3dprinting
Latest
Cubify brings 3D printer and Kinect app to CES
At this point it's kinda tough to get excited about 3D printing -- actual devices and services are a dime a dozen, but Cubify has a decidedly user-friendly vibe working in its favor. 3D Systems is rolling in to CES with its Cube 3D printer, but it'll also be showing off Cubify.com and its new Kinect-To-Print app. The app will allow users to design objects with "coloring book simplicity," then have them printed up and shipped to their door, or they can post their creations to the web for others to purchase and earn cash. The site will also be prepopulated with a selection of games and other custom objects ready to be printed on demand either at home on the Cube 3D or by the company and shipped out to customers. Cubify.com will go live in a beta version on January 10th and, while you wait, you can check out the video and PR after the break.
Mineways offers up 3D-printed models of your Minecraft creations
Sure, those gigantic tributes to Italian plumbers look great on your PC screen, but sometimes you want something a little more tangible. That's exactly what Mineways lets you do. Yep, it's another demonstration of why we all need a 3D printer in our life, although this Minecraft-friendly software can also export your models across to 3D printing site, Shapeways, which will do the whole printing slog for you. Sure, it'll cost you, but it's likely to be a mere fraction of your own 3D printer. The Mineways program is based on the open-source mapping tool Minutor and creates both a data and texture file ready to pinged across to the Shapeways site. You can also attempt to reclaim some money from those many hours sunk into Minecraft by selling your creations on the site. Check the source below for tutorials, more examples and the latest version of the model exporter. [Photo credit: postapocalyptic]
3D-printed bone replacements coming soon to an orthopedic surgeon near you, courtesy of WSU (video)
3D printers are slowly, but surely working their way into all sorts of useful, everyday applications -- like the creation of chocolates, flutes and even Mario Kart turtle shell racers. Now, Washington State University engineers are unveiling a unique implementation of the tech that could aid in the regrowth of damaged or diseased bones. Utilizing a ceramic compound, the group's optimized ProMetal 3D printer builds dissolvable scaffolds coated with a plastic binding agent that serve as a blueprint for tissue growth. The team's already logged four long years fine tuning the process, having already achieved positive results testing on rats and rabbits, but it appears there's still a ways to go -- about 10 -12 years, according to the project's co-author Susmita Bose -- before orthopedic and dental surgeons can begin offering "printed" bone replacements. With a synthetic windpipe already under medical science's belt and now this, it's looking like we're just a few short decades away from that long sought after full body replacement. Right, Mr. Lagerfeld? Click on past the break for a brief look at this osteo-friendly machinery.
Insert Coin: SeeMeCNC H-1 cuts entry price to the world of 3D printing
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. Maybe it was the Turtle Shell racers, or the ability to crowdsource homes for crabs, but we're enthralled with the potential of 3D printers. Now, SeeMeCNC is looking to offer up its skeletal H-1 as "the most affordable" entry-level three-dimensional printer available. Its design roots come from the open source RepRap's latest self-replicating machine, the Huxley. However, there are a few differences here. SeeMeCNC has replaced several parts for injection molding, which apparently shaves a substantial chunk off the manufacturing costs. This includes using plastic roller bearings instead of metal bearings, while the machine has also been readjusted to inch measurements. Fans of the imperial system and 3D printing antics can peer beyond the break to judge whether the cut-price printer will still cut the mustard.
Project Shellter: crowdsourcing 3D-printed homes for hermit crabs
The fine folks at MakerBot have impressed us enough with their Mario-themed RC racers and self-replicating 3D printers, but now the collective is looking to save mother nature with Project Shellter. Turns out, there's a housing shortage in the oceans. Harvesting of shells has left many hermit crabs with no option but to take up residence in bottle caps and other debris they can squeeze their soft bodies into. MakerBot's Miles Lightwood, has decided to crowdsource designs for artificial shells that hermit crabs can live in. Right now Lightwood is testing different shapes, materials and colors, looking for the combination that the critters will find most attractive. The shells are not intended to be placed in the wild -- putting plastic into the sea wouldn't be very environmentally friendly. Instead, the artificial domiciles are meant for domestic use, reducing the number that must be harvested for pets. You can get updates on the project from its Facebook page (at the more coverage link) and submit your own designs to Thingiverse, just make sure to tag them "shellter."
Print your own blood vessels, no need for red toner
Barely 24 hours after we told you about printing your own bones, the franken-science continues with the announcement that blood vessels are next on the body-parts-you-can-print list. Unsurprisingly, you'll need more than just regular toner if you want to start printing your own at home, but pioneering work by application-oriented research organization Fraunhofer has claimed to have cracked it by adding some good old 'two-photon polymerization' into the mix -- yeah, obvious once you know. The added photon special sauce is what makes the printed synthetic tubes biofunctionalized, which in turn enables living body cells to dock onto them -- we're guessing that's important. Sounds cute, but how long until we can start printing whole people -- Weird Science, anyone?
Shapeways serves up prêt-à-imprimer 3D bones, Lagerfeld stands by for full skeletal replacement
3D printed chocolates? Sure, sounds innocuous enough. But made-to-order 3D printed bones? Now, that's just morbid. For the surgical team at Glasgow's Royal Hospital for Sick Children, however, the tech's come in handy as a budget-priced, pre-operative planning tool. Mark Frame, an orthopedic surgical trainee at RHSC, first came up with the idea to create the osteo-facsimiles after a costly university-made replica, commissioned for a procedure, failed to meet necessary proportion and size requirements. After undertaking a bit of self-assigned internet research, Frame sorted out a method to create renders of a patient's fractured forearm using CT scans processed via the open source OsiriX software. These were then passed through a separate MeshLab application to tidy up any artifacting, and finally exported in 3D-compatible .stl format. The resulting files were sent to Shapeways for printing, with the white plastic bone copies delivered just seven days later for £77. The hospital's been so pleased with the inexpensive outcome, that it's already begun prep work on a hip replacement surgery using a replicated pelvis -- and, no, they didn't specify if the patient was a fashion victim.
Visualized: Objet's 3D printer breathes plastic life into Hollywood creatures, layer by layer
It ain't easy being plastic, you know? Objet -- the 3D printing house that aimed to replace your office's all-in-one Epson back in July -- brought a few of its snazziest pieces here to SIGGRAPH, and we popped by to have a gander. Targeting the animation-inspired crowd that showed up here in Vancouver, the company brought along some Hollywood examples of how its multi-material Objet260 Connex helped movie makers craft prototype creatures before they were inserted into the storyline. Thor's Destroyer and Avatar's Na'vi were both on hand, as well as the two critters shown above. The hothead on the right was crafted in around 18 hours (and subsequently painted), while the cool cat on the left was built in three fewer. Wildly enough, that fellow required no painting whatsoever; so long as you're cool with shades of grey, you can program your object to be colored from the outset. Oh, and as for his cost? Around $80 for the materials -- slightly more for the printer itself. %Gallery-130291%
3D-printed Mario Kart turtle shells race to rescue American economy
As soon as you see these little RC Koopa shells, you know that life can't be that bad. In fact, they've already had a hallelujah-inducing impact on the world of the 3D-printing genius who created them. Ten days ago, Michael Curry (aka Skimbal) was among America's 13.9 million unemployed, having been unceremoniously booted out of his ailing architect's firm. All he had was a $700 MakerBot printer to stop his hands from idling, but he made the most of it. MakerBot saw his stuff and were as bowled over as we are, so they just gave the guy a job. We're dusting off our Wii controllers and even those little plastic steering wheels in celebration.
3D-printed plane takes to the skies, sounds like a Black & Decker (video)
You know what's pleasing about this plastic drone, aside from the fact it flies? It took just a week to design and build from scratch, thanks to the labor-saving wonders of 3D printing. Each component was formed in ultra-thin layers by a laser beam trained on a bed of raw material -- either plastic, steel or titanium powder depending on the required part. If designers at the University of Southampton wanted to experiment with elliptical wings, they simply printed them out. If they thought a particular brand of WWII nose cone might reduce drag, they pressed Ctrl-P. And if they reckoned they could invent a wingless flying steamroller... Er, too late. Anyway, as the video after the break reveals, there's never been a better time for the work-shy to become aeronautical engineers.
Objet260 Connex makes 3D printing cheaper, feasible for cramped offices
Waiting for a 3D printer you can actually -- you know -- afford? Well, unfortunately the wait isn't over, but we're certainly getting closer with Objet's 260 Connex. The latest offering can still print two materials simultaneously like its more expensive brethren, but is more compact and apparently more "attractively priced." Exactly how frugal, the firm didn't say, but can one really put a price on something that can churn out chunks of Iron Man armor? Yeah, we didn't think so. No word on when it'll ship, but with more than sixty materials to print with, you had better start brainstorming those prototypes now. Video after the break.
3D printed toy features the runner from Canabalt
It's no Angry Birds toy, but I like the idea of this Runner figurine. It features the little guy from the popular iPhone game that spawned a genre, Canabalt. Not only does the resemblance to the little pixelated guy shine right through, but the figure is actually 3D printed in color, and then UV coated to hold the whole thing together. Pretty cool. Voxelous has it on sale right now for $14 along with a few other indie gaming stars, though supplies are limited. What other indie iPhone games need figures like this? I wouldn't mind having a printout of my favorite Bitizen in Tiny Tower...
Solar Sinter solar-powered 3D printer turns sand into glass, renews our faith in higher education (video)
Where would we be without the world's graduate art projects? In the case of Markus Kayser's Solar Sinter, we might never have seen the day when a solar-powered 3D printer would turn Saharan sand into a perfectly suitable glass bowl. Well, lucky for us (we suppose) we live in a world overflowing with MA students, and awash in their often confusing, sometimes inspiring projects. Solar Sinter, now on display at the Royal College of Art, falls into the latter category, taking the Earth's natural elements, and turning them into functioning pieces of a burgeoning technology. Solar Sinter uses the sun's rays in place of a laser and sand in place of resin, in a process that is perhaps more visually stunning than the results. See for yourself in the video after the break.
Vienna University of Technology builds a 3D printer, 3D prints the key to our hearts
We've all spent a good portion of the past few years imagining what we'll do as soon as we get our hands on our very own 3D printer. Of course, if you're of the particularly crafty, Make Magazine-subscribing sort, you've probably already built a few of your own. For those who don't know a soldering iron from a freshly-burned hole in their hand, however, it's been a matter of waiting for the technology to come down in size and price. A machine designed by professors at the Vienna University of Technology still has a ways to go on the roughly €1,200 (about $1,700) price, but it weigh in at a bit over three pounds, and that's not for your run-of-the-mill extruder -- this breadbox-sized machine uses lasers to harden plastics, allegedly with enough precision to produce medical parts. Looks like picking out the perfect gift for your professor friends in Vienna just got a lot harder.
Shapeways Glazed Ceramics make 3D printed objects you can eat off of
We've seen them spit out fancy glass vases and tiny white strandbeests, and now the 3D thingy makers are pumping out cutesy salt and pepper shakers. Those hyper-glossy white rabbits pictured above are some of the first spawns of Glazed Ceramics, the newly minted food-safe material available from Shapeways. Glazed Ceramics are fired in an oven or kiln like traditional ceramics and are then coated with a lead-free non-toxic gloss -- the result is food-safe, recyclable, and heat resistant up to 1000 degrees Celsius. The new material is now available to Shapeways designers and will be until August 12th, at which point the company will decide whether its worth keeping around. For now you can sate your appetite for 3D printed shiny white dishes by clicking the source link below.
Modder miniaturizes 5.25-inch disk drive, brings microSD support to Atari 400
You aren't looking at a retro microSD card reader, you're looking at an Atari-compatible serial disk drive that just happens to use microSD in lieu of 5.25-inch floppies. In a Zork inspired fit of nostalgia (we've all been there), hardware modder Rossum paired up an Atari connector with a LPC1114 microcontroller, capable of emulating up to eight Atari drives, managed by a custom, auto-booting app. The whole package is neatly packed in to a tiny 3D printed replica of the original Atari 810 disk drive, and is available for sale never -- but don't let that stop you: Rossum's schematics are free for the taking. The word's biggest little Atari drive is just a DIY away. [Thanks, Francesco F.]
Strandbeests birthed from 3D printer pop out ready to walk (video)
While designer Theo Jansen's dreams of a race of independently multiplying Strandbeests is more than just a little bit out there, it seems he has found a way to streamline production of the rather fascinating self-propelled creatures. In language that is unique to Jansen's relationship with the things, he explains the impact of 3D printing on the Strandbeest production process as such: "Strandbeests have found a way to multiply by injecting their digital DNA directly into the Shapeways system." The 3D printed versions of his strolling mechanisms, known as Animaris Geneticus Parvus, are now available in the Shapeways store, and require zero post-printing assembly. Check out the video after the break for more of Jansen's eyebrow-lifting take on reality.
Kinect hack turns tourists into 3D souvenirs (video)
As souvenirs go, a miniature replica of yourself -- striking a pose of your choosing on Barcelona's La Rambla street -- is a far sight more original than a bullfights-and-senoritas snow globe. This past January, the hilariously titled BlablabLAB enlisted three Kinects and a RapMan 3.1 to snap passersby and render them into personalized tchotchkes, in a project called Be Your Own Souvenir. Subjects stood atop a small platform, mimicking the human statues on La Rambla, as the Kinects captured their likeness in full 360-degree glory. The resulting images were then processed as a mesh reconstruction, saved as a G-code file, and then fed through a 3D printer -- and voila, out popped the tiny statuettes. If you're a fan of flashy editing and Kinect-based street experiments, check out the video after the break.
MakerBot's Interface Board Kit does PC-less 3D printing, turns your superhero fantasies into reality
If you're like us -- that is to say, wildly popular and devastatingly good looking -- then you're probably wondering why someone hasn't produced an action figure in your likeness yet. Well wonder no longer, for the folks over at MakerBot just announced yet another handy tool to make at home 3D printing even easier. An addition to the aptly titled Thing-O-Matic, the Gen 4 Interface Board Kit v1.1 is billed as a DIY interface that lets you operate your thingy printer without having to attach it to a PC. The kit comes equipped with an SD card slot for easy independent operation, and because the board's fully hackable, you can use it to control your robots or homebrew CNC devices, too. It sports nine programmable buttons and an LCD screen for feedback, and allows you to set and read temperatures, view build progress, or start a new project stored on the SD card. So what are you waiting for? Your self-aggrandizing bobblehead isn't going to make itself.
EADS's Airbike is a 3D-printed nylon bicycle, actually looks rather decent
We've seen plenty of neat 3D printing products over the last year or so, though none are as impressive as this bicycle in terms of scale. Unveiled by EADS (European Aerospace and Defence Group), the Airbike is "grown" with nylon powder using a process called additive layer manufacturing, which is similar to 3D printing but with the added benefit of laser-sintering to reinforce the structure. This way the parts can save up to 65 percent in weight while retaining the same strength (of steel or aluminum in this case), and apparently Airbus was quick to pick up this technology well before everyone else (hence named Airbike, in its honor). It's all well and good, except EADS does say there's still some way to go before we can print our own custom Harley-Davidson bikes without breaking our banks. Shame -- as with many things in life, we'll just have to wait.
