Lifeboat Foundation

Amazing; imagine when 4D printing produces building materials that self assemble themselves and with 5D printing the building can monitor the building and repairs itself someday in the future.

Hushang Tengda has 3D printed a 400 square meter luxury villa, on site, in just 45 days.

Construction is a huge deal in the 3D printing world right now and the likes of WinSun have made an impact with the first 3D printed office in Dubai. It also printed a five-storey apartment building and 10 3D printed houses in just 24 hours back in China. This villa is a still a breakthrough though, because it was built on site.

Continue reading “Chinese company prints villa on-site” »

Agree. So as a tech engineer, futurist, innovator, leader you have 3 key tracks to remain relevant in the future: bio/ living technology, quantum, and a hybrid of living/ bio meets quantum computing.

Editor €™s Note: Richard van Hooijdonk is a futurist and international keynote speaker on future technologies and disruption and how these technologies change our everyday lives. Van Hooijdonk and his international team research €˜mega trends €™ on digital health, robotic surgery, drones, the internet-of-things, 3D/4D printing, Big Data and other how new technologies affects many industries.

With people living increasingly longer lives, medical care from surgeons, physicians, pharmacists and dentists will increase as well. And since the future of healthcare will look very different from what it is today, the medical field may just be the right industry for you, even if being a doctor or nurse is not your calling. Many new technologies will be incorporated into the healthcare industry and we will see things like robotic surgeries and 3D-printed organ implants, to name a few. This means we will be seeing a whole new host of career opportunities, even for jobs that don €™t actually exist yet.

Continue reading “8 Digital Health Jobs of the Future to Watch” »

Forget 3D printing, are you ready for 4D printing?

The rapid development of a range of emerging technologies is driving four revolutions in military and security capabilities to which the global defence and security industry is increasingly required to respond.

Perception, processing and cognition

New approaches for both humans and machines to collect, synthesise, digest and discern information are necessary to make sense of complex and fast-moving strategic and operational contexts. Getting (and staying) ahead of threats and maintaining and leveraging situational awareness – especially in environments frequently marked simultaneously by a surfeit of available information of variable quality and timeliness and opacity – is beyond the capacity of legacy technologies and human capabilities.

Continue reading “SECURITY — Promise and peril: opportunities and challenges of disruptive technologies and innovation” »

Finally, someone is getting the concept about why in tech where you’re producing technologies that ultimately support many areas of the consumer market in the form of bio/ medical, consumer commercial products, art, homes/ buildings, autos, etc. You must be more inclusive in your teams or find your product and services will plataeu as more and more competitors crowd the space over time; something that other industries have learned many many decades ago.

Because most of the quickly growing companies and startups that tend to dominate it emerged from the maker community, the 3D printing industry often seems to find itself a little sequestered from the rest of the tech industry. Part of the reason is that very few of the industry’s largest companies started or are even based in Silicon Valley. While there is more to the tech industry than Northern California, it is often treated like the popular kids’ lunch table: everyone wants to sit there, and those that are tend to ignore those that aren’t. Sure most of the world’s large tech shows and conferences include plenty of 3D printing these days, but there still isn’t as much crossover as you’d expect, and 3D printing is still treated like that weird cousin who you’re not exactly sure is going to amount to anything.

Continue reading “3D Printing and Diversity: It’s Time to Start Taking It Seriously” »

This needs to be on the commercial carriers especially for those 4+ hour flights.

An Austin, Texas company, whose founders were commissioned by NASA to develop palatable foods for astronauts’ deep space mission to Mars, has built a device that can 3D-print pizza.

The company –known as BeeHex — boasts that its machine is efficient, clean, and capable of churning out a delicious pizza in less than half the time it takes a typical human chef. The tech is being developed for astronauts, but since NASA’s manned mission to the Red Planet isn’t planned until the 2030s, us Earthbound eaters may be able to enjoy a 3D-printed pizza at theme parks, shopping malls, or concert halls by early 2017.

Continue reading “NASA wants astronauts to have 3D printed pizza, and this startup is building a printer to make it happen” »

New research demonstrates that quantum dots solve a key issue with current 3D printing materials. I spoke with Keroles Riad, PhD student at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada, about his thesis on the photostability of materials used for stereolithography 3D printing. The research was supervised by Prof. Paula Wood-Adams, Prof. Rolf Wuthrich of the Mechanical and industrial engineering department at Concordia and Prof. Jerome Claverie of the Chemistry department at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

While quantum dots have been shown to cure acrylics, Riad says this work is the first demonstration of the process in epoxy resin.

3D printing is often richly rewarding because it spans multiple disciplines. Here we look at a new thesis that advances the critical area of materials. The approach taken uses engineering, chemistry and physics to overcome the issue of stability present in current stereolithography processes. The results could form the basis of superior materials and wider use of 3D printing in many areas.

Continue reading “Quantum dots may hold key to superior 3D printing materials” »

Gerard K. O’Neill’s name might not ring a bell for many of us, but he certainly is one of the most significant names in the world of physics and space sciences. Gerard was an American physicist whose ideologies resonated with the concept of Space Manufacturing and Space Colonization as early as 1969.

He visualized establishment of a space manufacturing facility that would product end products for use in the outer space. Located in a very high orbit as compared to Earth, or on any celestial body, he claimed that the manufacturing facility would be self-sufficient and would be built entirely using materials available on celestial surfaces like lunar soil. When O’Neill presented his novel idea using research papers at different forums, he faced rejection and disapproval as every other world-changing idea did.

Continue reading “The obvious connection between 3D Printing and Space Colonization” »

Several months ago I warned folks about how criminals can use AI (drones, robots, self driving cars, 3D printers printing drugs, etc.) against the public. Here is another example of how stolen technology can place people at risk.

Australia definitely has a love/hate relationship with 3D printing. There are numerous research programs and innovative ideas coming to us from Down Under, from a periodontist bioprinting jaw and gum cells for future dental surgeries to a group of entrepreneurs using the technology to benefit a charity for children at risk. New partnerships and distribution agreements abound.

3D printing is undoubtedly responsible for an inordinate amount of good happening—with much more to come—on the Australian continent. But the subject of fabricated weaponry has led the government to explore the dark side of this technology, with some police even admitting that they are terrified of 3D printed guns. Whether law enforcement approves or not, the flow of hardware is certainly on the rise for offering the tools of the trade to designers on nearly every level, legal or otherwise.

Naturally formed crystals have been used to create beautiful and exotic pieces of jewelry for thousands of years, probably far earlier than we could even imagine. Many cultures have even claimed that they have mystical properties that can improve the wearer’s health, offer spiritual protections and guidance or enhance their life in some measurable way. Clearly it isn’t really necessary to believe in magic in order to fully appreciate jewelry designed using crystals, as the natural beauty is obvious. But for those that do believe in the magical properties of crystals, jewelry made from them can often take on powerful symbolic roles in their lives, and become important sources of inspiration and focus.