Super Paper 3D Printing?

New Scientist reports on a very intriguing development involving plain paper. Researchers at the Swedish Royal Instititue of Technology have produced a very strong paper product by leveraging nanofibres that naturally occur in cellulose - a material available virtually everywhere.

Conventional paper production involves destruction of these nanofibres, but the Swedish research crew developed a method using enzymes to break down cellulose yet maintain the nanofibres. Then something interesting happened:

The end result is undamaged cellulose fibres suspended in water. When the water is drained away Berglund found that the fibres join together into networks held by hydrogen bonds, forming flat sheets of "nanopaper".

Apparently the hydrogen bonds are extremely strong:

Mechanical testing shows it has a tensile strength of 214 megapascals, making it stronger than cast iron (130 MPa) and almost as strong as structural steel (250 MPa).Normal paper has a tensile strength less than 1 MPa. The tests used strips 40 millimetres long by 5mm wide and about 50 micrometres thick.

So what does this have to do with 3D printing?

Previously we've seen 3D printing on paper, but we're not sure that approach would work with paper stronger than cast iron; you'd need something much more powerful than scissors to shape layers of super-paper.

Instead we contemplate a variation of additive printing, where the material is cellulose nanofibres. Suspended in liquid, they could be deposited in an additive manner, where heat and/or air can dry the deposition and fuse onto lower layers. What would be the result? Maybe you will be able to print a cast iron frying pan.

Via New Scientist

3D Printing Gets FAT

No, we don't mean the industry's been eating too much. Instead we're talking about a concept recently described by Design News. FAT is an acronym for "Fabricating and Assembly Tools". Here's the concept:

• 3D printers of today often don't produce objects robust enough for use in retail products
• However, they do produce objects sufficiently robust to be used in the manufacturing process: jigs, clamps, guides, etc. 

Evidently the market for such tooling is over 10x the value of additive printing itself! The article describes how vacuum manufacturer Oreck produced more than 300 FAT aids, as it has now reached their required levels of accuracy - at least using the FDM machinery used at Oreck.

Via Design News

Lyons Recognizes 3D Printing

While some have begun to notice the growing 3D Printing industry, we now see someone focused on the Printer industry in general write on the topic. Jim Lyons, Printing and Imaging industry observer reports on a variety of new printing technologies, including drug, organ, electronics, solar cell printing and of course 3D printing. He writes:

3D printing is grouped under the “rapid prototyping” technologies and is becoming a practical way to produce parts, competing with more established machine shop techniques.

Via JimLyonsObservations

The Most Expensive 3D Model?

The folks at Blossom posted several articles recently detailing their work to design and produce a rather unusual 3D object. It's a small-scale model of a strange and complex sculpture, as you can see in the rendering pictured here.

Evidently the shape of the object baffled the 3D printers as it had a double-layered shell with limited connectivity. Ingenuious redesign produced the necessary internal supports and the object was actually printed.

Via Florination, Florination and Florination

Desktop Factory Update

Last week Desktop Factory's periodic newsletter provided an update on their progress. For those who haven't heard, Desktop Factory is a startup company that intends on producing a relatively high-quality 3D printer at a cost of less than USD$5,000. At this price point the device will become affordable by a much larger audience than today's users who must spend 5 to 10 times that cost for current printers.

Highlights of Desktop Factory's Product Update:

• They have resolved the aperture clogging issue that delayed printer availability, but the new component caused a printing slowdown. It appears though, they have largely resolved the new problem and are close to target speeds.
• Like it or not, the first widely available 3D printers will not be as maintenance free as our friendly 2D printers. Regular maintenance will be required, and Desktop Factory reports they have exceeded their specifications for end-user maintenance activities. They are still working on "service technician" reliability, however.

In all, it appears to be good news; significant progress is being made. Hopefully we will see units appearing in the field early next year.

Via Desktop Factory News

A Future 3D Media Problem

We've been thinking about the future world of 3D printing, where theoretically everyone has a 3D printer at home, probably sitting right beside their 2D paper printer. We predict a printing media issue will develop. What might that be?

Consider the current situation of 2D paper printers: your 2D printer requires media (ink & paper, but let's talk about the ink). To refill your 2D printer, you must purchase a cartridge of ink from the manufacturer. Oh wait, you have to purchase up to Four Cartridges containing all the necessary spectrum of colors. The ink in these cartridges is consumed as you print.

Transform this to the analogous 3D printer scenario: your 3D printer requires print media (essentially a chemical goop of some kind) that will no doubt be a proprietary mixture available only from the manufacturer. Do you need different colors, like we do with 2D printers? Perhaps. But it gets worse. You may need print media of different quality! Consider these characteristics that you might look for on the box labels at a future 3D media store:

• Strength. How strong is the resulting object before it breaks?
• Malleability: How bendable is the resulting object?
• Temperature: How hot or cold can the resulting object get before it breaks down?
• Weight: How heavy is one standard unit of the media?

And there are probably even more characteristics. Color we mentioned above, but it likely won't be a characteristic of the 3D print media as that would imply our media store would require a lot more shelf space to accommodate all the required colors! Instead we suspect 3D printers will simply mix in coloring as the objects are printed. However, this means our 3D printer will also require a four-color ink cartridge just like your 2D printer!

So just as our print supplies today include color cartridges and a small selection of paper types, our 3D print supplies will include multiple bottles of differing media - and the color cartridges too.

Fabidoo Update

It's been a while since we've looked at Fabidoo, so we recently took a look at their current offerings.

For those who haven't heard of them, Fabidoo is one of many 3D print services now available around the world. Print services are all the same, yet different: they all have a 3D print engine in the back room, but access to it differs greatly.

Some companies permit (and require) you to develop your own 3D model, which then is submitted for printing. Fabidoo has a different approach where they provide the model and customers merely select (and customize) the design before printing. This approach brings 3D manufacturing down to the consumer level, since only limited design skills are required.

Fabidoo began by offering a small selection of figurine models that could be customized. But today their list of available models has expanded and now includes clovers, hearts, USB stick covers and more. The best part is that many of the designs have been submitted by Fabidoo customers, where ratings let the most interesting designs float to the top of the list.

Via Fabidoo Models