The Homebrew Industrial Revolution Lab Creates 3D Glass Printing Process Process is a modern take on an ancient glass making process 3D printing is an interesting technology which allows engineers and designers to get a 3D object from a digital design that can be viewed in the real world. Artists also use 3D printing to make art that is designed digitally. A team of engineers and artists working at the University of Washington's Solheim Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory has developed a new method of using conventional 3D printers to create glass objects. A 3D printer typically uses a layer of powder that is activated by an ink jet printer that sprays a binding material at the exact location it is needed. The reaction binder adheres to the powdered and creates the object. The problem with making glass parts in this method is that the reaction binder doesn't quickly absorb into the glass powder and the 3D objects printed in the glass medium end up with a gelatinous consistency.
Robot Spiders Weave Products from Plastic in a New Spin on 3-D Printing Siemens is testing teams of creepy-crawly 3-D-printing robots. Their descendants might make manufacturing lines far more efficient. If you’re afraid of spiders, then you might find Siemens’s vision for future manufacturing lines a bit alarming. In a lab in Princeton, New Jersey, the company’s researchers are testing spider-like robots that extrude not silk but plastic, thanks to portable 3-D printers. The work is at an early stage, but it hints at where manufacturing may be headed, thanks to more sophisticated robot hardware, smarter control software, and new ways of forming components using 3-D printing. Livio Dalloro, head of product design, modeling, and simulation at Siemens, says that the robots (which, unlike actual spiders, have only six legs) can currently produce only very simple objects, like cubes, but the idea is that they would eventually clamber around a larger, more complex object, building it as they go.
REPLICATOR — Putting the "Custom" Back In Customer Gifs have become a fixture of the web, transformed Buzzfeed into a major media entity, and brought countless millions of hours of joy to bored office drones the world over. There’s a gif search engine and a service that will turn these little moments of web zen into IRL animated pictures. So why aren’t these miniature animations used more widely for practical purposes? DIY.org, a kid friendly site that aims to transform little video gamers into latter day scouts uses the art form to highlight the physicality of their merit badges: This simple animation shows off the unique feature of an Medieval book that can be read six different ways in three seconds while a highly produced video might take thirty seconds to do the same. Despite their obvious utility, these catchy little cartoons are relegated to cat pics and epic fails. The knobby interface belies a traditional technology load out. 1.Take In a Little Light Reading With This Book-Inspired Lamp 2. 3. HT: Nick de la Mare 1. HT: Tim O’Reilly
The CandyFab 6000 Today we are relaunching the CandyFab Project with a new logo and a new wiki site, wiki.candyfab.org. But more importantly, we are unveiling this new machine, the CandyFab 6000: It’s a brand new CandyFab– still in beta. A clean break, designed from the ground up with almost no parts in common with the original, the CandyFab 4000. Here’s one of the first objects that we fabbed on the CandyFab 6000: a drilled sphere, about two inches in diameter and layer thickness of 1/15 inch. The machine is designed so that it can be made from scratch– i.e., without dumpster diving for old HP pen plotters. The new modular electronics control platform is called Zuccherino– that’s italian for “Sugar cube.” It’s an expandable system for all kinds of motion control projects, and we’ll be making kit versions of all of the Zuccherino boards later this summer. We’ve also got new cross platform control software — called CandyFabulous underway, and it’s looking sweet. And… oh can it fab sugar. Where from here?
Can HP Make 3-D Printing into a Mass Manufacturing Technique? The tech giant says its new $130,000 printers will produce plastic parts quickly and inexpensively. Despite the flexibility of 3-D printing, it still cannot compete with conventional injection molding for making large volumes of high-strength plastic parts. Hewlett-Packard says its new printing technology will change that. Today HP will begin taking orders for systems that print parts in a process it calls Jet Fusion. Jet Fusion is best compared to laser sintering, in which a laser is used to heat granules of polymer powder and fuse them to build objects layer by layer. HP says its technology is up to 10 times faster than laser sintering. Once the inks are printed according to digital instructions, a high-intensity light source passes over the whole print surface, heating the powder and fusing it wherever the fusing agent is. HP is not the first company to claim that its printing technology can compete head-on with injection molding.
THE NEXT TRILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY: 3D Printing The Melonia Shoe: A world's first? Wearable 3D printed footwear Posted by Sam Dunne | 21 Feb 2010 | Comments (10) Students of Stockholm's two most prestigious design schools have collaborated to produce these awe-inspiring, full-wearable shoes, 3D printed in polyamid. Naim Josefi and Souzan Youssouf, of Beckmans & Konstfack respectively, designed and modelled the shoes for Selective Laser Sintering (the one with all the powder and the lasers) and produced five pairs for Naim's "Melonia" collection, shown during Stockholm Fashion Show earlier this month. The concept for the shoes call for further exploration in ever-developing rapid prototyping processes. Photo above by "Sonny" - fantastic photos of the shoes, the show and much more on his website here. Naim's homepage is also well worth a look for fashion lovers.
3D Printing Feed a device with blueprints for a solid object of your choosing, then let the machine build it for you from plastic or other simple materials [1] Video illustration at "3D Printing” is an umbrella term that covers four distinct manufacturing technologies. All are “Additive Fabrication” processes that create objects by adding material in thin layers until a product is completed. Each technology addresses the challenge differently with accompanying benefits and drawbacks." "Three-dimensional printers, often called rapid prototypers, assemble objects out of an array of specks of material, just as traditional printers create images out of dots of ink or toner. "3D Printing is a technique that deposits material layer by layer using a head similar to that of a inkjet printer. Discussing the Definition "3D Printing is currently rather a hard term to define. "What might this 3D printer be useful for? Spare Parts. From the Wikipedia: 3D Printing Proper
The Free Universal Construction Kit Ever wanted to connect your Legos and Tinkertoys together? Now you can — and much more. Announcing the Free Universal Construction Kit: a set of adapters for complete interoperability between 10 popular construction toys. Fig. 1. Overview Video by Riley Harmon for F.A.T. F.A.T. The Free Universal Construction Kit offers adapters between Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Motivation Our kids are already doing it! Opening doors to new creative worlds is one major reason we created the Free Universal Construction Kit. The Kit offers a “best of all worlds” approach to play and learning that combines the advantages of each toy system. Finally, in producing the Free Universal Construction Kit, we hope to demonstrate a model of reverse engineering as a civic activity: a creative process in which anyone can develop the necessary pieces to bridge the limitations presented by mass-produced commercial artifacts. Download Figure 2. We (F.A.T. Implementation Figure 3. Figure 4. Fig. 9. Keywords