Watch a Super-Fast 3D Printer Scientists Call the “Replicator” A Robot Can Print This $64,000 House in as Little as 8 Hours. About us. Here's How 3D Printing is Changing Our World. Awesome Alert: NASA Develops 3D Printed Chain Mail For Space Travel. It’s a geek’s daydream come true.
Astronauts in chainmail. NASA Space knights. And the best part is, it’s so versatile. NASA engineers, led by Raul Polit Casillas a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, are designing advanced woven metal fabrics for space travel. Because the fabrics are so malleable, they could potentially be useful for large antennas, astronaut spacesuits, shielding a spacecraft from meteorites or for capturing objects on the surface of another planet. “We call it 4-D Printing because we can print both the geometry and the function of these materials,” said Polit Casillas, “If 20th Century manufacturing was driven by mass production, then this is the mass production of functions.” The idea is that the chain mail has small silver squares strung together to help protect the spacecraft and the astronauts. Awesome Alert: Snapmaker Hybrid 3D Printer Breaks $1 Million In Crowdfunding.
Thanks to its endless versatility and what the community around it has been able to pull off, we’re all still very much enamored by 3D printing.
In the real world, though, subtractive manufacturing methods like CNC machining and the use of tools such as laser engravers is just as prevalent. Realizing that all three implements are based on a three-axis motion system, California startup Snapmaker created a 3D printer-CNC machine-laser engraver hybrid called, well, Snapmaker. The Kickstarter community seems to love the idea of a mashup and has made the product part of the million dollar club well before the close of the campaign. The secret behind Snapmaker’s ability to combine three of the most popular tools in the manufacturing and industrial design industries is a modular design. The machine makes use of interchangeable heads based on what function you want to put to use, and also has modular connectors. At its most basic, the Snapmaker works as a 3D printer. Best 3D printers. With a 3D printer, you can create 3D objects from plastic, metal or even food.
The most advanced models are used in industry and medicine, but home 3D printers that print in plastic are now available. 3D printers transform 3D models created on a computer into real-world plastic objects. If you have the skills, you can create your own designs using many CAD software packages, including the free Google Sketchup. Could 3D printing help tackle poverty and plastic waste? When Sidhant Pai visited a local rubbish dump in his home city of Pune, India, he was struck by the size and intensity of the operation.
Large black crows swooping overhead, roaming pigs, overwhelming odours and groups of waste pickers collecting plastic bottles in large white sacks. There are an estimated 15 million people globally who currently make their living from waste picking and many earn less than a dollar a day. A key problem, says environmental engineer Pai, is that workers only capture a tiny proportion of the value of the waste they collect, separate and transport to scrap dealers.
Together with his parents, Suchismita and Jayant Pai, he founded social enterprise Protoprint in 2012, one of a number of organisations trying to address the twin issues of poor conditions for waste pickers and plastic waste pollution. “Our focus was on looking into different ways to add value to the waste, we were agnostic about the specific product,” Pai says. Largest 3D Printer In The World Creates Zero-Cost Homes Out Of Mud. The first home built by WASP is 40-feet tall and cost just $53 to make.
Credit: WASP By 2050, the human population is expected to reach 9.7 million. In effect, securing affordable and eco-friendly housing will become a forefront issue for many citizens. Fortunately, a new solution to this dilemma was recently presented, and it is literally dirt cheap. The company WASP – also known as the World’s Advanced Saving Project – has figured out how to 3D-print full-sized homes out of nothing more than mud and clay. A Futuristic Mars Colony Is Being 3D-Printed In The Mojave Desert. In Brief A team of design and urban planning experts will use 3D printed technology to create a mock-up of a future city in Mars.
It will feature sustainable designs and construction elements Secret Life Of (Future) Martians. 3D patterned membranes may allow rapid advances in membrane technology - Science and Technology Research News. Ion exchange membranes are used in many types of energy applications, such as fuel cells and certain batteries, as well as in water purification, desalination, removal of heavy metals and food processing.
Most of these membranes are thin, flat sheets similar to the plastic wrap in your kitchen drawer. However, recent work has shown that by creating 3D patterns on top of the 2D membrane surface, interesting hydrodynamic properties emerge that can improve ion transport or mitigate fouling, a serious problem in many membrane applications. Dubai 3D Printed This "Office of the Future" in Less Than 3 Weeks. Dubai’s Newest Experiment The city of Dubai, the largest and most populous in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has already proven itself to be in the vanguard of innovation.
It already possesses the world’s tallest building in the heaven-defying Burj Khalifa; it hosted the world’s first aerial drone race in March; it has housing developments built on islands shaped like a map of the world; and it even plans on having “water homes” and “floating hotels.” It’s really an incubator of innovative technological and architectural ideas—an unrestricted canvas for the human imagination to have free play in designing the city of the future. “We implement what we plan, and we pursue actions not theories. The rapidly changing world requires us to accelerate our pace of development, for history does not recognize our plans but our achievements,” said His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and hereditary Ruler of Dubai.
Stronger Ceramic Parts for Airplanes and industrial applications can now be 3D printed. A new way of making these tough materials could be a key step in producing better airplane engines and long-lasting machine parts.
Ceramics are some of the hardest materials on Earth. They can withstand extreme temperatures, and some are impervious to friction, scratching, and other mechanical stresses that wear out metal and plastic. But it can be difficult to make complex shapes out of the materials. 3d printing of rocket parts and liquified natural gas fuel could also dramatically lower launch costs. Reusable rockets could greatly lower rocket launch costs but two other significant emerging technologies are 3D printing and liquified natural gas rocket fuel.
Liquefied natural gas, which is a commercially available form of methane, could have several advantages as a rocket fuel. Blue Origin has said its wide availability and low cost would enable an "extended engine development test program. " Methane is also clean, meaning it's less likely to clog fuel lines inside the engine. That would reduce the type of rigorous cleaning needed to clear those particulates and make it easier for reusability, said Ann Karagozian, UCLA professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. The gas also self-pressurizes, which could eliminate the need for tank-pressurization systems. The combination could enable a simple, reliable design that is easy to manufacture. This 3D Printed Engine Combustor Just Passed its Hypersonic Test Flight at NASA. In Brief A new type of combustor has been manufactured and passed tests with flying colors. Also, it was 3D printed. In a press release that came out this past January, Orbital ATK announced that they have successfully tested a 3D-printed hypersonic engine combustor at the NASA Langley Research Center.
MakerBot is replacing its most ill-fated 3D printing product. 3D printing company MakerBot has announced a new version of its Smart Extruder — a vital printer component whose flaws have gotten the company in hot water over the past two years. The Smart Extruder+ is designed to fit into MakerBot's fifth-generation Replicator printers, which were announced in early 2014.
That includes the latest version of the MakerBot Replicator, as well as the smaller Replicator Mini and the plus-sized Replicator Z18. Like the original design, the Smart Extruder+ is supposed to make Replicator printers simpler to use, more reliable, and more future-proof. It automatically detects when the printer's filament runs out and pauses the job, notifying users via a desktop or mobile app. NASA can 3-D Print 75% of the parts for a Rocket Engine. A NASA team moved a step closer to building a completely 3-D printed, high-performance rocket engine by manufacturing complex engine parts and test firing them together with cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen to produce 20,000 pounds of thrust. Additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, is a key technology for enhancing space vehicle designs and manufacturing and enabling more affordable exploration missions. The technology has the potential to influence spacecraft built for leaving Earth and spaceships and landers for visiting other destinations.
Future plans include performing engine tests with liquid oxygen and methane--key propellants for Martian landers since methane and oxygen production might be possible on the Red Planet. Over the last three years, the Marshall team has been working with various vendors to make 3-D printed parts, such as turbopumps and injectors, and test them individually.
3D printing trends. 3D printed guns. 3D Manufacturing. 3D Personal. Medical 3D printing. 3D Printed Engine to Send MoonEx Lander to the Moon. 3d printing and education: a workshop report. Yesterday I and two others hosted a NERCOMP workshop on 3d printing for higher education. The large audience participated very actively, creating fun conversations and a lot of information-sharing about an emergent field. In this post I’ll sum up the day, based on our materials, my notes, and Twitter discussions. It’s a bit long, given the sheer amount of information covered. It’s also a snapshot of where 3d printing stands in mid-2015. We began the day with introductions, discovering a wide variety of academic institutions, from community colleges to research universities, high schools and liberal arts colleges. Faculty interest was all over the map, including the sciences and the humanities. Nearly every participant expressed a desire to learn from presenters.
I then took the floor to introduce the technology and its academic uses. Disney Research 3-D printer can combine fabrics, wiring. 3D printed objects from Disney Research layered fabric 3D printer: (a) printed fabric Stanford bunny, (b) printed Japanese sunny doll with two materials, (c) printed touch sensor, (d) printed cellphone case with an embedded conductive fabric coil for wireless power reception (credit: Huaishu Peng et al/ CHI 2015) A team from Disney Research, Carnegie Mellon University and Cornell University have devised a 3-D printer that layers together laser-cut sheets of fabric to form soft, squeezable objects such as phone cases and toys. These objects can have complex geometries and incorporate circuitry that makes them interactive. “Today’s 3-D printers can easily create custom metal, plastic, and rubber objects,” said Jim McCann, associate research scientist at Disney Research Pittsburgh.
“But soft fabric objects, like plush toys, are still fabricated by hand. 3D Printed Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diodes. 3DPrint.com - 3D Printer & 3D Printing News. The Unexpected Benefits of Rapid Prototyping - Roger Martin. 3D Printer Makes Prosthetic Foot For Duck. Contour Crafting: How 3D Printing Will Change Construction. 10 Reasons to be Bullish About the 3D Printing Industry. Inside The Making Of RoboCop's 3-D Printed Suit. Due to open in theaters nationwide today, Sony Pictures' RoboCop remake has divided fans of the original from the get-go. Particularly contentious has been the reimagining of the RoboCop suit, which turns the original into sleek, stealthy, almost ninja-like armor. But while this new suit might look like it was inspired by Christopher Nolan's Batman films, especially when compared to the hulking chrome original, it presented a singular challenge for the makers of the film. The First 3-D Printed Book Cover Is Here.
Ancient structures rebuilt using 3D-printed bricks - tech - 14 February 2014. EIGHT centuries on, the flying buttresses of Bourges Cathedral in France still beguile engineers. The secrets behind this marvel of medieval masonry are now about to be laid bare, thanks to a group of researchers who are rebuilding it, brick by brick. 3D bicycle 'printed' for Empire Cycles by Gloucestershire business Renishaw. 13-February-2014 13-February-2014 14:46 in General by The Business, The Citizen & Gloucestershire Echo. Video: Will 3D Printing Change Everything? 3D Printing Will Let Us Copy Any Object. Can We Stop It? Turning a Fairy Tale into Reality through 3D Printing (Robots) Bumper Sticker in India Reads: “My Son Dropped Out of High School and Invented his Own 3D Printed Technology at 15”
3D Scanning Smartphone App. Handheld 3D Bio-Pen Could Transform Implants. Is 3D Printing Over-Hyped? UK Home Office adds formal ban on 3D-printed guns to firearms rules. 3-D printing takes shape. The Best Free 3D Program Ever? ShapeShifter. Microsoft Releases 3D Builder App for Windows 8.1 — A Building Base for Easy 3D Printing. The audacious plan to end hunger with 3-D printed food - Quartz. Inhabitat. InMoov is an Open-Source Humanoid Robot You Can Make With a 3D Printer. Evgeny Morozov: Hackers, Makers, and the Next Industrial Revolution. Stratasys creates world's first color multi-material 3D printer. 10 completely 3D printed houses appears in Shanghai, built under a day.