The Cult of Maker prays for a burst-resistant bubble Is 3D printing creating a movement strong enough to move beyond the imminent threat of a sudden pop? By Randall S. Newton Most of us at Jon Peddie Research are old enough to have witnessed more bubble moments in the tech industry than we care to recall. Like stock market bubbles (to which they are usually connected at the bubble-hip) tech bubbles start with hype, grow with enthusiasm, float on a greedy breeze, and pop when poked by a pin of bitter unfulfilled expectations. Most of the promises made during the dotcom bubble era (1997-2001) came true only after a series of spectacular failures, when “burn rate” (the speed at which a start-up could spend its investors’ money) went from being a Dionysian mantra to a prophecy of sudden doom. The infamous Bubble. For the past 18 months or so the specter of a new tech bubble has been hovering over the landscape, arising from a corner of the tech universe called 3D printing. RepRap is an open source 3D printer popular with hobbyists.
More design hobbyists, entrepreneurs use 3-D printing Matt Sullivan, a retired soldier, still has trouble explaining his right leg to strangers. The shiny chrome surface, embossed with the lightning bolt logo of his beloved San Diego Chargers, covers the calf area of his prosthetic leg, the result of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2010. At the naval hospital where he was recovering from his wounds and the resulting surgery, Sullivan ran into entrepreneur Scott Summit, who suggested a solution to covering the metal rod that protruded conspicuously from his knee. PHOTOS: Behind the scenes of a 3D printing plant Summit's firm, Bespoke Innovations, uses an obscure process known as 3D printing to make durable thermoplastic leg coverings, or fairings. Thanks to the Internet and declining hardware costs, 3D printing — once a specialized process used sparingly by industrial companies for prototyping — is becoming more common among design hobbyists and entrepreneurs such as Summit. The consumer market's embrace of the technology has been swift.
Building Your Own 3D Printer Home-built 3D printers are booming. In 2006 there were no such printers and 5 years later there are tens of thousands. There are currently hundreds of thousands of people wanting to start their own build waiting for the right moment to get started. The project that single-handily propelled home-built 3D printers out of nowhere is RepRap. Building a 3D printer is very hands-on and will require all your technical skills. These are the sections of this book: How a RepRap 3D printer worksParts of the printerA word on the most commonly used plasticsTools and skills requiredSoftware required to run a RepRap 3D printerBuyer’s guideLinks to build instructions This book is not a replacement for build instructions. Image 1 shows a fully assembled working home-built 3D printer. This 3D printer builds objects by adding plastic material layer by layer until the object (also called printed part) is finished. The printer is usually controlled by a PC with special software installed. 9.
A 3-D Printer For Every Home! (Yeah, Right) There are a few Holy Grails on the Internet--things that thou shalt not touch because the Internet is still pretty much run by geeks. You can’t criticize the hilarity and hive mind intelligence of memes, even when they’re, you know, really stupid. You can’t discuss the potential reasoning behind DRM, even when, to be a little fair, the web is a fantasy land of copyright infringement. But maybe, more than any of these, thou shalt not question the obvious, inevitable future of 3-D printing. Well, I have bad news that will probably make a lot of intelligent people whom I respect very much shake their heads in disgust. 3-D printing is not “bigger than the Internet” or even as big as the Internet. 3-D printing is not the next home revolution. While 3-D printing will excite hobbyists and disrupt many industries--and in fact, already has--its consumer application has been vastly exaggerated in ways that a lower cost and higher printing resolution won’t solve. We’re Talking Ideals Vs Products
iRapid - A new 3D printer built with “rack and pinion” concept April 19, 2012 iRapid, a new 3D printer made by iRapid.de in Germany is ready to hit the market. iRapid is a complete assembled 3D printer, one of the first fully assembled 3D printers in Europe. iRapid is built with a brand new and unique "rack and pinion" concept that uses no belts and thread rod. This design keeps the machine neat and very easy to build. Unlike any other in it's price range, iRapid has a rigid aluminum frame and a reliable gear rack solution. Some critical technical data of iRapid 3D printer listed in the website are: Technology: Fused deposition modeling (FDM) Printing model size: approx 140x140x140mm (x,y,z) Nozzle: 0.4mm standard Printing rate: up to 80mm/s Accuracy: approx 0.2mm all axis (x,y,z) Minimum layer size: 0.25mm Printer size: approx 350x370x525mm Printing materials: ABS or PLA filament, d= 3mm Bed: heated up to 110°C The iRapid is expected to be on the market latest in three month time at a price tag of approx. 999 Euros (excluding taxes).
Modern-day alchemists turn cement into metal It’s not quite lead into gold, but a team of international researchers have succeeded in turning cement into metal. This metallic form of cement, which is electrically conductive and has increased corrosion resistance, might find applications in protective coatings, thin films (think LCD monitors), and computer chips. Cement, which usually consists of calcium oxide and other common minerals such as silicon dioxide and aluminium oxide, is of course an insulator. To turn cement into a metal, the researchers heat the powder to 2,000 Celsius (3642F) with a laser, turning the powder into liquid. A fantastic device called an aerodynamic levitator, which uses nozzles pumping out inert gas to levitate a material, is then used to levitate the molten cement. The levitator prevents the molten cement from touching the walls of the container, preventing unwanted crystal formation. Electrons (the blue blobs) trapped inside calcium oxide cages
Reprap development and further adventures in DIY 3D printing US Navy looks to 3D printing to turn its city-sized aircraft carriers into mobile factories I always think of that scene in Apollo 13: “We need to make this… fit into this… using this.” It’s a frustration that’s central to the whole film: how could we be able to send human beings all the way to the Moon and still be foiled by something as simple as the shape of a valve? More to the point, how could we send a rover all the way to Mars, and still worry about something as banal as a broken wheel or a bent rod? Specifically, the Navy. Though the dream of 3D printing an aircraft from scratch might be the ultimate end-point of this type of research, for the foreseeable future these initiatives will probably produce quick and dirty replacement parts. NASA printed this small part last year, which is theoretically strong enough for an actual launch. Realistic military applications are limited almost entirely by size; an F-35 is quite a way out, whether printed as a whole or as tens of thousands of parts, but a small, unmanned drone with only a few moving pieces?
Fabbster Personal 3D Printer 3D-printing for everybody