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Tag: 3D printer

  • NASA 3D Printer Flying to ISS in 2014

    NASA 3D Printer Flying to ISS in 2014

    Despite vast cuts to NASA’s budget over the past several years, the space agency still seems to be able to push beyond the boundaries of reality and make science fiction science fact.

    Just last week, the Mars Curiosity rover was able to find evidence of water on the Red Planet. Now, NASA has announced that it will send a 3D printer to the International Space Station in 2014.

    The thought behind the project is to avert any potential disasters that could happen in space due to limited resources: “Imagine an astronaut needing to make a life-or-death repair on the International Space Station. Rather than hoping that the necessary parts and tools are on the station already, what if the parts could be 3D printed when they needed them?” stated Aaron Kemmer, the chief-executive of Made in Space, the technology start-up that has been chosen to lead development for the project.

    3D printing, more formally known as additive manufacturing, works by layering material (right now the most popular being forms of plastic polymers) on top of itself in different patterns, leading to the formation of 3D, solid objects.

    Mike Chen, the co-founder of Made in Space, explained why being able to print objects in space is much more advantageous than making them here in Earth and then shipping them out of the atmosphere: “Everything that you launch is going to have to withstand up to 9Gs in the rocket and crazy vibrations. Things in space are vastly over-engineered, really, for the first 8 minutes of its existence. Think about what you can do now that you have 3D printing capabilities on orbit. For the first time, we’ll be able to design things for space that don’t ever have to exist in a gravity environment.”

    The biggest challenge facing the Made in Space currently, however, is exactly how to make a printer that will operate correctly in outer-space. The team needs to find solutions to such problems as not having enough power and containing fumes that are given off as a by-product of the 3D printing process.

    If the team is successful, though, averting crises in space will be much easier. So far this year, astronauts in the ISS have had to repair a coolant leak, attempt repairs to a broken solar-panel, and abort a space-walk due to the astronaut’s helmet filling with water. These issues would be much easier to handle if any tool or part the astronauts needed was able to be at their disposal in a matter of minutes, instead of waiting for Earth to send them the parts or improvising, like the 1970 Apollo 13 crew had to.

    The team at Made in Space, despite current technological limitations, still has huge aspirations: “We’re going to build a Death Star. Then it’s all going to be over,” stated Jason Dunne, chief technology officer.

    If one had to choose between zombie apocalypse or death by Death Star as an end to the Earth, the decision would be nigh impossible. Please make this a reality, Made in Space. For all us nerds/geeks/fan-people. Please.

    Image via YouTube

  • 3D Printers Can Make Your Valentine’s Day A Little Sweeter

    How do you show your undying love to your significant other on Valentine’s Day? Do you cook a nice meal to enjoy between the both of you? Or do you go out to see a movie? Perhaps you’ll make a 3D printed chocolate model of your face for them to nibble on.

    Wait, what?

    Indeed, Japan, the country that essentially has two Valentine’s Days, has cooked up another way for couples to celebrate their love. FabCafe has joined forces with KS Design Lab to offer 3D printed chocolate faces to couples on Valentine’s Day.

    So, how doe this all work? A person first gets a full 3D body scan, and their face is then recreated in 3D modeling software. From there, it prints silicon molds of faces which are then filled with chocolate. Once dry, the chocolate comes out in the shape of their face. It’s endearingly creepy, but hey, at least it’s not another 3D printed fetus.

    [BBC via CNET]

  • Company Uses 3D Printers To Make Incredibly Strong Fasteners

    Objet is still at Eurmold 2012, and the company is showing off some of the most impressive 3D printed work to come out of its line of industrial printers.

    Today’s creations are sets of fasteners and connectors created by Rotite, a company that specializes in modular fixing technology. The company created prototypes on an Objet Connex500 that are already proving to be ridiculously strong. Despite being made of plastic, the fasteners are already able to support the weight of a small person.

    Fasteners are nothing new, but the point here is that 3D printers are innovating in old technologies and industries. Rotite can quickly experiment with new designs via 3D printing, and see which ones will be best suited to bring to market.

    Lastly, it’s a testament to Objet’s material that it’s able to make something that can doesn’t break under pressure. As you can see in the video above, two men apply about 70 kg of force onto a small connecter and doesn’t break. That’s all thanks to the design and the material used.

    Objet will undoubtedly have more to share from Euromold 2012 in the coming days, but you can check out some of the other stuff the company is up to. The company announced its largest 3D printer yet – the Objet1000 – and has been showing off some of its own internal designs.

  • Objet Announces Its Largest 3D Printer Yet

    Objet, maker of fine 3D printers, is at Euromold 2012 this week to show off its latest innovations in 3D printing. The company started off big with the announcement of the Objet1000, it’s largest 3D printer yet.

    The Objet1000‘s name already indicates that it must be pretty big, but the 1000 in its name is the actual build volume of the printer. It has a 1000 x 800 x 500 mm build volume that will allow creators and industry specialists to create anything and everything. Objet says that the printer will be most useful in in making 1:1 scale models of cars, airplanes, household appliances and much more.

    The Objet1000 is big, but it’s also a fully functioning Connex printer to boot. That means that it can use over 120 materials, and print up to 14 materials into a single model.

    There’s no price just yet, but you can expect it to be in line with Objet’s previous industry 3D printers. This thing is going to be expensive, but those who can afford one are going to produce some fantastic stuff. Objet themselves will also most assuredly show off some impressive models being built with the device.

  • Virginia Tech Gets A 3D Printer Vending Machine

    Futurists often depict a world where anything and everything can be immediately obtained from easy to use machines. It’s as simple as a machine beaming in particles and rearranging them into a physical object that one can interact with. It may not be the same thing, but Virginia Tech has a new machine that’s awfully close.

    It’s called the Dream Vendor and it’s a vending machine of sorts that houses four MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printers. The students at Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering can use the machines to make any 3D printed model that their heart desires.

    The process of creating models in the Dream Vendor is really simple. Students can upload a standard .s3g file into the system, and the 3D printers get to work creating the model. Once it’s done, the model is dropped into a retrieval bay for easy pick up.

    Engineering schools usually have at least one 3D printer, but it’s usually very large and not everybody can use it. Virginia Tech is spearheading an effort to make 3D printers more accessible to all. It’s especially useful for the engineering student that needs a quick prototype of a project.

    We may not be at The Jetsons level just yet, and we may never get there. The Dream Vendor is still really cool though, and I can see other machines like this popping up at engineering schools across the country.

    [h/t: Fabbaloo]

  • LEGO And Duplo Can Finally Play Together

    LEGO And Duplo Can Finally Play Together

    I loved LEGO as a kid, and I still love the big Star Wars sets that they release today. I was never really into the other toys, but some of my friends were. It would would have been awesome if we could have used my LEGO sets and their Duplo or Lincoln Log sets together. If 3D printers didn’t cost a large fortune in the early 90s, we could have made our dream a reality.

    F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab have created the “Free Universal Construction Kit.” This kit allows users to download the schematics and use a 3D printer to create connector pieces that allows different toys to connect to each other. You want that LEGO to work with Duplo? No problem. Want to connect some Lincoln Logs and K’Nex? You can do it. It’s all very cool and should makes kids whose parents can afford a 3D printer very happy.

    Here’s a handy poster of all the parts and toy sets that can work together with the kit:

    LEGO And Duplo Can Finally Play Together

    To get a sense of how these things look when combined together, here’s a picture of four different construction toys combined using the Free Universal Construction Kit:

    LEGO And Duplo Can Finally Play Together

    As TechCrunch points out, there are a few legal ramifications the team faces with this kit. The toy companies hold patents over their inventions and defend them to the death. That’s why all the LEGO competitors have vastly different shapes and sizes for their bricks to avoid infringing on LEGO’s patent. The team lays out their feelings on the matter:

    Today’s manufacturers have little or no intrinsic motivation to make their products compatible with anyone else’s. Indeed—despite obvious benefits to users everywhere—the implementation of cross-brand interoperability can be nearly impossible, given the tangled restrictions of patents, design rights, and trademarks involved in doing so. So we stepped up. The Free Universal Construction Kit is the VLC of children’s playsets.

    As we can see from the example above, interoperability is a question of power and market dominance. Most market leaders regard interoperability as an anti-competitive nuisance, a regulatory check on their ambition, or a concession to the whining of lesser players. Quite simply, interoperability is the request of the disenfranchised. And which end-user, in so many ways, is less enfranchised than a preliterate child?

    The simple fact is that no toy company would ever make the Free Universal Construction Kit. Instead, each construction toy wants (and indeed, pretends) to be your only playset. Within this worldview, the other manufacturers’ construction sets are just so many elephants in the room, competing for your attention on the shelves of Toys-R-Us. No longer. The Free Universal Construction Kit presents what no manufacturer could: a remedy providing extensible, post-facto syntactic interoperability for construction toys. Let the fun begin!

    Likewise, they find that only providing the blueprint for people to create these tools at home is completely legal. If they were selling the kit, that would be one thing, but 3D printers are creating this new challenge to copyright holders the world over. It soon will no longer be a question of a digital copy cutting into sales, but physical copies being cheaply produced that invalidate the need for industries like hardware and toy makers. Why buy a wrench when you can make your own?

    The Pirate Bay has recently dabbled in this as well by offering Physibles for download. They are schematics for physical objects that users can create using a 3D printer. They even made the lofty claim that users would soon be able to print and assemble their own car using a 3D printer.

    3D printers are fascinating while presenting new challenges and opportunities for our connected world. The Free Universal Construction Kit is the first 3D printer aided creation that I think people can fully support. Letting different playsets work together would only expand a child’s imagination instead of limiting it.

    The ad for the Free Universal Construction Kit is an amazing piece of nostalgia for those who remember toy commercials from the 80s and 90s. Check it out:

    The Free Universal Construction Kit from Adapterz on Vimeo.

    Do you like the Free Universal Construction Kit? Or do you think it pushes too far into violating patents and copyright? Let us know in the comments.