Lifeboat Foundation

Elon Musk said Tesla moved the horn to the center of its steering yoke, where some customers said it belonged all along.

Icon’s new three-bedroom home with uniquely curved walls proves that 3D printing can create welcoming and warm houses for the average homeowner.

Fluicell, a bioprinting firm based in Sweden, has launched its new high-precision 3D printer, the Biopixlar AER.

Intended as a successor to the original Biopixlar, the device is Fluicell’s second single-cell 3D bioprinting system. The company has designed its latest machine to be as compact and accessible as possible, and claims that it’s the world’s first microfluidic bioprinter that fits inside a standard flow hood or biosafety cabinet. This enables users to easily integrate it with other in vitro and 3D cell culture technologies.

Victoire Viannay, CEO of Fluicell, said, “With Biopixlar AER, we have reached a new important milestone and we can now offer a pioneering product, fully tailored to meet current and future needs in the rapidly accelerating life science and research sector.”

Not long ago, Formlabs launched a new ESD Resin specifically for applications that need to keep parts safe from electrostatic discharge (ESD). Now, the double unicorn has announced the latest member of its selective laser sintering (SLS) range of materials—the new high-performance Nylon 12 GF Powder. Good for 3D printing engineering and manufacturing functional prototypes and end-use parts that require thermal stability and structural rigidity, the newly launched material offers excellent stiffness and is the latest meant for use with the Formlabs Fuse 1 industrial SLS 3D printer, which was released last year.

Formlabs’ Nylon 12 GF powder makes it possible to 3D print parts that are thermally stable, and can maintain their dimensional accuracy under load. In the past, glass-filled Nylon materials have been used for a variety of applications, such as 3D printing a scale model, a prosthetic drum stick, a bike rack, loudspeakers, and even a bar! This particular material—one of many Formlabs is planning to introduce for its industrial Fuse 1 3D printer—is said to be a good choice for printing threads and sockets, strong jigs and fixtures, parts subjected to high temperatures and sustained loading, functional prototypes for compsite parts, and replacement parts.

Following November’s catastrophic flooding events, roughly 600 Merritt residents still haven’t returned to their homes, but a 3D printer may speed up the process. Greg Solecki, the Merritt’s recovery manag.

“Our biggest priority is getting people back to Merritt and into homes and this 3D-printed option is looking like the most viable one right now,” Solecki said.

READ MORE: 3D printing’s new challenge: Solving the US housing shortage

Continue reading “Merritt considering 3D printer to help build homes for evacuees” »

Circa 2020 o.o!

A team of physicists at a university in the Netherlands have 3D-printed a microscopic version of the USS Voyager, an Intrepid-class starship from Star Trek.

The miniature Voyager, which measures 15 micrometers (0.015 millimeters) long, is part of a project researchers at Leiden University conducted to understand how shape affects the motion and interactions of microswimmers.

Continue reading “Scientists 3D print microscopic Star Trek spaceship that moves on its own” »

Turbojet engines are an incredible piece of 20th century engineering that except for some edge cases, have mostly been replaced by Turbofans. Still, even the most basic early designs were groundbreaking in their time. Material science was applied to make them more reliable, more powerful, and lighter. But all of those incredible advances go completely out the window when you’re [Joel] of [Integza], and you prefer to build your internal combustion engines using repurposed butane canisters and 3D printed parts as you see in the video below the break.

To understand [Integza]’s engine, a quick explanation of Turbojet engines is helpful. Just like any other internal combustion engine, air is compressed, fuel is burned, and the reaction produces work. In a turbojet, a compressor compresses air. Fuel is added in a combustor and ignited, and the expanding exhaust drives a turbine that in turn drives the compressor since both are attached to the same shaft. Exhaust whose energy isn’t spent in turning the turbine is expelled and produces thrust, which propels the engine and the vehicle it’s attached to in the opposite direction. Simple, right? Right! Until the 3D printer comes in.

Continue reading “Electric Jet Engine Uses 3D Printed Compressor, Skips The Turbine Altogether” »

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, can create custom parts for electromagnetic devices on-demand and at a low cost. These devices are highly sensitive, and each component requires precise fabrication. Until recently, though, the only way to diagnose printing errors was to make, measure and test a device or to use in-line simulation, both of which are computationally expensive and inefficient.

To remedy this, a research team co-led by Penn State created a first-of-its-kind methodology for diagnosing printing errors with machine learning in real time. The researchers describe this framework—published in Additive Manufacturing —as a critical first step toward correcting 3D-printing errors in real time. According to the researchers, this could make printing for sensitive devices much more effective in terms of time, cost and computational bandwidth.

“A lot of things can go wrong during the additive manufacturing process for any component,” said Greg Huff, associate professor of electrical engineering at Penn State. “And in the world of electromagnetics, where dimensions are based on wavelengths rather than regular units of measure, any small defect can really contribute to large-scale system failures or degraded operations. If 3D printing a household item is like tuning a tuba—which can be done with broad adjustments—3D-printing devices functioning in the electromagnetic domain is like tuning a violin: Small adjustments really matter.”