Replicatorworld 2013 november (2) by wattronix

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Born to 3D Print Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

Italian motorcycle maker CRP has “joined forces with F1 technologies to print [a] lightweight, zero-emissions electric motorcycle called the Energica Ego.” According to Clean Technica, the companies “[used] selective laser sintering and polyamide-based materials reinforced with carbon fiber called Windform.” In a press release, CRP and F1 technologies added, “3D printing and Windform materials can lead to the production of prototypes and functional parts, that once made, can be metalized and painted. With free-form design, short fabrication time, and the ability to build extremely complex geometry that cannot be easily tooled (or impossible to tool) a customized production is realized that goes beyond the aesthetic model.” The Energica Ego also sports “a KERS braking system designed to recapture some energy and send it back to the battery pack.” CRP states that the driving range of the bike is 120 miles between charges, “with DC fast-charging stations topping off 85% of the batter pack in as little as 30 minutes…the top speed is an electronically limited 150 mph, and 0 to 100 mph supposedly takes just 3 seconds to accomplish.” However, CRP and F1 technologies have not released a price for the bike just yet.

Phot o and Q uot e s Court e s y of Cle an T e chnica

Robox: “Plug and [3D] Print” Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

Tech Radar has recently written of CEL’s new 3D printer, the Robox. CEL, a Britishbased product development company, states that the Robox 3D printer will be simple to use thanks to its ‘plug and print’ functionality. “The Robox, which will only be launched if CEL’s Kickstarter campaign reaches its $162,000 funding target, is powered by the company’s bespoke AutoMaker software that lets you load up a design before clicking start to set the machine in motion.” At the time of this writing, the Robox Kickstarter campaign has raised roughly $125,210. The Robox will also include “a number of proprietary features that allows it to print finely tuned objects – including a rotating bed mechanism, closed feedback loop, and dual-pinch-wheel extrusion system – all of which help the printer feed and layer adhesives evenly.” Another feature of the Robox 3D printer is its “dual-nozzle system that…improves print speed by up to 300% compared to other printers. [According to CEL’s Kickstarter campaign] One [nozzle] is used to print on a detailed surface, whereas the other fills in larger areas, and both use a needle-valve system to stop substances oozing all over your shiny new desktop companion’s insides.” The Robox will be released in March 2014.

companion’s insides.” The Robox will be released in March 2014. Phot o and Q uot e s Court e s y of T e ch Radar Vide o Court e s y of CEL

Home Made Mini-Me Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

While scanned, 3D printed models of people aren’t new, Microsoft has recently shaken up the market. According to Dezeen, “Microsoft Kinect users can now scan their bodies with the motion capture device and order a 3D printed miniature model of themselves without leaving the house.” This new innovation was developed by 3D scanning company Artec Group. “Shapify.me offers a printing and delivery service for ‘3D MiniMe’ figurines.” The fun begins when users download an app to their computer or Xbox 360. Next, “the Kinect must be positioned at chest height on the edge of a surface. The subject stands in front of the device, just over a meter away.” Once they choose a pose, the user scans themselves and turns 45 degrees before scanning again. “This is repeated until a full rotation has been made and the same pose has to be held throughout…By pressing the 3D print button, the model one twentieth of the real height is ordered and delivered in the post in a matter of days.” Vide o, Phot os , and Q uot e s Court e s y of De ze e n

3D Printed Education Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

The company GADGETS3D is launching its “3D Printer in Every School” initiative next month. Forbes reports that the Poland and Hong Kong based company “has introduced the small-sized, low-cost RepRap G3D, especially designed for schools, small businesses, and individual customers.” RepRap is one of the leaders in the Maker community, a completely open source 3D printer. GADGETS3D’s project will allow any school to “buy a RepRap G3D for $245 as part of an educational kit. GADGETS3D also plans to supply more than 500 schools around the world with a free printer.” Students will even be able to access their school’s 3D printer from home using a smart phone.

Elsewhere, “Gerhard de Clercq and Pieter Sholtz – two 15 year-old South Africans working from a home-built RepRap 3D printer – recently wrote a Windows mobile phone app to let users print from a mobile phone.” De Clercq and Sholtz used their new app to print a phone case. However, “the intention of this project wasn’t just to print off a cell phone case and collect a class grade. Instead, de Clercq and Sholtz hope to bring the app to the consumer market and ultimately make 3D printing more affordable and accessible to South Africans through mobile tech.” Meanwhile, in the U.S., NVbots, an MIT startup, plans “to make 3D printing part of shop classes, and part of STEM programs across the U.S., NVbots has created an easy-to-use cloud interface and tiered safety training curricula enabling students to safely 3D print 24-7 on an NVprinter from any device…NVbots’ specialized 3D printing software allows printers to hold a queue of print jobs and then automatically remove parts after they have been printed. It then begins the next print job without any human interaction required.” As with many of these educational 3D printing programs, NVbots has a goal to spread this technology into even more classrooms. They aim to “engage 50,000 schools globally to improve STEM education and to inspire the next generation of inventors.” Phot o Court e s y of Re pRap Q uot e s Court e s y of Forbe s

3D Printing: Faster than Ever Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

At the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, researchers have “developed a faster 3D printing process and are now using it to model and fabricate heterogeneous objects, which comprise multiple materials.” This, according to Phys.org. Before this innovation, the fabrication time for printing such objects could take hours. Now, however, “USC Viterbi professor Yong Chen and his team have shaved the fabrication time down to minutes.” Yong Chen, Ph.D., professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the study’s lead researcher added, “digital material

and Systems Engineering and the study’s lead researcher added, “digital material design and fabrication enables controlled material distributions of multiple base materials in a product component for significantly improved design performance. Such fabrication capability opens up exciting new options that were previously impossible.” This revolutionary breakthrough comes a year after “Chen and another team of USC Viterbi researchers improved an AM-related process called mask-image-projectionbased stereolithography (MIP-SL) to drastically speed up the fabrication of homogeneous 3D objects.” (Or objects of just one material) In the future, however, Dr. Chen and his team aim to “investigate how to develop an automatic design approach for heterogeneous material distribution according to user-specified physical properties and how to improve the fabrication speed.” Watch USC Vitberbi’s video about the project here! Vide o, Phot o, and Q uot e s Court e s y of Phys .org

3D Printing App for Microsoft Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

In a previous issue, Replicator World discussed Microsoft’s first foray into the 3D printing world. When the computing giant released the latest version of their operating system, Windows 8.1, they included native 3D printing support. Additionally, as Personalize has reported, Windows has released “developer codes for the use of the Kinect [on an Xbox] as a 3D scanner” while partnering up with MakerBot stores. Now Microsoft has announced the 3D Builder. This “free app is aimed at newcomers to 3D printing and is a way to customize pre-set or imported designs. The modifications abilities are relatively limited but this does serve as a foolproof entry to 3D printing for any[one] looking to use their printer for the first time.” For now, 3D Builder is only available for devices running Windows 8.1, with the built-in 3D printing support

available for devices running Windows 8.1, with the built-in 3D printing support software. “The app is essentially a library of STL files that are easily manipulated within the software; it is not a complex CAD software package…[and an] easy visualization for showing newcomers the technology with a variety of objects that will…print.” Phot o and Q uot e s Court e s y of Pe rs onalize

On the [3D Printed] Road Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

Jim Kor, of Stratasys, announced the trip at the Manufacturing the Future Summit in November. Popular Mechanics was on hand during the announcement: “about two years from now, Cody and Tyler Kor, now 20 and 22 years old, respectively, will drive coast-to-coast in the lozenge-shaped Urbee 2, a car made mostly by 3D printing…they will spend just 10 gallons of fuel to complete the trip from New York to San Francisco. Then they will refuel, turn around, [and go back the other way].” The reason why the Kors chose a New York to San Francisco route is to echo the route taken by Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker in 1903, the first road trip in an automobile. Instead of 10 gallons, however, Jackson and Crocker used 800! It was important for the Kors to use so little gas because the original concept of the Urbee 2 was a “vehicle intended for urban use, powered by electric motors and a small, ethanol-fueled combustion engine. Those key words – urban, electric, ethanol – gave the Urbee its name.” Jim Kor says that the Google time estimate for the trip is 44 hours, but it will probably take his sons just a little bit longer. While discussing the years-long development of the Urbee 2, Korr says, “there were two of us that knew the aerodynamics really well, and two industrial designers, the industrial designers kept saying, ‘It can’t look like a jellybean.’ But I was adamant that the design must be efficient first, and then we would design for the look. Most cars are done the other way around – they start with how they want the car to look, and then

done the other way around – they start with how they want the car to look, and then they try to find ways to make it efficient.”

Phot os and Q uot e s Court e s y of Popular Me chanics

Heart Makers Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

At the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute in Louisville, Kentucky, an ambitious 3D printed heart project is underway. As reported by Livescience, “the project aims to make a natural organ replacement for patients possible within a decade.” Stuart Williams, executive and scientific director at the Institute, developed “the idea of a 3D printed heart grown from a patient’s own fat stem cells…his lab has already

of a 3D printed heart grown from a patient’s own fat stem cells…his lab has already begun developing the next generation of custom-build 3D [bio] printers aimed at printing out a complete heart with all its parts – heart muscle, blood vessels, heart valves, and electrical tissue.” The Institute refers to this potential 3D printed organ as the “bioficial heart.” Each component of the heart will be printed separately. As Williams explains, “I took a step back and looked at my colleagues, and said, ‘Why don’t we build it like a large airplane?’… Separate the organ into separate components, figure out the best way to make the components, and then put them together.” However, there are certain obstacles to the project. One of the main ones is the fact that certain blood vessels in a human heart are only a few microns wide. Even the most powerful current 3D printers can only print in millimeters. (“1 millimeter is equal to 1,000 microns.”) Despite this setback, however, Williams believes he has a possible solution: “we will be printing things in the order of tens of microns, or more like hundreds of microns, and then cells will undergo their biological developmental response in order to self-organize correctly.” In other words, they will knit together naturally. Many experts believe this sort of 3D printing technology is more than ten years away, but the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute is working tirelessly to make that ten-year goal possible. “Williams expects the next generation of ‘bioprinters’ to begin rolling out in December [2013].” Image and Q uot e s Court e s y of Live s cie nce

The New Face of 3D Printing Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

Consultant head and neck surgeon Adrian Sugar is leading the team at Morriston Hospital in Swansea, Wales. As reported by the Express, the patient’s “head was crushed in a motorbike crash.” The surgeons “will use [3D printing and CAD software] to create a template of the victim’s face and titanium implants to restore his appearance.”

create a template of the victim’s face and titanium implants to restore his appearance.” Half of the patient’s face was severely damaged, while the other side was unaffected. “[Surgeon] Sugar has used a CT scan of this side of the face as a template to create implants in titanium using 3D printing. The operation will involve breaking and cutting several facial bones once again, but the 3D printing process will also produce guide devices allowing the surgeons to reposition bones with pinpoint accuracy.” Surgeon Sugar added that the team “has a good chance of correcting 70 to 80 percent of the deformity.” In the future, the surgeons hope to “use similar techniques to reconstruct a face following surgery for cancer or congenital facial deformities.” Phot o and Q uot e s Court e s y of t he Expre s s

Senator Pushes Extension of Ban on ‘Undetectable Firearms’ Posted by : replicatorworld On : November 25, 2013

Ca te g o ry : December 2013

According to the Guardian, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York, wishes to extend a “federal law that [bans]…undetectable guns.” The law is set to expire on the 9th of December. Senator Schumer says that “anyone with $1,000 and an internet connection can access…plastic parts that can be fitted into a gun. [These] firearms cannot be [uncovered] by metal detectors or x-ray machines.” Senator Schumer is not alone in his concern. Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Bill Nelson of Florida have also announced their wish for the law to be extended. As Senator Schumer said during the announcement: “3D printers are a miraculous technology that have the potential to revolutionize manufacturing, but we need to make sure they are not being used to make deadly, undetectable weapons.” Q uot e s Court e s y of t he Guardian Phot o Court e s y of De f e ns e Dis t ribut e d/EPA

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