3D Printing

If you look up at a power line in a few years and see something skittering along the wires, it (hopefully) won't be a mutant crab monster, but a powerline inspection robot costing less than US$1,000. A prototype of such a robot, called SkySweeper, was presented this month at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering's Research Expo. The robot was built with off-the-shelf electronics and plastic parts printed on an inexpensive 3D printer.  Read More

3D printers have been a hit with consumers for several years now, but designing anything for them still requires some basic knowledge of 3D modeling software. Otherwise, you're stuck just building whatever designs you can find online. With Doodle3D, you can draw simple 2D sketches on a computer, tablet, or smartphone, and then send them to a 3D printer to turn them into physical objects.  Read More

Hear the words 3D-printed headphones, and you'd be forgiven for imagining a 3D-printed plastic case, with all the actual audio and electronic cleverness pilfered from a set of ordinary cans. Not so J. C. Karich's Low-Fi Hi-Tech headphones, in which many of the functioning parts such as the ear speakers themselves were printed. Those that weren't were at least made from scratch from basic materials.  Read More

Researchers at Indiana’s University of Notre Dame recently placed an anesthetized lab rat in a CT scanner, created a digital 3D model of its skeleton from the scan data, and then sent that model to a commercial MakerBot 3D printer. A highly-accurate plastic replica of the skeleton was the end result.  Read More

While 3D printers are gradually becoming more popular, their possibilities are limited if you lack the skills to create custom 3D models. This has led to a surge in the development of user-friendly 3D software, as well as affordable 3D scanners that can digitize real world objects. Matterform's Photon 3D scanner is the latest and most affordable example to be launched via a successful crowdfunding campaign.  Read More

While the prospect of 3D printers pumping out biological tissues and replacement organs has many justifiably excited, researchers at Oxford University have gone in a slightly different direction with the creation of a custom 3D printer capable of producing synthetic materials that have some of the properties of living tissues. Rather than being intended for supplying spare parts for damaged replicants, the new materials could be used for drug delivery or replacing or interfacing with damaged tissues inside the human body.  Read More

With so many personal 3D printers hitting the market, it can be difficult to decide which one is right for you. Over the years we've seen plenty of attractive options, but few have matched the price-performance of the B9Creator, a Digital Light Processing (DLP) projector-based 3D printer that was created by Michael Joyce of South Dakota. After a successful crowd-funding campaign last year (where the original B9Creator was launched to the tune of more than US$500,000), he's back with an upgraded kit that irons out some of its issues.  Read More

It is surely now but a matter of time before we are reporting on the completion of the first 3D-printed house, or at least something purported to be such a thing. Amsterdam-based DUS Architects is the latest company to show its hand, and has developed its own 3D printer, the KamerMaker (literally, RoomMaker), with the intention of 3D printing a house before the end of the year.  Read More

Signal Snowboards, the same company responsible for the snowboard made completely from glass, is at it again and this time, the company has used 3D printing technology to create a custom snowboard. Winter in the Northern Hemisphere may have just ended, but that doesn't mean snow has escaped the hearts and minds of riders.  Read More