Free Republic

MANUFACTURING industries present society with a dilemma. A healthy manufacturing sector helps an economy to grow, thereby raising living standards -- an especially important goal for developing countries. But, as factories try to meet ever-growing consumer demand, they deplete the world's natural resources and pollute the environment. For some, the world now faces a stark choice between rising prosperity and a cleaner, more sustainable environment. In fact, with new technology and fresh thinking, policymakers can strike a durable balance between these competing interests. In developed countries, consumers are increasingly recognising that, while their material well-being may be higher than ever,...

2014 could be a landmark year for an amazing medical technology: human organs built by 3D printers. San Diego biotech firm Organovo promises that its "bioprinting" technology will successfully print a human liver by the end of 2014, the company told Computerworld's Lucas Mearian. Mearian reports: Like other forms of 3D printing, bio-printing lays down layer after layer of material -- in this case, live cells -- to form a solid physical entity -- in this case, human tissue. The major stumbling block in creating tissue continues to be manufacturing the vascular system needed to provide it with life-sustaining oxygen...

Architects in Zurich have erected an impossibly ornate room entirely from 3D-printed blocks. The designers say it's the first time anyone has used a 3D printer to design a work of architectural art from sandstone and could suggest a new way of thinking about building construction. "We aim to create an architecture that defies classification and reductionism," said the architects on the project's website. We'll attempt to classify and reduce it anyway: It basically looks like Antoni Gaudí crammed all the flourishes of La Sagrada Familia into a 172-square-feet room. Designed by "customized algorithms," the architects say the work (called...

SURGEONS may soon be able to "draw" new bone, skin and muscle on to patients after scientists created a pen-like device that can apply human cells directly to car-crash victims and others with serious injuries. Australian scientists have made a "BioPen", which allows doctors to apply stem cells and growth factors on to damaged and diseased bones. The machine works in a similar way to a 3D printer, building up the materials required to heal a bone. Experts have said it could improve bone reconstruction surgery. The device was created at the University of Wollongong and St Vincent's Hospital in...

First there were meals we had to make all by ourselves. Then 'ready made' meals came along, making life that much easier. But what if you could just print your dinner using food 'ink'? Scientists at Cornell University in New York are developing a commercially viable 3D food printer which uses raw ingredients inside syringes. Part of their Fab@home project, an open-source collaboration, you just put the raw food 'inks' into the machine, load the recipe (or 'FabApp') - and press the button. The design takes the form of a set of syringes that deposit food inks line by line,...

Approximately 18 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant. But that may change someday sooner than you think -- thanks to 3D printing. Advances in the 3D printing of human tissue have moved fast enough that San Diego-based bio-printing company Organovo now expects to unveil the world's first printed organ -- a human liver -- next year. Like other forms of 3D printing, bio-printing lays down layer after layer of material -- in this case, live cells -- to form a solid physical entity -- in this case, human tissue. The major stumbling block in creating tissue continues...

(SLIDESHOW-AT-LINK) When college student Shai Schechter didn't have access to an affordable 3D printer on his SUNY Purchase campus in New York, he set out to build his own model — one that would still crank out 3D-printed objects, but at a much lower cost. "We have a laser- and powder-based 3D printer at school, but it costs about $500 for a bucket of powder and that only lasts for about one or two prints," Schechter said. "It's never used because it is so expensive and classes weren’t offered that much in the curriculum." He approached his sculpture professor about...

One day, millions of car parts could be printed as quickly as newspapers and as easily as pushing a button on the office copy machine, saving months of development time and millions of dollars. 3D printing technology is making that day come sooner at Ford Motor Company. The development of the engine cover for the all-new Ford Mustang is the most recent example of the use of this technology. Ford uses 3D printing to quickly produce prototype parts, shaving months off the development time for individual components used in all of its vehicles, such as cylinder heads, intake manifolds and...

Two of the biggest challenges with today’s desktop 3D printers are that they 1) don’t print very large objects and 2) are painfully slow. The Solidator 3D printer aims to change both of those things, in a printer that costs less than $5,000.In the example shown above, the Solidator 3D printer was able to output a set of six Eiffel Tower models – each measuring almost 8-inches-tall – in just 5.5 hours. A similar feat on typical 3D printers would take days.By using DLP imaging technology to print an entire layer at a time instead of a voxel at a...

The growth of three dimensional (3-D) printing technology brings opportunities scientific, entrepreneurial – even culinary. Some people are using the devices to build custom creations out of chocolate. “I don’t know if it’s good chocolate,” said Prabhjot Singh, Director of Additive Manufacturing at General Electric (GE), which uses 3-D printers to make parts for aviation and advanced energy-generation machinery – presumably out of non-edible materials. The process delivers performance while producing designs and prototypes for parts more quickly. Three dimensional printing uses a digital model to create a 3-D object by adding consecutive layers of material to it. That requires...

Welcome to the deepest dive into the 3D printing sector, what the different business models are all about, and how a fair value for shares can be calculated in this hot technology space. It is important to understand the difference between all of the companies involved in this area in order to separate the firms with real potential from the pretenders that are simply riding the coattails of the others. In recent weeks, we have witnessed several companies' stock prices soar by being mentioned as players in this technology, even with no real products or revenue to show. We need...

On a recent weekday in a sunny, computer-strewn classroom at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs, one of teacher Nicholas Seward's printers was busily whirring out a squirrel. Not a picture of a squirrel. Not a drawing of a squirrel. An actual, three-dimensional toy squirrel: bright orange, plastic, tough enough that when the reporter managed to drop a similar piece on the hard concrete, it simply bounced with a bright, ping-pong ball clink. The machine — called "Simpson" after the scientist George Gaylord Simpson, who came up with the idea that when animals evolve,...

Over the last few years, we’ve seen the price of 3D printers drop dramatically as key patents expire or the cost of components decrease. They still cost quite a bit of money, however, as much of the manufacturing and labor takes place in the U.S. Now Asian rivals, complete with cheaper labor costs, are trying to muscle their way into the market. New Kinpo Group, an electronics manufacturer out of Taiwan, has announced its first 3D printer – the da Vinci. It’s very similar to the Makerbot Replicator 2 and even has a similar build volume of 20x20x20 cm. Here...

Building on the Moon, 4D printing, self-repairing bridges, movement monitoring quadrocopters, 3D printed concrete houses and generating electricity from unwanted noise may all sound like science fiction. But at computing giant Autodesk’s annual convention in Las Vegas last week, it all began to look a little realistic. There was a growing movement throughout the conference that urged engineers to rethink their traditional methods, to look outside their organisations for innovative ideas and to place themselves on a higher plane of thinking to allow the computers to do the repetitive leg work. But there was another faction present that wanted to...

What if you could assemble your house like Legos using free modeling software and a 3D printer? That’s the idea behind Eric Schimelpfening‘s WikiHouse – a home designed entirely in SketchUp that can be downloaded by anyone, customized to fit the user’s needs and sent to the 3D printer. The components are then snapped together using less than 100 screws to make rooms that can be rearranged as easily as you would rearrange furniture.The WikiHouse Open Source Construction Kit can be downloaded by anyone interested in building a house. What distinguishes it from the modular houses of the 1950s...

Researchers at Michigan Technological University (MTU) have developed a low-cost 3D printer capable of producing steel objects. Low-cost 3D printing, which creates objects layer by layer, has been restricted to polymers to create objects such as chess sets, toys, Christmas decorations and mobile phone covers. But the team led by MTU’s associate professor Joshua Pearce has cut the cost of making a 3D metal printer to around £900, compared with £300,000 for commercial metal printers. Better still, the detailed plans, software and firmware are all freely available and open source, so anyone can use them to make their own metal...

Here’s an appliance to help you make perfect pizza every time, and we mean every time. The same technology being used to make guns, toys and even diamond rings, is being applied to homemade food. Barcelona-based 3D printing startup Natural Machines is releasing the Foodini, a 3D printer that allows cooks to create perfectly formed meals, reports the BBC. Users can combine up to six ingredients to at a time, and with a push of a button, the food comes out of the nozzle in a preprogrammed pattern. Think evenly made pizzas, burgers, and ravioli. And it’s designed so the...

By the early 2020s, we will have the means to program our biology away from disease and aging. Up until recently, health and medicine was basically a hit or miss affair. We would discover interventions such as drugs that had benefits, but also many side effects. Until recently, we did not have the means to actually design interventions on computers. All of that has now changed, and will dramatically change clinical practice by the early 2020s. We now have the information code of the genome and are making exponential gains in modeling and simulating the information processes they give rise...

Motorola’s Project Ara aims to build custom, open-source smartphones from replaceable, updatable, snappable components. Consumers could selectively replace and customize every device component, from camera to processor. Making modularity happen will be no small feat, but Project Ara recently signed up a powerful new co-conspirator—3D printing giant, 3D Systems. 3D Systems makes and sells 3D printing equipment for desktop, professional, and industrial use. The firm entered into a multi-year agreement with Motorola to design and implement a speedy, industrial scale 3D printing process for Project Ara.

The House Republican leadership with its Dec. 3 vote to extend the ban on “undetectable” guns proved again it excels at political cowardice and betrayal of conservatives. Do not bother looking for the roll call of the yeas and nays on the vote, the GOP leaders, working with Democrats, suspended the rules and passed the measure with a voice vote—with maybe 15 actual congressmen on the House floor. In another profile in cowardice, Republicans put up Rep. J. Howard Coble (R.-N.C) to sponsor the bill, H.R. 3626. The 82-year-old congressman announced his retirement a month ago...