3d printing
< TECHNOLOGY
< juhuhure
Part of The definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009 3D printing – Open source hardware is now making things.
FILTON, just outside Bristol, is where Britain's fleet of Concorde supersonic airliners was built. In a building near a wind tunnel on the same sprawling site, something even more remarkable is being created. Little by little a machine is “printing” a complex titanium landing-gear bracket, about the size of a shoe, which normally would have to be laboriously hewn from a solid block of metal. Brackets are only the beginning. The researchers at Filton have a much bigger ambition: to print the entire wing of an airliner.
What is the FFL Fab Lab? It is Fayetteville Free Library’s Fabulous Laboratory, where resources will be available for making things. When will the Lab be available? We are currently renovating the East Wing of our building to provide a permanent location for the Fab Lab. Why a Fab Lab at the Fayetteville Free Library?
I spent the summer helping Makerbot Industries develop educational curriculum. The start of this ambitious project can be found at http://curricum.makerbot.com . This is just the beginning, and I would love for other educators to contribute their ideas and lesson plans so that there is a community of teachers that can explore 3D printing in their classrooms and inspire their students to create, invent and engage in the engineering process. I currently have two Thing-O-Matics in my classroom and my students are using a variety of software to create their own models: 3dtin.com, tinkercad.com, sketchup, blender and openscad.
You are in: Future Technologies : 3D Printing 3D Printing Imagine a future in which a device connected to a computer can print a solid object. A future in which we can have tangible goods as well as intangible services delivered to our desktops or highstreet shops over the Internet.
