The Year of 2011 in 3D Printing As the year comes to an end, we often tend to reflect on the events that occurred within it and boy… was there lot to reflect on in 2011. If there is one thing that became obvious to us, it’s that 3D printing has come a long way since our reflections of last year. This year the 3D printing world was dominated by an impressive amount of 3D Systems acquisitions, a tremendous growth of new desktop 3D printers and a much larger media coverage than it had ever received before. We went through hundreds of articles and news items on 3D printing and found it quite a challenge to scale down the amount of information. Click on the image to view the timeline With that said, we hope that you enjoy having a look back in time as you take in the amazing developments of 2011. 3D printing food makes the news on CNN MoneyAs part of a project at Cornell University, a group of scientists and students built a 3D printer and began testing it out with food. Dr.
Internet outages scares global business Widespread internet outages and slowdowns lead to immense business shock and concerns across United States and parts of Europe, leading to absolute shut down of various business processes across the globe for some time. There were reports of service interruptions from various parts of United States, including all trade hubs such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. In fact Time Warner Cable confessed on Twitter stating that they were recovering from a large but brief internet outage affecting most of their service areas. Later, the company’s director of digital communications confirmed that they were are up and running, however they were still investigating the cause and scope of the outage. It was later known that all of the problems occurred when backbone provider Level3 Communications had a major outage, affecting most downstream providers and enterprises. The internet issues due to Level 3 outage scared many business enterprises as it meant complete shut down for a while.
7 Platforms Changing the Future of Publishing by Kirstin Butler Cutting out the middleman, or what the Nobel Peace Prize has to do with harnessing the potential of tablets. Depending on whom you ask, these are either the best or the worst of times for the written word. Byliner, whose beautifully designed site officially launched last week, is easily the most ambitious of the initiatives featured here. The startup’s first original offering, Three Cups of Deceit, tells the story of the now-disgraced Nobel Peace Prize nominee and bestselling author Greg Mortenson. With the tagline, “longer than an article, shorter than a book,” The Atavist considers itself a “boutique publishing house” that turns out bespoke nonfiction and narrative journalism for digital devices. Offering original content from well-established journalists and reporters, The Atavist also adds supplementary audio, video, and other contextual info to its selections, which are specifically designed for iPad, iPhone, Kindle and Nook. Read our full feature on 40K Books here.
Prepping Blender Files for 3D Printing This tutorial was written by Shapeways community member Jeff LaMarche. Introduction Okay, I've been fighting the good fight with Blender for a few weeks trying to convert some models I originally created for rendering into a printable file. I've learned a lot in the process, so I thought I'd share some of what I've learned. Finding non-manifold edges If you have a model created from several objects or meshes, first make sure that each individual mesh is manifold (water-tight). Any vertices that get selected when you press that key combination are non-manifold vertices that have to be fixed. If there are three or four attached polygons that it says are non-manifold, but says there is already a face, try deleting the face and, if necessary, recreating it. Tip: hide geometry to focus on the non-manifold areas One trick that makes things easier is to select non-manifold, then press ctrl+ several times to increase the selection. Cleaning up: join meshes using Booleans Finally, export to STL.
Changing the World with Open Data A few weeks ago, I attended a conference called Brooklyn Beta. In its second year, the conference is basically a collection of designers, developers, entrepreneurs, and crazy ne'er-do-wells. This conference usually leaves me feeling inspired, excited, intimidated, and ready to conquer the world, and this year was no different. While there were a few underlying themes running through the conference, the main theme was "Make Something You Love." Admittedly, I'm a bit of a data geek so when I saw a wonderful speaker named Todd Park give a talk on healthdata.gov, it really got my attention. And this is only a sampling. You might think some of this data sounds kind of boring. When we think of open data, we usually think about commercially released APIs from sites like Twitter and Facebook. For instance, did you know that besides the government's health data, we also have at our disposal data on the following? A link to each individual state government website can be found on USA.gov. Tagged:
Facebook For The Famous When Paul Feig, the director of Bridesmaids, was invited to join WhoSay.com, a relatively new social network that describes itself as the source for "Photos and videos directly from Celebrities and Influencers," he was sure he was somehow being set up. "They contacted me about four or five months ago and they made the offer to help me put up a page," Feig tells Fast Company. The page would bring together his tweets (a prolific tweeter, the director has over 1.2 million Twitter followers), Facebook page, and other social media odds and sods, in one easy-to-use platform built to his exact specifications. "They gave me the hard sell," he continues. "I kept looking for what the scam was, or if I had to pay. "They were so helpful," Feig says of the WhoSay representatives that worked with him to customize his page, which he calls (with obvious mock self-importance) Paul Feig's Media Lounge. Other WhoSay users bypass commerce in favor of old-fashioned image rehabilitation.
Ultimaker: There’s a New 3D Printer in Town The new Ultimaker 3D printer made in the Netherlands has arrived in the US. The machine, which prints bigger and faster than MakerBot printers, was created by three Dutch makers who met at the Fab Lab in Utrecht, Holland two years ago. The Lab is one of dozens of digital fabrication centers around the world affiliated with MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. Fab Lab/Utrecht’s manager, Siert Wijnia, collaborated with web designer Martijn Elserman and grad student Erik De Bruijn on the speedy new machine. “We wanted to have a better 3D printer, not necessarily to start a business,” says De Bruijn, who had built several open source RepRap 3D printers before tackling the project. “If Fab Lab wasn’t there, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened,” insists Elserman. Ultimaker creators, Erik De Bruijn (left) and Martijn Elserman (right), with product ready to ship. And they did. Ultimaker boasts that its low speeds are easily twice as fast as RepRap’s and MakerBot’s. Jon Kalish Related
Misleading Metaphors That Drive The War On Online Sharing Certain terms crop up time and again in the arguments around copyright infringement and file sharing. Words like "theft" and "stealing" clearly represent an attempt to frame the debate in a certain way. That's hardly a new insight: many posts on Techdirt have pointed out these attempts to manipulate the discourse. But until now, no one has stepped back and looked at this phenomenon as whole, placing it in a historical and legal context, or tried to analyze how it is related to the battles for the future shape of the Internet currently taking place. That's just what Stefan Larsson has done for his doctorate at Lund University in Sweden, in a thesis entitled "Metaphors and Norms - Understanding Copyright Law in a Digital Society" (available as a PDF.) Here's how the accompanying press release (yes, even theses have them these days) explains the central question it seeks to answer: What is it about copyright that doesn't work in the digital society? One of those metaphors is "theft":
The Gates Foundation's New Education Documentary to Incorporate Social Media The Gates Foundation's non-profit education organization, Get Schooled, will partner with filmmakers Adam McKay and Jason Pollock on their new feature documentary about the dropout epidemic in America's struggling school system. The documentary will use social media to connect the voices of students, teachers and principals with the world. Pollock will spend most of next year filming more than 100 public schools in America that are part of the "Get Schooled" Foundation. "Jason brought us his idea a few months ago, and we thought it was a perfect way to elevate the voices of students, teachers and principals," said Marie Groark, Executive Director of Get Schooled. "Too often their story is told for them. Jason and Adam will give them a chance to tell their stories themselves. "I think we have a great opportunity to use the social web in a way that can really benefit the education system in this country," said Pollock. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MarsBars
New tool gives structural strength to 3-D printed works Objects created using 3-D printing have a common flaw: They are fragile and often fall apart or lose their shape. "I have an entire zoo of broken 3-D printed objects in my office," said Bedrich Benes, an associate professor of computer graphics at Purdue University. The printed fabrications often fail at points of high stress. "You can go online, create something using a 3-D printer and pay $300, only to find that it isn't strong enough to survive shipping and arrives in more than one piece," said Radomir Mech, senior research manager from Adobe's Advanced Technology Labs. The 3-D printers create shapes layer-by-layer out of various materials, including metals and plastic polymers. "Now 3-D printing is everywhere," Benes said. The recent rise in 3-D printing popularity has been fueled by a boom in computer graphics and a dramatic reduction of the cost of 3-D printers, Benes said. Findings were detailed in a paper presented during the SIGGRAPH 2012 conference in August.