3D printing is hot

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.

2,052 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Printering: Water-Cooled Hotends
    https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/3d-printering-water-cooled-hotends/

    There’s an old joke about the Thermos bottle that keeps things hot and cold, so someone loaded it with soup and ice cream. That joke is a little close to home when it comes to FDM 3D printers.

    You want to melt plastic, of course, or things won’t print, so you need heat. But if the plastic filament gets hot too early, it will get soft, expand, and jam. Heat crawling up the hot end like this is known as heat creep and there are a variety of ways that hot ends try to cope with the need to be hot and cold at the same time. Most hotends today are air-cooled with a small fan. But water-cooled hotends have been around for a while and are showing up more and more. Is it a gimmick? Are you using, planning to use, or have used (and abandoned) water cooling on your hot end?

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Printing Goes Near Infrared
    https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/3d-printing-goes-near-infrared/

    Researchers at the University of Texas have been experimenting with optical 3D printing using near infrared (NIR) light instead of the more traditional ultraviolet. They claim to have a proof of concept and, apparently, using NIR has many advantages. The actual paper is paywalled, but there are several good summaries, including one from [3D Printing Industry].

    UV light degrades certain materials and easily scatters in some media. However, decreasing the wavelength of light used in 3D printing has its own problems, notably less resolution and slower curing speed. To combat this, the researchers used an NIR-absorbant cyanine dye that exhibits rapid photocuring. The team reports times of 60 seconds per layer and resolution as high as 300 micrometers. Nanoparticles in the resin allow tuning of the part’s appearance and properties.

    Next-generation 3D printing method proof of concept published
    https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/next-generation-3d-printing-method-proof-of-concept-published-203224/

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  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Conveyor Belt Printer Mod Is Nearly All Printed
    https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/conveyor-belt-printer-mod-is-nearly-all-printed/

    [Call Me Swal] wanted to experiment with large 3D prints. So he took a Hornet 3D printer and designed a lot of 3D parts to convert it into an “infinite” conveyor belt printer. It looks like — as you can see in the video below — that all the parts are 3D printed but you will still need to buy material for the actual belt.

    Of course, you may not have a Hornet, but the idea would be applicable to just about any similar printer. You’d have to, of course, adapt or redesign the parts.

    https://workbench.grabcad.com/workbench/projects/gcrHAT38NfZQu4oat4sHk3-AmwWRcN0bsbNID3e-RBKutN#/space/gcM1a6sAM3-5xPhVuC2xhwSpQXkVfuiPFueX-V44tka35n/folder/11452669

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  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Resin-Printed Gears Versus PLA: Which Is Tougher?
    https://hackaday.com/2022/02/10/resin-printed-gears-versus-pla-which-is-tougher/

    When it comes to making gearboxes, 3D printing has the benefit that it lets you whip up whatever strange gears you might need without a whole lot of hunting around at obscure gear suppliers. This is particularly good for those outside the limited radius served by McMaster Carr. When it came to 3D printed gears though, [Michael Rechtin] wondered whether PLA or resin-printed gears performed better, and decided to investigate.

    The subject of the test is a 3D-printed compound planetary gearbox, designed for a NEMA-17 motor with an 80:1 reduction. The FDM printer was a Creality CR10S, while the Creality LD02-H was on resin duty.

    The resin gearbox failed relatively quickly, and dissection indicated some of the internal gears had failed. A reprint with stronger resin was done, and the test begun again. This time, each gearbox lasted over 500 cycles without issues, but the resin gearbox failed shortly after, wiggling about before jamming up for good. Opening the gearbox led to broken teeth and powdered resin falling out. Meanwhile, the PLA gearbox showed very little wear despite the repetitive test.

    Thus, if you’re looking to put serious loads through your 3D printed gearbox, you probably want to go with PLA or another FDM material rather than resin. This result is unsurprising, as a general rule of thumb is that resin prints are more brittle than their FDM counterparts.

    3D Printed Planetary Gearbox! Resin vs FDM Printing?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9P5LBQqgFo

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  5. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Printing Tiny Metal Parts
    https://hackaday.com/2022/02/14/3d-printing-tiny-metal-parts/

    It may sound like a pop band, but μ-WAAM is actually a 3D printing technique for making small metal parts from the NOVA University Lisbon. Of course, WAAM stands for wire arc additive manufacturing, a well-known technique for 3D printing in metal. The difference? The new technique uses 250 μm wire stock instead of the 1mm or thicker wires used in conventional WAAM.

    Micro wire and arc additive manufacturing (µ-WAAM)
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277236902200007X?via%3Dihub#!

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  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How far can a 3d printer “bridge”???
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4i1SbIIMaA

    How far can the Creality Ender 3 or CR10 Bridge? In this video we will find out. Bridging is possible because of the tensile strength of the filament. As long as the extruder is “pulling” the filament the 3d printer can print horizontally in mid-air.

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  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How a 3DBenchy can tell where your 3D prints need improvement
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_7EMnQ6Rlc

    The 3DBenchy is a tremendously popular item to 3D print. In this video we look at why this is, as well as how to use it as a serious benchmarking tool to improve your 3D printers. We also touch on the #speedboatrace challenge, a competition to print 3DBenchy as fast as possible.

    3DBenchy on Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:763622
    3DBenchy guide: http://www.3dbenchy.com/features/

    Reply
  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Printing Basics: When things go wrong! (Ep9)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-CMotQ-nqI

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  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Printing Livers
    https://hackaday.com/2022/02/21/3d-printing-livers/

    The University of Utrecht has a team that is successfully bioprinting “liver units” that are able to do some of the functions of a human liver and may open the door to new medical treatments. This isn’t simply printing a fake liver in a jar though, instead the technique uses optical tomography to rapidly create small structures of about 1 cc of volume in less than 20 seconds.

    Apparently, one problem with printing hydrogels full of biological structures is that passing them through a nozzle tends to disturb the delicate structures. This technique uses no nozzle or layers, which makes it useful in this situation.

    Volumetric Bioprinting of Organoids and Optically Tuned Hydrogels to Build Liver-Like Metabolic Biofactories
    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.202110054

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  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Bend Your Vase Mode Prints By Hacking The GCode
    https://hackaday.com/2022/02/22/bend-your-vase-mode-prints-by-hacking-the-gcode/

    [Stefan] from CNCKitchen wanted to make some bendy tubes for a window-mountable ball run, and rather than coming up with some bent tube models, it seemed there might be a different way to achieve the desired outcome. Starting with a simple tube model designed to be quickly printed in vase mode, he wrote a Python script which read in the G-Code, and modified it allow it to be bent along a spline path.

    Vase mode works by slowly ramping up the Z-axis as the extruder follows the object outline, but the slicing process is still essentially the same, with the object sliced in a plane parallel to the bed. Whilst this non-planar method moves the Z-axis in sync with the horizontal motion (although currently limited to only one plane of distortion, which simplifies the maths a bit) it is we guess still technically a planar solution, but just an inclined plane. But we digress, non-planar in this context merely means not parallel to the bed, and we’ll roll with that.

    https://www.cnckitchen.com/blog/non-planar-3d-printing-by-bending-g-code

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  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Truth About 3D Printed Homes
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m46QekDm0oY

    The Truth About 3D Printed Homes. The first 500 people who click on the link will get 25% OFF a Fabulous subscription! https://thefab.co/undecided. Faster, cheaper, greener. 3D printing may reshape the world canvas for good. Like many inventions, 3D printed homes been hyped up over the last few years. Like the Icon 3D printed homes in Austin, Texas. But what if I told you that Italian architects designed the world’s first 3D printed house out of dirt…yep, dirt. Clearly, the hype hasn’t bitten the dust yet. Let’s take a closer look at what 3D printing means for the future of building sustainable homes and if 3d printed homes are all they’re cracked up to be.

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  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Modular heating bed for 3D printer
    Modular heating bed for 3d printer
    https://hackaday.io/project/183842-modular-heating-bed-for-3d-printer

    Each bed segment can be discretely controlled with its own heater circuit, you no longer have to heat up the entire bed for smaller prints.

    there are 3*3 separate zones each one have a thermistor that not only heating separately but also more even in heating than the normal print bed that have only one thermistor.

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  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The 3D Printed Car Tire Rim Finally Hits The Road, Sorta
    https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/the-3d-printed-car-tire-rim-finally-hits-the-road-sorta/

    When you think of “car rim” you probably think stamped steel or machined alloy with a sturdy drum to withstand the arduous life of the road, not something 3D printed out of ABS. That would be crazy, right? Not to [Jón Schone] from Proper Printing, who’s recently released an update about his long-term quest to outfit his older sedan with extruded rims.

    There were a few initial attempts that didn’t go as well as hoped. The main issue was layer separation as the air pressure would stretch the piece out, forming bubbles. He increased the thickness to the absolute maximum he could. A quick 3D scan of the brake caliper gave him a precise model to make sure he didn’t go too far. He also couldn’t make the rim any bigger to fit a bigger wheel to clear the caliper, as he was already maxing out his impressive 420 mm build volume from his modified Creality printer.

    Is it possible to drive on a 3D printed rim?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lnvv-khE6Y

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  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Gaskets, Can They Be 3D Printed?
    https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/gaskets-can-they-be-3d-printed/

    Can you 3D print gaskets? Should you?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgr2VkYESw

    Making gaskets in the home shop is something we all need to do from time to time. I found others using 3D printers to make gaskets from plastic but not just any plastic. In this video I make and test some 3D printed TPU gaskets in real world situations relevant to home shop guys. From fuel resistance to heat tolerance, I take a look at how these TPU gaskets hold up.

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  15. Tomi Engdahl says:

    TMC2208 Vs A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Sound Level Comparison
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx40lJkk9NQ

    TMC2208 stepper motor drivers are a popular choice for reducing the stepper motor noise on 3D printers and laser cutters, particularly because they are able to easily replace the A4988 drivers which are commonly used. I wanted to test them out against the A4988 drivers to see how much quieter they actually are. The results were quite surprising!

    Here’s a link to the write up of the test –

    https://www.the-diy-life.com/tmc2208-vs-a4988-stepper-motor-driver-sound-level-comparison/

    Reply
  16. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D printing specialists MakerBot and Ultimaker have agreed to a merger in a deal which brings the newly-formed combined company an impressive $62.4 million in venture capital — and with Nadav Goshen and Jürgen von Hollen to act as co-chief executives.

    MakerBot, Ultimaker Announce Their Merger — and a Whopping $62.4 Million in New Funding
    https://www.hackster.io/news/makerbot-ultimaker-announce-their-merger-and-a-whopping-62-4-million-in-new-funding-42756b7ca6f8

    Current chief executives to act in concert, with MakerBot’s Nadav Goshen to concentrate on R&D and general operations.

    Reply
  17. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Open Database Shares Resin 3D Printing Settings
    https://hackaday.com/2022/05/13/open-database-shares-resin-3d-printing-settings/

    3D printing is much like CNC milling or welding or just about any physical manufacturing process, in that good results fundamentally come down to having the right settings. In an effort to aid those working in the resin printing space, [Adam Bute] has put together a community database of resin printing settings.

    https://makertrainer.com/wiki/All_resin_settings

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  18. Tomi Engdahl says:

    To automate the production of several small parts, Brian Brocken created an Arduino-controlled Delta 3D printer system with a conveyor belt: https://youtu.be/8IoehlRmaUs

    Reply
  19. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D-Printed Captain Crunch Bosun Whistle
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YG1nPqZZB4E

    This 3D print is interesting because the original whistle is kind of infamous – John Draper (Captain Crunch) discovered that the frequency of one of the two tones was 2600hz – perfect for tricking pay phones to transition from toll free to “paid” without requiring payment.

    The 3D printed version probably isn’t as accurate, but it makes a tone quite nicely and it’s a cool artifact to add to the collection

    Reply
  20. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Tame Your Flexible Filaments With This Belt-Drive Extruder
    https://hackaday.com/2022/05/25/tame-your-flexible-filaments-with-this-belt-drive-extruder/

    Proper Printing] clearly enjoys pushing the boundaries of 3D printed materials, and sometimes this requires building custom 3D printers or at least the business end of them. Flexible filaments can be a bit of a pain to deal with, simply because most extruders are designed to push the filament into the hot end with a simple hobbed bolt (or pinch roller setup) and only work reliably due the rigidity of the plastic itself. Once you go flexible, the rigidity is reduced and the filament often deflects sideways and the extruder jams. The longer the filament path leading to the hotend, the harder it gets. The dual belt drive extruder (they’re calling it ‘proper extruder’) grips the filament on two sides with a pair of supported belts, guiding it into the hotend without allowing it to deflect sideways. The extruder body and gears were resin printed (but, we checked — the design is suitable for FDM printing as well) proving that resin printing on modern printers, does indeed maintain adequate dimensional accuracy allowing the building of mechanisms, despite the naysayers!

    Reply
  21. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Print Glass With A Laser Cutter
    https://hackaday.com/2022/05/28/3d-print-glass-with-a-laser-cutter/

    We’re all familiar with FDM 3D printing, and some of the more well-heeled or adventurous among us may even have taken a faltering step into the world of SLA printers. But for most of us there’s a step further in 3D printing that remains beyond our reach. SLS, or Selective Laser Sintering, creates prints from powder by melting it layer by layer using a laser, and has the advantage of opening up more useful materials than the polymer stock of the other methods. It’s not entirely unreachable though, as [Kenneth Hawthorn] shows us by using a laser cutter to produce SLS prints from powdered glass.

    He evolved the technique of repeated fast passes with the laser to gradually melt more glass together as opposed to slower passes. He achieved a resolution as low as 0.1 mm, though he found a better glass color when the laser was less tightly focused. It raises the concern that glass powder is abrasive and thus a threat to any mechanism, thus he’s being extremely careful with the fan settings.

    Using a Laser Cutter as a 3D printer for glass
    https://makerawaker.com/f/using-a-laser-cutter-as-a-3d-printer-for-glass

    Reply
  22. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Printing With Sound, Directly
    https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/3d-printing-with-sound-directly/

    Canadian researchers at Concordia University want to change how you do 3D printing. Instead of using light or thermal mechanisms, they propose using ultrasound-activated sonochemical reactions. Sounds wild? You can see a video about it below, or read the paper in Nature.

    The idea is that sound causes bubbles of cavitation. This requires a focused ultrasonic beam which means you can actually print through items that are transparent to ultrasonic energy. Wherever the cavitation bubbles form, liquid polymer turns solid.

    Using sound for 3D printing
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97vaWUhc3Eo&t=1s

    Reply
  23. Tomi Engdahl says:

    SolidCore CoreXY 3D Printer
    Modular and Scalable CoreXY 3D Printer
    https://hackaday.io/project/171316-solidcore-corexy-3d-printer

    Reply
  24. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3D Printering: Today’s Resins Can Meet Your Needs
    https://hackaday.com/2022/06/13/3d-printering-todays-resins-can-meet-your-needs/

    Filament-based 3D printers spent a long time at the developmental forefront for hobbyists, but resin-based printers have absolutely done a lot of catching up, and so have the resins they use. It used to be broadly true that resin prints looked great but were brittle, but that’s really not the case anymore.

    A bigger variety of resins and properties are available to hobbyists than ever before, so if that’s what’s been keeping you away, it’s maybe time for another look. There are tough resins, there are stiff resins, there are heat-resistant resins, and more. Some make casting easy, and some are even flexible. If your part or application needs a particular property, there is probably a resin for it out there.

    Reply
  25. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Recreator 3D PET#1 Pultrusion Unit
    https://hackaday.io/project/185867-the-recreator-3d-pet1-pultrusion-unit

    Strip down PET#1 Recyclable plastic bottles.
    Convert into new usable 3D filament.
    Load up your favorite 3D printer and recreate!

    Reply
  26. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Engineers create single-step, all-in-one 3D printing method to make robotic materials
    https://techxplore.com/news/2022-06-single-step-all-in-one-3d-method-robotic.html

    Reply
  27. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Polyformer – Ideal Filament Recycler
    https://hackaday.io/project/185304-polyformer-ideal-filament-recycler

    The ideal machine for recycling plastic bottles into 3D printer filament. Designed for developing countries and remote communities.

    Reply
  28. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Automatic Infinite 3D Printer
    The Automatic Infinite 3D Printer (i3D) gives anyone the power of a factory.
    https://hackaday.io/project/114738-automatic-infinite-3d-printer

    Reply

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