3D printing glass in the desert. If you were stuck in the desert & only had one provision to choose from, what would it be?
Well if your name is Markus Kayser you’d likely take your solar sintering 3D printer of course! The abundance of sand and sunlight in this environment provides both raw materials and energy. Allowing any failed mutineer or downed pilot to make nearly any provisions they could ever dream of! “By using the sun’s rays instead of a laser and sand instead of resins, I had the basis of an entirely new solar-powered machine and production process for making glass objects that taps into the abundant supplies of sun and sand to be found in the deserts of the world.” – Kayser Video and further images after the jump… This printing method employs no bonding agents nor synthetic support material – only using the raw materials readily available.
Kayser concisely sums up his project: Metal Laser-Sintering Systems. Gigantic Home-Designed 3D Printer. 3D Printing Featured On Science Friday. Science Friday's Flora Lichtman visits 3D Printer designer Jim Smith and his extraordinary new device at his workshop.
Erm, his living room. Now we finally understand why Jim decided to include a fume extractor on his printer! Jim explains in basic terms what a 3D printer does and how it works, pointing out the relevant features. Of interest to the reporter, however were safety concerns: the exposed ultra-hot print bed and not-so-nice ABS fumes. Scifri Videos: Extreme DIY: Homemade 3D Printer. Grass Roots Engineering. 3D Loom Printer. 3D loom weaves parts for supercar. Sandrine Ceurstemont, video producer It's a sports car few people will be able to get their hands on.
In production since last December, only 500 Lexus LFAs will be produced and they were already sold out in early June 2010 (see photo below). Welcome to MakerBot - MakerBot Industries. A Look Inside the V-Flash. During our recent visit to 3D Systems we managed to get a look deep inside one of their intermediate-level 3D printers: the V-Flash.
This device uses a unique method of deploying build material that results in the object being built upside down! Upside down or not, the printed results are of extremely high accuracy. The V-Flash uses a liquid resin approach, in which a layer of resin is instantly solidified with a high-intensity flash of light (hence the product name). The unique feature is how the resin is applied. Imagine the following: The advantages of this approach are several: Extreme accuracy is possible, because the resolution of the layer is equal to the light projectionClean operation without waste occurs because the resin is applied directly from the reservoir and returned if not "flashed"Quick prints because an entire layer is built in one flash. V-Flash Personal 3D Printer. Very Large 3D Printing System VX4000. Very Large 3d-printer. Voxeljet's innovative 3D printers are the perfect choice for the fully automatic manufacture of high-quality components from particulate material, without the use of tools.
We manufacture the machines with a high degree of vertical integration at our Augsburg plant. The printers combine durability with reliability even under the harshest industrial conditions. Thanks to their increased printing capacity, our high-performance machines are also among the fastest 3D printers available on the market. The VX4000 voxeljet series are also the best with regard to another aspect: With dimensions of 4000 x 2000 x 1000 millimetres, the machine offers the biggest build space in its class, and thus allows for the production of large-volume 3D models.
Voxeljet. The Mysterious BluePrinter - Fabbaloo Blog - Fabbaloo. We've found another 3D printer manufacturer: the Denmark-based BluePrinter, but we can't tell you much about it.
The only information is a one-page website that not only includes the logo above, but also this enticing description: Blueprinter develops a 3D printer, which is based on Selective Heat Sintering (SHS). The proprietary SHS technology produces high grade 3D prints similar to SLS but in a more robust, simple and affordable way. Now this sounds interesting. Blueprinter 3D printing, Heat Sintering. What? Free 3D Prionters. OBJET's PolyJet Technology more then one material. We're written about OBJET's amazing PolyJet technology before, but recently we ran across a great video that shows several truly interesting applications of this feature.
For those who haven't heard of it, PolyJet enables the printer to use more than one kind of material during a single print run. In other words, you might have soft and hard portions on one model. Of course, you could attempt this on other printers, but you'd end up doing multiple print runs and assembling a bunch of parts afterwards. Worse, there are probably some designs you simply cannot do unless you print them in a single run. Consider this example, where an entire bike was printed - including soft wheels and a hard frame. Or this truly amazing example of the technology, where the solid bones of a foot are printed inside of a "fleshy" material, producing a truly amazing medical model. Others are also testing the technology, as we can see with Zebedee above here.
Via YouTube, GodMode and Life and the Feeding Edge. Craftsman woodworking CompuCarve in Your Garage! Head down to your local Sears store Right Now and pick up a new Craftsman CompuCarve Computer-Controlled Compact Woodworking Machine for only US$1799!
This device uses specialized MAC or PC software that loads models onto a special memory card. The card is then inserted into the CompuCarve so that your PC doesn't have to get near the workshop-environment printer. CompuCarve uses a subtractive approach, where you load in a hunk of soft plastic or perhaps wood. It is then subjected to various common wordworking processes such as mitering or routing and your object is gradually revealed as material is stripped away. 3D Printer Found in Department Store! - Fabbaloo Blog - Fabbaloo. Yes, this is real!
A Make Magazine reader posted pictures and description of this Dimension printer found at Toronto's Umbra Concept Store. Evidently visitors can drop by to see the printer creating objects for Umbra's designers - who are occasionally present to answer questions. I'm not sure how successful this concept would be for drop-in customer prints, like Kinko's does for 2D print; customers would need some chairs to sit in while awaiting their objects for eight or ten hours. Or maybe even some sleeping bags... The Make posting's most amusing bit was the comment from Jimmy Smits, who said: RapMan Goes Pro.
3D Printer Software. Desk Top sized. Dimension Releases the 1200es Series - Fabbaloo Blog - Fabbaloo. Dimension 3D Printing Group (a unit of Stratasys) has made available two new 3D Printers: 1200es BST ($26,000)1200es SST ($34,900) The two key highlights of the 1200es series: A relatively large 10x10x12 inch build chamber (254 x 254 x 305 mm).
(For comparison, the DesktopFactory 125ci has a 5x5x5 build chamber)A special print media - ABSPlus, which is claimed to be some 40% stronger than their previous media. Obviously, your objects will be quite a bit more robust with this media. Nope, this isn't quite for home use, unless you have a bit more space on your workbench than we at Fabbaloo do! Via BusinessWire.com and DimensionPrinting. The Mosaic 3D Printer - Fabbaloo Blog - Fabbaloo. MakerGear, that wonderful online source for all kinds of 3D printing goodness, launched the Mosaic 3D Printer this past summer. The Mosaic is similar to several other inexpensive 3D printer kits.
This item comes in three forms: The basic kit, for USD$799The "Plus" version for USD$999, which adds a heated build platform and completely assembled electronicsThe assembled version for USD$1499. The Objet Connex350 - Fabbaloo Blog - Fabbaloo. Today Objet announces their newest printer, the Connex350, joining the Connex500 in Objet's flagship product line.
Like the earlier Connex500, the new Connex350 has the unique ability to print with multiple materials, and we don't mean that you stop the print, change the cartridges and resume printing with that other squishy material. No, these devices actually hold several cartridges of different materials and can deposit them all during a single print operation. How do they do this? Both devices have eight print heads and four sealed 3.6kg cartridges, into which you can load a variety of different materials. and continuously run for a very long time. 3D Printed Fiberglass. More on the Solidoodle 3D Printer - Fabbaloo Blog - Fabbaloo. After yesterday's post on the new Solidoodle 3D printer, we spoke with team leader Sam Cervantes, who answered some key questions were pondering. Fabbaloo: Why another 3D printer? Aren't there several for sale already? What makes Solidoodle different? Sam Cervantes: Some people love to put complicated machines together and that's great - it's a fun experience and I highly recommend it.
If you like building electro-mechanical machines as much as you like to print, then I recommend you check out a MakerGear Mosaic or a MakerBot Thingomatic, which are both great machines. Antennae. There's Another Stereolithography Vat In Town - Fabbaloo Blog - Fabbaloo. While we're on the topic of giant stereolithography printers, we've just been tipped onto a video of another. This one is the iPro 9000 XL, evidently the largest commmercially available SL system. Amazingly, the build chamber is a 59 inch long vat full of liquid manufacturing media.
Somehow we just don't find SL videos as visually interesting as other 3D deposition techniques. That's because all you see during the printing process is the laser dancing over the liquid media vat, while the printed object is developed out of view under the liquid surface. However, there is a dramatic moment when the object rises magically out of the fluid, as if it is being created at that instant.