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.
2,050 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacklet 108 – Simple Functional 3D Prints
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/21/hacklet-108-simple-functional-3d-prints/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Print It Or Fix It?
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/22/3d-print-it-or-fix-it/
Tomi Engdahl says:
101Hero : The World’s First US$49 3D Printer
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/101hero/101hero-the-world-first-us49-3d-printer/description
3D Printing for work, play, lifestyle, and everything in 101Hero! Simple, accessible, affordable, and dependable, start from $49.
Customer Version (AKA: CV):
-note: if you want to upgrade to DV, please add $5 into your pledge
Printer Dimensions: It’s a polygon
It is lightweight, roughly 3.9 lb (1.8 kg).
Dimensions: Print height: 100mm(3.93″ ), Base Print Area: φ150mm (5.9″)
Supports many different materials: ABS, PLA, Nylon, and more.
Standard filament rolls also supported.
Filament: standard 1.75mm.
Removable Print Bed.
50-350 micron layer resolution.
150 micron X and Y positioning accuracy.
101Hero SD Card mode for an effortless, plug-and-play experience. You could download the lab-tested gcode files from our website,
What’s Included with My Reward?
Due to the shipping budget is limited, so we decide to ship the 90% Finished Pre-Assembled Parts. When you got it, you just need to turn a few screws, then you could get a full functional 3D Printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sweet 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/24/sweet-3d-printer/
Dylan’s Candy Bar is an upscale sweet shop in Manhattan. In a stunning proof that 3D printing has become buzzword-worthy, they’ve announced a deal with Katjes Magic Candy Factory to bring four 3D gummy printers to the US (specifically, to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami).
The device looks a bit like a classic 3D printer, but it extrudes eight different gummis in a variety of flavors. The store offers twenty designs but you can also print text or your own drawings (including, apparently, your face).
Each creation costs about $20.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Metal in Mid Air
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/24/3d-printing-metal-in-mid-air/
Published only 3 days before our article on how it is high time for direct metal 3D printers, the folks at Harvard have mastered 3D metal printing in midair with no support (as well as time travel apparently). Because it hardens so quickly, support isn’t necessary, and curves, sharp angles, and sophisticated shapes are possible.
The material is silver nanoparticles extruded out of a nozzle, and shortly after leaving it is blasted with a carefully programmed laser that solidifies the material.
Printing metal in midair
http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/257
Reported online May 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this laser-assisted direct ink writing method allows microscopic metallic, free-standing 3D structures to be printed in one step without auxiliary support material. The research was led by Wyss Core Faculty member Jennifer Lewis, Sc.D., who is also the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at SEAS.
According to the study’s first author, Wyss Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Mark Skylar-Scott, Ph.D., the most challenging aspect of honing the technique was optimizing the nozzle-to-laser separation distance.
The result is that the method can produce not only sweeping curves and spirals but also sharp angular turns and directional changes written into thin air with silver inks, opening up near limitless new potential applications in electronic and biomedical devices that rely on customized metallic architectures.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacklet 109 – Complex 3D Printed Projects
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/28/hacklet-109-complex-3d-printed-projects/
If you can’t tell, we’re on a roll with 3D printers and printed projects this month. So far, we’ve covered printers, and simple functional 3D prints. This week we’re taking a look at some of the awesome complex 3D printed projects on Hackaday.io.
Complex 3D printed projects are things like robots, quadcopters, satellite tracking systems, and more. So let’s jump in and look at some of the best complex 3D printed projects on Hackaday.io!
We start with [Alberto] and Dtto v1.0 Modular Robot.
Next up is [Szabolcs Lőrincz] with Broke Hackers’ Model Railway
Next we have [Rob] with Quadrup3D, his 3D printed quadruped robot.
Finally we have [tlankford01] with LOKI 4G (Locate Observe Krack Isolate) 4th Gen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Metal in Mid Air
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/24/3d-printing-metal-in-mid-air/
folks at Harvard have mastered 3D metal printing in midair with no support (as well as time travel apparently). Because it hardens so quickly, support isn’t necessary, and curves, sharp angles, and sophisticated shapes are possible.
Printing metal in midair
http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/257
D printing and laser annealing of conductive metallic inks without supports could lead to customized electronic and biomedical devices
Tomi Engdahl says:
Introduced at CES last January, Monoprice – yes, the same place you get HDMI and Ethernet cables from – has released their $200 3D printer. This one is on our radar and there will be a review, but right away the specs are fantastic for a $200 printer. The build area is 120mm³, it has a heated bed, and appears to be not completely locked down like the DaVinci printers were a few years ago.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/05/29/hackaday-links-may-29-2016/
More: http://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=107&cp_id=10724&cs_id=1072403&p_id=15365&seq=1&format=2
Tomi Engdahl says:
This DLP 3D Printer Build Is Going Really Well
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/06/this-dlp-3d-printer-build-is-going-really-well/
We suppose [Dan Beaven] got up one day and said, “I’ll make my own resin 3D printer, with resin management and an advanced separation mechanism!” It’s a build log that shows just how possible it is to roll your own resin printer.
The machine isn’t finished yet, but the example prints coming off it are already very impressive.
3D Printer DLP – Rev 2
http://3dprintzothar.blogspot.fi/2014/07/3d-printer-dlp-rev-2.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Printer manufacturers introduce new 3D-printers
Hewlett Packard brings the end of the year available it’s first 3D-printers
Now the company has announced the first model – though not yet absolutely every consumer’s wallet – prices start from $ 130 000 upwards. The first two HP 3D printers are intended for industrial design, prototype making and industrial preparation. HP Jet Fusion 3D 4200 will go on sale in late 2016 and HP Jet Fusion 3D 3200 in 2017.
Japanese Ricoh introduces the new 3D printers alongside the 3D printing service.
Ricoh has introduced a professional grade 3D printer, which gives manufacturers the ability to create use of durable parts, and thus enhance the implementation of prototypes. The device supports the PA and PP materials.
Ricoh AM S5500P uses additive SLS method.
In addition to the new 3D-printer, Ricoh is setting up a 3D printing service to England.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/09/uusia-3d-tulostimia-hp-ricoh-2/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Hackaday: Material Databases
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/09/ask-hackaday-material-databases/
With more and more previously industrial processes coming online in the home shop, people are finding that getting the information that was previously provided by the manufacturer of a hundred thousand dollar machine for their three hundred dollar Shenzen special is not easy.
A common example is this, a hacker purchased themselves a brand new 3D printer off amazon for a price too good to be true. After a week of tinkering with it, a small fire, and a few replacement parts later, they get it to work.
Most people find that the second spool of filament they feed into their printer doesn’t work at all. What’s the quickest way to get the right temperature, cooling, and feed settings for your printer configuration?
The goal of filaments.directory is to create a database of 3D printer materials and link that up with a user’s 3D printer settings.
https://www.filaments.directory/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Internal Structure For Better 3D Printed Objects
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/10/3d-internal-structure-for-better-3d-printed-objects/
Makerbot is in the gutter, 3D Systems and Stratasys stock is only a shadow of their 2014 glory, but this is the best year 3D printing has ever had. Machines are now good and cheap, there’s a variety of various thermoplastic filaments, and printing useful objects – instead of just plastic trinkets – is becoming commonplace.
There’s one area of 3D printing that hasn’t seen as much progress, and it’s the software stack. Slicing, the process of turning a 3D object into a Gcode file for a printer has been basically the same for the last few years. Dual extrusion is still a mess, and automated bed leveling is still in its infancy.
One aspect of slicing that has been severely overlooked is infill. Obviously, you don’t want to print plastic trinkets completely solid – only the outside surface matters, and a part with 100% infill is just a waste of plastic.
Right now, infill is generated in a slicer by specifying a percentage. Zero percent infill means a hollow object, and 100% infill is a completely solid part.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Review: Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/13/review-monoprice-mp-select-mini-3d-printer/
2016 is the year of the consumer 3D printer. Yes, the hype over 3D printing has died down since 2012. There were too many 3D printers at Maker Faire three years ago. Nevertheless, sales of 3D printers have never been stronger, the industry is growing, and the low-end machines are getting very, very good.
Printers are also getting cheap. At CES last January, Monoprice, the same company you buy Ethernet and HDMI cables from, introduced a line of 3D printers that would be released this year. While the $300 resin-based printer has been canned, Monoprice has released their MP Select Mini 3D printer for $200. This printer appeared on Monoprice late last month.
My curiosity was worth more than $200, so Hackaday readers get a review of the MP Select Mini 3D printer. The bottom line? There are some problems with this printer, but nothing that wouldn’t be found in printers that cost three times as much. This is a game-changing machine, and proof 2016 is the year of the entry-level consumer 3D printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open Source SLA Printer Software Slices from the Browser
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/13/open-source-sla-printer-software-slices-from-the-browser/
Resin-based SLA printers need a different slicing algorithm from “normal” melted-plastic printers. Following their latest hackathon, [Matt Keeter] and [Martin Galese] from Formlabs have polished off an open source slicer, and this one runs in your browser. It’s Javascript, so you can go test it out on their webpage.
Open Source Slicer for DLP 3D Printers
http://formlabs.com/stories/open-source-dlp-slicer/
At Formlabs, we get excited about all types of 3D printing. At the 2016 Hackathon—a 2-day event where employees could build anything—one team wrote a slicer for DLP 3D printers. This slicer is a web-based tool that accepts an STL file and turns it into a set of bitmaps representing individual layers. It’s completely client side and uses WebGL to do slicing quickly.
Formlabs is happy to release the slicer as an open source tool: the source code is hosted on GitHub and released under the MIT license. Although this program is not an industrial-strength tool, you can try it on your own DLP printer. Customize it by editing values in printer.js, or load your own models into the demo
https://github.com/formlabs/hackathon-slicer
Tomi Engdahl says:
Prusa Shows Us the New i3 MK2 3D Printer and Where the Community is Headed
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/15/prusa-shows-us-the-new-i3-mk2-3d-printer-and-where-the-community-is-headed/
Josef Prusa’s designs have always been trustworthy. He has a talent for scouring the body of work out there in the RepRap community, finding the most valuable innovations, and then blending them together along with some innovations of his own into something greater than the sum of its parts. So, it’s not hard to say, that once a feature shows up in one of his printers, it is the direction that printers are going. With the latest version of the often imitated Prusa i3 design, we can see what’s next.
As Prusa tells us in the video interview below (we caught up with him at the Microsoft booth at Maker Faire — a RepRap at the Microsoft booth!), The MK2 is packed with new features.
Auto Bed Leveling and Its Many Benefits
There’s been a big push for auto bed leveling in the industry. It’s my absolute favorite upgrade for my printer. In my mind, it transformed the printer.
Starting with servo motors moving limit switches into place, and ending with non-contact inductance sensors, the reprap community has been moving towards auto bed leveling for a while.
This along with a cold-corner compensating heated bed let Prusa ditch the glass or aluminum build surface common to 3D printers. This is a feature that has been making it into the industry for some time now
The Increased Buying Power of 3D Printer Ecosystem
When home 3D printing was just starting, things like cheap stepper motors and linear bearing were not as easily found. However, people have kept buying and building 3D printers. This has created a demand, and now there is a pretty good market for 3D printer components.
Another trend that’s showing up more and more at events like MRRF is the ability for manufacturers to purchase custom parts.
Price and Polish
Along with the improved supply chain, printers everywhere are seeing better and better hardware as they start to compete on Z-axis resolution and ringing in prints.
Conclusion
Prusa delivers again. If you want to get started in 3D printing or you want a kit printer that will just work; there are few choices as good as the MK2. Once you build an i3, it’s hard not to get hooked and move on to a more complex build like the deltas from SeeMeCNC.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What is 3D Printing?
The definitive guide to additive manufacturing
https://www.3dhubs.com/what-is-3d-printing
Every 3D print starts as a digital 3D design file – like a blueprint – for a physical object. Trying to print without a design file is like trying to print a document on a sheet of paper without a text file. This design file is sliced into thin layers which is then sent to the 3D printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mosaic Palette: Single Extruder Multi-Color and Multi-Material 3D Printing
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/20/mosaic-palette-single-extruder-multi-color-and-multi-material-3d-printing/
Lots of solutions have been proposed and enacted for multi-color and multi-material 3D printing, from color mixing in the nozzle to scripts requiring manual filament change. A solution proposed fairly early on was to manually splice the filament together, making a custom spool. The printer would print as normal, but the filament would change color. This worked pretty well, but it was tedious and it wasn’t entirely possible to control where the color change happened on the model.
You’ll find some examples of the more successful manual splicing hacks in the pictures below. Scroll down a bit further to find our interview with Mosaic Manufacturing at Bay Area Maker Faire 2016. They have a new product that automates the filament splicing process with precision as the ultimate goal. It unlocks a single extruder printer to behave like a multi-extruder model without stopping and starting.
http://www.mosaicmanufacturing.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arcus-3D-M1 – Full Color Filament Printer
Active mixing, fused filament fabrication 3D printer.
https://hackaday.io/project/3729-arcus-3d-m1-full-color-filament-printer
This is my ongoing effort to perfect a reliable active mixing filament printer.
Up to five filaments, controlled by gcode weights, can be combined into fully mixed result.
I can currently get a complete color change in approximately 20mm of 0.4mm extrusion.
This project has evolved over the last year from a junkstrap into a full color capable linear delta 3D printer.
The current design is based on a Beaglebone Black running a Machinekit velocity extrusion branch, and some custom code. The interface is published as a network service and can be accessed locally or remotely with an Android, Windows, or Linux client.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Skateboard Hackers Trick on 3D Printed Wheels
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/22/skateboard-hackers-trick-on-3d-printed-wheels/
The team over at [Braille Skateboarding] is willing to ride just about anything. This week they’re testing out 3D printed skateboard wheels. We’re not just talking rolling around here, the [Braille] team takes their experiments out to the skate park and gives them to the locals to test out. Tail whips, jumps, ollies, and grinds were on the agenda. The skaters were a bit apprehensive, as this is the third time they’ve tested 3D printed wheels.
3D PRINTED WHEELS THAT WORK!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-dli8g1JjU
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finland brings 3D printing to brain research
Finland experimenting with 3D printing for brain disease research. The project is part of Tekes’ health bits of program and involving six Finnish companies. Brain 3D printing project is led by Professor Jari Koistinaho AI Virtanen Institute.
This new 3D project aims to solve three key problems of brain disease treatment and diagnostics development: how the human brain disease can be reliably modeled, individual differences affect how the treatment can be identified and how the individual risk of disease can be identified at an early stage.
The project combines the pharmaceutical industry, bioinformatics and genetics, as well as woodworking equipment technology expertise in molecular and developmental biology and clinical medicine.
The project started in March 2016 and will continue until the autumn of 2018.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/23/suomi-3d-tulostuksen-aivotutkiimukseen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fully 3D printed rocket with 3D printed fuel
The entire rocket and the fuel are all made of 3D printed PLA.
https://hackaday.io/project/12437-fully-3d-printed-rocket-with-3d-printed-fuel
experimenting with making an entire rocket out of 3D printed PLA plastic. The fuel is also PLA, which I have discovered burns vigorously when supplied with sufficient oxygen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automating 3D Printers With Robots
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/27/automating-3d-printers-with-robots/
3D printers were never meant to be used for production. They’re not manufacturing machines, they’re prototyping machines. That doesn’t mean 3D printers can’t be used in a manufacturing context, it’s just very hard – you’d need someone manning a fleet of machines, or some sort of ‘automated build platform’ that won’t be invented for exactly fourteen years.
In the absence of someone paid to watch printers print, [Mark], [Robert], and [James] at tend.ai have created a way to manage a fleet of printers with a robot arm. It’s a robotic arm that automatically monitors the LCD on a rack full of 3D printers, plucks the finished prints off the bed, drops the parts in a box, and starts another print.
World’s first robotic 3D printing system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv_wrdx-FDI
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Zoetrope Sculpture squashes 4 Dimensions into 3
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/29/3d-printed-zoetrope-sculpture-squashes-4-dimensions-into-3/
This fascinating project manages to be both something new and something old done in a new way. Artist [Akinori Goto] has used 3D printing to create a sort of frameless zoetrope. It consists of a short animation of a human figure, but the 3D movements of that figure through time are “smeared” across a circular zone – instead of the movements of the figure being captured as individual figures or frames, they are combined into a single object, in a way squashing 4 dimensions into 3.
A Fascinating 3D-Printed Light-Based Zoetrope by Akinori Goto
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/06/a-fascinating-3d-printed-light-based-zoetrope-by-akinori-goto/
Tomi Engdahl says:
One Man’s Journey To Build Portable Concrete 3D Printer Produces Its First Tiny House
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/28/one-mans-journey-to-build-portable-concrete-3d-printer-produces-its-first-tiny-house/
[Alex Le Roux] want to 3D print houses. Rather than all the trouble we go through now, the contractor would make a foundation, set-up the 3D printer, feed it concrete, and go to lunch.
It’s by no means the first concrete printer we’ve covered, but the progress he’s made is really interesting. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s claimed to make the first livable structure in the United States. We’re not qualified to verify that statement, maybe a reader can help out, but that’s pretty cool!
Vesta Printer
http://concreteprinter.tumblr.com/
The Vesta Printer is a concrete 3D printer capable of printing housing units
(we just printed the first 3D printed house in the USA).
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP said it is buying the German companies David Vision Systems GmbH and David 3D Solutions, which make 3-D scanning technology.
HP previously announced plans to sell 3-D printers as well as a device called Sprout that can be used as a 3-D scanner.
Source: http://www.wsj.com/article_email/hp-inc-to-offer-personal-computers-as-a-service-1467322733-lMyQjAxMTE2MzM4MDIzMzA5Wj
Tomi Engdahl says:
Improving 3D Printed Gears with… Hot Water
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/03/improving-3d-printed-gears-with-hot-water/
Being able to print out custom gears is one area where 3D printing can really shine, and [Karl Lew] has been busy doing exactly that with pinion gears printed in PLA and mounted to stepper motor shafts, but there are tradeoffs. Pinion gears need to grip a motor shaft tightly – normally done with a screw through the gear and onto the motor shaft. But a motor and its shaft can get quite warm when doing a lot of work, and a tight screw on a hot motor’s shaft will transmit that heat into the PLA, which can then deform.
[Karl Lew] managed to improve things in an unusual way: using a hot water bath to anneal the gear while it is attached to the stepper shaft. Annealing PLA has the effect of increasing the crystallinity of the material, which – according to an article going into some detail about the process of annealing PLA – increases stiffness, strength, and heat deflection.
Anneal PLA
https://github.com/firepick/FireGear/wiki/Anneal-PLA
3D-printed PLA parts can be annealed at low temperatures (60-80°C) to crystallize the PLA. Crystallized PLA has a higher HDT (Heat Deflection Temperature), which is important for use with, for example, hot stepper motors. Standard uncrystallized 3DP PLA parts will deform at HDT temperatures as low as 135°F/57°C when subjected to stress. Raising the HDT prevents deformation and ensures that the 3DP part functions properly in use.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D-printed micro-optics
http://scottadams-tttt.tumblr.com/post/146766594801/top-tech-256-space-sensors-micro-optics
Researchers at University of Stuttgart in Germany have used an ultra short laser pulses to create optical lenses “which are hardly larger than a human hair.”
The 3D-printed lenses will “permit the construction of novel and extremely small endoscopes which are suited for smallest body openings or machine parts that can be inspected,” Nature reports.
The scientists also printed optical free form surfaces and miniature objectives directly onto CMOS image chips, and combined the optics with LED illumination systems.
Two-photon direct laser writing of ultracompact multi-lens objectives
http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2016.121.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Build A 3D Printer Workhorse, Not an Amazing Disappointment Machine
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/06/build-a-3d-printer-workhorse/
3D printers have become incredibly cheap, you can get a fully workable unit for $200 – even without throwing your money down a crowdfunded abyss. Looking at the folks who still buy kits or even build their own 3D printer from scratch, investing far more than those $200 and so many hours of work into a machine you can buy for cheap, the question “Why the heck would you do that?” may justifiably arise.
The answer is simple: DIY 3D printers done right are rugged workhorses. They work every single time, they never break, and even if: they are an inexhaustible source of spare parts for themselves. They have exactly the quality and functionality you build them to have. No clutter and nothing’s missing. However, the term DIY 3D printer, in its current commonly accepted use, actually means: the first and the last 3D printer someone ever built, which often ends in the amazing disappointment machine.
This post is dedicated to unlocking the full potential in all of these builds, and to turning almost any combination of threaded rods and plywood into a workshop-grade piece of equipment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Modding The Monoprice MP Mini Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/07/modding-the-monoprice-mp-mini-printer/
This almost unimaginably cheap 3D printer is proving to be exceptionally popular, and is in my opinion, a game-changing machine for the entire world of 3D printing.
The biggest, and most easy to fix problem with the MP Mini is poor temperature control. 3D printers use a PID controller to keep the temperature of the hotend and heated bed at a constant, accurate temperature.
The stock PID loop causes the temperature of the hot end to oscillate ±5 degrees from the set point. This is not good; bridging is already hard without a proper fan on this machine, and poor temperature control only makes it worse. The good news is, you can fix this with one simple Gcode command.
The stock hot end on the MP Mini is a bit of a mess.
Since the hotend uses a standard heater cartridge and a thermistor that bolts onto the heater block with a screw, that means an e3d hotend is a drop in replacement.
The stock bed on the MP Mini is an aluminum clad PCB. For the price, it’s an awesome achievement; you don’t actually need a glass bed to print on this machine – all you need is a little bit of masking tape.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the MP Mini is one that Monoprice isn’t putting on the spec sheet. This printer has WiFi, it has an ARM-based controller board, and it’s far more capable than anyone is letting on. [Matthew Upp] has managed to find the original manufacturer of this printer and get his hands on some firmware that adds WiFi printing to his machine:
This is the Model T of 3D printers. Like all consumer 3D printers today, the technological heart is extraordinarily simple – open loop stepper motors, no way for the printer to tell if filament is in the machine and coming out the nozzle, and very little in the way of making sure a print is coming out right.
Review: Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/13/review-monoprice-mp-select-mini-3d-printer/
Monoprice has released their MP Select Mini 3D printer for $200.
this printer lists Cura, Repetier-Host, ReplicatorG, and Simplify3D as the compatible software. This means that it speaks normal G-code.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Linear Stepper Motors
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/15/hackaday-prize-entry-linear-stepper-motors/
Today, your average desktop 3D printer is a mess of belts, leadscrews, and pulleys. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [DeepSOIC] is eliminating them entirely. How’s he doing this? With a linear stepper motor.
Search Google for ‘linear stepper motor’ and you’ll find a bunch of NEMA-bodied motors with leadscrews down the middle. This is not a linear stepper motor. This is a stepper motor with a leadscrew down the middle. The motor [DeepSOIC] has in mind is more like a mashup of a rack gear and a maglev train.
linear stepper motor 3d printer
Eliminate belts, pulleys, leadscrews.
https://hackaday.io/project/10537-linear-stepper-motor-3d-printer
I wonder, why isn’t everyone using linear stepper motors for 3d printers? At least, no 3d printer I’ve seen so far… Maybe they are simply too expensive?..
The plan: make a DIY linear stepper. Attach it to my printer. Try.
If you are wondering, what a linear stepper is – it’s just like regular stepper, unrolled.
Example: http://www.intellidrives.com/App-How-Linear-Stepper-Works
ordered ferromagnetic PLA
http://www.blackmagic3d.com/Magnetic-PLA-Filament-p/bm3d-175-mag.htm
I’m very excited about this material. Can make motors, magnets for speakers, maybe even transformers..
Why!! Why they don’t make ABS like this? PLA is perfect for printing, but it can only withstand +20-+30 deg.C temperature rise (with respect to ambient +20..+30). That’s nothing! ABS is +60..+70 deg.C rise, more than double! Nylon… well… so on…
I did a crude measurement of BlackMagic3D’s ferromagnetic filament, and got permeability of about 2. That is hopeless.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sonic 3D Printer Auto Bed Leveling Makes a Swoosh
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/18/sonic-3d-printer-auto-bed-leveling-makes-swoosh/
3D Printering: the final frontier. These are the voyages of another 3D printer hack. Its mission: to explore strange new ways of leveling a print bed.
So far, we’ve had servo probes, Allen key probes, Z-sled probes, inductive and capacitive contactless switches, just to name a few. All of them allow a 3D printer to probe its print bed, calculate a correction plane or mesh, and compensate for its own inherent, time variant, inaccuracies.
These sensors are typically mounted somewhere on the print head and introduce their own sensor offset, which has to be precisely calibrated for the whole thing to work.
Polish 3D printer manufacturer Zortrax uses a smarter approach: Conductive pads on the build plate. During the leveling procedure, the printing nozzle makes contact with these pads, which practically turns the nozzle itself into the probe
Makerbot patented a contact sensing solution based on force sensors
All these techniques are based on the detection of a brief contact between the printing nozzle and the build plate, and are therefore offset-free.
Compelled by the idea of eliminating the last manual calibration step, I wanted to make Zortrax’s method of contact sensing compatible with non-conductive PEI, Garolite and glass build plates.
I figured that I could just strap a sufficiently heat resistant piezo sensor to the print bed to sense the little knock the nozzle would make when it collides with the print bed. However, not much sound energy is released when a nozzle runs into a build plate at blazing 1 mm/s.
To fix this, I acquired a 10 W structure-borne sound exciter and attached it to the extruder.
For the required realtime DSP, I hooked up the piezo discs to a plain Teensy Audio Shield equipped with a Teensy 3.1, which practically completed the hardware portion of this project in one step. Using Paul Stoffregen’s amazing DSP library, it took only a few lines of code to run a 256 point FFT on the input signal and a few more to generate a time-averaged amplitude spectrum.
Teensy Audio Library
http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Audio.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printering: Non-Planar Layer FDM
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/27/3d-printering-non-planar-layer-fdm/
Non-planar layer Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is any form of fused deposition modeling where the 3D printed layers aren’t flat or of uniform thickness. For example, if you’re using mesh bed leveling on your 3D printer, you are already using non-planar layer FDM. But why stop at compensating for curved build plates? Non-planar layer FDM has more applications and there are quite a few projects out there exploring the possibilities. In this article, we are going to have a look at what the trick yields for us.
Smooth, Curved Surfaces
Non-planar-layer FDM allows for smooth, curved surfaces, which otherwise would show the typical staircase of discrete layers. Usually, I’m relying heavily on sand paper and spray filler to upgrade my 3D prints to Class-A, and I’ve been quite surprised by how smooth the non-planar test prints came out directly from the machine
Non-planar printed parts seem to be stronger than their planar counterparts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Formlabs Form 1+ API now available on Github
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/21/formlabs-form-1-api-now-available-on-github/
Since 2014, the Form 1+ has been serving a faithful community of avid resin-oriented 3D printer enthusiasts. With an API now released publicly on Github, it’s time for the Form 1+ to introduce itself to a crew of eager hardware hackers.
Exposing an interface to the printer opens the door to a world of possibilities. With the custom version of PreForm that arrives with this release, a whopping 39 different properties are open for tuning, according to the post on Reddit.
API for the Form 1 / 1+
https://github.com/formlabs/openfl
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Part Day: ST’s 32-Bit 3D Printer Controller
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/19/new-part-day-sts-32-bit-3d-printer-controller/
There are a few 32-bit ARM-based 3D printer controller boards out there such as the Smoothieboard, the Azteeg X5 mini, [Traumflug]’s Gen5 electronics, whatever board is in the Monoprice MP Mini Select, and several others I will be criticized for not mentioning. All of these ARM boards provide smoother acceleration, better control, and ultimately better prints from whatever 3D printer they’re controlling. Now, out of the blue, there’s a new board. It’s an evaluation board from ST — much like those famous Discovery boards — that sells itself as a plug and play solution for 3D printers.
As with all 3D printer controller boards, there are a few aspects that will leave users wanting more. This is a board meant for 12V heaters (except for the bed, which has a 24V, 20A output), and the stepper drivers can only go up to 16 microsteps. That said, there’s not much else to complain about. This offering comes with a 32-bit firmware called Marlin4ST.
STEVAL-3DP001V1
Evaluation board for 3D printer
http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/evaluation-tools/solution-evaluation-tools/computer-and-peripherals-solution-eval-boards/steval-3dp001v1.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printering: G-Code Post Processing With Perl
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/20/3d-printering-g-code-post-processing-with-perl/
Most of our beloved tools, such as Slic3r, Cura or KISSlicer, offer scripting interfaces that help a great deal if your existing 3D printing toolchain has yet to learn how to produce decent results with a five headed thermoplastic spitting hydra. Using scripts, it’s possible to tweak the little bits it takes to get great results, inserting wipe or prime towers and purge moves on the fly, and if your setup requires it, also control additional servos and solenoids for the flamethrowers.
This article gives you a short introduction in how to post-process G-code using Perl and Slic3r. Perl Ninja skills are not required.
http://manual.slic3r.org/advanced/post-processing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Get Subpixel Printing With a DLP 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/07/26/get-subpixel-printing-with-a-dlp-3d-printer/
A DLP 3D printer works by shining light into a vat of photosensitive polymer using a Digital Light Processing projector, curing a thin layer of the goo until a solid part has been built up. Generally, the resolution of the print is determined by the resolution of the projector, and by the composition of the polymer itself. But, a technique posted by Autodesk for their Ember DLP 3D Printer could allow you to essentially anti-alias your print, further increasing the effective resolution.
How to get sub-pixel resolution for DLP 3D printing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTAmPrHLow
Tomi Engdahl says:
A few months ago, [Sébastien] released SLAcer.js, a slicer for resin printers that works in the browser. You can’t test a slicer without a printer, so for the last few months, [Sébastien] has been building his own resin printer.
http://lautr3k.github.io/SLAcer.js/
https://hackaday.io/project/12791-utopiaprinter-sla
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: The Strength Of 3D Printed Parts
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/06/real-research-towards-an-experimentally-verifiable-model-of-fdm-3d-print-strength/
[Sam Barrett] is doing something that is sorely needed. He’s doing real materials research on FDM parts.
There’s nothing wrong with the rough experiments like hanging a 1 L bottle of water from the end of a rectangular test print to compare strengths. We also have our rules-of-thumb, like expecting the print to perform at 30% of injection molded strength. But these experiments are primitive and the guidelines are based on hearsay. Like early metallurgy or engineering; 3D printing is full of made-up stuff.
FDMProperties
Developing a simple, accurate model for the mechanical strength of 3D-printed material.
https://hackaday.io/project/12439-fdmproperties
Tomi Engdahl says:
Liquid Metals Aren’t Easy to 3D Print, But These Companies Are Doing it
http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=280936&cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20160714.tst004c
Germany-based precious metals expert Heraeus and Swedish startup Exmet have successfully 3D printed amorphous metals. This is no small feat: these materials, also called liquid metals or metallic glass, haven’t exactly been easy to produce using conventional manufacturing methods.
Why would you want to work with liquid metals? Because their combined characteristics aren’t found together in conventional metals, due to a different atomic structure. Most conventional metals are crystalline when solid, versus amorphous metals, which have a disordered, non-crystalline structure more like glass, created when metal cools very quickly. Compared to conventional metals, liquid metals are harder, more corrosion-resistant, and combine both high strength and malleability, said Tobias Caspari, head of 3D printing at Heraeus New Businesses.
Amorphous metals are scratch-proof and energy-absorbing, yet retain good spring characteristics. These qualities make them good for consumer electronics casings, diaphragms in injection nozzles, and dome tweeters for speakers.
their commercial success has been held back by inadequate manufacturing methods
Heraeus, which has been developing 3D printing metal powders for some time, has been experimenting with 3D-printing processes and metal powder materials in tandem because of the importance of matching the component to be printed with a specific metal powder and printing process.
“We are experimenting with mixtures of different substances and can thus do research into materials with new characteristics,”
It has already purchased two plants for 3D printing: an electron beam furnace and a 3D laser plant. With these, it can conduct smelting and printing trials with different materials.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D printing tool is all-in-one pen, precision solder, burner, and cutter
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/tech-edge/4442368/3D-printing-tool-is-all-in-one-pen–precision-solder–burner–and-cutter?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160713&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160713&elqTrackId=9979fdeed6584e2d89457f8c4f9523ab&elq=183f8c45a0d54dcaaf332a5c0cfea6b3&elqaid=33057&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28885
A refined, “smarter” version of the 3DSimo product that was released by the Czech company of the same name in October 2013, the much smaller 3DSimo Mini builds on the capabilities of the original 3DSimo as well as the capabilities of the world’s first 3D pen, the 3Doodler, which Engadget’s Brian Heater described as “a bit like a hot glue gun for plastic — simple and ingenious.” The 3DSimo also presses melted/quickly cooling plastic out of a die. It distinguishes itself, however, with added functionality.
“We created the 3DSimo Mini to be the ultimate creator’s tool,” says David Paskevic, CEO of 3DSimo. “It is more than a 3D printing pen. Immediate uses include extensions for burning, foam cutting, and soldering. In the future, we will incorporate additional functionality to the pen, such as drilling, making it a practical tool for creators of any skill set. The Mini is a tool that can be used for all creative projects.”
A late summer 2015 Kickstarter campaign raised almost $230,000 for the 3DSimo Mini
Pre-ordering is now available for a price of $109.
http://3dsimo.com/eshop/all
Tomi Engdahl says:
The First 3D Printer for Microfluidic Devices Allows One-Step Prototyping
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=280918&cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20160712.tst004c
Very often, manufactures need to create a very small number of microfluidic devices, and traditional methods simply don’t meet the need for short concept-to-chip times. In addition, many users require pumping fluids at pressures of up to many bar, and traditional 3D printers are not able to create devices that seal at such pressures.
“3D printers have existed for a long time, but to date there are no options that address the needs of the community of users that use fluids inside their 3D printed devices,” according to Dr. Omar Jina, Chief Commercial Officer for UK-based Dolomite Microfluidics. “Rapid prototyping of microfluidic devices in a one-step manufacturing process is a significant advancement for the industries that require these devices.”
Dolomite Microfluidics has created the first fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer that allows virtually anyone to make rapid prototypes of fluidically sealed devices using biocompatible cyclic olefin copolymer (COC).
“Fabrication techniques in the fluidic/microfluidic industry are too slow and expensive for a prototyping approach,” Dr. Jina told Design News. “There is a clear market need for a device able to fabricate prototypes in an efficient, cost-effective manner. Such a device would undoubtedly untangle the route to market in the milli- and micro- fluidic industry.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
In Paris Buying a 3D Printer is Cheaper than Renting Machine Time
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/08/in-paris-buying-a-3d-printer-is-cheaper-than-renting-machine-time/
Through a lot of trial and tribulation, I eventually discovered that the most cost-effective way to get the prints done… was to just buy a cheap 3D printer and run it into the ground.
I was spoiled by my hackerspace in Louisville, KY. They had enough 3D printers to go around and the pricing was fixed at 10 cents a gram. For the amount of printing I needed, this would be a perfectly economical arrangement.
What I’ve discovered is this: If you need things like a water jet cutter, welding station, or a 50 grand CNC machine, Techshop is a really economical way to get access to and play with tools like that. However, if all you want is access to a laser cutter and a 3D printer, it will set you back five-hundred dollars and you’ll have to jump through some incredibly annoying hoops just to get access to them.
See, most pieces of equipment at a Techshop need to be reserved. Only the 150 euro and 300 euro a month membership tiers can reserve equipment.
To be able to touch the printers required a two-hour course with a 100 euros fee. The filament also ran 65 euro per 500 g. My printing needs would easily cost me tens of hours in travel and had a starting fee of 400 euros to be workable.
The last avenue available to me aside from 3D printer ownership was contracting someone with a 3D printer to run my prints for me. However, after asking around I found the service to be quite expensive.
That left me with one option. Which, honestly, sounded absolutely insane for someone visiting a country for a few months. Buy a printer. It’s an indication of the state of 3D printing that the price has come down so far that buying a printer is more economical than having someone do it for you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building Lab Instruments One Block at a Time
https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/38752
3D-printed, Lego-like system developed at UCR can be used by researchers, students and clinicians to build lab tools easily and affordably
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Trove Of 3D Printer Filament Test Data
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/13/a-trove-of-3d-printer-filament-test-data/
http://thrinter.com/filaments/
http://thrinter.com/12-yellow-filaments/
http://thrinter.com/10-transparent-filaments/
http://thrinter.com/walters-filament-collection-pla/
http://thrinter.com/walters-filament-collection-abs/
http://thrinter.com/walters-filament-collection-nylon/
http://thrinter.com/walters-filament-collection-metal/
http://thrinter.com/walters-filament-collection-wood/
http://thrinter.com/walters-filament-collection-other/
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/05/filament-thickness-sensors-what-are-they-and-what-are-they-good-for/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Worldwide Spending on 3D Printing Expected to Surpass $35 Billion in 2020, According to IDC
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/worldwide-spending-3d-printing-expected-184900318.html
A recent update to the Worldwide Semiannual 3D Printing Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts global revenues for the 3D printing market to reach $35.4 billion in 2020. This is more than double the $15.9 billion in revenues forecast for 2016 and represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.1% over the 2015-2020 forecast period.
While 3D printers and materials will represent nearly half the total worldwide revenues throughout the forecast, software and related services will also experience significant growth. Revenues for computer-aided design (CAD) software are forecast to triple over the five-year forecast period while the market for on-demand parts services will nearly match this growth. The gains in both software and on-demand parts printing are being driven by the rapidly expanding use of 3D printing for design prototyping and products that require a high degree of customization in non-traditional environments.
The use cases that will generate the largest revenues for 3D printing in 2016 are Automotive Design – Rapid Prototype Printing (more than $4.0 billion) and Aerospace and Defense Parts Printing (nearly $2.4 billion). Dental Printing has also emerged as a strong opportunity in 2016.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fail Of The Week: How NOT To Smooth A 3D Print
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/16/fail-of-the-week-how-not-to-smooth-a-3d-print/
Many of the Fail Of The Week stories we feature here are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. At worse, gears are ground, bits are broken, or the Magic Blue Smoke is released. This attempt to smooth a 3D print released far more than a puff of blue smoke, and was nearly a disaster of insurance adjuster or medical examiner proportions.
Luckily, [Maxloader] and his wife escaped serious injury, and their house came out mostly unscathed.
the dearly departed Mario print was in PLA, which is best smoothed with tetrahydrofuran, not acetone.
TIFU by almost burning my house down trying to smooth out a 3D print
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/4xyuz6/tifu_by_almost_burning_my_house_down_trying_to/
I recently got myself a 3D printer and some filament and got printing. Somewhere i had read that if you want to smooth out prints you can do an acetone vapor treatment in a closed container. This would take a couple of hours at room temperature, but i also read that if you heat up the acetone that it can be done in just minutes.
So off i went to get some acetone from the local hardware store and put half a centimeter of the fluid into a large cooking pan. When i told my wife that acetone was highly flammable, she had the bright idea to get the fire-blanket read ‘just in case’.
I literally had created a rocket engine on my stove (no joke). This is really what it looked like and how it sounded.
So yeah i almost burned my house down. I got myself a new blanket and also a fire extinguisher the next day.
Funny thing is, that i printed Mario with PLA plastic and that PLA doesn’t react with acetone. So my plan wouldn’t work anyway
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lego-Like Chemistry and Biology Erector Set
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/17/lego-like-chemistry-and-biology-erector-set/
A team of researchers and students at the University of California, Riverside has created a Lego-like system of blocks that enables users to custom build chemical and biological research instruments. The system of 3D-printed blocks can create a variety of scientific tools.
The blocks, which are called Multifluidic Evolutionary Components (MECs) appeared in the journal PLOS ONE. Each block in the system performs a basic lab instrument task (pumping fluids, making measurements or interfacing with a user, for example). Since the blocks are designed to work together, users can build apparatus — like bioreactors for making alternative fuels or acid-base titration tools for high school chemistry classes — rapidly and efficiently.
Building Lab Instruments One Block at a Time
https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/38752
3D-printed, Lego-like system developed at UCR can be used by researchers, students and clinicians to build lab tools easily and affordably
Tomi Engdahl says:
New 3D Printer M3D Pro Hits Kickstarter
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/18/new-3d-printer-m3d-pro-hits-kickstarter/
M3D just launched their second 3D printer on Kickstarter. The M3D Pro offers more professional features than its predecessor, the M3D Micro, which is still one of cheapest 3D printers around. Despite the higher price of $499, the campaign reached its $100,000 funding goal within hours.
The M3D Pro lures advanced users with a heated print bed from tempered glass, a larger build volume of 191 x 178 x 178 mm (7.5 x 7 x 7 inches) and a full-metal hotend that stands up to 270 °C. With 80 mm/s printing speed and 150 mm/s for travel moves, the Pro is notably faster than the Micro.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/m3d/m3d-pro-feature-packed-3d-printer-for-improved-rel
Tomi Engdahl says:
Full Color 3D Printer Upgrade Leaves Competition In The Dust
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/18/full-color-3d-printer-upgrade-leaves-competition-in-the-dust/
Most hobby 3D printers are based on FDM, extruding a single-color noodle of melted plastic to build up an object. Powder-based inkjet 3D printing allows you to print detailed, full-color models from a plaster-like material. The process uses ink and water droplets, dispensed from an inkjet print head to selectively fuse and color layers of a powdered binder material. When you see an offer for a 3D printed miniature version of yourself (or someone else), they are made with powder. [Aad van der Geest] wants to put this technology on your desktop with ColorPod, a kit that converts your FDM printer into a powder printer.
On the hardware side, his solution consists of a special printhead — shown in the header image — that mounts next to the extruder nozzle of an FDM machine. The printhead features a powder dispensing mechanism and two off-the-shelf HP inkjet cartridges.
The powder dispenser employs a pager motor to sprinkle down fine layers of PVA powder while a spinning roller to evens them out.
With the hardware working, [Aad] now sells his add-on kit for $488 ($349 for the PCB and $139 for the rest of the kit). Looking at the commercially available powder bed alternatives, [Aad’s] desktop-capable solution is underbidding the competition by about $50k.
ColorPod
https://www.tindie.com/products/spitstec/colorpod-/
The CororPod converts a reprap style filament 3d printer to a full color powder printer.
The ColorPod is a novel device that extents a regular 3D printer with the capability of printing full color 3D models. The unit prints full color 3D objects by dispensing powder and colored liquid droplets. It creates a model in a heap of powder on the build plate. It can be used with most popular 3D printers. The ColorPod comes with fully functional PC software supporting both STL and OBJ 3D model files.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Prints for Teachers of the Visually Impaired
https://hackaday.io/project/11312-3d-prints-for-teachers-of-the-visually-impaired
Visually impaired students can make great use of 3D prints to learn just about any subject, but their teachers need help making good models.