Het grote 3D-printer topic

Als McGyver dit toch eens standaard bij zich kon hebben

Traveling 3D Printer Fits Inside a Suitcase

PopFab from MIT is a mini multi-tool that combines a 3D printer, CNC milling machine, vinyl cutter, and programmable drawing device.

MIT’s Ilan Moyer and Nadya Peek have created a briefcase-sized 3D printer, which is also a CNC milling machine, vinyl cutter, and programmable drawing tool. Designed for a more freelance and nomadic lifestyle, PopFab would allow creatives to easily take their tools along with them as they travel. Moyer’s first video shows off its 3D printing capabilities, while the toolheads for vinyl cutting, milling, and drawing will be shown in future episodes.

PopFab is a multi-tool for the 21st century. At its heart is a computer-controlled motion platform and a means of attaching various toolheads. These enable PopFab to make objects from a digital plan in a variety of ways: current capabilities include 3D printing, milling, vinyl cutting, and drawing — with more on the way. PopFab has traveled the world as a carry-on item of luggage to Saudi Arabia and Germany, and within the USA to Aspen in Colorado. We hope that this is only the beginning.

Check out the video below to see the machine in action:


http://www.zeitnews.org/a(...)fits-inside-suitcase

3D Printed "Magic Arms" Help Little Girl Give Hugs

The next time anybody tells me that 3-D Printing Will Go the Way of Virtual Reality, that it is a techno-fantasy, I will make him sit down and watch this video of Emma Lavelle.

She suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that leaves her muscles underdeveloped, so she doesn't have the strength to lift her own arms.



There is a device called a WREX (Wilmington Robotic Exoskeleton) designed to help people with this condition, but it is too heavy, expensive, and not designed for a growing child. But 3D printing has enabled researchers to make a smaller, lighter and more adaptable WREX.

Researchers at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware deemed CNC milling unsuitable to produce intricate parts with light enough weight and the durability required. However, 3D printing the parts, turned out to be the perfect manufacturing solution. As Emma grows, the size of the WREX assembly can be adjusted in the CAD files. Also, as Emma’s WREX design is still a prototype, iterations can be developed and continually tested and refined. If any parts are damaged, a replacement can be produced and ordered on demand.


Emma's arms were made on a Stratasys 3D Printer, the same machine we have seen used to build entire cars. And it isn't just a one-off prototype, fifteen kids are using these magic arms now. 3D printing is not just for toys anymore.

http://www.zeitnews.org/n(...)ittle-girl-give-hugs

quote:

Op maandag 20 augustus 2012 16:05 schreef Somnitec het volgende:
Hey mensen,
Ik ben al een tijdje bezig om informatie te zoeken om bezig te gaan met het 3d printen van muziek instrumenten. Dit work-in-progress onderzoek heb ik hier online gegooid http://3dprintedinstruments.wikidot.com
Wie geīntereseerd is in deze toepassing van 3d printen, nodig ik ten zeerste uit om een kijkje te nemen en eventueel toe te voegen!

Cool! Nieuwe instrumenten bedenken!


A concept design from MIT Media Lab, to illustrate the possibilities with 3d printing. Not yet manufactured.

Make your own action figures with a 3-D printer

Computer graphics researchers at Cornell and Harvard have created software that will translate a graphic image of a character from a movie or video game, or even something you've created yourself, into a posable plastic model manufactured by a 3-D printer. Eventually this capability might be built into games and other software, the researchers said.

The project by Moritz Bächer and Hanspeter Pfister of Harvard, Bernd Bickel of the Technische Universität Berlin, and Doug James, Cornell associate professor of computer science, was described at the SIGGRAPH conference Aug. 7 in Los Angeles and in the July 2012 issue of the Association for Computing Machinery journal Transactions on Graphics. The researchers displayed models they had made of characters created in the video game "Spore," which allows the player to evolve an alien creature, as well as an articulated model of a human hand.


An articulated model based on a 3-D scan of a human hand. Below,the steps in creating a model: The computer divides the 3-D image into segments, decides where to pace joints and adds the joints to the design, which a 3-D printer fabricates in plastic.

A 3-D printer builds a solid object by scanning across a table and depositing tiny droplets of plastic or another material, then moving upward in tiny steps to add additional layers. Professional 3-D printers, used in industry for prototyping machinery, sell for $50,000 and up. The researchers suggest that character printing might be offered as an online service or perhaps as a service by hobby stores.

In a game or movie all the computer knows about a character is the overall shape. "All previous work on printing characters has just made solid shapes. Ours makes an articulated model," said James, who is a specialist on the animation of what the industry calls "skinned characters."


An alien created in the video game Spore and fabricated by a 3-D printer

The computer represents the skin as a lot of tiny triangles linked together. By examining the angles between the triangles it can find the bends. In effect it imagines a skeleton and figures out where joints should go. The user enters the process here, specifying which kind of joint to use. Elbows and knees get hinges. Torsos, tails and perhaps tentacles get ball and socket joints with what engineers call "three degrees of freedom."

The computer has a built-in description for each type of joint but must find the right size. The joint must be strong enough to support a particular part of the body, but "It might make the joint really huge so it sticks out through the skin, or collides with other joints, or it might be too small to print, so our algorithm has an optimization step to find the best balance," James explained. Finally, small bumps are added to the joint parts to create friction so that the figure will hold a pose.

To print a joint with moving parts, the 3-D printer deposits two different materials: a plastic that forms solid parts of the figure, and a temporary material that fills in what will eventually be empty spaces. This holds the figure together during printing, but the filler essentially turns to dust when the finished figure is first moved.

The software still needs refinements to handle some types of joints, the researchers said, and adding a flexible skin to cover the joints is a possible improvement. Some day, James suggested, it might be possible to build in motors and other actuators to create robotic figures that could "walk out of the printer when they're ready."

The work has been partially supported by the National Science Foundation. James received support from a Guggenheim fellowship and from Pixar. Test figures were printed at Disney Research Boston.

http://www.zeitnews.org/a(...)-figures-3-d-printer