Tag Archives: Berkeley
Maker Faire Bay Area Exhibits Grassroots 3D Printing Innovations
Maker Faire Shows Off 3D Printing
Each year Maker Faire comes to the Bay Area and it seems the 3D printing exhibit continues to grow in scale. With 120,000 attendees and thousands of makers, it’s a great event.
Our friends at Hack Things went to Maker Faire and wrote this recap.
The section on 3D printing — a tiny part of the entire event — was bigger than what we saw in New York. And even more 3D printers were scattered throughout the exhibition hall. There were some delightful variations.
- A team from Berkeley demonstrated 3D printing with sawdust or cement.
- The SandBox fuses thin layers of sand to create objects. The unfused sand acts as support so any geometry can be created and there’s no need for extra support structures. This mimics a property of the much more expensive SLS (selective laser sintering) technology.
- Fred White showed off his soon-to-be-on-Kickstarter Apex 3D printer head. It can print six separate filaments or fluids simultaneously. As he pointed out, you could print a teacup and fill it with tea in one pass.
- Oleksiy Pikalo has a 3D printer that can draw patterns in carmel in the foam of your latte. He’s working on a version that will work for beer.
- And the Serpentine 3D printer, designed by architecture students, uses clay to rapidly create structures.
Read the full write-up at Hack Things.
Visit the Maker Faire website.
Read more articles about Maker Faire.
Improving Education: 3D Printing Lab Equipment to Help Poor Schools
What can a school do when it does not have the budget to buy proper lab equipment for its students? The team at Tekla Labs believes they have a solution: 3D print your own.
Tekla Labs is an organization formed by students at University of California, Berkeley and has launched a PRINTmyLAB Design Challenge. They are looking for 3D printing blueprint submissions by April 30.
Some suggestions from the website:
1) DIY Alternative: A 3D printing blueprint for an item that can replace a commercial product or a specific component of a commercial product used in scientific laboratories or in scientific/engineering research. Especially helpful if this part tends to break or get lost.
2) Novel Gadget: A 3D printing blueprint for a novel item not commercially available that is of use in scientific laboratories or in scientific/engineering research. Invent! Imagine! Print!
Read more at Tekla Labs or in a feature by PC World.
Students image used under Creative Commons from lumierefl.
