Arduino, 3D printing, and clever engineering result in an affordable prosthesis.
Easton LaChappelle has made a series of continuously improving robotic hands. The first, which he made at age 14, won 3rd place at the Colorado state science fair, and the second, which we previously covered, won 2nd place at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the top science fair in the USA. At the Colorado fair he met a little girl who wore an $80,000 prosthetic arm, and he was convinced he could do better. (more…)
Are you finding the monochromatic output of your 3D printer a little drab? According to Andre Tiemann, coloured prints are easily achievable and he has written up a neat tutorial explaining how to achieve multiple hues… and you don’t even need to have the latest high-tech equipment.
With dual-head extruders becoming more and more commonplace, coloured prints may not seem so exceptional – but what sets Andre’s efforts apart is that he is producing multiple colours from a single extruder.
Referring to the prints as 2.5D (rather than full-blown 3D objects), he explains the process of colour swapping based on layer height to radically change the appearance of the printed object.
“…while this isn’t a breakthrough in 3D printing, it is a fun technique to liven up prints.”
Fans will go a long way to bring their favorite shows to life, especially during the long, cold Winter that separates viewing seasons. Game of Thrones fan Daniel Ammann has brought forth the town of Winterfell from the small screen with this faithful 3D printed replica.
With only a few seconds of footage from the opening credits to go by, Daniel also turned to fanart and information on the Wiki of Fire and Ice (a resource based on the novels that inspired the TV series).
The model of the town was made in Solidworks, and the files have been shared on Thingiverse where they are gathering quite a following. (more…)
Company prints heads of all 32 employees for a sweet holiday gift
Giving candy to your workers to keep them happy has a proven success rate, but here’s a company that took things one step further with a really fun Holiday gift.
Toronto-based Hot Pop Factory was commissioned to produce a 3D printed novelty item for each of the client’s 32 employees. In a bit of a departure from their usual work in architecture and jewellery, the team of Matt Compeau and Bi-Ying Miao set out to turn each employee into a custom 3D printed PEZ dispenser.
The head of each employee was scanned using a Microsoft Kinect motion-sensor and then combined with the necessary mechanical connectors (to attach to the PEZ cartridge) before being sent to an in-house 3D printer.
Click through for a short clip of the 3D scanning in action as well as further info on how they reached the final outcome. (more…)
Filament making machine winds its way toward finishing its Kickstarter campaign rewards
We last looked at Filabot, the plastic extrusion filament maker for Makerbot and RepRap style 3D printers when Tyler McNaney was in the middle of his Kickstarter Campaign, that ended up successfully raising $32,330 and was more than 320% funded.
The Filabot is a desktop machine that aims to help reduce the cost of 3D printing for filament based and reduce plastic waste by turning it into “ink” or filament for 3D printers that print by depositing and fusing plastic together.
The Filabot Reclaimer has recently had a lot of development work from McNaney, whose working hard to fulfil his Kickstarter rewards orders by the end of the year. He, recently revealed the design for the production Filabot Reclaimer on his website. The case is made from folded CNC plasma cut steel. (more…)
An open source, 3D printable humanoid robot is in development and available for download from Thingiverse. Right now only the arms can be downloaded, but the head and torso are promised as soon as the design has been refined.
InMoov is a project by Gael Langevin, a French sculptor (Thingiverse user hairygael). Langevin has been working on InMoov since early 2012 and has gone through numerous design iterations and discarded 3D prints since that time. The progress is nothing short of outstanding. As you can see in the video below, this is a fully articulated humanoid robot, a rarity outside the research labs of corporations and universities. (more…)
Protecting the future using 3D printed contraceptive implants
Israeli-born, Berlin-based designer Ronen Kadushin structures his work around a process called the Open Design Concept, where products can be downloaded, copied and modified much in the same manner as with Open Source software.
He has produced a diverse array of products and designs that follow this distributive method, with a notable concept that targets the much-lauded intrauterine device (IUD).
When one of the world’s most widely used methods of reversible birth control for women costs only a few cents to make, you’d think that it should be affordable to the women who need it. However, an IUD is priced out of reach for many, in particular the younger women who may not be able to afford the $400-$850 price tag.
Ronen’s Bearina IUD is a concept designed to demonstrate the disruptive potential of 3D printed Open Designs to give free and global access to essential products and challenge big players such as the medical juggernauts that aggressively defend their intellectual property.
Click through to discover how the Bearina IUD works, and where to download or purchase one. (more…)
A giant laser sintering printer with a tiny 20 micron layer thickness.
The German automaker Daimler AG has funded a research partnership between the Fraunhofer Institute of Laser Technology and the German company Concept Laser. The result was the X line 1000R system with a build volume is 630mm x 400mm x 500mm (23.6 inches x 15.7 inches x 19.7 inches) and a layer thickness of 20 to 100 microns.
This would be a significant achievement for a plastic or resin printer, but it’s remarkable considering that this is a laser sintering printer for fusing powdered metal. The machine was developed to aid in the production of complex metal parts that are traditionally made using a time- and money-intensive sand casting process.
The Form 1 is notable both for its wildly successful Kickstarter campaign and the subsequent lawsuit by 3D Systems against both Formlab and Kickstarter. But lawsuits aside, this is a remarkable machine for the very reasonable price of $3299. The Form 1 ships in May.
3D Systems has announced their newest entry into the desktop 3D printer market: the CubeX. The most notable thing about the new printer is the unusually large build volume of 1030 cubic inches or 10.8” x 10.45” x 9.5”. By comparison, the Makerbot Replicator 2 has a build volume of only 410 cubic inches, although that is still respectable. (more…)
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