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:
3D Printed Battery Forms
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/19/3d-printed-battery-forms/
What’s the worst thing that can happen when you are trying to show off a project? Dead batteries might not be the absolute worst thing, but it is pretty close to the top of the list. [KermMartian] has this problem every year at World Maker Faire with demos based around calculators. At first, he tried wedging power supply wires into the calculator using dead batteries to hold the wires in place. However, it didn’t take much wear and tear before the wires would pull out.
The solution? A 3D printed battery form that accepts metal hardware that can connect to the external power supply. The AAA-sized plastic batteries insert into the calculator’s battery compartment and the small machine screws and washers form the connection points.
Then again, you don’t have to get this fancy. We’ve seen people do the same with a piece of wood
Wall-Powering Devices With 3D-Printed AAA Batteries
https://www.cemetech.net/news.php?id=760
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Parts Help Regenerate Nerves
Custom scaffolds regrow nerves in rats
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327740&
Today more than 200,000 people per year experience traumatic nerve damage from accidents or disease. Whoever thought a 3D printer could help. The University of Minnesota professor Michael McAlpine has proven that 3D printed scaffolds customized to each particular patient, can now regrow complex nerves, which has never been possible before. Current successful trials are in rats, but McAlpine says that human trials are just around the corner.
“Within the next 2-to-5 years, particularly now that we have a set of successful rat studies as a proof of concept of the safety and viability of this approach. This could be useful in humans for nerve repair, reversing of nerve degeneration, and treating neuropathy,” McAlpine told EE Times.
So far the clinical trials in rats has resulted in regaining the ability to walk with new nerves grown on scaffolds that were customized by McAlpine to precisely follow the routes of the original nerves. A 3-D scanner was used to reconstruct the path of the original nerve, and biochemical cues were embedded by the 3-D printer into the scaffold to determine the path taken by the sensor and motor nerves as they grew. Scaffolds for single nerve regrowth has already been demonstrated, but according to McAlpine this is the first time complex nerves have been regenerated, Here a Y-shaped sciatic nerve was scanned and printed in about an hour.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Italian engineers are using a huge 3D printer to print a house
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/italian-wasp-engineers-3d-print-a-house-10511655.html
An Italian engineering company is attempting to 3D-print a basic house, with their end goal being to provide a solution to housing and shelter problems in crisis-stricken areas.
World’s Advanced Saving Project (Wasp) created their 12-metre tall, six-metre wide 3D printer as part of a 3D printing event in Massa Lombarda, a small municipality in the north of Italy.
The machine works in exactly the same way as a regular 3D printer. The huge metal frame supporters a nozzle linked to a computer, which dispenses clay in a pre-defined pattern.
As the nozzle moves round and round and adds layers to the structure, a functioning shelter can be created quickly and easily
The machine, named the BigDelta, could potentially be used in disaster-stricken areas or in developing countries, where solid and long-lasting shelter is needed, rather than just a tent or prefabricated structure.
The people behind Wasp also see themselves as members of the ‘maker economy’ – a new economic model that moves the production of goods from the hands of a few to everyone, using technology.
http://www.wasproject.it/w/en/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cancer Patient Receives 3D-Printed Titanium Rib Implants
http://www.medicaldesignbriefs.com/component/content/article/1104-mdb/news/22978
In a collaboration between the Melbourne-based medical device company Anatomics and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), a cancer patient diagnosed with a chest wall sarcoma received a 3D-printed titanium sternum and rib implants.
To address the complexity of replicating the intricate structures of the ribs and sternum, the surgical team used metallic 3D printing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Moving on up: 3D printing takes on batteries
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/powersource/4440406/Moving-on-up–3D-printing-takes-on-batteries?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150923&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150923&elq=e8470eeb25bd4533a9ceeb1f7ac049a5&elqCampaignId=24890&elqaid=28237&elqat=1&elqTrackId=1f91bca553a94d6b80f764834d4b5844
Three-dimensional printing technologies have been around since the late 1980s – the first patent for “stereo lithography” was issued in 1986. Back then the field was known as rapid prototyping because it was seen primarily as a quick way of fabricating prototypes for product development.
Over time, the number of materials that can be used for 3D printing has increased. Each one requires a different procedure: the direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) process, for example, uses a high-powered 200 W Yb-fiber optic laser in conjunction with metal powder alloys such as stainless steel, cobalt chromium, inconel, and titanium to build up an object from layers as thin as 20μm. For thermoplastics, fused deposition modeling (FDM), also known fused filament fabrication (FFF), makes use of a plastic filament fed into a heated nozzle which melts it and extrudes small flattened strings of molten material to build up successive layers of the object.
More recently, the development of conductive ink and lower-cost printers has opened up new applications, such as printed circuit boards and other electronic assemblies, including batteries. Developing more effective storage is a high priority for rapidly-expanding fields such as wearable electronics, so several teams are working on applying 3D printing to make suitable batteries at both the micro and macro levels.
The scientists developed specialized conductive inks for both anode and cathode; each one contained nanoparticles of a different lithium metal oxide compound. The team also developed a 3D printer that could extrude the inks through an extremely narrow nozzle. The inks solidified into interlaced, ultrathin stacks of electrodes less than the width of a human hair
Potential applications include medical implants and even miniature insect-sized robots, coming soon to a conflict zone near you, no doubt.
Fast forward to 2015. A number of start-ups, often funded by crowdsourcing methods such as Kickstarter, are developing low-cost 3D printers that are suitable for electronic applications. In addition, new materials are becoming available for 3D printing use, notably including graphene, a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms bound together in a honeycomb lattice pattern that has many extraordinary properties and numerous potential applications, such as batteries.
Start-up Graphene 3D Lab is developing a range of conductive filaments incorporating graphene nanoplatelets that can be used to produce 3D-printed batteries of any shape or size, allowing them to be easily integrated into a wide range of equipment, or printed directly into the structure of a device as it is manufactured.
A standard FFF process is used to construct the battery structure including connectors; when activated by an electrolyte, the electrochemical reaction will cause the battery to generate voltage. The current process requires the separate printing of individual components,
Fast forward a few more years, and 3D printing is likely to drastically change how we acquire goods
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startups Push 3D Printers As Industry Leaders Falter
http://build.slashdot.org/story/15/09/23/1726259/startups-push-3d-printers-as-industry-leaders-falter
Given the hype around 3D printing, you’d never guess that established leaders like 3D Systems and Stratasys have seen their stock fall by 75 percent in the last year. Big companies like HP, Amazon, and Boeing are getting into the field, too, but startups are still where a lot of the action is.
The question is whether Formlabs—and other startups like MarkForged, Voxel8, and Desktop Metal—can find enough of a market to survive until 3D printing becomes a more mainstream form of manufacturing.
As Industry Leaders Falter, Formlabs and Others Push New 3D Printers
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2015/09/22/as-industry-leaders-falter-formlabs-and-others-push-new-3d-printers/
So, while some 3D-printing startups want to chip away at the big guys’ market share with cheaper professional-grade devices, they’re not looking to fuel the maker revolution just yet. That may come later—if desktop devices can drop below the price point of several thousands of dollars. (The Form 2 sells for $3,499.)
“If you give someone access to rapid prototyping and 3D printing, it changes the way they think,” Lakatos says. “We think it’s a step function, not just an incremental change.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Buttons, Sliders, and Touchpads All 3D Printed with PrintPut
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/24/buttons-sliders-and-touchpads-all-3d-printed-with-printput/
[Jesse Burstyn] and some colleagues at Queen’s University and Carleton University (both in Canada) are delivering a paper at the INTERACT 2015 about PrintPut, their system for printing sensors directly into 3D printed objects. Using a printer with dual extrusion and conductive ABS filament, they have successfully formed capacitive touch sensors, digital resistive sensors, and analog resistive sensors.
In practice, this means they can print buttons, sliders, and even touch pads directly into objects. They also have a design for several pressure sensors and a flex sensor
PrintPut: Resistive and Capacitive Input Widgets for Interactive 3D Prints
http://www.hml.queensu.ca/blog/printput
PrintPut is a method for 3D printing that embeds interactivity directly into printed objects. When developing new artifacts, designers often create prototypes to guide their design process about how an object should look, feel, and behave. PrintPut uses conductive filament to offer an assortment of sensors that an industrial designer can easily incorporate into these 3D designs, including buttons, pressure sensors, sliders, touchpads, and flex sensors.
Existing touch solutions, even if flexible, cannot seamlessly wrap around many non-planar objects. Alternatively, using many individual sensors introduces wires that are difficult to manage and impede interaction. PrintPut addresses these concerns by seamlessly integrating interaction points within the existing surface geometry of the object and internally routing the wires to a common connection point.
PrintPut’s main components are conductive ABS filament, a dual-extruder 3D printer, and a series of scripts to generate conductive geometry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Conductive ABS 3D Filament – 1.75mm / 0.25lb
http://www.makergeeks.com/coabs3dfi10.html
Conductive PLA
http://www.proto-pasta.com/pages/conductive-pla
Tomi Engdahl says:
Enormous Delta-bot 3D Designed to Print an Entire House
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/27/enormous-delta-bot-3d-designed-to-print-an-entire-house/
[Massimo Moretti] has a big idea – to build housing on the cheap from locally sourced materials for a burgeoning world population. He also has a background in 3D printing, and he’s brought the two concepts together by building a 12 meter tall delta-bot that can print a house from clay.
The printer, dubbed Big Delta for obvious reason
Clay extrusion is not the only medium for 3D printed houses
The world’s largest 3D printer towers 40 feet, will print clay houses
Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/wasp-set-to-unveil-worlds-biggest-delta-3d-printer/#ixzz3myMZJ2Cf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Printing Chocolate with a LEGO 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/26/printing-chocolate-with-a-lego-3d-printer/
Some people think the future will include a 3D printer in every home. We think if LEGO started producing these as kits we’d get pretty close. Introducing the home-made LEGO 3D printer… with a chocolate extruder.
3D Chocolate Printer (made from LEGO)
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Chocolate-Printer-made-from-LEGO-1/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Semifinalist: Individualized Breathing Apparatus
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/25/hackaday-prize-semifinalist-individualized-breathing-apparatus/
Preterm infants frequently require ventilator support while they’re in the neonatal ICU, and this is usually done with a CPAP machine. The machine to infant interface is called a nasal cannula,
For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Ben] is tackling this problem head on. He’s working on creating individualized nasal cannula for newborns using 3D modeling and printing, allowing nasal cannula of all shapes and sizes to be created in a matter of hours.
To create these customized cannula, [Ben] is 3D scanning an infant mannequin head to gather enough data to import it into a Processing sketch. A custom cannula is then created and printed with flexible 3D printer filament. In theory, it should work, apart from the considerations involved in building a medical device.
https://hackaday.io/project/7295-individualised-nasal-cpap-cannula-for-preterm-kids
Tomi Engdahl says:
ESPrint
ESP8266-based web server for 3d printers and routers.
https://hackaday.io/project/7826-esprint
ESPrint is an ESP8266-based embedded web server that can be used to control any serially-controlled 3D printer or router. While any web-browser can be used to access the server it is specifically designed for mobile phones and/or tablets, thus allowing the user to initiate the print whilst standing next to the printer and then monitor ongoing progress elsewhere.
The main controller is a Pro Mini running a version of the Teacup firmware. An SD breakout board provides storage for gcode files.
An ESP8266 provides the WiFi link and contains an embedded web server. The server code is based on JQueryUI mobile and uses AJAX calls to send standard SD-related gcodes to the controller via the serial connection.
Four stepper controllers are provided on the example board for control of the printer’s axis and extruder motors. The final board layout is expected to also support the extruder heater drive transistor and thermistor circuitry
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Autodesk Open Source 3D Printer
http://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2015/09/30/autodesk-open-source-3d-printer/
If you’ve ever been interested in what goes on inside a (roughly) $6000 DLP stereolithography printer, you might want to check out the recent announcement from Autodesk that open sources their electronics and firmware for their Ember 3D printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Has Evolved Two Filament Standards
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/29/3d-printing-has-evolved-two-filament-standards/
We’re far beyond the heyday of the RepRap project, and the Hackaday tip line isn’t seeing multiple Kickstarters for 3D printers every week. In a way, this is a bit of a loss. The rapid evolution of the low-cost 3D printer seen in the first half of this decade will never be matched, and from now on we’ll only see incremental improvements instead of the revolutionary steps taken by the first Prusa, the first Printrbot, and even the Makerbot Replicator.
This doesn’t mean everything is standardized. There’s still enough room for arguing over deltas versus Cartesians, beds moving on the Y axis versus moving along the Z, and a host of other details that make the current crop of printers so diverse. One of these small arguments is especially interesting: the diameter of the filament.
Today, you can get any type of plastic you want, in any color, in two sizes: 1.75 and 3mm. If you think about it, it’s bizarre. Why on Earth would filament manufacturers, hot end fabricators, and even printer manufacturers decide to support two different varieties of the same consumable? The answer is a mix of a historical choice, engineering tradeoffs, and an absolutely arbitrary consequence of what 3D printers actually do.
Although nearly everything from the original hot end experiments have been reengineered and reworked, one thing remains: the 3mm filament standard. The first thermoplastic extruders were designed to accept 3mm filament, and one of the first RepRap wiki pages for filament suppliers bears this out. Everything was 3mm, and Makerbot has doubled the price of their filament in five years. No surprises here. 3mm filament was the standard until 2011, when 1.75mm appeared on the scene and started to take over.
The earliest home 3D printers used geared extruders nearly exclusively to push filament through a hot nozzle. These geared extruders, like Wade’s Geared Extruder, are essentially a reduction drive. By using 1.75mm filament, the torque required from a stepper motor is three times less than with 3mm filament.
There’s another advantage of using 1.75mm filament – print speed. Heating less mass will always take less time
That’s not to say there aren’t advantages to 3mm filament. If you’re printing with large nozzles or high feed rates, you want a larger filament.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Printing Material Suppliers
http://reprap.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Printing_Material_Suppliers&oldid=17613
table listing suppliers of filament.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Half a million 3D-printer
If one little part breaks down, it can continue to print at home quickly and cheaply. This is a big vision for 3D printing. According to Gartner, the world is sold next year, almost half a million 3D-print inserts. Next year is an accurate reading According to Gartner, more than 490 000.
This year 3D printer sold more than 244 thousand, the increase will be 1023 per cent. Looking ahead, the market is doubling every year, so 2019 printers are sold globally 5.6 million.
The growth was leaving the area is still relatively fragmented, Gartner says. Printers is roughly seven types. However, a large part of the coming years will be the volume of sales of low-cost, mainly printers for home use.
In total, the proportion of under a thousand dollars of equipment total sales will be about 25 per cent, a research institute to predict.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3378:puoli-miljoonaa-3d-tulostinta&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
MakerBot lays off 20 percent of its staff for the second time this year
A rough year continues for the fast-rising company
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/8/9477999/makerbot-layoffs-employees-lawsuit
MakerBot is laying off 20 percent of its staff for the second time in the last six months, citing “market dynamics” and a failure to meet “ambitious goals.” The company is also leaving one of the two buildings it occupies in Industry City, a large-scale manufacturing complex in Brooklyn.
The 3D-printing company will also be making changes to its leadership team to better “focus on [its] people and the MakerBot 3D Ecosystem.” The news was announced in a blog post by CEO Jonathan Jaglom.
“We are facing tremendous challenges at MakerBot,” Jaglom tells The Verge. “Across the board throughout the industry we are seeing a very slow growth pace in the 3D printing space, and of course MakerBot is impacted by that as well.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Makerbot Has Now Cut 36% of Staff in Last 6 Months
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/09/makerbot-has-now-cut-36-of-staff-in-last-6-months/
The CEO of Makerbot, [Jonathan Jaglom] announced this week a massive reorganization. Twenty percent of the staff will be laid off, management will be changed, an office will be closed, and perhaps most interestingly, the production of 4th generation of Makerbots will be outsourced to contract manufacturers.
This news comes just months after Makerbot announced its first 20% reduction in staff, and follows on the heels of a class action suit from investors. These are troubling times for Makerbot.
The 3D printing industry has been forced through the rollercoaster of the hype cycle in the last few years, and where Makerbot goes, media coverage and public perception of 3D printing goes with it. According to pundits, we are now deep in the doldrums of the trough of disillusionment. No one wants to make their own parts for their washing machine, it is said, and 3D printers are finicky devices with limited utility.
Despite these pundits’ projections, the 3D printing industry doubled in 2015. Multiple manufacturers of sub $5000 machines are going gangbusters, and seeing the biggest revenues in the history of their respective companies. By any measure except the one provided by Makerbot, we are still in an era of a vast proliferation of 3D printing.
The Verge writes – incorrectly – “…The consumer 3D-printing market’s rise has slowed”, and Business Insider writes ‘consumers are beginning to lose interest.’ These are not statements backed up by facts or statistics or even hearsay; they are merely a reflection of the consumer’s disinterest in Makerbot and not of the 3D printing industry of the whole.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printable Robot Arm
A printable robot arm, a little bigger than the usual hobby servo once.
https://hackaday.io/project/3800-3d-printable-robot-arm
My printable robot arm is inspired by the well known industry robots, but printable.
The goal is to develop a open source robot arm to use in private or small businesses and make robot development available for every one.
The arm should lift about 2 kg enough to perform every day tasks. Currently robot arms are expensive or small and weak, or clumpy.
Industrial robots are expensive and dangerous and for that not suitable for using at home or schools.
A Open Source printable robot can build,used and developed by every one.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A $1.5M Kickstarter Project Fails, Leaving Most Backers Without Their 3D Printer
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/14/a-1-5m-kickstarter-project-fails-leaving-most-backers-without-their-3d-printer/#.ojwuxm:29iN
Pirate3D Inc raised nearly $1.5M on Kickstarter in 2013, promising a 3D printer that anyone can use. A total of 3,520 backers pledged money to the project including 3,389 who pledged over $300 to eventually get a printer. But as of now, 60 percent of the orders have still not been fulfilled and it seems unlikely that in the end backers will get a refund or their product.
In a convoluted note to backers (below), the company’s founder states that the company is exploring raising additional capital yet seems to say it does not expect to be able to fulfill the remaining Kickstarter orders even with additional cash.
This is why we cannot have nice things.
Investing is a risky business. Not everything pans out. No matter how it’s billed, crowdfunding through sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and GoFundMe is an investing scheme and carries unexpected risks for the general consumer.
Crowdfunding removes barriers and makes it easier to get products into production. And that’s great. Raising money needed to get a product from an idea to a product is hard and takes a lot of time. But often over the course of fundraising and moving things into production, issues arise and are addressed before promises are made to consumers. With crowdfunding, promises are made before the challenges are known.
Sometimes Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects fail. There’s risk associated with crowdfunding. Pledging money towards a project is not a guarantee that the project will be fulfilled as promised. Kickstarter changed its terms of service last October to give project creators a way out of fulfilling their obligations as long as certain criteria had been meet including posting a report showing how funds were used and stating what is preventing the project from finishing as planned. But that terms of use only applies to project that launched after October 17, 2014. Pirate3D’s Buccaneer printer was funded the previous year and subject to a different set of rules.
Pirate3D must fulfill its orders or issue a refund, according to Kickstarter’s terms of use agreed by the company. It’s cut and dried. If neither conditions are met, backers have the right to sue the creator
Crowdfunding must not be confused with purchasing a product. Instead, consumers need to know that they are doing someone a favor and help fund their dream whether it be producing a hair metal album or building a company around a 3D printer. There are countless examples where project creators fulfill their obligations and return the favor in the form of a product or service. Yet it’s projects like the Buccaneer printer from Pirate3D that cast doubts on the promise of crowdfunding.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Your 3D printed parts will rarely come out perfectly. There will always be some strings or scars from removing them from the bed. There’s a solution to these problems: use a hot air gun.
Cleaning up 3D prints
http://thegizmodojo.com/2015/10/cleaning-up-3d-prints/
For this method, you’ll need a heat gun.
If you’re using PLA and you want to remove strings from 3D prints, set the temperature to 120 degrees C (ABS is around 140 degrees C). The number may vary a bit, depending on color and brand of filament, but that’s a good starting place. Gently wave the heat gun over the print, at a distance of about an inch, and the strings should mostly disappear. You can clean up the part a little bit first with a knife or sandpaper if you’d like. The scars from the knife and sandpaper will also disappear at that temperature. If you increase the temperature to 140 degrees C, you can smooth out some of the lines that show up in between layers.
WARNING: this will make your part very soft and flexible. Make sure it’s on a flat surface if it’s a flat part.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Converting a 3D Printer from 3mm to 1.75mm
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/17/converting-a-3d-printer-from-3mm-to-1-75mm/
For no reason whatsoever, consumer 3D printers have settled on two different sizes of filament. Yes, there are differences, but those differences are just a function of engineering tradeoffs and historical choices.
The printer [Thomas] is changing out to accept 1.75mm is the Lulzbot Mini, one of the most popular printers that would ever need this modification. The only required materials is a new hot end suitable for 1.75mm filament, a 4mm drill, and a few wrenches and allen keys.
It should be noted that changing a 3mm hot end to 1.75mm doesn’t really do anything. Just about every filament is available in both sizes
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Has Evolved Two Filament Standards
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/29/3d-printing-has-evolved-two-filament-standards/
The difference between 1.75 and 3mm filament is only a choice in engineering tradeoffs – neither one is better, but each offers a few advantages.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Guy creates handheld railgun with a 3D-printer
http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/19/3d-printed-handheld-railgun/
An ambitious maker has built a partly 3D-printed railgun that can fire aluminum or graphite projectiles at over 250 meters per second (560 mph). No, this isn’t Quake, but it’s no janky, all-plastic gun, either. The “handheld” weapon houses six capacitors that weigh 20 pounds and deliver over 1,800 joules of energy per shot. And it indeed works just like a full-sized railgun, using parallel electrodes to fire an “armature” bullet.
The resulting design was complex enough that he even made a 3D CAD drawing that would do DARPA proud (above). The test shots with graphite and aluminum projectiles
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kanye West is afraid 3D printers will ruin the fashion industry
http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/29/kanye-west-afraid-of-3d-printers/?utm_content=gravity_organic_sitefeed&cps=gravity_1677_-3793521369978197999
Kanye West has a way with words. He’s not known for often, if ever, holding back on whatever thoughts cross his mind. In a recent episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the musician-turned-self-proclaimed-designer had an interesting thing to say about 3D printers: He believes they will ruin the fashion industry. During a visit to the Tumo Centre for Creative Technologies in Yerevan, Armenia, Kanye was shown a 3D printer and said, “This is what I’m afraid of here, 3D printing, because the internet destroyed the music industry and now this is what we’re afraid of right now with the textile industry.”
Kanye’s point is interesting given that established designers like Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of Chanel, used 3D printing to make one of the brand’s fall 2015 women’s suits — which was described by The New York Times as “a little bit futuristic.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Quadcopter Props
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/21/3d-printed-quadcopter-props/
Here’s something that isn’t quite a hack; he’s just using a 3D printer as a 3D printer. It is extremely interesting, though. Over on Hackaday.io [Anton] is creating 3D printable propellers for quadcopters and RC planes. Conventional wisdom says that propellers require exceedingly exacting tolerances, but [Anton] is making it work with the right 3D file and some creative post-processing treatment of his prints.
These 3D printed props are a remix of an earlier project on Thingiverse.
Although [Anton]’s prop is basically a replica of a normal, off-the-shelf quadcopter prop, 3D printing unique, custom props does open up a lot of room for innovation.
3D-Printable Propeller
Exploring 3D printing of various propeller designs.
https://hackaday.io/project/8123-3d-printable-propeller
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Turbofan Features Reverse Thrust
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/24/3d-printed-turbofan-features-reverse-thrust/
[Harcoreta] has created a 3D printed model of the GE GEnx-1B Turbofan. This is the engine that powers Boeing’s 787 dreamliner. What sets this model apart is that it has a complete working reverse thrust system. A real jet engine would be asking a bit much of 3D printed ABS plastic. This model is more of an Electric Ducted Fan (EDF). An NTM 1400kv 35mm brushless motor hides in the core, cooled by a small impeller.
GE GEnx-1B 100mm 3D Printed EDF
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2390401
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wait, a 3D Printed Lawn mower?
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/05/wait-a-3d-printed-lawn-mower/
Well, we have to admit, we never saw this coming… A 3D printed lawn mower? What? Why? Huh? How? Those were at least a few of the thoughts running through our head when we saw this come in on the tips line.
[Hans Fouche] has a giant 3D printer
he reverse engineered his old rusty lawn mower, and redesigned it to be printable
South African Man 3D Prints a Working Lawn Mower With His Super Fast 3D Printer in Just 9 Hours
http://3dprint.com/34873/3d-printed-lawn-mower/
The only parts of the mower which were not 3D printed were the motor, which was taken from an old lawn mower, the blade, the handle (including the switch), and the shafts for the wheels
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fitting 3D Prints On Eagle Boards
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/25/fitting-3d-prints-on-eagle-boards/
One of the hardest things you’ll ever do is mesh your electronic design with a mechanical design. Getting holes for switches in the right place is a pain, and if you do it enough, you’ll realize the beauty of panel mount jacks. This is especially true when using Eagle to design a PCB, but with a few tricks, it’s possible to build 3D printable pieces directly from Eagle designs.
Generating 3D-printable pieces directly from EAGLE PCB designs
http://discspace.org/generating-3d-printable-pieces-directly-from-eagle-pcb-designs/
Today I figured out a simple way to 3D print a light mask for this board using design elements straight out of EAGLE! Here are the high-level steps:
In a new layer in your EAGLE board layout, draw the stuff you want to 3D print.
Do a series of conversions to get that EAGLE layer turned into an OpenSCAD script and then a STL for printing.
Print, jam on board, enjoy a better looking display.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Printing Soft Body Tissue
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/28/printing-soft-body-tissue/
If you are like us, you tend to do your 3D printing with plastic or maybe–if you are lucky enough to have access to an expensive printer–metal. [Adam Feinberg] and his team at Carnegie Mellon print with flesh. Well, sort of. Printing biomaterials is a burgeoning research area. However, printing material that is like soft tissue has been challenging. In a recent paper, [Feinberg] and company outline a method called FRESH. FRESH uses a modified MakerBot or Printrbot Jr. printer to deposit hydrogel into a gelatin slurry support bath. The gelatin holds the shape of the object until printing is complete, at which point it can be removed with heat.
The printer uses an open source syringe extruder found on the NIH 3D print exchange
The paper describes printing items including a model of a 5-day-old embryonic chick heart, an artery, and a miniature human brain model.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tubular Tape Gun “Sketches” Furniture You Can Never Sit On
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/29/tubular-tape-gun-sketches-furniture-you-can-never-sit-on/
Sometimes you just need a life-sized model. When you do, reach for your (highly modified) tape gun and get drawing.
As the Protopiper team describes it, the “gun” is a computer-aided hand held fabrication device for imagining layouts of large objects
the device itself is rather ingenious. It takes normal tape, measures it, and rolls it into tube form, which results in a surprisingly strong structure allowing you to build 3D shapes quite easily. From a design point of view it’s quite brilliant.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hair Enthusiasts Rejoice! Synthetic Follicles Are Now 3D-Printable
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/01/hair-enthusiasts-rejoice-synthetic-follicles-are-now-3d-printable/
If you’ve been performing painstaking hair-plug procedures on your 3D-printed troll dolls, then prepare to have your world rocked! [Chris Harrison, Gierad Laput, and Xiang “Anthony” Chen] at Carnegie Mellon University have just released a paper outlining a technique they’ve developed for 3D printing fur and hair. Will the figurine section of Thingiverse ever be the same?
The technique takes advantage of a 3D printing effect that most hobbyists actively try to avoid: stringing. Stringing is what happens when the hot end of a 3D printer moves from one point to another quickly while leaking a small amount of molten filament. This results in a thin strand of plastic between the two points, and is generally perceived as a bad thing, because it negatively affects the surface quality of the print.
To avoid this particular phenomenon, 3D printing slicers generally have options like retraction and wiping. But, instead of trying to stop the stringing, [Chris Harrison, Gierad Laput, and Xiang “Anthony” Chen] decided to embrace it.
3D Printed Hair: Fused Deposition Modeling of Soft Strands, Fibers and Bristles
http://chrisharrison.net/projects/3dprintedhair/3dprintedhair.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are You Telling Me You Built A Lexus…Out Of Cardboard?
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/01/are-you-telling-me-you-built-a-lexus-out-of-cardboard/
So, you want a new Lexus? Well then download yourself a free car, and cut it out on a laser. Add some glue, and bingo, you have yourself a fancy new ride. We’ll, not really.
Sure, this promo video is just a publicity stunt from Toyota (News flash: Your fancy Lexus is actually a Toyota) but we have to hand it to them, it worked. It’s basically 1700 individually shaped, laser cut cardboard cross-sections that are painstakingly stacked and glued together. What we like about this is the technique – that is making a 3D object from 2D.
Using 2D parts to create 3D shapes is nothing new. Most people’s first experience with this technique is with building model airplanes.
And with 3D software now in the hands of the masses, it’s never been a better time to try your hand at building in 3D.
Lexus – Making the Origami Inspired Car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F7DnWAhox8
Tomi Engdahl says:
Print Your Own Vertices for Quick Structural Skeletons
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/03/print-your-own-vertices-for-quick-structural-skeletons/
3D printing is great for a lot of things: prototyping complex designs, replacing broken parts, and creating unique pencil holders to show your coworkers how zany you are. Unfortunately, 3D printing is pretty awful for creating large objects – it’s simply too inefficient. Not to mention, the small size of most consumer 3D printers is very limiting
The standard solution to this problem is to use off-the-shelf material, with only specialized parts being printed. But, for simple structures, designing those specialized parts is an unnecessary time sink. [Nurgak] has created a solution for this with a clever “Universal Vertex Module,” designed to mate off-the-shelf rods at the 90-degree angles that most people use.
The ingenuity of the design is in its simplicity: one side fits over the structural material (dowels, aluminum extrusions, etc.), and the other side is a four-sided pyramid. The pyramid shape allows two vertices to mate at 90-degree angles, and holes allow them to be held together with the zip ties that already litter the bottom of your toolbox.
Universal Vertex Module
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1080119
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Eyeglasses, VR Lenses
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/09/3d-printed-eyeglasses-vr-lenses/
[Florian] is hyped for Google Cardboard, Oculus Rifts, and other head mounted displays, and with that comes an interest in lenses. [Floian] wanted to know if it was possible to create these lenses with a 3D printer. Why would anyone want to do this when these lenses can be had from dozens of online retailers for a few dollars? The phrase, ‘because I can’ comes to mind.
The starting point for the lens was a CAD model, a 3D printer, and silicone mold material. Clear casting resin fills the mold, cures, and turns into a translucent lens-shaped blob. This is the process of creating all lenses, and by finely sanding, polishing, and buffing this lens with grits ranging from 200 to 7000, this bit of resin slowly takes on an optically clear shine.
3D Printing Virtual Reality Lenses for Smartphones
http://www.cuddleburrito.com/blog/2015/10/13/3d-printing-virtual-reality-goggles-for-iphone-6-plus
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Pen and CNC Machine Yields Cheap 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/11/3d-printing-pen-and-cnc-machine-yields-cheap-3d-printer/
3D printers are ubiquitous now, but they’re still prohibitively expensive for some people. Some printers cost thousands, but even more inexpensive options aren’t exactly cheap. [Daniel] decided that this was unacceptable, and set out to make a basic 3D printer for under $100 by including only the bare essentials needed for creating anything out of melted plastic.
3D printers are essentially four parts: a bed, filament, and a hot end and extruder. In a previous project, [Daniel] used parts from old CD drives to create a three-axis CNC machine which he uses for the bed. To take care of the hot end and extruder, he is using a 3D printing pen which he mounts to the CNC machine and voila: a 3D printer!
How To Make A Cheap 3D Printer
http://www.tinkernut.com/portfolio/how-to-make-a-cheap-3d-printer/
Hack old CD-ROMs into a CNC Machine – Part 1: The Hardware
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFo5MKSrM-k
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are your 3D Prints Toxic?
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/11/are-your-3d-prints-toxic/
With the rising popularity and increasing availability of 3D printers, it was inevitable that someone would start looking into the potential environmental impact presented by them. And now we have two researchers from the University of California Riverside sounding the alarm that certain plastics are toxic to zebrafish embryos (abstract only; full paper behind a paywall).
As is often the case with science, this discovery was serendipitous. Graduate student [Shirin Mesbah Oskui] was using 3D printed tools to study zebrafish embryos, a widely used model organism in developmental biology, but she found the tools were killing her critters. She investigated further and found that prints from both a Stratasys Dimension Elite FDM printer and from a Formlabs Form 1+ stereolithography printer were “measurably toxic” to developing zebrafish embryos. The resin-based SLA printed parts were far worse for the fish than the fused ABS prints – 100% of embryos exposed to the Form 1+ prints
Assessing and Reducing the Toxicity of 3D-Printed Parts
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.5b00249
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frank Makes A CNC Table
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/11/frank-makes-a-cnc-table/
[Frank Howarth] is one of the big guns when it comes to woodworking on YouTube, and now he’s doing something completely unlike his other builds. He’s building a gigantic CNC machine. Yes, we’ve seen dozens of CNC router builds, but this one adds a few nifty features we’ve never seen before.
The CNC Build: Part 1: All About That Base
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNvoFTV5tIE
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers Can Now 3D Print Stem Cell “Building Blocks” | IFLScience
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/researchers-can-now-3d-print-stem-cell-building-blocks
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed lens Gears for Pro-grade Focus Pulling
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/17/3d-printed-lens-gears-for-pro-grade-focus-pulling/
Key Grip, Gaffer, Best Boy – any of us who’ve sat through every last minute of a Marvel movie to get to the post-credits scene – mmm, schawarma! – have seen the obscure titles of folks involved in movie making. But “Focus Puller”? How hard can it be to focus a camera?
Turns out there’s a lot to the job, and in a many cases it makes sense to mechanize the task. Pro cinematic cameras have geared rings for just that reason, and now your DSLR lens can have them too with customized, 3D printed follow-focus gears.
Unwilling to permanently modify his DSLR camera lens and dissatisfied with after-market lens gearing solutions, [Jaymis Loveday] learned enough OpenSCAD to generate gears from 50mm to 100mm in diameter in 0.5mm increments for a snug friction fit.
3D Printable, Seamless, Friction-fit Lens Gears for Follow Focus
http://jaymis.com/2015/11/3d-printable-seamless-friction-fit-lens-gears-for-follow-focus/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Diamond Hotend Opens the Color Gamut for 3D Printing
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/18/diamond-hotend-opens-the-color-gamut-for-3d-printing/
It’s safe to say we’ve hit a bit of a plateau with hobby based 3D printers using FDM technology. Print quality is pretty high, they’re about as fast as they’re going to get, and compared to commercial machines they’re a pretty good bang for your buck. So what’s next? What about printing in color?
It is possible to print in color using a regular 3D printer and a bit of patience, but it’s really not economical or efficient. We’ve seen multiple extruder heads for 3D printing as well, but there are many problems with that due to calibration and trailing plastic from one head to another. So what if you could feed multiple color filaments into a single mixing head?
Well, it turns out you can. Earlier this year RepRap ran a Kickstarter for the development of the Diamond Hotend — a single nozzle multi-color extruder. It’s in production now and appears to work quite well. It’s also compatible with many 3D printers as long as the motherboard has triple extruder support.
The Diamond Hotend – Single nozzle multi-color 3D printing
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wr3d/the-diamond-hotend-single-nozzle-multi-color-3d-pr
An affordable 3D printer single nozzle hotend that provides a faster, easier and more precise method of color 3D printing
Beware of Diamond Hotend knockoffs
Six months after the completion of our Kickstarter campaign, we are seeing some hotends that imitate our design being sold on Ebay.
Some of them even claim to be Diamond Hotends.
Although similar in appearance, it is very doubtful that they will be able to perform as expected. If they do work at all.
The genuine Diamond Hotend is produced with great care and quality here in Denmark.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building A Better 3D Printed Gun
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/21/building-a-better-3d-printed-gun/
Back in 2013, [Cody Wilson] of Defense Distributed designed and built the world’s first completely 3D printed pistol. He called his gun the Liberator, after a World War II-era single-shot pistol designed to be cheap and easy to manufacture, easy to conceal, and for members of the French Resistance, ‘a great gun to obtain a better gun’.
[Cody]’s Liberator turned out to be a great gun to obtain two or three fewer fingers. Not only was this a single-shot pistol, it was a single barrel pistol; with each round fired requiring a new 3D printed barrel.
For all the media hubbub, for all the concerned legislators, the first 3D printed pistol was much ado about nothing.
3D printers are still an extremely interesting technology, and if history has proved one thing, it’s that engineers and tinkerers will keep building guns. Last week, [James Patrick] released his latest design for a working 3D printed gun.
What’s very interesting about this build is how closely the development of 3D printed firearms is following the development of historical firearms. First, we had guns that probably shouldn’t be fired, ever. Now, the technology for 3D printed guns is about up to 1830 or thereabouts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Garbage can CNC Machine Build
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/21/garbage-can-cnc-machine-build/
Forget sourcing parts for your next project from some fancy neighborhood hardware store. If you really want to show your hacker chops, be like [HomoFaciens] and try a Dumpster dive for parts for a CNC machine build.
Sure, this is a giant leap backwards for the state of the art in DIY CNC builds. but that’s the point – to show what can be accomplished with almost nothing, and that imagination and perseverance are more important for acceptable results than an expensive BOM.
The video about CNC v0.6
http://www.homofaciens.de/technics-machines-cnc-v0-6_en_navion.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stronger 3D Printed Parts
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/20/stronger-3d-printed-parts/
When [hobbyman] wanted some 3D printed parts to attach a bag to his bike, he was worried that the parts would not be strong enough to hold when the bag was full. He decided to find a way to reinforce the part with fiberglass and epoxy. His first model had holes and grooves to be filled in with epoxy.
created the part as a shell and then filled it with fibers and epoxy. After it all cured, a little sanding started removing some of the plastic shell and what was left was mostly a cast fiberglass part (although some of the plastic was left on).
Strengthening a 3D Printed Part
http://www.instructables.com/id/Strengthening-a-3D-Printed-Part/
As we all know, 3D printed parts produced by our ordinary home type printers are not so strong and when used in place of actual parts, they don’t last long. I thought it would be great If it is possible to somehow strengthen the 3d printed parts and worked on the subject a bit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Carver Makes Magnetic Fields Visible
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/19/3d-carver-makes-magnetic-fields-visible/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printers Spit out Small PCBs
Nanomaterials meet plastics at event
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328319
Two companies showed 3D printers that can spit out small printed circuit boards and others including Qualcomm showed advances putting electronics on plastic substrates at the annual IDTechEx conference here.
“We see 3D printing contributing to the vision of a trillion-sensor world,” said James Stasiak, a distinguished technologist in printing technology at Hewlett Packard Inc.
A combination of traditional electronics with 3D printing of nanomaterials on new kinds of substrates will enable ten-cent transistors needed for the future Internet of Things, Stasiak said in a keynote. He pointed to the room-sized YieldJet inkjet printer from Kateeva Inc.
On the show floor Israeli startup Nano Dimension demoed its DragonFly 2020 3D Printer for the first time in the U.S. It can print a multilayer 20 x 20 cm circuit board that is up to 3mm high with 80 micron traces in 3-20 hours, depending on the number of layers. The company targets users who don’t want to wait weeks it typically takes to make a board and can tolerate the $50,000 cost of the printer.
Key to the 3D printer is a silver-conductive and an insulating ink Nano Dimension developed, printed through a 500-nozzle inkjet head from Minolta. Like many targeting this market, the company is working on a cheaper copper-conductive ink, but so far no one has solved the problem of keeping cooper from oxidizing in the print process
Nano Dimension got its start less than two years ago when its founders had an idea for adapting for printed-circuit boards a silver-conductive ink used for creating solar cells on a silicon wafer.
HP’s Stasiak said companies such as Nano Dimension ultimately should be able to print circuit boards that cost less and offer greater flexibility than traditional processes. One of the challenges using the ink jet method, however, is it is currently limited to applying femto-liter droplets that create relatively large traces, he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hospitals Can 3D Print a Patient’s Vasculature For Aneurysm Pre-Op Practice
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/11/24/2116242/hospitals-can-3d-print-a-patients-vasculature-for-aneurysm-pre-op-practice?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
University of Buffalo physicians and researchers from two institutes working with 3D printer maker Stratasys have successfully 3D-printed anatomically correct models of patients’ vascular systems — from their femoral artery to their brain — in order to test various surgical techniques prior to an actual operation.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3008229/emerging-technology/3d-printing-can-recreate-your-vascular-system-for-pre-op-practice.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inkjet hologram printing now possible
http://phys.org/news/2015-11-inkjet-hologram.html
Vivid holographic images and text can now be produced by means of an ordinary inkjet printer. This new method, developed by a team of scientists from ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, is expected to significantly reduce the cost and time needed to create the so-called rainbow holograms commonly used for security purposes to protect valuable items such as credit cards and paper currency from piracy and falsification. The results of the study were published 17 November in the scientific journal Advanced Functional Materials.
Rainbow holograms are widely used to fight against the forgery of credit cards, money, documents and certain manufactured products that call for a high level of protection. Even though the technology of obtaining holographic images was already developed in the 1960s, there still exist numerous technical difficulties that impede its further spread and integration into polygraphic industry.
“The conventional way of preparing a hologram is incredibly time consuming and consists of several stages. First, one needs to create a master hologram, which is usually laser recorded on a thin layer of photosensitive polymer. The polymer is then dried and washed out to get rid of unexposed parts,” explains Aleksandr Yakovlev, first author of the study and researcher at the SCAMT laboratory. “The resulting stencil is then transferred to a metallic matrix, which eventually serves to emboss holographic microrelief on the surface of a transparent polymer film.”
According to the scientist, the whole process of obtaining a holographic image may take up to several days in total. To prepare a master hologram, a set of very rigid requirements must be met—temperature control and vibration isolation among them. “Printing separate holographic images in a quick and effective manner is a challenge that, until now, has been unresolved,” adds Aleksandr Yakovlev.
The new nanocrystalline ink makes it possible to cut the expenditures related to the production of rainbow holograms by several times. The ink is applied with a simple inkjet printer on a microembossed surface, which is afterwards covered with varnish. As a result, the holographic image is exclusively seen in those areas where the protective ink was deposited.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-inkjet-hologram.html#jCp
Tomi Engdahl says:
Upgrading a 3D Printer with A Leadscrew
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/26/upgrading-a-3d-printer-with-a-leadscrew/
Consumer 3D printers have really opened up the floodgates to personal at home fabrication. Even the cheapest of 3D printers will yield functional parts — however the quality of the print varies quite a lot. One of the biggest downfalls to affordable 3D printers is the cost cutting of crucial parts, like the z-Axis. Almost all consumer 3D printers use standard threaded rod for the z-axis, which should really use a leadscrew instead.
Threaded rod is not designed for accurate positioning — it’s primarily designed to be a fastener.
Enter the lead screw. Lead screws are precision machined components used for pretty much all proper CNC equipment. They have almost no backlash, they’re perfectly straight, and they allow for higher load transfers without jamming.
In order to upgrade his Prusa i3, [Daniel] designed and printed his own z-axis carriages to use with the lead screw.
3D Printer Lead Screw Upgrade
http://harariprojects.com/2015/11/18/3d-printer-lead-screw-upgrade/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A 3D Printed Car Jack? No, Seriously!
http://hackaday.com/2015/11/25/a-3d-printed-car-jack-no-seriously/
Ah nuts, I lost my car jack again. What will I do? Well, why not 3D print a new one?
Uploaded to Thingiverse earlier this week, this design allows you to 3D print a fully functional car jack — provided your build platform is large enough. It’s actually a bit of a promo for the Cheetah 2, a massive modular 3D printer by [Hans Fouche]. Earlier this year we shared his 3D printed lawn mower; which spoiler, also works.
The neat thing about the Cheetah 2 is that it doesn’t use filament. It actually processes plastic pellets right inside the hot end, allowing for much cheaper material — typically dollars on the kilogram, as opposed to the $30+/kg we’re all used to being gouged on. Of course, you could also make your own filament.
Car Jack
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1152696