Category Archives: News
Michael Ian Black Tweets About 3D Printing – Our Response
American comedian Michael Ian Black, made famous through his role in The State, tweeted about 3D printing.
Several articles tell me how great 3D printing will be because it will allow me to make “missing game pieces.” Great.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 18, 2013
Okay, it’s a sarcastic tweet, but exciting that his nearly 2 million followers will be thinking about 3D printing.
Michael, here are a few ideas for you:
Practical 3D Printing: 10 Things to Make With a 3D Printer
Practical 3D printing? Hack Things put together a list of 10 practical things to make with a 3D printer. Here’s the list.
Wow: 3D Printing a Lunar Base with Material Already on the Moon
How would you go about constructing livable habitats on the moon? Foster + Partners proposes to use 3D printing with material already on the moon.
Photo by lizzk used under Creative Commons license.
Startup Azavy Launches AirBnB Marketplace for 3D Printing
Azavy, an AirBnB for 3D Printing
In college, all the Azavy team members independently had difficulty getting access to a 3D printer. Having lived through this challenge, they created Azavy to efficiently connecting designers with makers (owners of 3D printers).
Co-founder Michael Anderson described to us the vision for the company, ”3D printing is a nascent market with vast potential. We see parallels with the early personal computing industry. With rapidly developing technology, lowering costs, and increasing ease of use, the number of printers and their capabilities are expanding dramatically. Azavy allows everyone to participate in and capitalize on this new technology–by purchasing items, designing products or fulfilling orders.”
Think of this like the AirBnB of 3D printing. You want a design. Someone has a printer. Get it printed cheaper than higher-end 3D printing services through crowdsourcing. The service is similar to Teleport It 3D, but more trusting in the kindness of strangers.
Bringing 3D Printing Costs Down
Consumers buy 3D printed products because they are manufactured just for them and can be made from unique stunning designs. Products bought through Azavy arrive 2x faster and up to 6x cheaper than current competitors. User reviews and feedback establish consumer trust, and Azavy guarantees product delivery or your money back.
How Azavy Works
Designers start selling their 3D designs for a price-per-product that they specify, without requiring any upfront capital. Designers retain full rights to their uploaded files, and can choose to be the sole manufacturer if they do not wish to share their design with other makers.
Makers (owners of 3D printers) monetize their expensive assets which would otherwise sit idle. Azavy allows makers to place bids on products to fulfill orders, and monetize their 3D printers.
Anderson describes the marketplace:
Azavy will rapidly democratize the 3D printing landscape, empowering designers, consumers, and printer-owners. There are two primary sides to the Azavy platform:
1) “iTunes store” for 3D Designs: Designers are compensated on a per-product-sold basis, incentivizing them to create the most desired designs on the market, while retaining full ownership of their digital models. As the store grows, Azavy will be a major ecosystem in the intellectual property space for 3D designs, as physical items become digitized, transferable, and shareable.
2) Dynamically Routed Local Manufacturing: The Next Industrial Revolution will be on-demand, localized production. The Azavy platform makes this possible by connecting designers and consumers with local fulfillers. The secret sauce is the Azavy algorithm for routing work-orders based on consumer preferences, while optimizing for price and delivery time. By dynamically routing orders to local makers, Azavy enables the next generation of manufacturing efficiency – on demand production at the closest possible location.
The Azavy algorithm works by suggesting the best fulfiller for each item, specific to each consumer. Consumers also have the option to choose any of the various makers bids on each product, and the algorithm incorporates customer reviews, adjusting the “preferred fulfiller” for each item and trending to higher-quality manufacturing.
The Azavy vision is this manufacturing model on a global scale. 3D printers, supported by a library of digital designs, and an efficient crowd sourcing and order routing system, will enable production of physical items anywhere in the world on-demand. This is the Next Industrial Revolution, and represents a tidal shift in how people will go about producing products. By dynamically routing orders efficiently, Azavy represents the global production model of the future: items created on-demand, locally, for the cheapest price by available resources.
Azavy launched in April and is targeting early adopters and hobbyist 3D printers in the United States, while looking toward a long-term vision of a global marketplace.
In May, Azavy was named a winner in the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition.
Below is a video made by the Azavy founders.
Learn more at Azavy.
Michigan Tech Launches 3D Printers for Peace Contest
3D Printers for Peace
In the wake of the Cody Wilson’s 3D printed gun fiasco, Michigan Tech is launching a 3D printing contest for good.
Below are the details of the contest and how to enter.
3D printing is changing the world. Unfortunately, the only thing many people know about 3D printing is that it can be used to make guns. We want to celebrate designs that will make lives better, not snuff them out.
What is the Printers for Peace Contest?
We are challenging the 3D printing community to design things that advance the cause of peace. This is an open-ended contest, but if you’d like some ideas, ask yourself what Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, or Ghandi would make if they’d had access to 3D printing.
- low-cost medical devices
- tools to help pull people out of poverty
- designs that can reduce racial conflict
- objects to improve energy efficiency or renewable energy sources to reduce wars over oil
- tools that would reduce military conflict and spending while making us all safer and more secure
- things that boost sustainable economic development (e.g. designs for appropriate technology in the developing world to reduce scarcity)
1st Prize
Fully assembled, open-source Type A Machines Series 1 3D Printer
The Series 1 recently won best in class in the Make: Ultimate Guide to 3-D Printing. It has a 9-by-9-by-9-inch build volume, prints at 90mm/sec in PLA, ABS and PVA with 0.1mm resolution.
2nd Prize
Michigan Tech’s MOST version of the RepRap Prusa Mendel open-source 3D printer kit
The RepRap can be built in a weekend. It has a 7.8–by-7.8-by-6.8-inch build volume on a heated bed, prints comfortably at 80 mm/sec ABS, 45 mm/sec PLA, HDPE and PVA with 0.1 mm resolution.
Enter the Contest
Go to the Michigan Tech website to enter the contest.
Image by snapies_gi used under Creative Commons license.
Startup Launches Teleport It 3D to Revolutionize P2P 3D Printing
3D Printing Goes Peer-to-Peer with Teleport It 3D
Layer by Layer, a California-based 3D printing startup announced the availability of Teleport It 3D™, an online file-sharing platform that allows users to “teleport” ready-to-print designs to anyone with access to a personal 3D printer.
By emphasizing the final physical objects made by 3D printers, Teleport It 3D shifts the current 3D printing industry’s focus away from digital designs. While sharing 3D printable designs is typically complex and time-consuming, the platform streamlines the process by pre-slicing all teleported designs.
When sending a file, a user first uploads a design and adds any settings they have previously used to print the object. Senders may also limit the amount of time or number of prints their teleported design is available for. With the client-side TelePad™ software application, users receive 3D printable designs without actually downloading or slicing any CAD files. Once a “teleport” expires, it disappears from the user’s TelePad account, leaving behind a newly 3D printed object.
The first platform of its kind, Teleport It 3D not only makes it easy to share 3D printable designs, it protects the work of designers. Secure Stream technology allows Layer By Layer to stream designs directly to 3D printers without compromising or giving away actual design files. The application of pre-sliced, ready-to-print file streaming makes using a personal 3D printer easier then ever while introducing a better, safer way to share designs.
We interviewed Max Friefeld, Founder & COO of Layer by Layer:
On 3D Printing: Tell us about the inspiration for this new site / business.
Friefeld: The founders of Layer By Layer believe that 3D printing will be the cause of the next industrial revolution. By increasing the availability of 3D printing related products and platforms, we can advance the future of the 3D printing industry and change the world. Part of this means that 3D printing must become more accessible, easier to use and understand.
Teleport It 3D was inspired by these core values. The platform takes a new approach to personal 3D printing by shifting the current focus away from digital designs and to the physical products people can make on their 3D printers.
What’s the advantage of using Teleport It 3D? Our platform allows users to send prints not files. This way, a designer can share their work without giving anyone else access to the original design file. Their work is protected from improper distribution and alteration, and meanwhile, the receiver doesn’t have to worry about downloading any actual files to their computer or figuring out the proper settings. They can just print the product.
On 3D Printing: Who is Teleport It 3D targeted at? Upon first glance, it seems to be more advanced than, say, Shapeways. You have to know what an STL file is, for example.
Friefeld: We streamlined the process of teleporting as much as possible so that the platform would appeal to a larger audience. In order to send a file, you need basic knowledge of 3D printing files/settings, so we expect our senders [at first] to be mostly makers and other people with a general knowledge of 3D printing CAD designing. Our receivers however, can be anyone with access to a 3D printer. We do all the work with the sent file, and so all the recipient needs is a way to print it out.
On 3D Printing: Is this the MegaUpload for 3D printing?
Friefeld: We do no store files like a MegaUpload, when someone sends a teleport ,it is only delivered to the single recipient.
On 3D Printing: How do I find a “friend who has a 3D printer?” Are you looking to expand to more of an eBay peer-to-peer model at some point?
Friefeld: I’m glad you asked. Stay tuned for the launch of our next platform, next month. Right now, in order to send a teleport, the sender must know the receiver, so for the moment, “a friend” actually means a friend.
Learn more at teleportit3d.com.
Alliance Announces New 3D Printing Innovation Centers in China
3D Printing Innovation Centers in China
Investments in 3D printing innovation are increasing. President Obama last week announced a $200 million program to develop 3D printing institutes. Now a Chinese group plans to build 10 innovation centers focused on 3D printing.
Luo Jun, CEO of the Asian Manufacturing Association (AMA) and executive secretary-general of the China 3D Printing Technology Industry Alliance, told the Global Times ”Over the past 30 years, 3D printing technology has already been applied in the aerospace, automotive and biomedical industries, and now the conditions are ripe for it to scale up.”
Although 3D printing can create complex designs, it cannot compete today with the cost efficiences of traditional manufacturing. The innovation centers are therefore looking to develop complementary manufacturing processes.
The alliance will build 10 innovation centers at a cost of 20 million yuan ($3.3 million) for each.
“China can consider developing an industry-led strategic transformation plan to focus on technological innovation and differentiation. It can enact policies that bring in capital and technology-intensive industries from developed countries and it should work on improving how to utilize innovations imported from other countries,” Ricky Tung, co-leader of the Manufacturing Industry Group at auditing and consulting firm Deloitte China, told the Global Times. ”Going forward, (China) should continue to improve incentive mechanisms to cultivate technical leaders and promote deeper cooperation between enterprises and academic institutions,” said Tung.
Via Global Times.
Photo by TechYizu used under Creative Commons license.
