Motorola Mobility, a Google company, is building a 3D printed modular phone, and has partnered with 3D Systems for commercial fulfillment. More »
The Captured Dimensions pop-up studio was located in the Smithsonian Castle and featured approximately 80 digital cameras all connected to 3D software. More »
Microsoft expanded their support for 3D printing by launching a Windows 8 app called 3D Builder. It includes a library of objects you can edit and 3D print. More »
3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) announced the availability of the Sense 3D scanner, the first 3D scanner designed for the consumer and optimized for 3D printing. More »
With rumors circling that 3D Systems will be purchased by IBM, the stock soars. We look at why IBM might be interested in the 3D printing giant. More »
Could 3D Printing Save the Public Library System? Mixed Opinions
Back in July, we covered a story about 3D printing coming to a Nevada public library. The University of Nevada engineering library became the first in the nation to offer 3D printing resources to the public. At On3dPrinting, we think this is a trend that is going to continue.
But some do not agree. We came across an editorial post at PublicLibrariesNews.com, where the author posts about why libraries will not make a good install base for 3D printing.
What I’m curious about is its impact on public libraries.
The theory goes that public libraries will provide great spaces for 3D printers. Libraries have always provided material for the benefit of the community for those who cannot afford it and 3D printing, on the face of it, seems to fit right in. Libraries are also in the centre of most communities, have space (as long, presumably, as one gets rid of those pesky books) to hold them and have helpful staff that could show you how to use 3D printers. I’m not aware of any UK library having one as yet but, in the USA, several libraries already have one and they’re feeling pretty cocky about being on the crest of the technological wave.
That’s right up to a point but let’s go deeper. For one thing, even now, a pre-assembled 3D printer can be purchased for $500. That’s barely over £300. That’s just about fine for libraries now. They provide computers precisely for people who can’t afford similar amounts of money after all. However, these prices are at the start of the technological revolution. Last year, one had to spend perhaps $1000. You can see where this is going. 3D printers are going to be cheap. Really cheap. Cheap enough that everyone who wants one is going to have one. There’ll be no need for libraries to provide them for the poor because everyone will own them, like the ubiquitous smartphone. Be prepared to see “Happy Birthday Wayne” 3D banners on roundabouts. Perhaps there was a time when it would have made sense for libraries, therefore, to provide 3D printers to the populace but that time has already effectively gone even before most of us were really aware of the possibility.
The other selling point for libraries in this is that we have friendly staff who will be able to help people in learning how to use them. That may be so in some branches of course. However, I’m willing to bet that right now the majority of staff working in libraries have not even heard of 3D printers. A lot of library staff frankly need to be more highly trained in Word, let alone the next disruptive technology. Moreover, libraries are in no position to help anyone. The current cuts mean that there is never been such a difficult time for libraries to justify gambling on such a new technology. It would be an act of desperation. An act of desperation, that is, unless there was a national investment programme to get 3D printers into libraries and the political will not only to do that but to train staff in the bargain. With the current belief in austerity and, on the side of all main political parties, in the free market and localism, that is simply not going to happen.
What do you think? Weigh in with your own comments.
Public library photo by wallyg used under Creative Commons license.
SpiderFab: NASA Turns to 3D Printing for Future Space Expeditions
Astronauts have always had limited carry-on storage. Even some of the most valuable scientific equipment can be restricted from flight because of constraints in the design of a space shuttle.
NASA has green lit a new project called SpiderFab that will enable the manufacturing of spaceship parts and other equipment in flight. How? By integrating 3D printing into the space program.
From Iowa State Daily:
NASA’s project entitled “SpiderFab” proposes the use of 3D printer technology on future missions allowing for the possibility of a spaceship to self-assemble parts in orbit. The project is funded by NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program with a $100,000 grant. This new initiative opens the door to potentially lower costs and the ability to launch 3D printers with the materials needed for ship construction in outer space. Current spacecraft are designed to fold and fit all necessary components into a compact area within the craft, while also having to withstand the high energy forces of launch and the ascent into space.
“We’d like someday to be able to have a spacecraft create itself entirely from scratch, but realistically that’s quite a ways out,” said Robert Hoyt, CEO and chief scientist of Tethers Unlimited Inc. “That’s still science fiction.” “The system could then morph in orbit into a very large system a dozen or hundreds of meters in size,” Hoyt told InnovationNewsDaily. “It would be like launching a CubeSat that creates a 50 meter-length boom.” (Space.com)
Here is the description of SpiderFab from the NASA site:
We propose to develop a process for automated on-orbit construction of very large structures and multifunctional components. The foundation of this process is a novel additive manufacturing technique called ‘SpiderFab’, which combines the techniques of fused deposition modeling (FDM) with methods derived from automated composite layup to enable rapid construction of very large, very high-strength-per-mass, lattice-like structures combining both compressive and tensile elements. This technique can integrate both high-strength structural materials and conducting materials to enable construction of multifunctional space system components such as antennas. The SpiderFab technique enables the constituent materials for a space structure to be launched in an extremely compact form, approaching perfect packing efficiencies, and processed on-orbit to form structures optimized for the micro-gee space environment, rather than launch environments. The method can also create structures with 2nd and higher orders of hierarchy, such as a ‘truss-of-trusses’, achieving 30X mass reductions over the 1st order hierarchy structures used in most space applications. This approach can therefore enable deployment of antenna reflectors, phased array antennas, solar panels, and radiators with characteristic sizes one to two orders of magnitude larger than current state-of-the-art deployable-structure technologies can fit within available launch shrouds.
The SpiderFab process for on-orbit construction of large, lightweight structures will dramatically reduce the launch mass and stowed volume of NASA systems for astronomy, Earth-observation, and other missions requiring large apertures or large baselines, enabling them to be deployed using much smaller, less expensive launch vehicles and thereby reducing total life cycle cost for these missions. Potential applications include construction of multiple high-gain antennas in Earth and solar orbit to support a deep-space communications network, long-baseline interferometry systems for terrestrial planet finder programs, and submillimeter astronomy of cosmic structure. The proposed space system fabrication technologies will also enable these systems to be re-configurable and repairable on orbit, and can evolve to support ISRU of orbital debris in Earth orbit and asteroid materials in deep space exploration missions.
NASA photo by Luke Bryant used under Creative Commons license.
Interview: Idle Print Looks to Monetize Spare Cycles in 3D Printing
Idle Print is trying to help people find solutions for their 3D printing needs at a fraction of the cost, while also helping people who own 3D printers make some income on the side. Idle Print is an online marketplace that allows sellers with 3D printers to find buyers who need an object printed. The company was created by Kevin Nuest and Blaine Wilson and debuted at Startup Tucson.
We spoke with Idle Print and here’s the transcript of the interview.
On3DPrinting: Hi Blaine, thanks for taking time to answer a few questions. First, what problem are you trying to solve at Idle Print?
Idle Print: The 3D printing market suffers from great inefficiency. Lead times are often measured in days if not weeks, and commercial services aren’t cheap. Meanwhile the rate of innovation and development of open source 3D printers is driving machine prices downward and capability upwards. Our founding assumption is that these two segments are ready to converge.
On3DPrinting: How much money do you think an end user can make?
Idle Print: That will depend on a great many things; supply/demand, additional services, marketing, capability, etc. We hope to enable proficient operators with a capable machines to make a living doing this, though I’m sure we’ll see a range of users from hobbiests to full-time users with a garage full of bots cranking out parts. If you consider the average cost of commercial print jobs, having a single machine generate a day’s salary at minimum wage isn’t unreasonable, and depending on how you calculate it, conservative.
Additionally, we hope for this to be a platform to offer additional services to supplement revenue via 3D modeling, scanning, post processing, etc. We want to enable users to provide a bit more than just printing, though that’s certainly the foundation.
On3DPrinting: Why wouldn’t someone just order a print from Shapeways or i.materialise rather than ordering from a consumers’ 3D printer?
Idle Print: In a word – Efficiency. Shapeways is running a several week backlog on their least expensive material and I’ve never heard of anyone getting anything back from Solid Concepts in less than three days. As someone in manufacturing who needs a model RIGHT NOW, that’s not acceptable. Meanwhile those same companies start their pricing at $1.40 per cubic cm. Last I checked, ABS is ~$.04 per ccm. While that’s not an apples to apples comparison, we believe there’s certainly room for such a service to compete with (if not supplement) existing commercial printers.
Additionally, we hope to help accelerate the shift from 3D printing from the domain of engineering offices and product developers to everyone else. Companies such as Makerbot and Cubify already spearheading the effort, making the service more efficient and available is our contribution to that goal.
On3DPrinting: How does someone get involved in Idle Print?
Idle Print: The best way to stay updated is via facebook at http://www.facebook.com/
Additionally, if you’d like to be notified once the service is up & running, you can sign up here: http://idleprint.co/ (still in early alpha)
On3DPrinting: Thanks Blaine! Good luck with Idle Print.
Unique 3D Printed Art Featured at the 3D Print Show in London
This October, the 3D Print Show will come to London. Among the exhibitors will be artists and designers who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible thanks to 3D printing technology. Here are some of our favorite previews.
Above: fashion takes the front seat during a planned live catwalk show featuring 3D printed wearables. Designer Niccolo Casas created this spicy accessory, part of the “Alchemy” collection.
Sophie Kahn‘s “Dominick” sculpture, featured at the 3D Print Show, derived from using a cinema-quality laser scanner and 3D imaging software to create a unique characterization of a human face in motion.
“The precisely engineered scanning technology I use was never designed to represent the body, which is always in flux,” Kahn notes on her Web site. “Confronted with motion, the software receives conflicting spatial coordinates, and generates a fragmented model. This model is then edited — virtually ‘sculpted’ — using 3D editing software.” Read more about the methods and materials she uses for the 3D printing process.
See a larger set of designs at CNET.
3D Printing Will Be As Disruptive As the PC, Thanks to Piracy
The Economist published a feature on the intellectual property implications of 3D printing. Remember Napster and shareware? 3D printing will be as disruptive as the PC.
The machines, called 3D printers, have existed in industry for years. But at a cost of $100,000 to $1m, few individuals could ever afford one. Fortunately, like everything digital, their price has fallen. So much so, industrial 3D printers can now be had for $15,000, and home versions for little more than $1,000 (or half that in kit form). “In many ways, today’s 3D printing community resembles the personal computing community of the early 1990s,” says Michael Weinberg, a staff lawyer at Public Knowledge, an advocacy group in Washington, DC.
This disruption will require a change in business model. The question is whether manufacturers will adapt.
Manufacturers are likely to behave much like the record industry did when its own business model—based on selling pricey CD albums that few music fans wanted instead of cheap single tracks they craved—came under attack from file-swapping technology and MP3 software. The manufacturers’ most likely recourse will be to embrace copyright, rather than patent, law, because many of their patents will have expired. Patents apply for only 20 years while copyright continues for 70 years after the creator’s death.
Will regulation create obstacles to innovation?
Today’s 3D printing crowd—tucked away in garages, basements, small workshops and university labs—needs to keep a keen eye on such policy debates as they grow. “There will be a time when impacted legacy industries [will] demand some sort of DMCA for 3D printing,” says Mr Weinberg. If the tinkerers wait until that day, it will be too late.
Read the full feature at The Economist.
Piracy photo by robotson used under Creative Commons license.
