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 »
Search Results for: 3d printer
3D Printing Crosses Academic Boundaries at Universities
3D printing has historically been seen as a tool for engineers and designers to rapidly prototype. Now the technology is crossing academic boundaries at universities and being adopted by various disciplines.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on this trend.
Colleges and universities are finding more and more uses for 3-D-printing technology, which has grown in sophistication and fallen in price in recent years. Some proponents argue that nearly every discipline could benefit from the ability to easily create objects from customized designs. “We want this for humanities, for social sciences, for bio people, for law school, so what’s interesting about 3-D printing is that it touches on all these areas,” says Hod Lipson, a professor of mechanical engineering and of computing and information science at Cornell University, who is creating a 3-D-printing course for nonengineers.
What are some examples of students using 3D printing across disciplines?
Art: “When an art student at the University of Washington wanted to bring her vision of a futuristic animal to life last semester, she didn’t draw, paint, or sculpt it. She printed it—in three dimensions—using a machine that rendered her design from powdered bone.”
Medical: “Consider the work of Brandon Bowman, 28, a former blacksmith who is now studying at Washington. He is working with a hand surgeon to see if the technology can print body parts. Years ago Mr. Bowman lost the tip of a finger in a metal-shop accident. A friend told him to leave the wound alone and let the nub of flesh grow back on its own. It did, and he has been interested in regenerative medicine ever since.”
Paleontology: ’Kenneth Lacovara, a biologist at Drexel University uses the campus lab to print copies of dinosaur fossils, which he lets his students handle. “I can only have so many undergraduates in my lab, but I can give thousands of students the experience of what it’s like to hold a dinosaur bone and see the richness of detail contained in an ancient fossil,” says the associate professor. His students can’t go on the actual digs, but the printer has helped him replicate the experience.’
How far can 3D printing go?
University of Washington mechanical engineering professor Mark Ganter thinks that 3D printing will continue to proliferate.
“With 3-D printers, they’re either going to get to the ubiquity of Kinko’s, or lots of people are going to have them in their house,” he says.
Mr. Ganter sees 3D printing as a way to hook younger students on engineering fields. This year his class printed 8,000 edible cookies for an engineering open house for visiting junior-high and high-school students. They were more excited by the printed cookies than by anything else, he says.
The Washington professor’s students have also used the technology to print a device for NASA that, when sent into outer space, would store fuel in zero gravity. If institutions can develop early interest in engineering, and maintain sufficient access for kids to nurture this interest, he says, “soon we are going to try to figure out how to print on the moon.”
Read the full article at Chronicle of Higher Education.
Students 3D Printing photo by cogdogblog used under Creative Commons license.
Will It 3D Print? Objet Prints a Baseball Bat (Video)
In this edition of our Will It 3D Print?, we ask: could you 3D print a baseball bat?
In the video below, a baseball bat was 3D printed on an Objet Connex Multi-Material 3D Printer and tested against a variety of objects to see if it breaks. The bat is printed in Objet’s ABS-like Digital Material – a very strong and functionally versatile composite material that is unique to the Objet Connex range of 3D printers. The bat does not shatter or splinter upon hard contact with various objects.
Verdict: YES!
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.
