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The Škorpion vz. 61 is a very recognizable submachine gun that garnered a following due to its representation in video games and movies. First designed in 1959, this Czechoslovak firearm is also available in semiautomatic versions. However, the semiautomatic variants can be a bit hard to find, and unless you are capable of milling your own lower receiver for one, many fans will have a difficult time getting their hands on a working Škorpion. That is, unless you know how to work a 3D printer. The enthusiasts in this video used a demilled receiver to design their blueprint for this...

Laura Bosworth wants to 3D print breast nipples on demand. The CEO of the Texas startup TeVido Biodevices is betting on a future in which survivors of breast cancer who have undergone mastectomies will be able to order up new breasts printed from their own living cells. “Everyone,” she says, “knows a woman who has had breast cancer.” Right now their options are limited. Reconstructed nipples using state-of-the-art plastic surgery techniques, she says, “tend to flatten and fade and don’t last very long.” A living nipple built from the patient’s own fat cells, and reconstructed to the precise specification of...

A couple of forward-thinking engineering students from the University of British Columbia have put together a little machine that grinds up used plastics and turn them into usable filaments for 3D-printing. It’s called the ProtoCycler, and it’ll generate a kilogram spool of filament for free (negating the cost of electricity of course) if you have some soda pop bottles lying around. The concept behind the 3D-printer add-on was simple—combine a filament extruder and plastic grinder into one contraption. (COMPARISON-CHART-AT-LINK)The ProtoCycler can churn out 10 feet of filament a minute, which makes it the fastest extruder on the market according to...

The 3D printing industry is still very much in its infancy. But that could change if the CIA has its way. The intelligence agency's venture capital firm just invested in Voxel8, the company behind the first multi-material, 3D electronics printer. What does the CIA want with 3D printing? We can only guess at this point, but we may hear stories one day of how some futuristic James Bond 3D-printed his own gadgets in the field. What's the potential impact for consumers? The move might just jumpstart a field that has so far been struggling to find its footing. Voxel8 says...

Three-dimensional printing has been used to make everything from pizza to prostheses, and now researchers are working on using the emerging technology to fabricate hearts, kidneys, and other vital human organs. That would be very big news, as the number of people who desperately need an organ transplant far outstrips the number of donor organs available. On average, about 21 Americans die every day because a needed organ was unavailable. What exactly is the promise of 3D printing organs and tissues, or "bioprinting?" How does the technology work, and when might it start saving lives? For answers to these and...

It isnÂ’t often that you come across new 3D printers that utilize an entirely new concept which hasnÂ’t been seen within this industry as of yet. With todayÂ’s technology, we are able to 3D print objects in hundreds of different materials, but when it comes to printing with metals, most of these machines are out our price ranges. 3D metal printers are mainly reserved for large corporations, as they come with price tags in excess of $250,000. However, as technology advances, we may one day soon be able to 3D print metal objects from the comfort of our own homes,...

Concrete is an amazing building material: cheap to create, strong when used correctly, and hard-wearing, too. But turning it into exotic and shapely forms can be prohibitively complex and expensive. Now, a 3D printer capable of producing one-off moulds as large as a phone booth could help turn architectural dreamw into affordable reality. The Engineer reports that a collaboration between 3Dealise, a 3D engineering company, and Bruil, a construction company, has spawned the new device. The pair claim that the machine—pictured below—can "create irregularly curved surfaces, lightweight half-open mesh or honeycomb structures, and even ornamental craftwork." The printer is used...

MELBOURNE, Feb. 26 (UPI) — Researchers have 3-D printed everything from animal prosthetics and human teeth to whole cars, but now a university in Australia has tackled printing two jet engines. A group of researchers at Melbourne’s Monash University, in conjunction with Deakin University and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), used a large 3-D printer to manufacture the two engines.

A printer was once just a printer, dispensing paper sheets with printed material made from the ink stored within. But today, a printer has evolved to becoming a small-scale manufacturer that 'prints' out anything from human organs to affordable meals to guns. For instance, the XYZPrinting 3D Food Printer, exhibited at the recent CES 2015 in Las Vegas, is expected to print any style of uncooked cookies and other dough-based pastries in minutes. Not exactly as affordable as any other food processor, the printer ranges between $500 and $1,900 and prints food that measures around 5000 cubic cm by volume....

The Mark One 3D printer from MarkForged caused a bit of a sensation last January when it was announced that it could extrude continuous fiber using the FFF process.The Mark One 3D printer, featuring a build volume of 320 x 132 x 160 mm, can print using carbon fiber, Kevlar, fiberglass, and nylon, and in doing so creates very strong parts. Now 3 HTi has announced they’ll be offering, through a partnership with the Cambridge, MA-based MarkForged, the Mark One 3D printer as one of the first companies authorized to sell the revolutionary technology. 3 HTi is a technology solutions...

Elon Musk isn’t afraid to shake things up, and he did so again with accusations that US defense contracts awarded to a competitor were the product of corruption. SpaceX, Musk’s orbital transport firm, has been competing for a major contract to put US Air Force satellites in orbit. With a dearth of private investment in space and the end of the US space shuttle program, SpaceX has quickly leapt to the fore of aerospace firms with the help of contracts from NASA to provide re-supply missions to the International Space Station and develop a manned spacecraft to fly astronauts there....

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. While it's certainly impressive that Elon Musk has bachelor's degrees in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania, it's an absurd understatement to say that prepared him to run SpaceX, his spacecraft company. Jim Cantrell, who was an aerospace consultant at the time, became SpaceX's first VP of business development and Musk's industry mentor when the company launched in 2002. He says that Musk literally taught himself rocket science by reading textbooks and talking to industry heavyweights.

We’ve seen an incredible amount of research hours and dollars being poured into an area where the ‘miracle material’ graphene converges with what some may call a ‘miracle technology’ in 3D printing. In this space, a whole slew of groundbreaking applications and processes may emerge as a better understanding of graphene, and how to 3D print it come about. We’ve discussed a company called Graphene 3D Lab in the past. They have been producing a graphene nanocomposite filament for typical FDM/FFF 3d printers. The problem with this filament, however, is the fact that most of the desirable properties of graphene,...

Robotic building by Contour Crafting won the grand prize in a NASA magazine's Create the Future contest.In the not-too-distant future, building a new home may be as simple as printing it out. The process of wielding 3D printers to make homes is in its infancy today, but someday soon you may look out your window at a large-scale printer, swiftly spitting out a whole home under the instruction of just one operator. "Generally, they'll be much cheaper, much faster, much safer and with much nicer architectural features [than traditional homes]," says Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, creator of and lead researcher for...

Voxel8, creator of the world’s first multi-material 3D electronics printer and backed by Braemar Energy Ventures, announced pre-order availability of its initial product – the Voxel8 Developer’s Kit. Voxel8 also announced its partnership with Autodesk to develop a new design tool called Project Wire for creating 3D electronic devices printed on Voxel8’s platform. Together, Voxel8 and Autodesk are enabling designers and engineers to create three-dimensional parts with embedded circuitry for the first time. Rapidly design novel devices, such as 3D printed antennas, electromagnetic coils, or stack ICs in ways that were previously impossible. Eliminate wire harnesses by combining them with...

By pushing existing technology to the limits, undergraduates from NTU have assembled a 3D-printed body shell for an electric car, says Associate Professor Ng Heong Wah.SINGAPORE: Students from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have built the first urban solar electric car with a 3D-printed body in Singapore, said the university in a news release on Monday (Feb 2). The car – named NTU Venture 8 (NV8) – is mounted on a carbon fibre single shell chassis. “We are extremely proud to have designed and assembled a 3D-printed body shell for the electric car,” Associate Professor Ng Heong Wah said. “The...

It sounds like something from a science fiction plot: so-called three-dimensional printers are being used to fashion prosthetic arms and hands, jaw bones, spinal-cord implants -- and one day perhaps even living human body parts. While the parts printed for humans so far have been fashioned from plastic, metal and other inorganic materials, researchers in California and elsewhere also have begun printing living tissue, with the goal of eventually employing these "bioprinters" to create customized kidneys, livers and other organs for people needing transplants. What's particularly attractive about the technology, according to its proponents, is that 3D printers can produce...

A Chinese company has successfully 3D printed a five-storey apartment building and a 1,100 square metre villa from a special print material.While architectural firms compete with their designs for 3D-printed dwellings, one company in China has quietly been setting about getting the job done. In March of last year, company WinSun claimed to have printed 10 houses in 24 hours, using a proprietary 3D printer that uses a mixture of ground construction and industrial waste, such as glass and tailings, around a base of quick-drying cement mixed with a special hardening agent. Now, WinSun has further demonstrated the efficacy of...

Perhaps you read the title of this article, and automatically assumed that we made a typo. After all, it sounds awfully similar to a story we did in the past about 3D Systems. If you have been following the 3D printing space for the past several months, then you know that 3D Systems has been working on creating a new 3D printing system that they say is based on a “racetrack architecture”. It is an assembly line of sorts, and is said to be able to fabricate objects up to 50 times faster than other printers currently available today. Now...

The first ATF ruling of 2015 is a vast expansion of its already considerable power.  It maintains that an entity that rents or leases equipment or tools that are under kept under the entity's control, must be licensed as a gun manufacturer and keep gun manufacturing records, if it allows other people to use its equipment to perform work that complete a frame, receiver, or complete firearm.  From the ruling (pdf): An FFL or unlicensed machine shop may also desire to make available its machinery (e.g., a computer numeric control or “CNC” machine), tools, or equipment to individuals who...