Lifeboat Foundation

I hate that I am going to miss the Farnborough airshow.

The Farnborough airshow begins next week and will feature a number of announcements from the 3D printing industry. The show only takes place once every 2 years and will see a flurry of news and displays of the latest aviation technology. These include Boeing’s 737 MAX airliner with its 3D printed LEAP engines and also demonstrations by the first Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II, or Joint Strike Fighter, stealth jets to arrive in the UK.

Additive manufacturing company Norsk Titanium (NTi) hopes their announcements will make an equally large splash. During 2016 a number of press releases by the company have piqued the interest of insiders in the 3D printing industry and also in the aerospace industry. Outside of this group, the name Norsk Titanium may be relatively unknown.

Continue reading “Stealthy 3D Printing at Airshow?” »

Space and technology have collided in a recent design challenge hosted by Star Trek and NASA. Future Engineers has once again called upon students to push their creative boundaries. Since February 2016, they have been working hard to engineer 3D printable design concepts aimed at food sustainability in space. More than 400 students from 30 US states created amazing solutions that would aid astronauts in harvesting, preparing, eating and disposing of food while on long-duration space missions. A panel of judges from NASA, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Foundation, and Made In Space, Inc. selected Kyle Corrette from Phoenix, Arizona and Sreyash Sola from Asburn, Virginia as winners of their respective Teen Group and Junior Group. Judges also selected three finalists from each group, who were each awarded a MakerBot Replicator Mini Compact 3D printer for their school and a PancakeBot for their household. Winners Corrette and Sola received a grand prize trip to New York City for a private viewing of the Space Shuttle Enterprise with astronaut Mike Massimino at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, as well as a VIP tour of MakerBot’s headquarters in Brooklyn, New York.

Read more about each finalist’s innovative design concept below:

BAE systems and a professor at Glasgow University have revealed a way to really grow drones with an advanced form of chemical 3D printing.

The news has already swept the mainstream news sites, even though this is little more than a theoretical exercise right now. Professor Lee Cronin, the man behind the concept, freely admits that he has a mountain to climb to turn this dream into a reality.

The video, then, which depicts a pair of printer heads laying the absolute basics in a vat before the drone literally grows from almost nothing, is really a pipe dream right now.

Researchers at the Masdar Institute are creating 3D printed high performance materials with custom-designed mechanical, thermal and electrical properties by manipulating the materials’ internal structures.

I told folks just the other day; US Manufacturing in the next 3 to 5 years will primarily be robots, 3-/4-D printers, other AI systems, and a couple of line managers to spot check quality of the operation. Just surprised Amazon wasn’t already fully robotic.

Amazon’s progress toward an army of helpful robots is one step closer: a prize for the best warehouse-working “picker” machine has gone to a robot designed by a team from TU Delft Robotics Institute and Delft Robotics, both based in the Netherlands.

Continue reading “Amazon moves one step closer toward army of warehouse robots” »

With the advantage of high resolution providing facial designs that can be created based on the FACS (facial active coding system), 3D photography scanning and printing of the subject will create images with connected feature grids. This allows the angles of the craniomaxillofacial surface to be observed for specific unique aspects of physical characteristics, for underlying anatomical bone structures based on eye to midline features.

The nasal process provides the centerpiece of anatomical facial mapping and organization which affects how the individual is viewed by the world around them. These connected grids with the aid of imaging allow for facial feature approximation for important craniofacial-facial planning creating vital structures that will be 3D printed according to accepted innovation in FACS (Facial active coding system) design. Medical grade silicone soft tissue prosthetics with colour are being created out of the UK with the Picsisma printer by Fripp Design as far back as 2013.

Continue reading “Multi-planar Processing: Rhinoplasty Implant” »

“May you live in interesting times,” resonates with many involved in the metal 3D printing industry, an ironic phrase regarded by some as a curse. Magnus René, CEO of the Arcam Group AB, might one of the last to agree. In the 3D metal printing market Arcam are unique. Holding propriety Electron Beam Melting (EBM) patents the company is at the forefront of cutting edge industries such as aerospace and medicine. I asked Arcam’s CEO about some of these developments.

René compares today’s additive manufacturing landscape to an earlier career experience in another industry at the frontier of technology.

“I was with a company that developed and released the [semiconductor] printers that are used still to this day for manufacture. Those were also interesting times, we really felt that we were changing the way things were manufactured.”

Continue reading “3D Printing Metal Interview with Arcam CEO Magnus René” »

It sounds like an idea for a science fiction film, but here in the UK scientists and engineers are spending time and money to see if they can do exactly that.

British warplanes are already flying with parts made from a 3D printer. Researchers are already using that same technology to build drones.

The military advantage is obvious — building equipment quickly and close to the battlefield — without long waits and long supply chains — gives you an enormous advantage over any enemy.

Continue reading “‘Growing’ drones is under research” »

This article is a bit odd to me. Why? Because the way 5D printing is describe is not that much more advance than 3D printing. In fact, 4D printing (as shown by Mitsubishi Lads) prints an object that self evolves/ assembles itself into the object specification submitted to the printer. In another article, it was highlighted that 5D printing would take the 4D printing formation and apply technology that enables the object/s to have intelligence to repair/ evolve over time. So, at this point 5D is still being defined.

3D-printed parts made with five-axis technology are stronger and use less material.

Continue reading “3D Printing + Five Axes = 5D Printing?” »