Tag Archives: video
3D Scanning and Printing Dinosaurs, Open-Sourcing Scientific Data
In the past, scaling and reproducing fossils was cost prohibitive and was in the domain of artists. Now 3D printers and 3D scanners are affordable, which means that paleontologists can now recreate dinosaurs.
In the video below, Professor Kenneth Lacovara says ”the best thing you could do in science is to falsify your hypothesis.” 3D digital technology allows scientists to “open-source” their empirical data, including original discoveries like fossils. Now, instead of asking colleagues to fly across the globe to help validate new findings, a scientist can just send a digital file and the finding can be 3D printed at the other end.
Scanning fossils has further application with the use of the 3D printer, of course. Holding the 1/10 scale leg bone of a dinosaur in the palm of his hand, Lacovara explained that uses in the classroom present attractive prospects, where examination of real specimens is hardly practical. The scans can also fill in the blanks of broken or incomplete bones by replicating data from a similar part. Of course, printing all of the specimens is still fairly expensive, so for now, they’re only printing fossils from which they hope to learn some new piece of information. The process is simple: Dr. Lacovara, and his students set a bone on a table, or, if size is less of a factor, on a small rotating pedestal. The scanner used in his lab is a $3,000 NextEngine scanner, which uses simple proprietary software to scan around 1 million points on a three-dimensional object in a few minutes. It is plugged into a Windows computer. The scanning produces an STL file, commonly used in CAD. The STL file is sent to another computer, and this time, it’s the one that is attached to the Dimension Elite 3D Printer which is housed in the Engineering Department, where the actual “printing” of the bone takes place. The complete process can take just a few hours. The printer uses fused deposit modeling, a 3D imaging and printing process developed in the 1980s and commercialized in the 1990s. It takes the STL file and essentially slices it into layers, automatically generating a disposable, breakaway support structure if needed. The printing material, a polymer plastic, is laid down in those corresponding layers, eventually completing the finished object. The result is a highly faithful and exact scale model of the object as originally scanned at a given scale. While the process is still somewhat expensive, it leads to the possibility — previously unthinkable — of endless duplication, and endless faithful reproductions.
Read the full article at The Verge.
Video: 3D Printing for Dummies; A Very Basic Introduction
Looking for a very basic introduction to 3D printing? Here is a video produced by a video game company in India that walks through the basics of 3D printing. If you can avoid being distracted by the animated narrator, the content in the video is accurate and helpful.
Dummies book photo by Marcus Q used under Creative Commons license.
$300 3D Printer Printxel Shows at the Kansas City Maker Faire
The Kansas City Maker Faire was held this past weekend, celebrating things people create themselves. Geek.com posted a summary of the highlights from the show, one of which was the debut of a $300 3D printer called Printxel.
With 3D printing technology moving forward at a brisk pace, the KC Maker Faire was overrun by people who are doing some interesting things to broaden what can be done with the new printing process. Pictured above is one of the world’s first $300 3D printers, created by Billy Zelsnack. Coming out of a fully-funded Kickstarter campaign, the “Printxel” as it’s called sports the ability to print 6-inch items in its small frame using either regular plastic filament or PLA-based extrusion material.
The device is lightweight and surprisingly simple in person. While the resolution it’s capable of won’t knock your socks off, it’s capable of printing useful everyday items. The best part? After the initial Kickstarter delivery run, Zelsnack stated that he will be making the plans for the device open source so that you can build your own!
Below is the Kickstarter campaign video for the Printxel.
Making 3D Printing Accessible: Interview with Tinkercad Founder
Kai Backman, co-founder and CEO of Helsinki-based Tinkercad, was interviewed by Wired magazine last week. Tinkercad allows mainstream consumers to design 3D models in their web browser for free, competing with traditional professional software costing thousands of dollars. Below are some excerpts from the interview.
What inspired you to create Tinkercad?
Tinkercad was born from a very personal frustration. In 2009, I started researching the new emerging 3-D printing technology and eventually bought my first printer by the end of the year. The device was assembled with great fanfare and my children eagerly looked forward to printed toys while my wife expected jewelry or at least some useful household items. Much to their disappointment it turned out that actually designing anything for printing was extremely hard with the software available. I would spend the evening learning one CAD system after another, only to get very little traction and forgetting most of what I learned before the next session.
In mid-2010 it had become clear the problem was more and more acute for a lot of people, so I quit my job at Google, Mikko my co-founder quit his job, and we started the company. We are still on the same road, our vision is to make 3-D design in general, and the design of physical items in particular, accessible to hundreds of millions of people.
On the Tinkercad Comunity
We let users choose how they want to publish their things and a lot of them use a Creative Commons license. This means the tinkercad.com site has a rapidly growing repository of interesting 3-D designs and an equally rapidly growing base of users.
Asked what Kai’s favorite 3D design is in the community, he pointed us to an historic train station on the Harlem line called Brewster Station.
Below is a video walkthrough of Tinkercad that showcases how it is feature rich despite the fact that it runs in a browser.
Read the full interview at Wired.
Tinker Towne photo by kafkan used under Creative Commons license.
3D Printer Maker Objet Breaks Records by Developing 100+ Materials
3D printer manufacturer Objet has established a new record in the world of 3D printing: the ability to print with over 100 materials. This feat was accomplished by developing 39 “digital material” composites that are derivatives of other materials that can be fed to the printer.
By comparison, most consumer 3D printers can only support one, two or three unique materials in a single model and most marketplaces only support a dozen or so total materials to choose from.
From the Objet press release:
Objet expands material range to 107 including 39 new ‘Digital Material’ composites for the Objet Connex Multi-Material 3D Printing Systems
Objet Connex Multi-material 3D Printers can include up to 14 different material properties in the same model – unique to the industry.Objet Ltd., the innovation leader in 3D printing for rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing has announced 39 new ‘Digital Materials’ available with its Objet Connex range of multi-material 3D printing systems. This development places Objet customers at the forefront of additive manufacturing in terms of range of possible printing materials to choose from. Customers can now select from 107 materials ranging from rigid to rubber-like substances in terms of texture, standard to ABS-grade engineering plastic in terms of toughness, as well as from transparent to opaque, in terms of clarity and shades.
90 of the 107 materials made available by Objet are ‘Digital Materials‘, derived by the composite mixing of primary Objet materials. This enables designers, engineers and manufacturers to simulate very precise material properties to closely resemble their intended end-product with the greatest level of realism. The use of the Objet Connex multi-material 3D printer allows users to also combine up to 14 of these materials; such as rigid and flexible, or opaque and transparent materials, at the same time in a single consistent model.
According to David Reis, CEO for Objet, “With 39 new Digital Materials, Objet have become the first 3D printing company to break the 100 materials barrier. Considering that we had half this number just a few short years ago, this growth in material choice confirms our commitment to consistently deliver new and enhanced material properties to our customers,” explains Reis. These new materials will be used by design and manufacturing companies in virtually every industry segment and in every stage of their product prototyping process from form modeling to fit testing and functional verification.
The company has also today launched two new material enhancements. It now offers a new and improved Objet Rigid Black material (Objet VeroBlackPlus) providing increased dimensional stability and surface smoothness for all-purpose rapid prototyping applications.* Objet’s 2011-released High Temperature material, offering the high thermal functionality of engineering plastics will be available on all Objet Connex and Objet EdenV 3D Printers and the new Objet30 Pro Desktop 3D Printer.
Objet released a whitepaper listing the 10 reasons to shift to multi-material printing. In that whitepaper is the chart below that shows Objet’s continuous innovation in 3D printable materials.
Below is a video of a 3D printed car being manufactured with 14 different materials in the same model.
Via MarketWatch and Objet.
