Category Archives: News
Neil Gershenfeld Speaks With RadioNZ (New Zealand), Talks 3D Printing
Father of the Fab Lab movement and MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld speaks with RadioNZ about the current status of personal fabrication.
“It’s all a big accident,” Professor Gershenfeld starts out.
He goes on to say that we’re building micro-LEGOs to fabricate objects digitally. Listen to the full interview below.
Neil Gershenfeld photo by etech used under Creative Commons license.
Read more articles about Neil Gershenfeld.
Top 3D Printing Headlines Last Week: Kids, Stocks, Suitcases, Fab Labs
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from August 6 to August 12.
Monday, August 6
Tuesday, August 7
- 3D Printing On the Go: Portable 3D Printer PopFab Fits in a Suitcase
- Finally, an iPhone Case That Does Something Useful (Opens Beers)
Thursday, August 9
Friday, August 10
- Open-Source 3D Printer Pwdr Takes on MakerBot, Offers New Materials
- Setting Up and Running a Fab Lab: Primer, History, and Recommendations
Saturday, August 11
Sunday, August 12
Who Makes Better Sand Castles: Kids or 3D Printing?
Building sand castles is one of the cherished experiences for kids in the summer. Castles can be big or small, organized or chaotic. But it’s really about the process.
Well, a new 3D printing system called Stone Spray is looking to upstage these kids with perfectly created sand castles.
Stone Spray is a revolutionary construction method which uses soil as the base material and a liquid binder to solidify the soil granules. And uses a jet spray system to deposit the mix of soil and binder, for constructing architectural shapes.
Stone Spray is a project by architects Petr Novikov, Inder Shergill and Anna Kulik. The project is done in the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and supervised by Marta Male-Alemany, Jordi Portell and Miquel Lloveras. With professional advisors: Santigo Martin from Vortica and Guillem Camprodon from Fab Lab Bcn.
Stone Spray is a research project. We want to push further the boundaries of digital manufacturing and explore the possibilities of an on-site fabrication machines.
The video below shows the team’s project in action.
Sand castle image by Paul Watson used under Creative Commons license.
Cubify Sent Us a 3D Printed Name Plate!
In June, we covered an exclusive story of 3D Systems’ Cubify division printing at Google I/O.
This week we received something special in the mail from Cubify: a custom 3D printed name plate featuring our very own brand “On 3D Printing”.
Thanks Cubify!
Open-Source 3D Printer Pwdr Takes on MakerBot, Offers New Materials
There’s a new open-source 3D printer in town, and its name is Pwdr.
In a change from the technique used by MakerBot 3D printers of extruding plastic onto a platform layer by layer, Pwdr operates like the expensive industrial powder printers. This opens new doors for the consumer 3D printing market.
A whole new range of materials become available for experimenting with open-source rapid-prototyping; for example, when using the 3DP process: gypsum, ceramics, concrete, sugar, etc. And when the SLS process is fully supported, plastic materials like ABS, PP, Nylon and metals become available as building material.A Hewlett Packard inkjet cartridge is used for the deposition of binder. The cartridge can be refilled with custom binders using a syringe. A custom binder of 20% alcohol and 80% water has been proven to work.
The Pwdr Model 0.1 consists of chassis, tool head and electronics. The printer entirely consists of off-the-shelf components. It has a simple design and can be built within a couple of hours. The machine is easy and affordable to build and modify. Building a Pwdr Model 0.1 machine costs about €1000.
