
Enter the XYZPrinting Nobel, a resin printer that uses lasers to solidify parts 25 microns at a time. The build volume is 125x125x200mm (5x5x7.9″), with an X and Y resolution of 300 microns. Everything prints out just as you would expect. As far as laser resin printers go, it’s incredibly cheap: $1500. It does, however, use XYZware, the proprietary toolchain
You’ve seen the cheapest, now check out the most expensive. It’s the DWS Lab XFAB, an enormous and impressive machine that has incredible resolution, a huge build area, and when you take into account other resin printers, a price approaching insanity.
First, the price: $5000 officially
The minimum feature size of the XFAB is 80 microns, and can slice down to 10 microns. Compare that to the 300 micron feature size of the Form 1+ and Nobel, and even on paper, you can tell they really have something here.
Also on display – but not in the 3D printing booth, for some reason – was the Sharebot Voyager. Unlike all the printers described above, this is a DLP printer; instead of lasers and galvos, the Voyager uses an off-the-shelf 3D DLP projector to harden layers of resin.
The Problem With Resin Printers
Taking a gander over all the resin-based 3D printers, you start to pick up on a few common themes. All the software is proprietary, and there is no open source solution for either moving galvos, lasers, or displaying images on a DLP projector correctly to run a resin-based machine. Yes, you heard it here first: it’s the first time in history Open Source hardware folk are ahead of the Open Source software folk. Honestly, open source resin printer hosts is something that should have been done years ago.
This will change in just a few months.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Make A Hackerspace Passport Stamp
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/22/how-to-making-a-hackerspace-passport-stamp/
So next time you’re visiting a new hackerspace, bring your passport and get it stamped to document the trip…. and that brings us to the point of this post: The Stamp. At around $25, having a custom ink stamp made at an office supply store isn’t that much money, but buying a stamp is not as fun as making one! That is what we are going to do today; make a stamp… or more specifically, several stamps using different techniques.
3D Printed Plastic
The 3D print will be used as the stamp itself. Printed plastic is hard and slippery. Our past experience is that this method won’t look good but 3D printers are a very common tool found at hackerspaces, so let’s try it! Our stamp will printed with ABS.
3D Printed Flexible PLA
This 3D print will be printed in the same manner as the plastic stamp but the material is significantly more rubber-like and flexible.
3D Printed Mold with Caulk Casting
3D Printers are a great tool but we expect that the 3D printed stamps may not perform well due to the material properties. For this test, a mold will be printed and filled with silicone caulk. The cured caulk will then be removed and hopefully result in a usable stamp. Like the 3D printed plastic stamp, this mold was also printed with ABS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Scanning Rig And DIY Turntable
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/23/3d-scanning-rig-and-diy-turntable/
It seems almost every day 3D scanning is becoming more and more accessible to the general DIYer. The hardware required is minimal and there are several scanning softwares and workflows to choose from. However, if you have slowly walked around a subject while holding a Kinect and trying to get a good scan, you know this is not an easy task. A quick internet search will result in several DIY scanning setup solutions that have been cobbled together and lack substantial documentation…. until now! [aldricnegrier] is fighting back and has designed and documented a rotary table that will spin at a constant speed while a subject is 3D scanned, making person scanning just that much easier.
The project starts off with a plywood base with a Lazy Susan bearing assembly attached to the top.
Autonomous / Voice Controlled – 3D Scanning Rig For 3D Printing
http://www.instructables.com/id/Autonomous-Voice-Controlled-3D-Scanning-Rig/?ALLSTEP
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pictures that Defeat Key Locks
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/23/pictures-that-defeat-key-locks/
We’re at LayerOne this weekend and one of the talks we were excited about didn’t disappoint. [Jos Weyers] presented Showing Keys in Public — What Could Possibly Go Wrong? The premise is that pictures of keys, in most cases, are as good as the keys themselves. And that pictures of keys keep getting published.
[Jos] spoke a bit about new services that offer things like 3D scanning and storage of your key for printing when you get locked out, or apps that ask you to take a picture of your key and they’ll mail you a duplicate. Obviously this isn’t the best of ideas; you’re giving away your passwords.
We’ve already seen the proof of concept for taking covert images to perfectly duplicate a key.
A master key for the NYC Subway was compromised and available for sale. The news coverage not only shows a picture at the top of the story of a man holding up the key straight on, but this image of it on a subway map which can be used to determine scale. This key, which is still published openly on the news story linked above, opens 468 doors to the subway system and these are more than just the ones that get you onto the platform for free. We were unable to determine if these locks have been changed
Worse, was the availability of fire-department master keys which open lock boxes outside of every building. A locksmith used to cut the original keys went out of business and sold off all their stock.
There was also an example of speed camera control cabinet keys being shown by a reporter.
Some locks are stronger than others, but they’re all meaningless if we’re giving away the keys.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Hackaday Prize: An Ultra Low Cost 3D Printer Controller
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/25/the-hackaday-prize-an-ultra-low-cost-3d-printer-controller/
This isn’t a Hackaday Prize entry that will change the world, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a place for it. [vdirienzo] is building an ultra low-cost 3D printer controller for 3D printers and other CNC machine. It’s not going to change the world, but it is a rather interesting little device.
This printer controller is very minimal, with a single-sided circuit board with just enough parts and components to make this board useful. The stepper motor drivers are from Pololu
The microcontroller is rather interesting; it’s an Arduino Nano.
Teacup firmware to fit on the ATMega328 in the Arduino Nano.
The SinapTec is not by any means the first effort to create an ultra low-cost controller board for a 3D printer that can be assembled at home.
SinapTec AT328.02 is a 3D FDM printer controller
3d printer ultra cheap controller board
https://hackaday.io/project/5957-sinaptec-at32802-is-a-3d-fdm-printer-controller
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tinkerplay lets you design and 3D print your own heroes and villains
http://www.geek.com/apps/tinkerplay-lets-you-design-and-3d-print-your-own-heroes-and-villains-1618589/
Want to get your kids interested in 3D printing… or take a stab at it yourself? Autodesk has a cool new app that makes it incredibly easy — and incredibly fun — to get started.
It’s called Tinkerplay, and it lets you create figures that look very similar to Lego’s Hero Factory toys. The modular models’ bodies snap together quickly using ball-and-socket construction. Hands are shaped to hold weapons and tools, and other body parts have holes in them that you can plug accessories into, like a pair of wings, for example.
http://www.123dapp.com/tinkerplay
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pump Up the Volume with the 3D Printed Syringe Pump Rack
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/29/pump-up-the-volume-with-the-3d-printed-syringe-pump-rack/
Syringe pumps are valuable tools when specific amounts of fluid must be dispensed at certain rates and volumes. They are used in many ways, for administering IV medications to liquid chromatography (LC/HPLC). Unfortunately, a commercial pump can cost a pretty penny. Not particularly thrilled with the hefty price tag, [Aldric Negrier] rolled up his sleeves and made a 3D-printed version for 300 USD.
3D Printed Syringe Pump Rack
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Syringe-Pump-Rack/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Embedding PCBs In 3D Prints
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/04/embedding-pcbs-in-3d-prints/
The folks over at Lunchbox Electronics are working on a very cool prototype: embedding LEDs inside standard 1×1 Lego bricks. Being a prototype, they needed a cheap way to produce Lego bricks stuffed with electronics. It turns out a normal 3D printer has okay-enough resolution, but how to put the electronics in the bricks? Gcode wizardry, of course.
The electronics being stuffed into the bricks isn’t much – just a small PCB with an LED. It does, however, need to get inside the brick. This requires stopping the 3D printer at the right layer, moving the print head out of the way, inserting the PCB, and moving the head back to where it stopped.
How to embed electronics into a 3D Print
http://www.lunchboxelectronics.com/how-to-embed-electronics-into-a-3d-print
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automatic Print Ejector For All 3D Printers
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/06/automatic-print-ejector-for-all-3d-printers/
Way back in 2010, Makerbot released the Automated Build Platform, a neat heated conveyor belt for the Cupcake or Thing-O-Matic that would spit parts out when a print was done.
The Automatic Print Ejector is pretty much taken straight out of a [Buster Keaton] movie. It’s a series of scissor mechanisms with a 3D printed boxing glove on the end, driven by a stepper motor. When the print finishes, the boxing glove simply punches a print off the bed of a printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: 3D Printed Parametric Motrs
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/06/hackaday-prize-entry-3d-printed-parametric-motrs/
If you’re building something that moves, chances are you’ll be using an electric motor. There are tens of thousands of different motors out there, each with their own properties, speeds, torque, and sizes. How do you pick the right motor? Most of the time it’s a highly educated guess, but [Solenoid] has a better idea: just 3D print a motor designed by a calculator that will give you the properties you need
Calculator For 3D Printed Parametric Motor
Calculator to evaluate properties of an electromechanical motor with some defined parameters and provide ready-to-3D-print files
https://hackaday.io/project/4593-calculator-for-3d-printed-parametric-motor
Having a motor is nice and all, but for brushless type motors a controller is needed to make them turn. It doesn’t have to be something very fancy, an Teensy and some MOSFETs could easily do the work and then some.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lego Printer Prints Lego
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/08/lego-printer-prints-lego/
[Gosse Adema] made his very first instructable by detailing his Lego 3D printer build. It’s Prusa i3 based, and originally started out as an A4 plotter with repurposed steppers out of an old HP printer. After upgrading to some NEMA 17 steppers, it became a full-blown 3D printer.
It turns out that NEMA 17 stepper mounting holes align perfectly with Lego, making it super easy to mount them.
LEGO 3d Printer
http://www.instructables.com/id/LEGO-3d-Printer/
Tomi Engdahl says:
We Have A Problem: 3D Printers Are Too Expensive
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/09/we-have-a-problem-3d-printers-are-too-expensive/
Hackaday, we have a problem. 3D printing is changing the world but it’s still too expensive to be embraced as a truly transformative technology.
With each passing year, the 3D printing industry grows by leaps and bounds. Food safe PLA is now the norm, with dissolvable and other exotic filaments becoming more mainstream. New filaments are making it possible to print objects that were not possible before. New CAD software is popping up like dandelions, with each iteration giving novice users a friendly and more intuitive interface to design 3D models. As time marches on, and we look into its future, a vision of the 3D printing world is evident – its only going to get bigger.
Imagine a future where a 3D printer is as common as an ink jet printer in homes all across the world. A future where you could buy filament from the supermarket down the street, and pick up a new printer from any hardware store. A future where dishwashers, refrigerators and bicycles come with .stl files that allow you to print upgrades or spare parts.
Is this future possible? Not until the technology changes. It’s too expensive, and that’s the problem you’re going to solve. How can you make a 3D printer cheaper? A cheap printer could change the game and make our future a reality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MX3D is to 3D-print a steel bridge over water in Amsterdam
http://phys.org/news/2015-06-mx3d-3d-print-steel-bridge-amsterdam.html
MX3D is an R&D startup focused on 3D-printing metals and resin in mid-air, without the need for support structures. They pride themselves in “robotic technology with which we can 3D print beautiful, functional objects in almost any form.” Now they say “We are going to print a steel bridge in Amsterdam.” The robots will be printing in steel and the robots will print that bridge over water in Amsterdam. The project team sees the metal bridge as serving as a showcase for present-day capabilities in software, engineering and design.
Key to their progress has been robotic 3D printing technology that makes it possible to draw in mid-air. They will use what they describe as “multi-axis” industrial robots.
Fast Company reported that “MX3D’s bridge will be made of a new steel composite that the University of Delft created. As strong as regular steel, it can be dolloped out by a 3D printer, drop by drop.”
“What distinguishes our technology from traditional 3D printing methods is that we work according to the ‘printing outside the box’ principle,” said the CTO of MX3D, Tim Geurtjens, “By printing with 6-axis industrial robots, we are no longer limited to a square box in which everything happens.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-mx3d-3d-print-steel-bridge-amsterdam.html#jCp
Tomi Engdahl says:
Prevent Failed Prints With A Filament Speed Sensor
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/16/prevent-failed-prints-with-a-filament-speed-sensor/
If you have used a 3D printer for any length of time, you’ve probably experienced a failed print caused by a clogged nozzle. If you’re not around to stop the print and the nozzle stays hot and full of filament for hours, the clog gets even worse. [Florian] set out to solve this issue with an encoder that measures filament speed, which acts as an early warning system for nozzle clogs.
Preventing failed prints with filament feed encoder and Arduino
http://www.cuddleburrito.com/blog/2015/6/11/preventing-failed-prints-with-filament-feed-encoder-and-arduino
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Hackaday (And Adafruit): The New CEO Of MakerBot
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/16/ask-hackaday-and-adafruit-the-new-ceo-of-makerbot/
Just a few years ago, MakerBot was the darling of the Open Hardware community. Somehow, in the middle of a garage in Brooklyn, a trio of engineers and entrepreneurs became a modern-day Prometheus, capturing a burgeoning technology into a compact, easy to use, and intoxicating product. A media darling was created, a disruptive technology was popularized
since then the reputation of MakerBot has fallen through the floor, crashed through the basement
MakerBot took creations from their 3D object hosting site, Thingiverse, and patented them. The once-Open Source line of 3D printers was locked up behind a closed license.
If you’ve ever wanted to ask a CEO how they plan to stop screwing things up, this is your chance. Adafruit is looking for some direction for their interview/listening meeting, and they’re asking the community for the most pressing issues facing the 3D printing community, the Open Source community, and MakerBot the company.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: OpenBionics
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/17/hackaday-prize-entry-openbionics/
There have been a lot of people warming up their 3D printers and laser cutters to make prosthetic limbs in recent years. For [OpenBionics]’ entry for The Hackaday Prize, they’re building a prosthetic hand that costs less than $200, weighs less than 300 grams, and can be easily fabricated with 3D printers and laser cutters.
Still, the [OpenBionics] team is working hard to properly emulate a thumb with three degrees of freedom, putting 144 different grasps on the hand, and making their hand useful with soft fingertips.
Even with all this capability, [OpenBionic]’s robotic hand – motors and all – is about the same size as a normal human hand. That’s incredible, especially when you consider the motors for your hand – muscles – are all in your arm.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Interview With The CEO Of MakerBot
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/19/an-interview-with-the-ceo-of-makerbot/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Making A Bobblehead Of You
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/20/making-a-bobblehead-of-you/
Bobbleheads, you remember them, small figures with a spring-mounted comically large head. They brought joy to millions of car drivers every day
[Luis] uses software called Skanect along with his Kinect to scan a persons geometry. There is a free version of Skanect but it is limited to exporting STL files no larger than 5,000 faces. That means that 3d printed bobbleheadscans of large objects (including people) come out looking noticeably faceted.
MeshMixer is the software used to merge the STL files of the 4 separate scans.
http://skanect.occipital.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Might Save the Rhinoceros
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/06/22/028209/3d-printing-might-save-the-rhinoceros
San Francisco based biotech startup Pembient have released details of their 3D printing led method to derail the market for Rhinoceros horns. Presently the bulk of demand originates from China
Synthetic rhino horns are being 3D printed in an effort to defeat poachers
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/synthetic-rhino-horns-are-being-3d-printed-in-an-effort-to-defeat-poachers-10334751.html
A startup firm in San Francisco is using the technique to flood the Chinese market for rhino horns with cheap synthetic products
The firm uses keratin and rhino DNA to produce a dried powder which is then 3D printed to look similar to original horns, the digital journal reported.
The company also plans to release a beer brewed with the synthetic horns later this year.
“We can produce a rhinoceros horn product that is actually more pure than what you can get from a wild animal,” Mr Markus told the digital journal.
“Demand reduction is important, but hard to do, especially when you’re tackling so many things,”
“Questions arise as to how law enforcement authorities will be able to detect the difference between synthetic and real horn, especially if they are sold as powder or in manufactured products.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Parametric Motor
https://hackaday.io/project/4593-3d-printed-parametric-motor
Custom electromechanical motor that can be printed using any 3D printer, some coil, maybe magnets and a controller.
Mechanical solutions usually need some sort of motor to actuate stuff, with the ever more democratized world of 3D printers custom motors fitting a specific needs could be made on a whim, but no such calculator exists to relieve the engineer from the laborious task of calculating all the properties of such a motor.
This project aims to offer not only web-based calculator for a 3D printed parametric motor, but also generate the required files so that it could be printed immediately.
Winding the stator and rotor coils will be an annoying part in building such a motor, so this should be made easy. One possible approach is to make the poles insertable
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Rythm Composter
https://hackaday.io/project/6389-the-rythm-composter
Circuit Bending an old Roland Drum Machine using an Arduino Mega some cross-point arrays some schmitt triggers and a touch-screen
So I wired up 3 CD22M3494 cross point array ICs to an arduino added an optoisolator for MIDI control and a touchscreen, and coded up a UI… Thus was born the ‘Patch-a-tron-omatic’.
The patch-a-tron is a 48×8 analog switch array for use as a solid state cable-less patch bay for circuit-benders and synthesizer. It’s controlled by touchscreen and MIDI and is currently connected to my Roland TR-626 Rythm Composer from 1988.
After that I cut into the clock traces on the Roland on 4 channels and replaced them with my own oscillators based upon a the Texas Instruments CD40106 hex schmitt trigger to allow me to ‘pitch-bend’ those channels. (All switchable of course!)
Tomi Engdahl says:
biohand – Low cost 3D printed hand prosthesis
https://hackaday.io/project/6411-biohand-low-cost-3d-printed-hand-prosthesis
Development of a robust low cost 3D printed hand prosthesis using off-the-shelf components.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D printing and digital 3D replication technologies have existed for nearly a decade and been used in a complementary fashion for a variety of professional and industrial applications. Yet it’s only been in the last few years that we’ve seen a growth in these technologies used together for cultural and archeological replication, stop motion animation and scenery development, surgery and prostheses development and service bureaus producing consumer keepsakes, all of which rely on the combination of digital image and geometry replication using 3D scanning or photogrammetry and 3D printing to produce physical 3D human and animal forms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Interview With The CEO Of MakerBot
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/19/an-interview-with-the-ceo-of-makerbot/
A few days ago, we posed a question to the Hackaday community. If you could ask the CEO of MakerBot a question, what would it be?
It’s an interesting proposition; there is no company serving the maker community – and those of us who refuse to call ourselves part of the maker community – more hated than MakerBot.
MakerBot and Open-Source – There’s an opportunity to patch things up with the Open-source community, is MakerBot interested?
Jonathan said they’d like to promote the open parts of Thingiverse, the API, how those can be used. He was very interested in how MakerBot can communicate clearly what is open and what is not.
Jonathan said at this time he sees no value in DRM’ing filament for MakerBots. It would be expensive, hard to enforce, cause less sales – there’s not a lot of compelling reasons to do that.
We said Stratasys should not speak on behalf of MakerBot if they’re going to talk to the Copyright Office regarding DRM protection/issues because it’s not helpful for the MakerBot and 3D printing community.
MakerBot Replicator 5th gen
The MakerBot replicator 5th Gen units had some challenges and mixed reviews at launch, we know you’ve been working to fix the issues such as the Smart Extruders, we decided not to stock them at this time.
Spam becoming an issue on Thingivese
Thingiverse has some spam issues… maybe a report spam button is necessary.
Eric said they could make the button bigger, etc and will work on this.
Reselling MakerBot products
Generally speaking, dealing with the MakerBot distributor(s) was not as easy or as profitable as when we were able to purchase directly from MakerBot. For Adafruit we need better margins if we’re going to resell 3D printers. The return policies were not reseller friendly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pneumatic Multiplexer- 3d printed
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/23/pneumatic-multiplexer/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Pneumatic-Multiplexer/?ALLSTEPS
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fused Deposition Modelling 3D Printers
http://www.eeweb.com/news/fused-deposition-modelling-3d-printers
ESCATEC announced that it has purchased one of the world’s leading fused deposition modelling (FDM) 3D printers that will enable it to produce rapid prototypes in minutes rather than using an outside contractor that used to take several days.
Michael Walser, ESCATEC’s Head of R&D, explained, “Having a high end 3D printer means that we can test out a new design in minutes and quickly refine it. When you are deep into the design of a new part, it is great to be able to touch and feel it, and then see how it fits in with the rest of the design. We can now work on a design continuously rather than stopping and starting while we have to wait for the next version to be delivered. It has not only improved productivity but also creativity as designers can try out new designs on-the-fly in-house rather than going through the formal process of engaging an outside contractor every time.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Man Uses a 3-D Model of Himself to Take Hilarious Selfies
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/man-uses-3-d-model-take-hilarious-selfies/
Chris Buck takes selfies … sort of. The photographer made a 3-D printed doppelgänger of himself, and has been wandering around the East and West Coast snapping pics of his mini-me’s adventures. The series, published only on Instagram, is a playful look at narcissism, social media and the irresistibility of tiny things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
World’s First 3D Printed Supercar is Unveiled – 0-60 in 2.2 Seconds, 700 HP Motor – Built from Unique Node System
http://3dprint.com/74810/3d-printed-supercar-blade/
The automobile industry has been relatively stagnant for the past several decades. While new car designs are released annually, and computer technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, the manufacturing processes and the effects that these processes have on our environment have remain relatively unchanged. Over the past decade or so, 3D printing has shown some promise in the manufacturing of automobiles, yet it has not quite lived up to its potential, at least according to Kevin Czinger, founder and CEO of a company called Divergent Microfactories (DM).
The vehicle, called the Blade, has 1/3 the emissions of an electric car and 1/50 the factory capital costs of other manufactured cars. Unlike previous 3D printed vehicles that we have seen, such as Local Motors’ car that they have printed several times, DM’s manufacturing process differs quite a bit. Instead of 3D printing an entire vehicle, they 3D print aluminum ‘nodes’ which act in a similar fashion to Lego blocks. 3D printing allows DM to create elaborate and complex shaped nodes which are then joined together by off-the-shelf carbon fiber tubing.
Once the nodes are printed, the chassis of a car can be completely assembled in a matter of minutes by semiskilled workers.
The Blade is one heck of a supercar, capable of going from 0-60 MPH in a mere 2.2 seconds. It weighs just 1,400 pounds, and is powered by a 4-cylinder 700-horsepower bi-fuel internal combustion engine that is capable of using either gasoline or compressed natural gas as fuel. The car chassis is made up of approximately 70 3D printed aluminum nodes, and it took only 30 minutes to build the chassis by hand. The chassis itself weighs just 61 pounds.
The initial plan is for DM to scale up to an annual production of 10,000 of these limited supercars, making them available to potential customers.
This isn’t all though, as DM doesn’t merely plan on just being satisfied by manufacturing cars via this method. They plan on making the technology available to others as well.
The node-enabled chassis of cars built using this unique 3D printing method, are up to 90% lighter, much stronger, and more durable than cars built with more traditional techniques.