3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel, Half the Weight, and Nearing Production | Autopia Engineer Jim Kor and his design for the Urbee 2. Photo: Sara Payne Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles. If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. Urbee’s approach to maximum miles per gallon starts with lightweight construction – something that 3-D printing is particularly well suited for. Jim Kor is the engineering brains behind the Urbee. “We thought long and hard about doing a second one,” he says of the Urbee. Kor and his team built the three-wheel, two-passenger vehicle at RedEye, an on-demand 3-D printing facility. Photo: Sara Payne “We’re calling it race car safety,” Kor says.
Plastic film is future of 3-D on-the-go Ditch the 3D glasses. Thanks to a simple plastic filter, mobile device users can now view unprecedented, distortion-free, brilliant 3D content with the naked eye. This latest innovation from Temasek Polytechnic and A*STAR's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering is the first ever glasses-free 3D accessory that can display content in both portrait and landscape mode, and measures less than 0.1 mm in thickness. "The filter is essentially a piece of plastic film with about half a million perfectly shaped lenses engineered onto its surface using IMRE's proprietary nanoimprinting technology," said Dr Jaslyn Law, the IMRE scientist who worked with TP on the nanoimprinting R&D since 2010 to enhance the film's smoothness, clarity and transparency compared to other films in the market. "Our breakthrough is a game-changing piece of plastic that simply fits onto current smartphones or tablets to give users breathtaking 3D graphics on their smart devices.
Dita Von Teese předvedla první šaty z 3D tiskárny - iDNES.cz 9. března 2013 16:23 Americká burleskní umělkyně Dita Von Teese jako první oblékla šaty z látky potištěné nejmodernější 3D tiskárnou a posetou krystaly. Předvedla je v New Yorku. Dita Von Teese v šatech z 3D tiskárny | foto: Albert Sanchez Černou róbu vyrobila tiskárna Shapeways na nejvyspělejší 3D tiskárně, která vytváří prostorové objekty nanášením několika vrstev. Róbu sešitou ze 17 potištěných kusů a posetou 13 tisíci krystaly od značky Swarovski navrhl Michael Schmidt. "Samotné šaty jsem navrhoval na iPadu, dolaďovali jsme je přes Skype, poslal jsem je elektronicky Francisovi a ten je poslal do tiskárny," citoval Schmidta server Foxnews.com.
The World’s First 3D Printing Pen that Lets you Draw Sculptures Forget those pesky 3D printers that require software and the knowledge of 3D modeling and behold the 3Doodler, the world’s first pen that draws in three dimensions in real time. Imagine holding a pen and waving it through the air, only the line your pen creates stays frozen, suspended and permanent in 3D space. Sound like magic? Well it certainly looks like it, watch the video above to see the thing in action. The 3Doodler was designed by Boston-based company WobbleWorks who recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to sell the miraculous little devices that utilizes a special plastic which is heated and instantly cooled to form solid structures as you draw. I don’t know about you but for me this might have just won the most impulsive Kickstarter purchase in history.
Rebuttal to 3D Printing Revolution: the Complex Reality by Adam B. Levine | Mar.6, 2013 I respect MAKE and the niche they've carved out for themselves, but after the hopes-and-dreams crusher I just read, well.... The existing hobbyist-friendly additive prototyping methods tend to produce parts from a very narrow choice of materials, all of which exhibit fairly poor mechanical characteristics; there are no signs that this will change in the coming years.... ...In popular view, 3D printers are a tool that will enable us to directly make almost anything; this way of thinking is exemplified by the commercial arms race to deliver FDM machines that print in color. It's so funny to see a forward looking publication thinking in such an antiquated way. Early machines were barely even computers by modern standards, available at high costs to enthusiasts only. The Future of Design What word processor do you use? "....What? To the actual points, frankly I don't dispute them I'm happy to report that is changing really really fast. You are Here.
“Download this gun”: 3D-printed semi-automatic fires over 600 rounds Cody Wilson, like many Texan gunsmiths, is fast-talkin’ and fast-shootin’—but unlike his predecessors in the Lone Star State, he’s got 3D printing technology to help him with his craft. Wilson’s nonprofit organization, Defense Distributed, released a video this week showing a gun firing off over 600 rounds—illustrating what is likely to be the first wave of semi-automatic and automatic weapons produced by the additive manufacturing process. Last year, his group famously demonstrated that it could use a 3D-printed “lower” for an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle—but the gun failed after six rounds. The lower, or "lower receiver" part of a firearm, is the crucial part that contains all of the gun's operating parts, including the trigger group and the magazine port. “This is the first publicly printed AR lower demonstrated to withstand a large volume of .223 without structural degradation or failure,” Wilson wrote on Wednesday. “I just made an AK-47 magazine—I’ve got it printing as we speak”
Someone Out There Is 3D-Printing Faces With Your Discarded DNA Scraps Now You Can Buy 3D Printers From Staples Staples just became a little more cutting edge. The office supply chain announced Friday that it is now selling 3D printers through its website and will start selling 3D printers in select stores by the end of next month. Staples is touting itself as the first "major U.S. retailer" to sell the product. Staples, which announced in November that it planned to bring the devices to its European stores, will be selling the Cube 3D Printer from 3D Systems for $1,299. Selling 3D printer at Staples will likely help the technology to reach more of a mass market, although the printers may end up losing some of their cool factor when placed in the same store that sells fax machines and surge protectors. Would you consider buying one of these 3D printers for $1,299? Image courtesy of 3D Systems
US Government shuts down 3D gun manufacturer DALLAS, May 9, 2013 - The revolutionary concept of 3-D printed firearms has been building momentum for months now. Online observers, innovators, investors and the generally curious celebrated as the first completely 3-D printed handgun became a reality. Since the blueprint for “The Liberator” hit the web, the file was downloaded more than 100,000 times in a few days. Today, the government shut it down. SEE RELATED: Sunday Slant: 3D printable gun, a genie best kept in its bottle? Cody Wilson, the 3-D gunsmith, libertarian law student, and founder of the non-profit innovation outlet, Defense Distributed, broke the bad news in a tweet to his followers. #DEFCAD has gone dark at the request of the Department of Defense Trade Controls. According to an earlier interview, Wilson received a letter from the US Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance, Enforcement Division (DTCC/END) which demanded the group remove the content in question from public domain.