3D printing

Rounded crystals that mimic starfish shells could advance 3-D printing pills

Another round of 3d printing material The squishy materials this time.

Nice! They are getting more and more capable.

I am just waiting on the large scale production ability to reach full maturity before I officially get excited. Though I am honestly a bit interested in the at home printers becoming cheaper.

Through 3D-printed prosthetic, Illinois students lending a hand in Ecuador

How 3D printing brought Skylanders to life

This is a nice practical use for 3D printing in the real world, and an example of how it's gradually moving into things we see in our lives. The toy figures for the Skylanders video games were printed with 3D printers once the printers got better over time. At first the printers sucked and created things that broke easily, but gradually, better printers came out.

I had no idea it took months to create a physical toy prototype!! That's ridiculous! 3D printing solved that problem, certainly.

They do complain about the lack of supported materials, so 3D printers still can't create the final figures that they sell. But they help tremendously with prototyping, and the team is optimistic that 3D printers will become mainstream in the future.

From earphones to jet engines, 3D printing takes off

Impressive that the technology goes from nothing to really big after a few decades. It goes to show that good ideas shouldn't be given up on even if it seems they won't take off, since you never know what scientific discoveries will be made, or what improvements may come. For a perfect example, see the history of the computer. They used to fill a whole room and do nothing but calculate numbers. Now, you're using one to communicate with people all around the world and read the news, for some of you, while listening to music.

Using 3-D printers to print out self-learning robots: "On the third floor of the Department of Informatics in a university in Norway there is a robotics laboratory which looks like a playroom. This is where researchers are testing how their robots can figure out how to move past barriers and other obstacles. The robotics team are currently comparing the performance of five robots which in theory should be equally good. Three of the five robots have four legs, one has three, another has six. The fewer legs, the less energy is consumed. One of the robots is fitted with single-joint legs. The others have legs with two joints."

Researchers looking to 4-D printing to create biosensors from edible gels: "A team of researchers working at the University of Wollongong in Australia has received the go-ahead for a seven year study with the goal of looking at the possibility of using additive manufacturing techniques to develop biosensors made from edible gels. Team lead Marc in het Panhuis along with colleague Alex Keller recently gave a presentation to attendees at a Materials Research Society, Symposium, entitled 'Printed Organic Electronic Device Components from Edible Materials.' Their aim is to learn if it might be possible to use ordinary edible gels to create biosensors that when consumed, could provide physicians with data regarding the internal state of a patient.

Traditionally, objects printed with 3D printers are hard—in het Panhuis and his team want to take the technology further, into the 4D realm, which is where objects that are printed change shape after the printing is complete. They believe that combining gels that are already eaten by people, such as those made using gelatin or other foods that jiggle, such as puddings, could lead to the creation of gels that could serve as a biosensor."

4D printing sounds very interesting. There was talk of creating furniture that self-assembles. That would be a dream for people who have to move!

Contact lens merges plastics and active electronics via 3-D printing: "As part of a project demonstrating new 3-D printing techniques, Princeton researchers have embedded tiny light-emitting diodes into a standard contact lens, allowing the device to project beams of colored light."

Off-world manufacturing is a go with space printer: "On Friday, the BBC reported on a NASA email exchange with a space station which involved astronauts on the International Space Station using their 3-D printer to make a wrench from instructions sent up in the e-mail. Quite a marker for things to come? An object, after all, was designed on Earth and then transmitted to space for manufacture, indicating such events may have an impact on the economics of supply and demand for space missions. Astronauts would be more self-reliant on future long-duration space missions if on-demand manufacturing were in place, as an alternative to launching the actual items from Earth. NASA in this recent episode was responding to a request by ISS commander Barry Wilmore for a ratcheting socket wrench. Previously, said the BBC, if astronauts requested a specific item they could have waited months for it to be flown up on one of the regular supply flights. The BBC posed the question, 'If a 3D printer can churn out something as useful as a tool in space, what else is possible?' The sky is no longer the limit. 'Spare parts, components, even equipment, according to the company behind the printer, Made In Space. And that's just the start.'"

/fistpump

That's a huge leap forward. You have no idea how much shit has gone wrong in space because they're missing one tiny little part or tool. Now all we need is some sort of 3D shredder to recycle things, and we're good to go.

As long as they have enough materials, and enough things can be made with those materials, but this really is a huge improvement.

Beyond the trinkets: Voxel8 shows 3D electronics printer: "Beyond plastic angel paperweights and keychain elves, how complex can complex be in today's output from 3D printers? Voxel8 says they have the world's first multi-material 3D electronics printer, the nature of which can give the imagination a workout.

'Voxel8 3D printer can print a complete quadcopter, including the circuits," said Geek.com's headline about the company announcement. Matthew Humphries of Geek.com said the printer can create both the object and the circuitry required to power/control. The company showed the 3D printer at CES; the big deal is that designers and engineers can create three-dimensional parts with embedded circuitry. Voxel8 also announced a partnership with Autodesk to develop Project Wire for creating 3D electronic devices printed on Voxel8's platform. Project Wire is a software tool for designing 3D printable electronic devices, rapidly fabricated using the Voxel8 3D printer. This is a browser-based tool. Project Wire features a library of components, tools for 3D wiring, and integration for printing."

​3D-Printed Car Factories Are Coming This Year - Local Motors is 3D-printing a car on the floor of the Detroit Auto Show right now. That's cool. What's cooler? They're building two new factories that combine a research lab, a manufacturing center, and a retail outlet to put them on sale next year.

I wonder how small and how powerful the electronic parts will be capable of being. This could potentially drive the cost of electronics absurdly low at some point, or there could be barriers that get in the way.

The cool thing about 3D printing is that if you get small enough on a scale like nanometer and molecular scale the implications for energy storage and electronics means you can make high efficient fast charging batteries and unrivaled parallelism for processors and high density solid storage drives.

Depends on how much it costs to go to that scale, I think. Though if the cost is low enough, you might see cost of electronics plummet.

Along with costs of many other things.

Scotty project eyes uniqueness, sharing issues in 3D printing: "A teleportation machine system this week caught the attention of tech writers this week, including John Biggs, East Coast Editor of Tech Crunch. The system involves units of off-the-shelf 3D printers extended with a 3-axis milling machine, camera, and a microcontroller for encryption, decryption and transmission. Users place an object into the sender unit, enter the address of a receiver unit and press the teleport button. The sender unit digitizes the original object layer-by-layer, shaving off material using the milling machine, takes a photo using the camera, encrypts the layer using the public key of the receiver, and sends it. The receiving unit decrypts the layer and starts printing right away. So the object sent by one person is destroyed and reassembled elsewhere."

That's a pretty big step forward. Of course, there's no reason that the deconstruction can't just keep a copy of the data file so that you can print it out more than once, but I understand the need for security.

Either side could be hacked to keep the information about the object so it's not destroyed forever and can be copied.

Sounds a lot like the Star Trek transporters work. Remember me to never step inside one.

They can print graphene now with 3D printers.

It's another step forwards in the things they can make, but impressive, with all the things that graphene can supposedly do.