3D Printing Flies High now. Articles on three-dimensional printers are popping up everywhere these days. And nowadays there are many 3D printer products. Some are small enough to fit in a briefcase and others are large enough to print houses.
Everything you ever wanted to know about 3D printing article tells that 3D printing is having its “Macintosh moment,” declares Wired editor -in-chief Chris Anderson in cover story on the subject. 3D printers are now where the PC was 30 years ago. They are just becoming affordable and accessible to non-geeks, will be maybe able to democratize manufacturing the same way that PCs democratized publishing.
Gartner’s 2012 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies “Tipping Point” Technologies That Will Unlock Long-Awaited Technology Scenarios lists 3D Print It at Home as important topic. In this scenario, 3D printing allows consumers to print physical objects, such as toys or housewares, at home, just as they print digital photos today. Combined with 3D scanning, it may be possible to scan certain objects with a smartphone and print a near-duplicate. Analysts predict that 3D printing will take more than five years to mature beyond the niche market. Eventually, 3D printing will enable individuals to print just about anything from the comfort of their own homes.Slideshow: 3D Printers Make Prototypes Pop article tells that advances in performance, and the durability and range of materials used in additive manufacturing and stereolithography offerings, are enabling companies to produce highly durable prototypes and parts, while also cost-effectively churning out manufactured products in limited production runs.
3D printing can have implications to manufacturers of some expensive products. The Pirate Bay declares 3D printed “physibles” as the next frontier of piracy. Pirate Bay Launches 3D-Printed ‘Physibles’ Downloads. The idea is to have freely available designs for different products that you can print at home with your 3D printer. Here a video demonstrating 3D home printing in operation.
Shapeways is a marketplace and community that encourages the making and sharing of 3D-printed designs. 3D Printing Shapes Factory of the Future article tells that recently New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg cut the Shapeways‘ Factory (filled with industrial-sized 3D printers) ribbon using a pair of 3D-printed scissors.
The Next Battle for Internet Freedom Could Be Over 3D Printing article tells up to date, 3D printing has primarily been used for rapid commercial prototyping largely because of its associated high costs. Now, companies such as MakerBot are selling 3D printers for under $2,000. Slideshow: 3D Printers Make Prototypes Pop article gives view a wide range of 3D printers, from half-million-dollar rapid prototyping systems to $1,000 home units. Cheapest 3D printers (with quite limited performance) now start from 500-1000 US dollars. It is rather expensive or inexpensive is how you view that.
RepRap Project is a cheap 3D printer that started huge 3D printing buzz. RepRap Project is an initiative to develop an open design 3D printer that can print most of its own components. RepRap (short for replicating rapid prototyper) uses a variant of fused deposition modeling, an additive manufacturing technique (The project calls it Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) to avoid trademark issues around the “fused deposition modeling” term). It is almost like a small hot glue gun that melts special plastic is moved around to make the printout. I saw RepRap (Mendel) and Cupcake CNC 3D printers in operation at at Assembly Summer 2010.
There has been some time been trials to make 3D-Printed Circuit Boards. 3D Printers Will Build Circuit Boards ‘In Two Years’ article tells that printing actual electronics circuit boards is very close. Most of the assembly tools are already completely automated anyway.
3D printing can be used to prototype things like entire cars or planes. The makers of James Bond’s latest outing, Skyfall, cut a couple corners in production and used modern 3D printing techniques to fake the decimation of a classic 1960s Aston Martin DB5 (made1:3 scale replicas of the car for use in explosive scenes). The world’s first 3D printed racing car can pace at 140 km/h article tells that a group of 16 engineers named “Group T” has unveiled a racing car “Areion” that is competing in Formula Student 2012 challenge. It is described as the world’s first 3D printed race car. The Areion is not fully 3D printed but most of it is.
Student Engineers Design, Build, Fly ‘Printed’ Airplane article tells that when University of Virginia engineering students posted a YouTube video last spring of a plastic turbofan engine they had designed and built using 3-D printing technology, they didn’t expect it to lead to anything except some page views. But it lead to something bigger. 3-D Printing Enables UVA Student-Built Unmanned Plane article tells that in an effort that took four months and $2000, instead of the quarter million dollars and two years they estimate it would have using conventional design methods, a group of University of Virginia engineering students has built and flown an airplane of parts created on a 3-D printer. The plane is 6.5 feet in wingspan, and cruises at 45 mph.
3D printers can also print guns and synthetic chemical compounds (aka drugs). The potential policy implications are obvious. US Army Deploys 3D Printing Labs to Battlefield to print different things army needs. ‘Wiki Weapon Project’ Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home. If high-quality weapons can be printed by anyone with a 3D printer, and 3D printers are widely available, then law enforcement agencies will be forced to monitor what you’re printing in order to maintain current gun control laws.
Software Advances Do Their Part to Spur 3D Print Revolution article tells that much of the recent hype around 3D printing has been focused on the bevy of new, lower-cost printer models. Yet, significant improvements to content creation software on both the low and high end of the spectrum are also helping to advance the cause, making the technology more accessible and appealing to a broader audience. Slideshow: Content Creation Tools Push 3D Printing Mainstream article tells that there is still a sizeable bottleneck standing in the way of mainstream adoption of 3D printing: the easy to use software used to create the 3D content. Enter a new genre of low-cost (many even free like Tikercad) and easy-to-use 3D content creation tools. By putting the tools in reach, anyone with a compelling idea will be able to easily translate that concept into a physical working prototype without the baggage of full-blown CAD and without having to make the huge capital investments required for traditional manufacturing.
Finally when you have reached the end of the article there is time for some fun. Check out this 3D printing on Dilbert strip so see a creative use of 3D printing.
2,037 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D printed bones made using bone powder may be on the horizon
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/tech-edge/4441519/3D-printed-bones-made-using-bone-powder-may-be-on-the-horizon?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20160311&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20160311&elqTrackId=926e2d63660e4c8b8f7897b70e3773c1&elq=edb7f6f382274515a39af3649a9c4383&elqaid=31272&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27344
Developments in the medical world are underway that are equal parts fascinating, inspirational, and possibly even macabre.
Additive manufacturing — creating three-dimensional solid objects from a digital file — has become a billon-dollar industry whose potential is limited only by the imaginations of individuals with access to a 3D printer. Within that market, 3D bioprinting, which involves fabricating replacement tissues and organs for patients layer by layer to create a three-dimensional structure, is rapidly evolving in its own right. Numerous companies, including Organovo, Cyfuse Biomedical, and BioBots, are active in the space and making incredible strides to improve outcomes for patients dealing with a range of illnesses and injuries. The specialty now has its own conferences, including the 3D Bioprinting Conference held recently in the Netherlands and a July 2016 event in Singapore.
Currently, objects 3D printed for medical implant applications are made of plastic, ceramic, or metal. A team of researchers at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, however, is working to develop potentially implantable bones made using a material comprising finely ground bones layered thousands of times with biological glue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Hackaday MRRF Edition: 3D Printers Can Catch Fire
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/21/ask-hackaday-mrrf-edition-3d-printers-can-catch-fire/
[Jay] out of the River City Labs Hackerspace in Peoria, IL cleared out a jam in his printer. It’s an operation most of us who own a 3D printer have performed. He reassembled the nozzle, and in a moment forgot to tighten down the grub nut that holds the heater cartridge in place. He started a print, saw the first layer go down right, and left the house at 8:30 for work. When he came back from work at 10:30 he didn’t see the print he expected, but was instead greeted by acrid smoke and a burnt out printer.
As far as he can figure, some time at around the thirty minute mark the heater cartridge vibrated out of the block. The printer saw a drop in temperature and increased the power to the cartridge.
Eventually the cartridge, without a place to dump the energy being fed to it, burst into flame.
Which brings us to the topics of discussion.
How much can we trust our own work? We all have our home-builds and once you’ve put a lot of work into a printer you want to see it print a lot of things. I regularly leave the house with a print running and have a few other home projects going 24/7. Am I being arrogant? Should I treat my home work with a lesser degree of trust than something built by a larger organization?
The other side of the coin is corporate responsibility.
So, if you made a modification or dirt standard to a repair out of manufacturer insistence, and a critical failure occurred because a common-to-hackers-fail-safe was missing, who’s responsible? Is the manufacturer right because they wanted to do the work themselves and control the input to their machine to ensure proper operation? Or is the user right because it’s their machine and, by all regards [Jay] is competent enough to perform the repair to his machine?
It’s also a very good case for open sourcing safety critical code. Someone might have seen this lack and just fixed it.
Just like with the debates around encryption, if we can’t look into the code that we’re trusting and make sure the things we expect are there, do we really own it?
Comment:
There’s a setting in Marlin firmware to protect against exactly this problem
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF: 3D Printed 2D Paintings
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/22/mrrf-3d-printed-2d-paintings/
3D printing is obviously best used in printing three-dimensional objects. Laser cutters, jig saws, and CNC routers are obviously well-equipped to machine flat panels with intricate shapes out of plastic sheets, plywood, or metal, but these devices have one drawback: they’re subtractive manufacturing, and 3D printers add material. What good is this? [Jason Preuss] demonstrated a very interesting 3D printing technique at this year’s Midwest RepRap Festival. He’s producing 2D paintings with a 3D printer, with results that look like something between very intricate inlay work and a paint by numbers kit.
the artwork becomes a single piece of plastic with individual colors laid down one at a time.
http://www.patterntoprint.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Little 3-D Printer on the ISS Is a Huge Step for Space Exploration
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/little-3-d-printer-iss-huge-step-space-exploration/
When humans depart from Earth to set up the first planetary colony, they’ll have to travel light. Seeds, water, and tools might secure a spot on the cargo ship. But everything else will have to be built from extraterrestrial materials. The question is, how?
Made In Space might have an answer. Today, NASA will send a resupply mission to the International Space Station carrying a high-tech 3-D printer and feedstock from the microgravity tech company. Voila: the first off-world manufacturing facility
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF, How Red Hat Helps Open Source 3D Printing
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/23/mrrf-how-red-hat-helps-open-source-3d-printing/
Red Hat is the world’s largest open source company. Run as a for profit company, it manages to give every line of code away and still rake in a cozy 1.5 to 2 billion US dollars a year. So, quite provably, Red Hat knows how to run an open source business. Despite being a software company, as a corporation, Red Hat has hopes for the future of open hardware, and they put their money where their ethos is.
[Tom Callaway] is Red Hat’s full time 3d Printer guy.
Red Hat’s first interest is that anyone who uses their software to run a 3D printer or interacts with the files involved has an easy time of it in Linux. To that end Tom regularly tests the latest versions of the software we regularly use. He makes sure that the software is nicely packaged for Red Hat. On top of that he also contributes to the projects themselves. He has submitted patches for Cura and Slic3r to name a few.
[Tom] runs Red Hat’s 3D printing lab.
If you are a 3D printer manufacturer (open or closed) you can send them a printer and they’ll make sure it has a profile and runs faultlessly with each version update, not bad!
The coolest thing about all this, is Red Hat’s support for manufacturers. Red Hat will make sure any software that supports a printer will run, for free. So if you’ve written a custom driver for your printer that only runs on windows. As long as you give Red Hat access to the source code, they’ll make sure it can run on Linux as well.
Being primarily a software company, Red Hat has no personal interest in entering the open hardware market at this time
Tomi Engdahl says:
Extremely Thorough Formlabs Form 2 Teardown by Bunnie
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/26/extremely-thorough-formlabs-form-2-teardown-by-bunnie/
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF: Innovating Extruders and Dissolvable Filament
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/30/mrrf-innovating-extruders-and-dissolvable-filament/
Think laying down molten plastic on a 3D printer is as easy as squeezing plastic filament out of a hot tube? It’s not, and anyone who had a 3D printer in 2009 would tell you as such. There were hobbed bolts that stripped the plastic into a gooey paste, extremely large x carriages that made everything wobbly, and nothing worked as well as it does today.
Technology marches on, and this year’s Midwest RepRap Festival had people showing off the latest advances in pushing plastic, and something that hasn’t seen much use yet – dissolvable filament.
Dissolvable filament used as a support material in RepRaps and other 3D printers has been around for a while. Makerbot launched a line of dissolvable PVA back in 2011, but somehow the idea of extruding two types of filament and dissolving one when the print was done never really caught on. Why, we’ll never know.
Since E3D has a few different extruders specifically designed for dual extrusion, it only makes sense they would incorporate dissolvable filament into their product lineup.
One problem with dissolvable filaments is how to get rid of the support material. If you’re using HIPS as a support material, you can dissolve it away with limonene, but that means you need to get rid of the resulting goo of dissolved plastic and toxic chemicals. PVA is water soluble, and so are all the other ingredients in the Scaffold material, so the best way to dissolve the material on a print is just to put it in a dishwasher.
Comment:
What’s cross-linking? It’s the act of PVA turning into carbon in your nozzle. PVA is a tricky material, at the temperature that it prints, it will also cross-link. Meaning if you leave it hot for longer amounts of time, you will ruin your nozzle. This also means your nozzle should not have any resident material buildup.
Degradation. It dissolves in water. Water is everywhere, including in the air. PVA has a shelve life of a year, if properly stored. But it can degrade a whole lot faster depending on temperature and moister. W
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing A Fake Product Leak
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/04/3d-printing-a-fake-product-leak/
A few days ago you might have seen images floating around the net of the next Nintendo console controller, The Nintendo NX. There were so many pictures, it just had to be real!
Wrong. It was just [Frank Sandqvist] messing with everyone on the Internet. While phony product leaks are usually just photoshopped or 3D modeled renders, [Frank] took it a step further and actually designed a whole controller, 3D printed it, and took pictures of it.
NX Controller Rumor [Up5: Original was fake, and thus this is too]
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1199996
Tomi Engdahl says:
A $99 Smartphone Powered 3D Printer?
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/01/a-99-smartphone-powered-3d-printer/
What if we could reduce the cost of a photopolymer resin-based 3D printer by taking out the most expensive components — and replacing it with something we already have? A smartphone. That’s exactly what OLO hopes to do.
A resin-based 3D printer, at least on the mechanical side of things, is quite simple. It’s just a z-axis really. Which means if you can use the processing power and the high-resolution screen of your smart phone then you’ve just eliminated 90% of the costs involved with the manufacturing of a resin-based 3D printer. There are a ton of designs out there that use DLP projectors to do just this. (And there have been open-source designs since at least 2012.)
The question is, does it work with a cellphone’s relatively weak light source?
http://www.olo3d.net/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D printers set for lift off? Yes, yes, yes… at some point in the future
If only hardware makers could print more customers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/05/3d_printer_sales/
3D printing is still perched on the edge of greatness, industry types insist, but sales are not yet matching the marketing bluster.
The latest stats in the shipment stakes arrived on our desks today from the number-crunchers at Context – units sales went up 19 per cent year-on-year in Q4 to 73,012 machines.
Some 96 per cent of total sales were desktop/ personal printers, mostly priced below $5,000, a segment of the market that grew 24 per cent. Conversely, the industrial/professional sector declined 24 per cent to 2,907 shipments.
“This nascent side of the 3D printer market again saw great changes in 2015,” said Context veep for global analysis Chris Connery.
“Companies with a long standing presence in the additive manufacturing market scaled back their expectations for this newer, desktop side of the market, retooling to concentrate more on their core B2B competencies,” he added.
The de-emphasis on consumer 3D printers was self evident in the second half of the year, with market behemoth Stratasys/Maker Bot and 3D Systems/Cubity looking to tap up business punters.
Other brands are trying to squeeze into the space that was occupied by those big hitters and new entrants include startups and toy company Mattel (a sub-$3000 machine is due by year’s end) alongside IT firms such as HP, Canon and Ricoh.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The State Of 3D Printing At MRRF
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/05/the-state-of-3d-printing-at-mrrf/
Hundreds of people made the trek out to Goshen this year, and a lot of them brought a 3D printer. Most of these printers aren’t the kind you can buy at a Home Depot or from Amazon. These are customized machines that push the envelope of what consumer 3D printing technology. If you want to know what 3D printing will be like in two or three years, you only need to come to MRRF. It’s an incubator of great ideas, and a peek at what the future of 3D printing holds.
Resin printing has been just over the horizon for several years now. Is it ready for prime time? You would think so, with Autodesk’s release of the Ember and the materials, hardware, toolchains, and machines quickly coming together into something that’s actually usable in a home, lab, or hackerspace. So, how well were resin printers represented at MRRF? Eh, not very well.
The Current State of 3D Printing
The Hype Cycle is a completely unscientific and only correct in retrospect observation on new technologies. It starts off with a trigger, and quickly accelerates to the peak of inflated expectations. For 3D printing, the peak of inflated expectations happened sometime around 2013 or 2014. 3D printed cars were the future, 3D printed apartment blocks existed, and soon we would have 3D printers on every desktop.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Error Correction of 3D Printers
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/07/error-correction-of-3d-printers/
From the very first RepRaps to the newest and latest printers off the Makerbot assembly line, nearly every consumer 3D printer has one significant shortcoming: it cannot recover from missed steps, slipped belts, or overheating stepper drivers. Although these are fairly rare problems, it does happen and is purely a product of the closed-loop control system used in 3D printer firmware.
[Chris Barr] has come up with a rather clever solution to this problem. He’s designed a system that will detect and correct problems with the mechanics of 3D printers. It’s technically not a closed loop control system, but it does allow him to get the absolute position of a nozzle on the build plate, detects error states, and can automatically calculate the number of motor steps per millimeter.
3D Printer Error Detection
http://chrisbarrbuilds.com/2016/04/3d-printer-error-detection/
I’ve been playing around with magnetic encoders a lot lately in the hopes of getting some sort of error-detection system up and running. I think I’ve finally made some headway on it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Machines That Build Other Machines
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/06/machines-that-build-other-machines/
When the RepRap project was founded in 2005, it promised something spectacular: a machine that could build copies of itself. RepRaps were supposed to be somewhere between a grey goo and a device that could lift billions of people out of poverty by giving them self-sufficiency and the tools to make their lives better.
While the RepRap project was hugely successful in creating an open source ecosystem around 3D printers, a decade of development hasn’t produced a machine that can truly build itself. Either way, it’s usually easier and cheaper to buy a 3D printer than to build your own.
[castvee8]’s entry into the 2016 Hackaday Prize does just what the RepRap project promised ten years ago. It’s all about building machines with the ability to reproduce, creating an ecosystem of machines to build household goods. The best part? You can 3D print most of the machines. It’s the RepRap project, but for mills, lathes, microscopes, and routers. It’s an entire shop produced entirely in a 3D printer.
Building Simplified Machinery
Using 3D printing and inexpensive components to make machines that make!
https://hackaday.io/project/10150-building-simplified-machinery
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stealing 3D Prints By Sound
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/12/stealing-3d-prints-by-sound/
In the open hardware world, we like to share 3D design files so that our friends and (global) neighbors can use and improve them. But we’ve all printed things from time to time that we’d like to keep secret. At least this is the premise behind this article in Science which proposes a novel method of 3D-printer-based industrial espionage: by recording the sound of the stepper motors and re-creating the toolpath.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6282/132
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Hackaday: Open Fire Suppression and Safety Standards
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/12/ask-hackaday-open-fire-suppression-and-safety-standards/
We posted about a 3D printer fire a while back. An attendee of the Midwest RepRap Fest had left his printer alone only to find its immolated remains on his return. In the spirit of open source, naturally, he shared his experience with the rest of us. It occurred to me that hackers are never powerless and there are active things to be done and avenues to explore.
There are really fantastic commercial fire extinguishing systems out there. One implementation, which is commonly deployed in cabinets and machining centers, is a plastic tube pressurized with an extinguishing agent by a connected tank. When a fire breaks out the tube melts at the hottest locations, automatically spraying the area with a suppressant. Variations of this involve a metal nozzle filled with a wax or plastic blended to melt at a certain temperature, much like the overhead fire sprinklers.
This system is also used inside engine compartments with success.
Most of the chemicals used in these constructions are benign and readily available. High pressure tubing and waxes can all be purchased and the desired melt points can be aligned with their datasheets by need.
Ask Hackaday MRRF Edition: 3D Printers Can Catch Fire
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/21/ask-hackaday-mrrf-edition-3d-printers-can-catch-fire/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printers: You Know You Want One
https://www.eeweb.com/news/3d-printers-you-know-you-want-one/
3D printers are undeniably cool. The fused deposition modeling (FDM) printer, for example, is the coolest thing in our office (even more so than the 3D-printed Curiosity rover on Gary’s desk). In this printer, a thin filament of plastic is melted and then immediately solidified as it comes out of the nozzle, creating a shape as the nozzle moves around. The FDM printer is the most common 3D printer currently available. SLA 3D printers, or resin printers, have superior resolution but are considerably more expensive. Two less popular options are the selective laser sintering and melting processes, which are great for metal, but cost significantly more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Microscope Chamber Saves Big Bucks
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/14/3d-printed-microscope-chamber-saves-big-bucks/
Optical microscopy is over 400 years old, and in that time, it has come a long way. There are many variations of microscopes both in the selection of lenses, lighting, and other tricks to allow an instrument to coax out more information about a sample.
One proven way to increase the resolving power of a microscope is oil immersion. The sample and the lens are placed in oil that is transparent and has a high refractive index. This prevents light from refracting at the air-coverslip interface, improving the microscope’s overall performance.
The main body uses ABS plastic, and the laser cutter produces silicone gaskets. Rare earth magnets keep the whole assembly together.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Use of desktop 3D printers must ensure ventilation, is expected to in the new Institute of Occupational Health, Aalto University and the University of Helsinki study.
Benchtop 3D printers have become common in the industry and amateurs in the seat of learning. Therefore, it is desired to find out also arise in connection with the printing of emissions of harm. Printing is released on the basis of the latest nano-particulate emissions, with the spread of the air in the room should be restricted.
” Exposure can be reduced by purchasing the printer encapsulated by the design of emission control has been taken into account, avoiding the stay in the same state as the printer, or most assuredly passing the emissions out of the air in the room, ” says senior researcher Anna-Kaisa Viitanen Institute of Occupational Health.
Temperature increase causes more particle emissions
” ABS plastic Printing desktop printer caused a nano-particulate emissions, into the room where the spread of the limit would be a good ”
” The ventilation must be as good as possible, and should lead to emissions as close to the exhaust air channels
Both ABS and the PLA are thermoplastic, a thermoplastic, plastics that have been heated for extrusion. ” Oil-based ABS requires heating to about 230-250 ° C, and biodegradable PLA approximately 180-210 degrees Celsius
” Mug ,ust be printed on food grade plastic and jewelery from material that is safe for skin contact, ” Aalto University Rooster says.
‘ Post-treatment chemicals for risk assessment of chemicals, it is important to protect yourself and chemicals should be properly selected guards, ” recalls Anna-Kaisa Viitanen Institute of Occupational Health.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/04/14/tutkimus-3d-tulostimista-hiukkaspaastoja/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Cocooner (3D Lattice Printer)
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/14/3d-cocooner-3d-lattice-printer/
Sometimes it feels like we haven’t yet tapped into all the possibilities of additive manufacturing. Festo, a company that loves to try innovative things (and not always bring them to market), just came up with something called the 3D Cocooner — essentially, a rostock style 3D printer on its side, with a UV cure feature to allow it to build up skeletal structures and lattice style shapes.
Similar to the MX3D-Metal 3D printer (which is currently on a mission to build a bridge end-to-end — by itself), this 3D printer specializes in printing structures as opposed to the more traditional layer approach
The cool thing is, it’s not actually using plastic filament like most printers — it’s actually printing using string! The string is covered with a special UV resin which is then hardened into place as soon as it is expelled from the print head — making this more like a giant robot spider than a 3D printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Houses from Concrete
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/15/3d-printing-houses-from-concrete/
We’ve seen 3D-printed houses before, but most make use of prefabricated chunks. This hurricane and tornado resistant hotel suite in the Philippines was printed in one shot.
Sound familiar? This is the work of [Andrey Rudenko], who started by building a concrete 3D printer in his garage 2 years ago, moved on to 3D printing his kids a concrete castle in his backyard later that year and now appears to have a full-blown company offering commercial 3D printed houses. Way to go [Andrey]!
The building was designed in Sketchup no less, and the printer makes use of Pronterface for the control software. It’s absolutely fascinating to see this built at full-scale. We want one.
Lewis Grand Hotel teams with Andrey Rudenko to develop world’s first 3D printed hotel, planning 3D printed homes
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150909-lewis-grand-hotel-andrey-rudenko-to-develop-worlds-first-3d-printed-hotel.html
Over the past two years or so, a very exciting race has been ongoing in the construction world: Who can be the first to develop a commercially viable concrete 3D printer capable of making homes? And the competition has been very tough, as interesting and promising projects quickly began popping up all over the place. Just a few months ago, even Dubai stepped into the race with an ambitious plan, and just this week Italian manufacturers WASP announced the creation of the world’s largest Delta 3D printer with an eye on concrete construction. But today, another team has jumped to the head of the pack, as the innovation-minded Lewis Grand Hotel in the Philippines, owned by entrepreneur Lewis Yakich, has begun work on a massive 3D printed expansion of the hotel.
What’s more, 3D printing itself was quite successful. For as Rudenko explains, the Philippines has an ideal, all-year-round warm climate that is perfect for 3D printing concrete in large portions. ‘Printing such houses is fairly cheap in terms of materials and labor, but it’s still very expensive to set up a production plant in a different country and everything to start assemble printers,’ he adds. 3D printing itself took approximately 100 hours, though that doesn’t include a large number of stops to install plumbing, wiring and rebars in the concrete creation.
For now, however, the main focus is on the development of homes, as a method for streamlining the technology and helping a lot of people.
‘This is a model home to have a proof of abilities of concrete printing technology/machine. This house is a printed in place/on lot printed as one solid object,’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Milk-Based 3D Scanner
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/16/milk-based-3d-scanner/
3D scanners don’t have to be expensive or high-tech because all of the magic goes on in software. The hardware setup just needs to gather a bunch of cross-sections. In perhaps the lowest-tech of scanners that we’ve seen, [yenfre]’s GotMesh scanner uses milk.
Specifically, the apparatus is a pair of boxes, one with a hole drilled in it. You put the object in the top box and fill it with milk to cover the object. A camera takes pictures of the outline of the object in the milk as it drains out the hole, these get stitched together, and voilà.
GotMesh: The most cheap and simplistic 3D scanner.
http://www.instructables.com/id/GotMesh-the-Most-Cheap-and-Simplistic-3D-Scanner/
Tomi Engdahl says:
MIT Can Now 3-D Print Robots Made of Both Solids and Liquids
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/mit-made-3-d-printed-robots-solids-liquids/
Building a robot is hard work. It’s expensive. It requires expertise in a number of disciplines, and a willingness to make certain trade-offs for practical reasons. But many of those obstacles melt away when you can 3-D print a robot with liquids and solids simultaneously.
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab have done just that. Their “printable hydraulics” method uses an inkjet printer to build up layer upon layer material less than half the width of a human hair one drop at a time. After each layer, a high-intensity UV light solidifies the material that is to be solid, while leaving the liquids liquid. In other words, the process can print a complex shape that contains liquid.
Think your robot might benefit from six legs instead of just two? It’s much easier—and cheaper—to 3-D print those experiments than to fabricate them.
“The ability of printing solids and liquids at the same time will enable us to create a whole different class of active mechanisms,” says Rus. “The idea of reducing or simplifying the amount of manual assembly that’s required to create robots is really critical for getting broader adoption of robots, and making them more accessible.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D printing large volumes searches
Finland’s first 3D print exhibition 3DExpo was held on Friday and Saturday in Vantaa, Finland. The event showed that the technology is in many ways already a mature stage. Now only applied for the use of an object having instant hit manufacturing through a large audience.
If 3D-printing is considered from the perspective of builders and developers, PLA plastic is clearly the most popular material. It is inexpensive and allows the manufacture of very accurate models of the devic
At its least expensive printer to get for less than $ 500 and the latest cheap printers already accepted by most of the organic filaments.
Software there are major differences, however.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4269:3d-tulostus-hakee-isoja-volyymeja&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
ImplicitCAD: Programmatic CAD Built with 3D Printing in Mind
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/18/implicitcad-programmatic-cad-built-with-3d-printing-in-mind/
Programmatic CAD, in particular the OpenSCAD language and IDE, has accompanied the maker movement for a while now. After its introduction in 2009, it quickly found its way into the 3D printing toolbox of many makers and eventually became what could be called an Industry Standard among open hardware labs, makerspaces and tinkerers. The Prusa i3, one of the most popular DIY 3D printers, was designed in OpenSCAD, and even Makerbot, the company that sold 100.000 3D printers, uses the language for its “Customizer” – an online tool that allows users to customize 3D printable models with minimal effort.
OpenSCAD is indeed a wonderful tool, and we have been using it a lot. We have become used to its quirks and accepted working with polygon mesh approximations of the models we are trying to design. We have made our peace with excessive rendering times, scripting workarounds and the pain of creating fillets, and we have learned to keep our aesthetic expectations low. We are happy with the fact that there is a way to programmatically create and share virtually any object, but sometimes we wish there was a better way in the open source world. Hint: there is.
Inspired by OpenSCAD, ImplicitCAD was originally started by Christopher Olah in early 2012, aiming to create a solid programmatic CAD tool to create complex models for 3D printing. It borrows the OpenSCAD language for modeling but has its own 3D geometry engine. At the core, the engine relies on continuous mathematical descriptions of 3D geometries rather than polygon mesh approximations.
Powerful, Open-Source, Programmatic CAD
http://implicitcad.org/
ImplicitCAD is a project dedicated to using the power of math and computer science to get stupid design problems out of the way of the 3D printing revolution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When 3D Printing Meets PCBs
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329449&
The convergence of electronics and 3D printing will bring the PCB prototyping in-house.
Open any magazine and it’s clear that applications for 3D printing are exploding. Yet one area that remains largely unexplored is the use of additive manufacturing for electronics. The convergence of electronics and 3D printing will have staggering implications for the electronics industry—particularly around printed circuit boards and rapid prototyping.
Not surprisingly, the 3D printed electronics space is in its infancy, more or less at the same level of adoption as regular 3D prototyping was in 2009. But its slow adoption is not from a lack of interest or need; rather, it’s because creating 3D printers for PCBs is exceedingly complex and existing inks and printers just weren’t up to the challenge. These printers must be able to print conductive traces, which is the domain of printed electronics and produce components that meet the demanding performance requirements of aerospace, defense, consumer electronics, Internet of Things and even wearables.
3D printers and materials for PCBs
Developing systems for true 3D-printed electronics involves creating exceedingly precise hardware with three axes: X, Y and Z. It also requires using specialty inks that are engineered at the nanoparticle level. The final element needed is advanced software that ties it all together, including the ability to effortlessly convert standard PCB Gerber design files—which are designed for 2D manufacturing environments—into 3D printable files. This allows for the 3D printer to print the substrate to the required thickness, leave and fill holes where vias are required, and more. Software for the design and validation of freeform circuit geometries isn’t yet readily available in the marketplace but will open up further electronics design abilities.
Still, despite the complexities of building such 3D printers, the benefits of using them are obvious for electronics and other industries. PCB designers and electronics engineers are eager for the first 3D printers for professional printed electronics to emerge.
Practical uses and benefits for prototyping
Interest in these highly specific 3D printers is very high. The possibility of using additive manufacturing to create professional PCBs offers manufacturers the flexibility of printing their own circuit board prototypes in-house for rapid prototyping, R&D, or even for custom manufacturing projects. While it is unlikely that 3D printers for electronics will replace all of the traditional processes for in-house development of high-performance electronic device applications, they will be particularly useful for prototyping, reducing time to build from weeks to just hours.
With traditional PCB prototyping, turnaround times of weeks or even months for multiple iterations while perfecting a design can wreak havoc on time-to-market. Given that, many designers opt for more conservative designs. Printing the PCB prototypes in-house means designers can risk being more creative without slowing the development process.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A 3D-Printed Engagement Ring
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/22/a-3d-printed-engagement-ring/
[Hans Peter] had reached the moment of popping the question. Going down on one knee and proposing to his girlfriend, the full romantic works.
He’s a brave man, [Hans]. For instead of heading for the jeweller’s and laying down his savings on something with a diamond the size of a quail’s egg he decided that his ring should contain something very much of him. So he decided to 3D print a ring and embed a slowly pulsing LED in it. He does mention that this ring is a temporary solution, so perhaps his soon-to-be-Mrs will receive something sparkly and expensive in due course.
The most important 3D print (She said yes!)
http://embryonic.dk/wordpress/?p=454
I figured that Making an engagement ring should contain something from ‘me’. That meant that making the ring myself was essential. I went through different ideas and I found a guy who made a ring from titanium and installed an induction coil along with LEDs.
It would be fair to note at this point that My girfriend is hoem earlier than me. keeping a project like this a secret is not easy. I however, managed to keep the real reason behind my new 3d printer a secret (the old one just wasn’t capable of making the model). The design phase was relatively straightforward. The ring is temporary – My girlfriend is working as a dental hygienist and can’t wear a ring at work. Other solutions exist and i will explain later.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ISIS-destroyed monument rebuilt with 3D technology
http://www.cnet.com/news/isis-destroyed-monument-rebuilt-with-3d-technology/
The Monumental Arch of Palmyra, built by the Romans and destroyed by Islamic State, has been restored, at the cost of around $145,000, thanks to 3D technology.
It’s not the original monument, but thanks to 3D technology, the arch stands again. Today in Trafalgar Square in London, the Institute of Digital Archaeology unveiled a two-thirds scale model of the Monumental Arch carved from Egyptian marble.
When Palmyra was attacked, the Institute’s director, Roger Michel, reached out through its Million Images Database, which distributes 3D cameras to volunteers for the purposes of recording important artefacts, to get photographs of important monuments in the area. The Institute used the resulting 3D photographs of the arch to construct an accurate digital 3D model of the arch.
This model was used by a robotic arm to painstakingly carve the arch, which stands 5.5 metres high (18 feet) out of stone. In all, the project cost about $145,000.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Printing Magnetic Fields
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/25/printing-magnetic-fields/
We told you about these “printable” magnets a while back. When you have the ability to squeeze many smaller magnets into a tiny spot and adjust their north/south orientations at will, you can not only control the strength of the overall magnetic field, you can construct new and seemingly physics-defying widgets. This article will not focus on the magnets themselves, but instead we’re going to peel away the closed source shroud that hides the inner workings of that nifty little printer of theirs. There has been a lot of talk about these printable magnets, but very little about how they’re made. This changes today. We’ll show you how this magnetic field printer works so you can get busy making your own.
Several years ago, a company called Correlated Magnetic Research introduced to the world the idea of a magnetic field printer with the Mini MagPrinter. It sold for a whopping $45,000,
Firstly, you can toss your Kickstarter idea in the recycle bin because they hold several patents for their printer. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make one in your garage or for your hackerspace. Their machine might have cost $45k, but we’d be willing to bet a dozen Raspberry Pi Zeros that you could make one for two orders of magnitude less. But first we need to know how it works.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sean O’Kane / The Verge:
MakerBot to stop making its own 3D printers, will outsource manufacturing to Jabil, a contractor with facilities in China
MakerBot will no longer make its own 3D printers
The company is outsourcing its manufacturing to China
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/25/11503360/makerbot-manufacturing-outsource-china-industry-city
MakerBot has announced that it will no longer manufacture its own hardware. Over the course of the next six months, the company will transition the building of its 3D printers and other products to Jabil, a contract manufacturer with facilities in China. As a result, the company will shut down its manufacturing operations in the Industry City complex in Brooklyn, NY, and will part ways with an undisclosed number of staffers. MakerBot’s headquarters and its other teams — namely design, engineering, logistics, and repairs — will remain in Brooklyn.
“We need to be able to manufacture printers on a much higher volume in the coming years,” Jaglom says.
Companies like MakerBot have struggled to establish a consumer market since the awareness of 3D printing boomed a few years ago. MakerBot tried, unsuccessfully, to reach general consumers through partnerships with stores like Home Depot and Micro Center. The company even opened retail stores of its own, but those have since closed.
The change is also likely to rankle the die-hard MakerBot fans, who have become increasingly frustrated with the company over the years. The company, which was founded in 2009, turned away from making open-source 3D printers in 2012, and soon after was acquired by 3D-printing giant Stratasys.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D-Printed Bones May Be on Horizon
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329523&
Researchers in China are testing a new method to 3D-print bones made from actual human or animal bone powder.
Developments in the medical world are underway that are equal parts fascinating, inspirational, and possibly even macabre.
Additive manufacturing—creating three-dimensional solid objects from a digital file—has become a billon-dollar industry whose potential is limited only by the imaginations of individuals with access to a 3D printer. Within that market, 3D bioprinting, which involves fabricating replacement tissues and organs for patients layer by layer to create a three-dimensional structure, is rapidly evolving in its own right. Numerous companies, including Organovo, Cyfuse Biomedical, and BioBots, are active in the space and making incredible strides to improve outcomes for patients dealing with a range of illnesses and injuries. The specialty now has its own conferences, including the 3D Bioprinting Conference held recently in the Netherlands and a July 2016 event in Singapore.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Threadless Ballscrew for 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/28/threadless-ballscrew-for-3d-printer/
[2n2r5] posted up a mechanism that we’d never seen before — a threadless ballscrew that turns rotational into linear motion with no backlash. It works by pressing the edge of three bearings fairly hard up against a smooth rod, at an angle. The bearings actually squeeze the rod a little bit, making a temporary indentation in the surface that works just like a screw thread would. As the bearings roll on, the rod bounces back to its original shape.
OpenSCAD Threadless Ballscrew – Highly Customizable
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:124706
A professional version of the same mechanical idea uses special bearings with a ridge in the center
http://www.amacoil.com/rolling-ring-how.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cardboard And Paperclip CNC Plotter Destined For Self-Replication
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/27/cardboard-and-paperclip-cnc-plotter-destined-for-self-replication/
Self replicating CNC for 194 (or more) countries
Creating a design for a CNC that is easy to replicate and suitable for diverse drives.
https://hackaday.io/project/10299-self-replicating-cnc-for-194-or-more-countries
Tomi Engdahl says:
The MakerBot Obituary
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/28/the-makerbot-obituary/
MakerBot is not dead, but it is connected to life support waiting for a merciful soul to pull the plug.
This week, MakerBot announced it would lay off its entire manufacturing force, outsourcing the manufacturing of all MakerBot printers to China. A few weeks ago, Stratasys, MakerBot’s parent company, released their 2015 financial reports, noting MakerBot sales revenues have fallen precipitously. The MakerBot brand is now worth far less than the $400 Million Stratasys spent to acquire it. MakerBot is a dead company walking, and it is very doubtful MakerBot will ever be held in the same regard as the heady days of 2010
Today, MakerBot has precisely two reputations. The most generous reputation comes from tech enthusiasts suffering from low information, that sees MakerBot as the Kleenex and Asprin of 3D printing. With more machines coming out on the market, this reputation is fading.
The second reputation is one of a poorly designed 3D printer. This reputation is deserved thanks to the horrible failures of the MakerBot Smart Extruder introduced a few years ago, but also touches on the technology the 3D printers of 2010 were built upon. Anyone who has ever been to a hackerspace has seen a MakerBot printer, but that printer was broken.
Five years ago, this second reputation would be completely incorrect. MakerBot was the darling of the Open Source Hardware movement. MakerBot was the poster child of a new economy where anyone could manufacture hardware, at scale, and ship it to thousands of consumers around the world. The future would put a 3D printer in every office, if not on every desktop. MakerBot would sell those printers.
Forgetting Open Hardware
Throw money at anything, and the vultures will start circling. MakerBot and the RepRap community had a friendly relationship, with MakerBot making contributions to the most popular 3D printer host software at the time. MakerBot created new tool heads for 3D printers, including a device that would print pastes. These designs were open sourced, and we all became richer. MakerBot’s contributions were held up time and time again as an example that Open Source Hardware could succeed.
In August of 2012, MakerBot’s resolve to democratize 3D printing would be challenged.
MakerBot turned their back on Open Sourc
In June of 2013, MakerBot was purchased by Stratasys for $403 Million.
The Stratasys Downfall
Before the acquisition by Stratasys, MakerBot sold an impressive 40,550 printers according to the Stratasys yearly report ending on December 31, 2013. According to the 2014 Annual Report put out by Statasys, 79,906 printers had been sold under the MakerBot brand by the end of 2014. In a single year under Stratasys, MakerBot sold nearly 40,000 printers. A year later, in 2015, MakerBot sold only 18,673 printers, half of their 2014 numbers.
Sales of 3D printers are remarkably seasonal,
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Goes Mainstream
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329555&
3D printing has serious uses now and promises to revitalize production by bringing creative designs and small-lot printing to many industries.
A year ago, talking about 3D printing almost always led to images of pastel-colored coffee cups or rather unappetizing printed hamburgers. We were still in the hype phase of the technology, despite it being about a decade old. Things have changed. There are serious uses now for 3D printing and it promises to revitalize production by bringing creative designs and small-lot printing to many industries.
3D printing is an umbrella term for printing solid products with a spectrum of different materials. We can choose between plastics and ceramics, metals or composites and the biological side now has human cell-based offerings. With all these choices, industry has many options for making parts that otherwise would be uneconomic or impossible to create by conventional means.
Let’s look at some of today’s practical uses. Making plastic parts has typically required a substantial investment in tooling a molding die. Even so-called “soft” tooling involves metal cutting and both expense and, more importantly, delay. Often tooling is the pacing item to getting a new product to market, given the time to fabricate the die and then tweak it in to specification. It is essential to model the CAD design as carefully as possible before investing in tooling, so that adds to design costs and schedule, making projects even longer.
With additive metal printing, soft tooling can be constructed quickly and cheaply, and if mistakes are made, corrections won’t break the bank. The result is a much faster design process, followed by fast introduction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Japanese Lab Builds 5-Axis 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/29/japanese-lab-builds-5-axis-3d-printer/
A Japanese lab is investing some time in the possibilities of a 5-axis 3D printer. They show it printing using five axis as well as doing finish machining on a printed part. We’ve covered parts of why this is the right direction to go for 3D printing in another post.
It looks like they have modified an existing industrial machining center for use with a 3D printing nozzle.
There isn’t too much to show in the video, other than it’s possible and people are doing it.
Hybrid 3D Printer Using 5-Axis Control
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L37IhrkVX04
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Look Into the Future of Slicing
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/07/a-look-into-the-future-of-slicing/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is It A Stepper? Or Is It A Servo?
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/30/is-it-a-stepper-or-is-it-a-servo/
Almost everyone who is involved with 3D printing thinks to themselves at some point, “this could all be done using a closed-loop system and DC motors”. Or at least everyone we know. There’s even one commercial printer out there that uses servo control, but because of this it’s not compatible with the rest of the (stepper-motor driven) DIY ecosystem.
[LoboCNC] wanted to change this, and he’s in a unique position to do so, having previously built up a business selling PIC-based servo controllers. His “servololu” is essentially a microcontroller and DC motor driver, with an input for a quadrature encoder for feedback. The micro takes standard step/direction input like you would use to drive a stepper motor, and then servos the attached DC motor to the right position. It even signals when it has an error.
The unfortunate side effect of [LoboCNC]’s old day job means that he can’t release the code that’s running his demo, but he says he’s working on a version of the firmware to open-source.
Servolulu: Polulu-compatible servo motor driver
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,654278
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D printing will be preparing food
Three-dimensional 3D printing enables new innovations in the food of the future. VTT will combine with the Aalto University School of 3D, food and material expertise to develop new foods and food.
Food 3D-development project aims to respond to the growing interest in healthy snacks, which would be faster and easier to produce almost anywhere. The long-term vision are, for example, vending machines, where the consumer can actually design products; they buy.
“On an industrial scale will require a lot of work. In addition to materials development also suitable for the food industry equipment needed. Equipment can also be developed for domestic use and vending machines”
Layer by layer, based on manufacturing using 3D technology offers this new implementation possibilities. It is a new technology that will lead towards the development of unique snacks and other products with different structures, patterns, flavors and aromas combine.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/05/02/3d-tulostus-tulee-ruuanvalmistukseen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finnish company makes 3D printer for special applications
Manufacturer of dental equipment Planmeca publish a new kind of 3D-printer for dental laboratories and clinics. DLP technology enabled printer can be customized to make the dental models and in the future also other dental products.
Planmeca new Creo 3D printer is used, developed by Texas Instruments video projector mirror circuit DLP (Digital Light Processing), which allows the manufacture of articles with UV light curable resin. The printer control software is supplied with the unit.
“3D printing is a growing field of the future, which helps dental laboratories and clinics to expand production capacity and improve efficiency,”
Planmeca Creo – a 3D printer supplies will start estimate in June.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/05/04/suomalaisyritykselta-3d-tulostin-erikoiskayttoon/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printer Prints Sound
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/08/3d-printer-prints-sound/
People like music, but they are also visual creatures. Perhaps that’s why music visualization is such a common project. Usually, you think of music visualization as using LEDs or a computer screen. However, [Gieeel] did his music visualization using a 3D printer.
The actual process isn’t very difficult, once you have the idea. [Gieeel] captured the waveform in Audacity, did a screen capture, and then converts the image to an SVG file using Inkscape.
From there, you can use many different CAD tools to convert the image into a 3D object. [Gieeel] used Autodesk Fusion 360 and had the resulting object professionally 3D printed.
3D Printed Sound Sculpture
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Sound-Sculpture/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Bone
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/09/3d-printing-bone/
What do you print with your 3D printer? Key chains? More printer parts (our favorite)? Enclosures for PC boards? At Johns Hopkins, they want to print bones. Not Halloween skeletons, either. Actual bones for use in bodies.
According to Johns Hopkins, over 200,000 people a year need head or face bone replacements due to birth defects, trauma, or surgery.
This is an obvious application for 3D printing if you could find a suitable material to produce faux bones. The FDA allows polycaprolactate (PCL) plastic for other clinical uses and it is attractive because it has a relatively low melting point. That’s important because mixing in biological additives is difficult to do at high temperatures.
Better bone replacement: 3-D printed bone with just the right mix of ingredients
Blend of natural, human-made materials works best, study in mice shows
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160504121802.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peachy Printer Collapses, Investor Built A House Instead Of A Printer
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/11/peachy-printer-collapses-investor-built-a-house-instead-of-a-printer/
The Peachy Printer, originally a crowdfunding campaign for a $100 stereolithography 3D printer, is now dead in the water.[Rylan Grayston], the creator of the Peachy Printer, announced that [David Boe] — investor, 50% owner of Peachy Printer, and business partner — had stolen over $300,000 in Kickstarter campaign funds. According to [Rylan], this money was used to build a house.
When the Peachy Printer was announced on Kickstarter, it was, by any measure, a game changing product. Unlike other stereolithographic printers like the Form 1 and DLP projector kit printers, the Peachy was cheap. It was also absurdly clever.
In our first coverage of the Peachy Printer, everyone was agog at how simple this printer was. It wasn’t a high-resolution printer, but it was a 3D resin printer that only cost $100.
For the last two years, [Rylan] appeared to have the Peachy Printer in a pseudo-stealth mode.
In the update published to the Kickstarter campaign, the reason for the failure of Peachy Printer to deliver becomes apparent. The Kickstarter campaign was set up to deliver the funds received – $587,435.73 – directly into [David Boe]’s account. Thirty days after the funds were received, [David] had spent over $165,000. In just over three months, all the Kickstarter funds, save for $200,000 transferred into the Peachy Printer corporate account, were spent by [David].
With no funds to complete the development of the Peachy Printer, [Rylan] looked into alternative means of keeping the company afloat until Kickstarter rewards had shipped. Peachy Printer received two government grants
Right now, [Rylan] and the Peachy Printer are pursuing repayment from [David Boe], on the basis that Kickstarter reward money is still tied up in the construction of a house.
Big Bad News
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc/posts/1572573
Tomi Engdahl says:
Now You’re Printing with Water
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/12/now-youre-printing-with-water/
How do you earn a place in a flower festival with a handful of Arduinos and a 3D printer? By building a water curtain that draws flowers. That’s exactly what Tecnoateneu Vilablareix, a hacking community in Spain did. They built this project specifically for Temps de Flors, a popular annual gathering in Girona, Spain. More than just a flower festival, the event opens gardens and courtyards of culturally importance to the general public that are closed the rest of the year.
The water curtain uses four Arduino Nanos to control the valves, which work in pairs to draw flowers, words, and patterns. A Mega provides a wifi connection to receive commands.
Over 16 continuous days worth of print time went into the 128 valves and 64 nozzles that make up the water curtain.
Stunning 3D printed ‘water curtain’ makes waves at Temps de Flors flower show in Girona, Spain
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20160509-3d-printed-water-curtain-makes-waves-at-temps-de-flors-flower-show-in-girona-spain.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Conductive Inks Give New Meaning to the Term ‘Printed’ Circuit Boards
https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1100561
NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center has developed a novel nanosilver ink technology that provides a conductive ink system to suit a variety of printing applications. These include inkjet or direct-write 3D printing of electrodes, antennae or interconnects in printed electronic devices and systems, and applications where chemically etched, copper-printed circuit boards are used.
This conductive ink innovation offers low-temperature processing, high electrical conductivity, and excellent adhesion to various substrates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacklet 107 – 3D Printing Projects
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/14/hacklet-107-3d-printing-projects/
3D printers have forever changed the hardware hacker movement. From the original RepRap project on up through current commercial offerings, 3D printers have become an indispensable tool for hackers, makers, and engineers. While printers may not have started a desktop manufacturing revolution, they are a desktop prototyping evolution. It’s rare for a day to go by on Hackaday without a project that uses a 3D printed part in some way shape or form. These printers also continue to evolve, with new projects pushing the technology ever forward. This week’s Hacklet is all about some of the best 3D printer projects on Hackaday.io!
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing and Modelling on the Fly
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/17/3d-printing-and-modelling-on-the-fly/
3D printing is supposed to be about rapid prototyping. Design, print, use, re-design, print, test — iterate until happy. But when you’re laying down filament at 60 mm/s, it can seem anything but rapid.
[Huaishu Peng], [Rundong Wu], and their supervisors at Cornell have come up with a 3D printer that can print almost as fast as you can model, and is able to add and subtract from the model on the fly. The goal is to get an initial model out so quickly that designing and printing can be truly interactive. They look to have succeeded — check out the video below.
On-the-Fly Print: Incremental Printing While Modeling
http://www.huaishu.me/projects/on-the-fly.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphone-based Robotic Rover Project goes Open Source
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/17/smartphone-based-robotic-rover-project-goes-open-source/
[Aldric Négrier] wrote in to let us know that his DriveMyPhone project has been open sourced. The project is a part telepresence, part remote-controlled vehicle, part robotic rover concept on which he says “I spent more time […] than I should have.” He has shared not just the CAD files, but every detail including tips on assembly. He admits that maybe a robotic chassis for a smartphone might not seem like a particularly new idea today, but it was “an idea with more potential” back in 2010 when he first started.
DriveMyPhone – Smartphone Controlled 3D Printed Vehicle
http://www.instructables.com/id/DriveMyPhone-Smartphone-Controlled-Hybrid-Vehicle/
The DriveMyPhone is intended to be a high mobility robotic/tele-robotic vehicle concept, capable of moving and navigating on land, water and in midair. It can be controlled by a smartphone or by computer using bluethooth and it also features an on-board smartphone option for remote access.
The chassis is equipped with several attachable modules such as the flying module, the object avoiding cleaning module and the telerobotic module.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucas Mearian / Computerworld:
HP is now taking orders for its first 3D printer, the Jet Fusion 3D, which starts at $130K and HP says is 10X faster than rivals; orders will ship in late 2016 — ORLANDO — Hewlett-Packard today began taking orders for its first 3D printer, the HP Jet Fusion printer, which it said will be …
HP begins selling its Jet Fusion 3D printer; says it’s 50% cheaper, 10X faster than others
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3071035/emerging-technology/hp-begins-selling-its-jet-fusion-3d-printer-says-its-50-cheaper-10x-faster-than-others.html
HP’s Jet Fusion technology will be able to print electronics in a product
Hewlett-Packard today began taking orders for its first 3D printer, the HP Jet Fusion printer, which it said will be up to 10 times faster than existing machines and can cut the cost of manufacturing parts in half.
At the RAPID 3D additive manufacturing conference here, HP revealed two models: the lower-cost and lower production 3200 series and the 4200 series, for which it is now taking orders.
HP claims its printer will enable mass production of parts through additive manufacturing (3D printing), instead of just rapid prototyping, for which the technology is typically used. The printers are unlikely to be used to produce millions or billions of production parts; think, instead, in terms of hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of parts, HP said.
The printers will also revolutionize 3D printing in that they will be able to print electronics in the parts they create through the use of conductive materials printed at the voxel level. Like a pixel in a display, a voxel in 3D printing is a tiny cube, millions of which make up a larger object. A single voxel is 50 microns in size.
HP’s Jet Fusion printers have a print area or a print bin of 16-in. x 12-in. x 16-in. Within that area, there are 2.4 teravoxels (a teravoxel is a trillion voxels).
For example, Monino said, healthcare products such as orthotics or medical implants could have embedded wireless RFID chips that provide feedback to physicians or physical therapists on how well the product is performing or even how well a patient is doing.
The printer works by first depositing powder (about 100 microns thick, or the thickness of a standard sheet of paper) onto a print bed using a print bar that looks like a scanning bar on a typical 2D printer. The print bar has 30,000 nozzles spraying 350 million fusing agent droplets per second in specific patterns as it moves back and forth across a print platform.
HP sells its printing materials in 30 liter boxes or 200 liter barrels.
Currently, HP’s Jet Fusion printers only use nylon, although its technology roadmap includes other plastics, ceramics and possibly metals.
3D printing shines when it is used to produce an item that cannot be made with injection molding, CNC machines or other traditional manufacturing techniques
“Compared to high-volume manufacturing of the same part, there is a cross-over point at which it is cheaper to produce the part with traditional technology than with 3D printing,” Basiliere continued. “Injection molding, for instance, has a cost curve that starts high (due to tooling costs) but declines as those and other costs are amortized over the long production run. 3D printing has essentially a horizontal cost curve since there are no tooling costs and make-ready cost is low.”
About the size of two washing machines, the HP Jet Fusion printer line will have a starting price of about $130,000 for the 3200 series and in the low $200,000 range for the more sophisticated 4200 series.
While technically dissimilar in some ways to binder jet or selective laser sintering (SLS), a method of binding pulverized material together with either chemicals or laser light, HP’s Jet Fusion 3D does result in a similar post-processing requirements; printed parts must be allowed to cool and then be pulled from a bin or “cake” of powder and cleaned before used.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s Time For Direct Metal 3D-Printing
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/19/its-time-for-direct-metal-3d-printing/
It’s tough times for 3D-printing. Stratasys got burned on Makerbot, trustful backers got burned on the Peachy Printer meltdown, I burned my finger on a brand new hotend just yesterday, and that’s only the more recent events. In recent years more than a few startups embarked on the challenge of developing a piece of 3D printing technology that would make a difference. More colors, more materials, more reliable, bigger, faster, cheaper, easier to use. There was even a metal 3D printing startup, MatterFab, which pulled off a functional prototype of a low-cost metal-powder-laser-melting 3D printer, securing $13M in funding, and disappearing silently, poof.
General Electric is on track to introduce 3D printed, FAA-approved fuel nozzles into its aircraft jet engines, Airbus is heading for 3D-printed, lightweight components and interior, and SpaceX has already sent rockets with 3D printed Main Oxidizer Valves (MOV) into orbit
Direct metal 3D printing is transitioning from the experimental research phase to production
Direct metal 3D printing fuses metal powder particles layer by layer into dense objects and does not require post-print infusion like binder-based methods. The selective melting of the particles can be achieved through an electron beam (Electron Beam Melting, EBM) or lasers (Direct Metal Laser Melting, DMLM, synonymous to EOS’s trademarked DMLS). Laser-based direct metal 3D-printing is currently experiencing an extreme push since it typically outperforms the previously hyped EBM technology in terms of resolution and surface finish. DMLM saves the need for a vacuum chamber, but since it requires several high power laser units to catch up to the productivity level of a single beam EBM machine, as well as an inert gas atmosphere and post-print heat treatment, it is also more expensive.
DMLM machines cost about $1M and above, and besides the acquisition price of a machine, direct metal 3D-printing is also a process with a ludicrous per-unit-cost. The materials, fine, high purity metal powders have to be generated through gas- or plasma atomization to obtain consistent and spherical particles.
What comes after that is a classic, manual process of cleaning, annealing, support structure removal, subtractive refining and surface treatment.
So, does that mean labeling additive manufacturing as an efficient and waste-free manufacturing method is naively wrong? That depends on the application. The Yb-fiber-lasers commonly used in DMLM machines are a surprisingly effective way of fusing metals and can stay in continuous operation for more than a decade due to their very long MTBF.
Additive manufacturing allows for complexity. Its ability to generate arbitrary shapes and structures enables lightweight construction techniques, where excess material is shaved away from a design based on mathematical and natural models, often referred to as „bionic design“. Since in aviation, even minor weight savings accumulate to massive fuel savings
Just like MatterFab demonstrated, low-cost DMLM machines are – somewhat possible, but need drive, ideas, the the right applications and funding to become productive and viable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D printing meets PCBs
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/all-aboard-/4442049/3D-printing-meets-PCBs?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160520&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160520&elqTrackId=ed545f32789f49f9a1b27874ddce8510&elq=04e282c9258d42e287673815cf8a6775&elqaid=32341&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28252
Open any magazine and it’s clear that applications for 3D printing are exploding. Yet one area that remains largely unexplored is the use of additive manufacturing for electronics. The convergence of electronics and 3D printing will have staggering implications for the electronics industry—particularly around printed circuit boards and rapid prototyping.
Not surprisingly, the 3D printed electronics space is in its infancy, more or less at the same level of adoption as regular 3D prototyping was in 2009. But its slow adoption is not from a lack of interest or need; rather, it’s because creating 3D printers for PCBs is exceedingly complex and existing inks and printers just weren’t up to the challenge. These printers must be able to print conductive traces, which is the domain of printed electronics and produce components that meet the demanding performance requirements of aerospace, defense, consumer electronics, Internet of Things and even wearables.
Certainly, there already are some 3D printers capable of including some conductive traces by embedding basic wiring by extruding of conductive filaments. The end result of these types of printing techniques is a low-resolution, point-to-point conductive trace that may be suitable for hobbyists but not for professional electronics. Higher resolution and higher conductivity that meets the needs of professional electronics requires more advanced printing solutions and materials.
Other actual conductive circuit printer systems are available today. They are designed to print conductive traces on one and sometimes both sides of a substrate, creating two-sided PCBs. These printed electronics are not the same as 3D printed electronics, however, which builds up a PCB on a substrate with layer after layer of material, creating a true multi-layer, interconnected, 3D-printed circuit board. To 3D-print electronics requires advanced materials and highly specialized equipment.