Lifeboat Foundation

New ink for printers to improve speed and conserve ink. I know a few legal and accounting firms that would love this.

Nano Dimension Ltd has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Nano Dimension Technologies, has filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the development of a new nanometric conductive ink, which is based on a unique synthesis.

The new nanoparticle synthesis further minimizes the size of the silver nanoparticles particles in the company’s ink products. The new process achieves silver nanoparticles as small as 4 nanometers.

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Columbia Engineering Professor Changxi Zheng’s new approach could lead to better tagging and coding, leveraging 3D printing of complex geometries.

New York — July 18, 2016 — Columbia Engineering researchers, working with colleagues at Disney Research and MIT, have developed a new method to control sound waves, using a computational approach to inversely design acoustic filters that can fit within an arbitrary 3D shape while achieving target sound filtering properties. Led by Computer Science Professor Changxi Zheng, the team designed acoustic voxels, small, hollow, cube-shaped chambers through which sound enters and exits, as a modular system. Like Legos, the voxels can be connected to form an infinitely adjustable, complex structure. Because of their internal chambers, they can modify the acoustic filtering property of the structure—changing their number and size or how they connect alters the acoustic result.

“In the past, people have explored computational design of specific products, like a certain type of muffler or a particular shape of trumpet,” says Zheng, whose team is presenting their paper, “Acoustic Voxels: Computational Optimization of Modular Acoustic Filters,” at SIGGRAPH 2016 on July 27. “The general approach to manipulating sound waves has been to computationally design chamber shapes. Our algorithm enables new designs of noise mufflers, hearing aids, wind instruments, and more — we can now make them in any shape we want, even a 3D-printed toy hippopotamus that sounds like a trumpet.” VIDEO: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/cg/lego/

3D print materials and products with superconducting properties is truly a breakthrough towards the mass production of various complex materials. I see this as a large step forward for 3D and placing things on an evolution track to even mass produce synthetic diamonds.

3D printing is revolutionizing many areas of manufacturing and science. In particular, 3D printing of metals has found novel applications in fields as diverse as customized medical implants, jet engine bearings and rapid prototyping for the automotive industry.

While many techniques can be used for 3D printing with metals, most rely on computer-controlled melting or sintering of a metal alloy powder by a laser or electron beam. The mechanical properties of parts produced by this method have been well studied, but not enough attention has focused on their electrical properties.

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Perfect; I actually was thinking about robots as personal trainers and sparring partners for boxers. I love boxing as a workout and had thought about having a robot as a sparring partner as well as my weight/ strength training.

BTW — another concept is to build into the weight training machines AI technology to assist users. Think about if the machine sensors that the users’ muscle is about to strain that the machine takes the weight off or lightens the weight on the user of the equipment. And, if the machine senses that the person is about to have an heart attack, etc. that the equipment contacts 911, etc.

Trials of a prototype robot for sports therapy have just begun in Singapore, to create a high quality and repeatable treatment routine to improve sports recovery, reducing reliance on trained therapists.

Continue reading “Robot therapist hits the spot with athletes” »

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have combined tissues from a sea slug with flexible 3D printed components to build “biohybrid” robots that crawl like sea turtles on the beach.

A muscle from the slug’s mouth provides the movement, which is currently controlled by an external electrical field. However, future iterations of the device will include ganglia, bundles of neurons and nerves that normally conduct signals to the muscle as the slug feeds, as an organic controller.

The researchers also manipulated collagen from the slug’s skin to build an organic scaffold to be tested in new versions of the robot.

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The researchers have found a way a hacker can create sub-millimeter defects between printed layers that can create fatigue in the product.

Tags: 3D printer cyber security technology.

California’s space technology company Made In Space, currently preparing their second zero gravity 3D printer called the Additive Manufacturing Facility for the International Space Station, will be playing a key role in a NASA project that could completely revolutionize manufacturing in space. They will be partnering with Northrop Grumman and Oceaneering Space Systems on Archinaut, a 3D printer capable of working in the vacuum of space that will be equipped with a robotic arm. Archinaut is scheduled to be installed on an external space station pod and will be capable of in-orbit additive manufacturing, the fabrication and assembly of communications satellite reflectors or the repair on in-orbit structures and machinery.

Matthew Davis’ Arcus is officially the most impressive thing we’ve ever seen come out of a 3D printer. Sure, cheap prosthetics and replacement body parts are important uses of the technology, but this spinning rubber band blaster is what finally makes us want to put a 3D printer on our desks.

Unlike most rubber band blasters that only fire a single shot every time you squeeze the trigger or require a drive mechanism to make them fully automatic, Davis’ Arcus uses the energy from the loaded elastics to spin the barrel and automatically fire shot after shot until it’s empty. Brilliant.

Continue reading “3D-Printed Gatling Gun Fires 48 Rubber Bands in Mere Seconds” »

With more than 25 years of using 3D printing technology, there probably isn’t a global automotive manufacturer that has pushed the limits of using additive manufacturing applications than the BMW Group. For most of the quarter-century that they have been using 3D printing, it was primarily used in the production of prototypes or one-off custom parts. However BMW began using 3D printing technology to produce end-use parts in series production back in 2012 with their new Rolls-Royce Phantom. Over the next several years, more than 10,000 3D printed components would end up being used to manufacture each Phantom coupe that came off the assembly line. The switch from traditionally manufactured parts to 3D printed parts was so successful that BMW began incorporating them into the new Rolls-Royce Dawn this year.