A French company, Bombyx Prod, has devised a different way to provide 3D print services to manufacturers. The problem being attacked here is the low-volume production market. This market exists because there are those who require smaller volumes of products than would otherwise justify the expense of setting up a traditional manufacturing line. Several 3D print companies have attempted to capitalize on this market by using arrays of 3D printers to meet this demand. 3D printers are an ideal mechanism to perform low-volume manufacturing because they are essentially programmable and do not require any complex set up, as a typical mass-manufacturing operation would. You simply send the 3D model through the…
Mobile devices are, more and more, integrating 3D capabilities. There’s 3D modeling, of course, but also social integration, interactive home models, smartphones as 3D printers and 3D scanning (all the way back in 2011!), but it’s the mobile 3D scan apps that are really starting to become more prevalent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkTaCOQ_OjI Qlone: 3D Scan & Print Enter Qlone. Qlone is a mobile app which allows you to 3D scan, upload, and export 3D objects in a variety of formats for modification in the 3D software or printing with the 3D printer of your choosing. Mobile 3D Scan with an AR Mat The scanning process starts with a piece of paper–the AR…
On March 9th, 2018, mHUB in Chicago celebrated surviving its first year and it’s showing a strong start to its 2nd. A product of Chicago’s rich manufacturing history, mHUB refers to itself as a “manufacturing and physical product innovation center”. It provides incubator-type resources, fabulous and expensive prototyping equipment & software, and coworking spaces. Their 1st birthday is no small accomplishment considering the recent closing of TechShop… which made poor Dan Slaski weep. With over 100 industry and community partners, nearly 200 startup company members, and over $40 million in capital raised by member companies, mHUB shows no signs of slowing down! At the party, we met Ashley S. Moy of CAST21 and…
Modeling a 3D object and prepping it for 3D printing on a 2D screen sounds counterintuitive… because it is. You’re stabbing your mouse at a 2D plane in 3D space to make something which can be interacted with in the real world. I thought we were in the future? So, what if you could design the object in 3D as it is printing in 3D? *pop* The Robotic Modelling Assistant (RoMA) is an AR CAD software/3D printer project by Huaishu Peng, Jimmy Briggs, Cheng-Yao Wang, Kevin Guo, Joseph Kider, Stefanie Mueller, Patrick Baudisch, and François Guimbretière which allows you to create 3D objects using both an Oculus Rift HMD moded into…
My kiddos are all about the Nerf Guns–there are so many Nerf guns the Nerf guns have Nerf guns. Well, now I have an example of why we don’t need any more Nerf guns–we can just MAKE THEM. Oh, I know. “Why didn’t you do that in the first place?” Two answers to that – 1) I’m super lame 2) I didn’t have a 3D printer, which doubles the amount of super lameness considerably. No mas, señor, NO MAS. Vedran Marjanović was in a similar spot. He bought a 3D printer last year, then another one five days later. Needless to say, he’s designing and printing like a madman now,…
You know Eric Strebel likes to show you how to make stuff, right? Did you also know he’s a science fiction fan. Upon watching a movie involving a magical, glowing amulet (which narrows the potential number of films down to about a thousand), he felt inspired to create his own wearable glowing rock – one which has a pulsing “heartbeat” of its own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7hKE8hAT9Y As with all his designs, Strebel starts off by sketching his ideas onto paper. Once he has the initial design figured out, he sets out to find a suitable stone for the amulet. The gem had to be big enough to house a simple circuit system,…