The Future of 3-D Printing | Optics & Photonics News A bionic gripping tool inspired by an elephant’s trunk and produced via 3-D printing from polyamide using the laser sintering technique. Three-dimensional printing seems to be everywhere. It’s been highlighted over the past year by Make and Wired, two magazines known for being on the cutting edge of technology trends. In March, DIYRockets, an organization devoted to lowering the cost of space exploration, launched a competition to design a 3-D–printed rocket engine that could become part of a propulsion system to carry nano-satellites into space. (Winners will be announced on 1 August.) And the Texas-based non-profit Defense Distributed made headlines earlier this year when it posted—and subsequently removed, on the order of the U.S. Why is 3-D printing—a technology that has been around at least since the 1980s—such a big deal all of the sudden? An additive approach A fully playable violin with a body manufactured from EOS PEEK HP3 thermoplastic. A multidimensional history
Kinematics Kinematics is a system for 4D printing that creates complex, foldable forms composed of articulated modules. The system provides a way to turn any three-dimensional shape into a flexible structure using 3D printing. Kinematics combines computational geometry techniques with rigid body physics and customization. Practically, Kinematics allows us to take large objects and compress them down for 3D printing through simulation. It also enables the production of intricately patterned wearables that conform flexibly to the body. Today we are releasing a jewelry collection and an accompanying customization app built upon our Kinematics concept. Kinematics is a branch of mechanics that describes the motion of objects, often described as the “geometry of motion.” Kinematics produces designs composed of 10’s to 1000’s of unique components that interlock to construct dynamic, mechanical structures. a tale of two apps The Kinematics app allows for the creation of necklaces, bracelets and earrings.
$199 Rubicon 3D scanner on indiegogo Sep.8, 2013 Robert Mikelson from Riga, Latvia has just launched his new invention on indiegogo: Rubicon, a simple and cost-effective 3D scanner. Rubicon is a 3D scanner that uses a webcam and an Arduino to control two lasers and a stepper motor. How does it work? Webcam takes a picture of an object on the turntable with both lasers on and off, then a program written in c# looks for differences in those pictures to detect the shape of your object. After the scanning is complete, you would be able to export either a raw hi-polygon mesh or have it structured and optimized. Robert is offering fully assembled Rubicon 3D scanner with color of your choice on indiegogo for $199, the funding will be used for making his own printed circuit boards.
Complain about overpriced plastic dingus and a stranger will model a free 3D printable version Back in April, a redditor complained that a simple plastic cable-comb (used to bundle cables) was too expensive at $45. Later that day, WillySF modelled a printable cable comb and linked to the shape files (1, 2). It's a bit of a futuristic moment, no? Saw the cable comb on Amazon with prime shipping (Thanks, Jonathan!) Structure Sensor raises $1M on Kickstarter, with 13 days to go Oct.18, 2013 Boulder & SF-based Occipital announced today that their Kickstarter campaign for the Structure Sensor has surpassed $1M in pledges from more than 2,700 backers worldwide. "A month ago,we had no certainty if the project we had started nearly two years ago was going to plummet or soar. We were exceptionally nervous,"said Jeff Powers, CEO and co-founder of Occipital. "Today's milestone makes us feel both lucky and exceptionally encouraged by the response the Structure Sensor has received." The Structure Sensor gives mobile devices a new sense – the ability to not just capture the world as two-dimensional images, but to actually understand it in three dimensions. 3D object scanning for 3D content creation with no knowledge of CAD required. 3D mapping of indoor spaces for instant measurements and virtual redecoration. Occipital's Kickstarter campaign for the Structure Sensor was launched on September 17th, 2013.
New laser-printed material is lighter than water, as strong as steel Materials shape human progress—think Stone Age or Bronze Age. The 21st century has been referred to as the molecular age, a time when scientists are beginning to manipulate materials at the atomic level to create new substances with astounding properties. Taking a step in that direction, Jens Bauer, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and his colleagues have developed a bone-like material that is less dense than water but as strong as some forms of steel. "This is the first experimental proof that such materials can exist," Bauer said. Since the Industrial Revolution, our demand for new materials has outstripped supply. We want these materials to do many different things, from improving the speed of computers to withstanding the heat when entering Mars' atmosphere. All known materials can be represented quite neatly in one chart (where each line means the strength or density of the material goes up 10 times): There are limitations.
PhoneScope 3D: add a high-res 3D scanner to your iPhone Dec.4, 2012 PhoneScope 3D designed by Spatial Vision and Design is a special macro lens add-on for your iPhone's camera. - "Think of it as a magnifying glass for your iPhone." The Phonescope 3D consists of a macro lens clip and a light lens attachment. The macro lens clip allows you to magnify your iPhone's camera view by as much as 5x what it normally allows so that you can view fine text and small objects in greater detail. The Light Lens shell is made of a durable and strong anodized aircraft grade aluminum and 3D printed on one of the most advanced machines in the industry. Probably one of the most unique functions is that the PhoneScope 3D can capture 3D surface scans of your magnified views. (Images credit: Phonescope 3D) For scanning you can place the Light Lens over the object, the device then illuminates the scene from different directions and capture each image. This technique interprets depth based on how light is distributed over the object surface. Source: Techcrunch
3D printing loosens CGI’s iron grip on movie special effects 3D printing is a technology that seems to have gotten a little ahead of itself—we have more 3D printers than we know what to do with, yet they often serve little purpose beyond making sad versions of model dinosaurs and pizza wedges. But the tactile art seems to have found an unlikely home in movie special effects, even amid all of the CGI. In a piece at LiveScience, Andrew Clement of Creative Character Engineering describes how 3D printers have filled in when creating models by hand would have been too time-consuming. Clement told LiveScience that using 3D printers is “an extremely fast way of sculpting and doing concepts.” These concepts for special effects are normally created out of a clay material and then shown to a film’s decision-makers. Clement said that when his studio had to create a smaller model of a spider for a Harry Potter film, the larger model was scanned and 3D-printed.
Crazyflie KiCad project released July 29th, 2013 tobias No Responses We finally got the time to clean-up the Crazyflie kicad project enough to make it publicly available. It is released under CC BY-NC-SA license so you are able to use if for personal use, and please respect that. You can skip to the end and leave a response. 3D: Printing the Future Exhibition Journalist and presenter Evan Davies poses with a 3D printed model of himself in the exhibition “3D: printing the future” in the Science Museum in London, on Oktober 8, 2013. Davies’ model features his arm in a sling due to him being scanned in August 2013 whilst recovering from a broken wrist. The exhibition features over 600 3D printed objects ranging from replacement organs to artworks, aircraft parts and a handgun. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images) A 3D-printed artwork. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images) A 3D-printed artwork, Inversive Embodiment by Tobias Klein. A closeup of some of the 3D-printed objects. A variety of 3D-printed objects. More 3D-printed objects. A technician checks a 3D printer as it constructs a figurine. A close-up of the printer in action. Some 3D-printed human figures, scanned from real people. A 3D-printed prosthetic arm. A 3D-printed handgun which was created and fired by Finnish journalist Ville Vaarne. 3D printed maxillo facial implants, by Renishaw are shown on the left.
Quadcopters and Spatially-Centric Data | Ferret Labs A few months ago I came across my new favorite toy, the Crazyflie nano quadcopter. Developed by Bitcraze, the Crazyflie is an open source firmware and hardware flying development board. With a relatively beefy STM32 ARM Cortext-M3 MCU and an expansion header the Crazyflie is an ideal candidate for upgrades and modifications. The Crazyflie is an ideal candidate for unplanned, exploratory flight paths. Why is this useful? A more familiar example is cold air detection in an old house during winter. Several technical challenges need to be overcome to facilitate the autonomous exploration of space. The focus of this article is on selecting a proximity sensor, setting up a Crazyflie development and debugging environment, and learning how to program MCUs in general. C, Vim, Cscope, and the ARM Development Environment To review the firmware, I chose to keep things simple and run Cscope on top of Vim (check out the tutorial). cd ~/crazyflie-firmwarecscope -Rb cd initvim main.c:cs add .. Like this:
Printing ideas into 3D reality: Miles O'Brien reports on what's next in 3D printing for PBS NewsHour PBS NewsHour has a double-header from science correspondent Miles O'Brien on what's new and interesting in 3D printing. Part one [transcript here] above explores how, with the push of a button, the emerging technology of 3D printing can produce food, plastic phone accessories, even human tissue. Miles explores how businesses and schools are creating everything from speakers to ballet shoes, as well as serious challenges and risks presented by ever-widening printing possibilities. Among the organizations and people in this story: Shapeways, Hod Lipson at Cornell, that ATF gun, and Micah Scott, one of the happy mutants at Ardent West who modded a MakerBot with amazing results. Part two [Transcript here]: A.J. Pasta and desserts I can see, but beyond that? Anyway, A.J.' [Special thanks to SF Slim and Nadya Lev.
Ultrasonic Sensor Operation on a Quadcopter MaxBotix Inc., sensors have been successfully used on a number of multi‑copters. Multi‑copters are also called UAVs, rotorcraft, quadrotor helicopters, or quadcopters. Many users have had issues getting the sensors to operate reliably. Sensor operation during flight on a quad‑copter is a challenging environment for an ultrasonic sensor to operate reliably. Electrical energy that the motors use (with amps of current) typically share the same micro-controller, controlling both the flight and reading the sensors, so conducted electrical noise is likely. Air Turbulence Propellers cause a substantial amount of air turbulence, yet they do so in a predictable manner. Measurements of a powerful electric copter showed that this effect caused the sensor's received signal energy to lower, sometimes by more than ten times! Visualize this effect. Propeller Acoustic Noise We recommend that the user avoids mounting the sensor in places where the sensor has a direct path to any propeller.
Espresso Book Machine The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) is a print on demand (POD) machine that prints, collates, covers, and binds a single book in a few minutes. The EBM is small enough to fit in a retail book store or small library room, and as such it is targeted at retail and library markets.[1] The EBM can potentially allow readers to obtain any book title, even books that are out of print. The machine takes as input a PDF file and prints, binds, and trims the reader’s selection as a paperback book.[2][3] History[edit] Jason Epstein gave a series of lectures in 1999 about his experiences in publishing. The first Espresso Book Machine was installed and demonstrated June 21, 2007 at the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library. Distribution[edit] The direct-to-consumer model supported by Espresso Book Machine eliminates the need for shipping, warehousing, returns and pulping of unsold books; it allows simultaneous global availability[3] of millions of new and backlist titles. UK[edit]