A post from Olimpio DeMarco, VP of Research and Development at ZCorp questioned the possibility of using open source 3D printers for business use. He says: Who then is buying open source FDM printers? It isn’t clear to me that there is an industrial, true business application for open source 3DP. He’s probably… Continue reading ZCorp Questions Open Source Printers
Ideas
3D Print an ATM Skimmer!
Attention Criminals: you’d better buy your own 3D printer; DO NOT use a 3D printing service to build parts for your bank job, or you’ll be apprehended. That’s exactly what happened at 3D printing service i.Materialise, whose sharp-eyed operators managed to catch what appeared to be the card slot of an ATM being printed!… Continue reading 3D Print an ATM Skimmer!
Materialise Touts 3D Printing Services Over Hobby 3D Printers
Ok, that might be totally predictable: a big 3D print services vendor promotes the use of services instead of using your own low-cost 3D printer (such as a RepRap, RapMan or MakerBot). Here’s their take: If you happen to be a ‘maker’, and love the creative experience like we do, then you definitely welcome… Continue reading Materialise Touts 3D Printing Services Over Hobby 3D Printers
Creaform Gets Certified
Handheld 3D laser scanner manufacturer Creaform has just achieved an interesting milestone: they’ve been certified by the Chinese National Institute of Metrology after extensive testing at NIM’s Beijing facility. What? You’ve never heard of NIM? Here’s what they are about: Founded in 1955, the National Institute of Metrology (NIM) is China’s national metrological institute… Continue reading Creaform Gets Certified
Hive45 On 3D Printing
Beer drinking Australian futurists Tristan Grace and Nathan Waters speculate about the future of 3D printing on their podcast, episode 24. They feel that the ultimate goal of 3D printing is in fact very small: nanotechnology. In other words, that’s printing individual atoms and molecules in the right arrangements to achieve virtually any conceivable object. … Continue reading Hive45 On 3D Printing
Fractal Tree Table
If the size of your 3D printer’s build chamber is too small, the answer is obvious: break your object into a series of smaller parts, print and assemble them. That or buying a bigger printer. But let’s turn this around: what if you don’t know how big your object is, and you just print… Continue reading Fractal Tree Table
Printing Sound
Contrasting opinions are a main feature of today’s communications. We read opposing viewpoints on and endless series topics, words versus words. But what if you could actually *see* the words colliding? That’s the question Canadian artist Eva Schindling set out to discover when she produced her work, “Liquid Sound Collisions”. The artist took two… Continue reading Printing Sound
Sintering the Moon
We just finished reading a paper describing the viability of using microwaves to fuse lunar soil (regoilith) into solid shapes, in the hopes of creating an effective way of building lunar structures for future astronauts and their bases. The chemistry and process are fascinating. It seems that most of the lunar regolith was formed… Continue reading Sintering the Moon
Printing the Disney Concert Hall – And Other Buildings
While watching a video of Sweet Onion Creations making a printout of the beautiful Disney Theater in Los Angeles, it became clear that one could find ready-made 3D models of many famous buildings. Sweet Onion Creations recommends using Google Earth to find such buildings, as it’s integrated with Google’s 3D Warehouse. We suspect there… Continue reading Printing the Disney Concert Hall – And Other Buildings
MakerBot Calibration Hoedown
Members of Kansas City’s Cowtown Computer Congress had an unusual event: 3D Printer Calibration Night. That’s right, members brought in their MakerBot 3D printers in an effort to properly calibrate their heater barrels, which are notoriously tricky to set right. Half a dozen MakerBots and a couple of RepRaps appear to be present in… Continue reading MakerBot Calibration Hoedown
Breeding RepRaps
The premise behind the RepRap project is to build a machine that can reproduce itself. While it’s not quite able to accomplish that task entirely, it can produce a great many of its own parts. That’s exactly what’s going on at the University of Washington, where they seem to have set up a “RepRap… Continue reading Breeding RepRaps
The Inevitable Obj Store
After re-reading Bradshaw, Bowyer and Haufe’s paper “The Intellectual Property Implications of Low-Cost 3D Printing”, we’ve been considering where this personal manufacturing space is heading. In the paper, the tangled intellectual property rights scenarios they described involved personal manufacturing of some sort. It occurred to us that at the end of the day, most manufactured… Continue reading The Inevitable Obj Store
IP Rights vs. Personal 3D Printing
At this early stage in inexpensive personal 3D printing, we’re still exploring the technology and what it means. While we see intellectual property confusion and carnage in the digital music and now text-based industries, some of us feel that a similar catastrophe will befall personal manufacturing. In the meantime, we continue to explore the space.… Continue reading IP Rights vs. Personal 3D Printing
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution
Kevin Carson has published a new book speaking to a vision of industrial revolution based on home-based manufacturing. This is a theme we’ve written about many times before, but we’ve not yet seen anyone take the concept into such detail as Carson’s nearly 400 page tome. Carson starts with the history of manufacturing, discussing… Continue reading The Homebrew Industrial Revolution
3D Memories?
We’ve written before about the sentimental value of 3D printed objects. Consider the notion of capturing 3D data from a pregnant woman’s ultrasound scan of her unborn child – and then reproducing the child in 3D even before it’s born! These and many other similar activities are quite possible these days with 3D print tech. … Continue reading 3D Memories?
MicroManufacturing with a MakerBot?
MakerBot operator Pete Hinzy asks an interesting question: who else out there is using their MakerBot or other type of low cost manufacturing equipment as a part of their business? What is your business model? Pricing structures, etc.? For certain, the MakerBot and similar low-cost 3D printers don’t offer typical commercial capabilities, such… Continue reading MicroManufacturing with a MakerBot?
Materialise Shapes F3 Euro Series Cars
3D service Materialise has been working with the Signature F3 Euro Series team to fine tune their racing cars, apparently quite successfully. The approach is to duplicate the aerodynamic scenario by testing a scale model of the proposed car design in a wind tunnel. By tweaking the shape of critical parts, the airflow can… Continue reading Materialise Shapes F3 Euro Series Cars
Do You Need an Atomic Force Microscope?
Sure, everyone needs an AFM! But what is it? From Wikipedia: Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy, with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the optical diffraction limit. The precursor to the… Continue reading Do You Need an Atomic Force Microscope?
Additive or Subtractive?
Something struck us the other day when thinking about the variety of 3D printing approaches. Traditional manufacturing is typically “subtractive”, in that you take a large chunk of material, say a granite cube, length of wood or a 17 tonne cube of solid titanium and go at it with tools, manual or automated. When the… Continue reading Additive or Subtractive?
A Distributed Manufacturing Experiment – Get Involved Now!
We received a note from Vernon Effalo of Effalo.com, who’s performing a very interesting experiment. He’s designed a unique geodesic dome connector (you know, the five-way joint for the arms of the dome) and wants you to build them for him. And it’s not begging – he’s willing to pay USD$2 per connector! So… Continue reading A Distributed Manufacturing Experiment – Get Involved Now!
Poor Man’s 3D Printing: Finishing
You’ve obtained or made a 3D model and printed it on a 3D print service or perhaps your own 3D printer. Now the question is, “how can I finish it at low cost?” While there are several professional commercial finishing services, they’re quite expensive and don’t fit the theme here. There are only two reasonable options: … Continue reading Poor Man’s 3D Printing: Finishing
Poor Man’s 3D Printing: The Print
In our previous article we provided ideas on how to prepare your 3D model at the lowest cost possible. But once you have the model ready to print, how do you get it done at low cost? There are three basic approaches: You Know Someone. That’s right – you just might happen to… Continue reading Poor Man’s 3D Printing: The Print
Poor Man’s 3D Printing: The Design
So you want to start 3D printing, but you have no money? It is possible to do 3D printing without much cash, and for starters you’d need to prepare your 3D model for printing. But how to do this without cash? Two ways: simply use a 3D model from a well-stocked repository or design a… Continue reading Poor Man’s 3D Printing: The Design
3D Printers are the New Cranes
Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG speculates on a spectacular use of Enrico Dini’s building-sized 3D printer: endless change and renewal as a building could have its own 3D printer constantly printing out new modules, rooms, floors and other components. By adding a tear-down function, the building would both birth and consume itself continuously. From Manaugh: … Continue reading 3D Printers are the New Cranes
DeviceKnit Discovers Good Uses
We were approached by John Ganotis, developer of DeviceKnit, a unique way to think about gadgets. Here’s how it works, according to John: We’ve been describing it as a “cookbook for gadgets.” In its first, simplest form its all about sharing applications for different electronics and gadgets people have. Users submit “implementations” as responses… Continue reading DeviceKnit Discovers Good Uses
3D Printing Solves The Innovator’s Dilemma?
In the classic business book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, author Clayton M. Christensen describes a scenario which happens all to often in large companies: Inventive staff come up with a new way to produce the product Management is not interested in backing the new way because even if it succeeded, the amount of revenue is… Continue reading 3D Printing Solves The Innovator’s Dilemma?
Up Against the Wall and Spread Your Legs!
Designer Tom Matten submitted a rather unusual design to 3D model repository Thingiverse the other week: a bong. According to the description: Maker Bong puts the smoker back in charge. Maker Bong gives the individual the ability to create what ever type of bong they desire, weather it be a steamroller, Hookah, or normal… Continue reading Up Against the Wall and Spread Your Legs!
3D Printed Gloves
Fabbing superstar Janne Kyttanen of Freedom of Creation has been commissioned to produce unique white 3D printed gloves, as shown here. The gloves were commissioned by the Design Hub Barcelona, are will be on display from 15 June 2010 to 28 February 2011 in at the Fabrication Laboratory exhibition. According to DHUB: The objects… Continue reading 3D Printed Gloves
The Infinite MakerBot
On your 2D paper printer, the print job is usually complete by the time you get your butt out of the chair and stroll over to the printer. Not so with a 3D printer, where you often must wait for many minutes, or even hours for a job to complete. When it’s done, you’ve probably… Continue reading The Infinite MakerBot
Five Things to 3D Print in 2050?
PrintCountry proposed “5 Ways Your Grandkids will Use 3D Printers in 2050” in a whimsical post recently. We thought about their list and came up with our own. But first, here’s PrintCountry’s assessment: Organs What if in 2050, no one will have to be on a waiting list for an organ transplant ever again?… Continue reading Five Things to 3D Print in 2050?
A 3D Idea: Printing The City
We’ve been fascinated by a video of Google’s new feature for their popular Google Earth product: 3D imagery. You might be surprised to realize that the image above is NOT a photograph of New York City, but was from a new version of Google Earth that incorporates street view images and superimposes them on 3D… Continue reading A 3D Idea: Printing The City
Gartner’s Jackie Fenn on 3D Printing
Fabbaloo interviewed Gartner Analyst Jackie Fenn, VP and Gartner Fellow covering Emerging Trends. Jackie writes on a variety of new technologies and approaches, one of which has been 3D printing. Jackie is the originator of Gartner’s famous Hype Cycle, which proposes that every technology follows a consistent pattern of interest through its lifecycle. Jackie’s… Continue reading Gartner’s Jackie Fenn on 3D Printing
What’s The Most Important Characteristic of a 3D Printer?
We found a survey link in our email from 3D Systems, one of the largest commercial manufacturers of 3D printers. 3D Systems is seeking to learn what their clients and prospects think is important in a 3D printer. We’re wondering that too. Therefore, we have duplicated 3D Systems’ key question in our very own… Continue reading What’s The Most Important Characteristic of a 3D Printer?
Forget Z Layers – Just Fold Instead!
The fundamental premise of 3D printing is layers. We add them a fraction of a millimetre at a time, be it with plastic, powder or some expensive goop, it is the basis of all 3D printing. Even the software assumes this is the case as it slices our 3D models into layers suitable for printing. … Continue reading Forget Z Layers – Just Fold Instead!
Open Hardware: Defined?
The results of a March 17th workshop on open hardware have been released. The event, termed “A workshop on legal tools for open source hardware”, started discussing ideas for open hardware licenses beyond the software-heritage open licenses commonly reused today. These software licenses (such as Creative Commons, GPL, etc.) do not necessarily account for the… Continue reading Open Hardware: Defined?
SMArchitecture
We ran across a very interesting operation: SMArchitecture, a “Kuwait and London based architectural & design R&D practice”. Their blog, written by Dr. Thomas Modeen describes their design experiments, which are often highly unusual and seem to have evolved from fabrication techniques. Some examples: The ‘Comet’ vase, which consists of a bundle of hollow,… Continue reading SMArchitecture
A Little World Idea
We’re checking out the new iPhone app from “Little World Gifts”, which is a rather cool idea. You browse a series of 3D “gifts” via your iPhone – and browsing means viewing in 3D using rotations, zoom, etc. Once you’ve selected something, you can pick one of your contacts and purchase the item to be… Continue reading A Little World Idea
Printing The Iron Man, And More
Blockbuster film Iron Man 2 has a direct 3D printing connection: Iron Man’s suit, as well as that of arch-nemesis Whiplash, were produced on a 3D printer. And they didn’t just print a mould for the suit parts, they printed the actual suit components. After a bit of paint, they were ready to be worn!… Continue reading Printing The Iron Man, And More
Hexapod Emerges from 3D Printer
Matt Bunting is a student who’s been interested in building robots for many years. Finally at the University of Arizona he was able to do so, partly by using the University’s Dimension 3D printer. The very complex leg assemblies were printed in eleven hours, using a great deal of support material. The design was such… Continue reading Hexapod Emerges from 3D Printer
3D Printing Aids Biohacking
These days people are fiddling with anything that can be made digital, and one of the more interesting digitizations recently is biology! DNA, those tiny molecular strands that define us all, are increasingly being investigated by, well, hackers. BBC News reports on this phenomenon, which has grown recently aided by technological developments. The idea… Continue reading 3D Printing Aids Biohacking
Digging Through eBay for 3D
Following up on our earlier article in which we sought out used 3D printers on eBay, we noticed that printers are not the only relevant 3D item you can find on eBay. We’ve located several instances of individuals selling print services via eBay, but we’d use them only if their price was less than… Continue reading Digging Through eBay for 3D
Print 3D in 2D
A new 3D print service has launched, SnapilyPro, but it’s not what you think: they print 3D models in 2D. The service accepts 3D photoshop PSD files and uses lenticular printing to produce a flat surface image that appears to move when you rotate the image. Why would you use a 2D print… Continue reading Print 3D in 2D
Looking for a Used 3D Printer?
The press typically covers announcements of new printers, but did you know you can find used 3D printers for sale at prices that are sometimes quite a bit lower than retail? We cruised through Ebay today to see what we could find: ZCorp Spectrum 510 for USD$20,000 3D Systems Actua 2100 Rapid Plastic Prototype… Continue reading Looking for a Used 3D Printer?
Microscopic Bacteria-Based 3D Printing
We didn’t see this one coming: corralling a herd of Magnetotactic bacteria to build a 3D pyramid. The process works due to the amazing magnetic properties of these tiny agents. They respond to magnetic fields by moving in the field’s direction by flapping their two flagella bundles generating up to a whole 4 piconewtons… Continue reading Microscopic Bacteria-Based 3D Printing
3D Printing The Roads
There’s a wonderful concept device produced by designers Hoyoung Lee, Doyoung Kim, and Hongku Kim called the “Road Printer”. Click on the image for larger detail. The idea is to have a solar-powered robot paint those nice lines on our roadways. This should be inexpensive and offer a lot more safety than having live crews… Continue reading 3D Printing The Roads
3Shape Focuses on Dentistry
The most popular software these days is that designed with the user in mind, where all aspects of the software are focused on delivering the function required by the user. When people see such software, they immediately resonate with it and are more likely to use it. There are countless examples of this effect. … Continue reading 3Shape Focuses on Dentistry
Is Hardware Open?
We think hardware could be truly open, but only if the correct legal frameworks are in place. And they likely are not. Software has gone through all this before, of course. In the 1960’s software was basically homemade, but then commercial software companies emerged and grew in the 1970’s and 80’s. However, in the… Continue reading Is Hardware Open?
OpenStructures
As the world slowly fills with advanced personal and commercial manufacturing equipment, we’re starting to see the emergence of systems to make the resulting manufactured objects fit together in organized ways. Projects such as SKDB and MakerBeam hope to help us locate and assemble independently designed objects. Another project in this area is OpenStructures: … Continue reading OpenStructures
The Battle of Big Thinking
We listened to an interesting presentation from John Wilshire on the topic of “Big”. He means the notion of mass production, mass consumption and the resulting mass media, where the goal is simply to have you “buy more” in a “big way”. It’s true. We’ve all been conditioned to think this way as that was… Continue reading The Battle of Big Thinking
Maker Culture
Great article on Maker Culture from Re/Creating Tampa, where they contrast 21st Century maker activities with historical events in the United States. They explain how inventions were largely the domain of the individual (think Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, etc.) These renowned “individual gadgeteers” made a truly significant difference in the history of the United States… Continue reading Maker Culture
3D Printing is Not China on Your Desktop
A 2008 quote attributed to Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google says: “Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop.” We strongly resonate with that image. Instead of receiving goods from China, which evidently manufactures all things these days, you can drop a 3D printer on your desk and manufacture things yourself.… Continue reading 3D Printing is Not China on Your Desktop
The Social Engineering-Knowledge Database
Bryan Bishop provides a great overview of the Social Engineering-Knowledge Database (SKDB) project in an article at HPlus Magazine. The premise of the project is to create a standard environment for the development of complex 3D models by leveraging models and instructions that already exist. This is very similar to the open source software industry,… Continue reading The Social Engineering-Knowledge Database
The New Means of Production
We’ve been reading a very interesting article by Greg J. Smith of Serial Consign, which discusses the implications of advanced personal manufacturing capabilities on art and design. Smith explains the basics for those who aren’t familiar with modern fabbing, but then goes to review thoughts by several designers, writers and analysts. A key concept we… Continue reading The New Means of Production
Seth Godin’s Vision
We read Seth Godin’s posts often, and recently completed his latest book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?. In the book Godin proposes that the industrial model that we’ve lived with for some 250 years is drawing to a close. With painful accuracy, he describes the fruitless struggles and frustrations many people face at work in the… Continue reading Seth Godin’s Vision
3D Printing: The Trends?
Which 3D printer manufacturers are most popular? That’s very hard to say, since internal company statistics are often difficult to find. However, Google is Our Friend in this case, since they offer a free trending service: Google Trends. Google Trends does not tell you which item is most popular. Instead they simply tell you the… Continue reading 3D Printing: The Trends?
Top 5 Reasons To Get Into the 3D Printer Market?
Channel Insider writes of five reasons they believe value added resellers should consider adding 3D printers to their catalog of products. Let’s examine their rationale: Reason # 1: Soaring Market Growth Who knew? The 3D printing market is in major growth mode. In a down economy, companies that want to stay afloat need to innovate… Continue reading Top 5 Reasons To Get Into the 3D Printer Market?
Sterling’s Kiosk
It’s possible that Science Fiction inspired the creation of 3D Printing; we’ll never know for sure. That inspiration continues today, as we recently listened to Starship Sofa’s rendition of Bruce Sterling’s amazing short story, “Kiosk”. Published to the web in 2008, this story follows the career of Borislav, a street-savvy Belgrade entrepreneur who somehow gets… Continue reading Sterling’s Kiosk
3D Printed Kitchen
This week has seen several articles on Food Printing, and today we can tell you that not only can the food be printed, but so can the Entire Restaurant! Instructables Restaurant is the first open source restaurant in the world. Everything you see, use and eat is downloaded from instructables.com. It’s an experiment in internet… Continue reading 3D Printed Kitchen
The Atomic Kitchen
For some reason there seems to be increasing mentions of “Food Printing” recently, including an article in The Independent. We’re all for that, being a hungry lot here at Fabbaloo. Today’s FoodPrint comes once again from Wallpaper, where they’ve posted an amazing vision of 3D Food Printing potential. The Philip’s molecular gastronomy concept is perhaps… Continue reading The Atomic Kitchen
Test Parts
Television has the famous colored Test Pattern. 2D printers have “Test Pages”. But what should 3D printers use as the gold standard for testing and comparing output objects? With the recent marketing comparisons of 3D Systems and Objet technology, and now a post from Open3DP, it’s seems logical that the industry should develop defacto… Continue reading Test Parts
The Homemade 3D Printer
Those new to the concept of 3D printing are often even more amazed to find out that it’s entirely possible to actually build a 3D printer yourself! It’s not particularly easy and you must have very reasonable hardware talent, but definitely possible. You’ll need to select a method of depositing print media from many… Continue reading The Homemade 3D Printer
3D Jobs of the Future
The Guardian’s Ian Wylie posts an interesting vision of the future, where he extrapolates technologies emerging today into full-on industries and associated job roles. They describe a great many truly interesting jobs of the year 2020, and one of them involves 3D printing: Construction Worker. Actually, they believe that Construction Workers might be at risk,… Continue reading 3D Jobs of the Future
Possessions are Over!
Writer Bruce Sterling fantasizes a new flat near Old Street Station in London. Apparently he’s a bit short on facilities right now: As yet, I possess no stove, no toilet, no bathtub and and no bed. In fact, there are no physical objects in my flat whatsoever, except for my two roll-aboard suitcases, this Taiwanese… Continue reading Possessions are Over!
The Third Wave of Industrialization
Alf Rehn is is Chair of Management and Organization (Åbo Akademi University) and formerly Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (KTH, Stockholm), and in a recent column he postulates the future for Finland, and by implication the rest of the world. Rehn writes of the growing troubles in our world today, including climate change, financial… Continue reading The Third Wave of Industrialization