Hasta La Gadget!

Anyone who has used conventional 3D printers knows that they work by stacking layer on layer, limiting just what they can create and where. Mataerial’s upcoming printer doesn’t abide by those petty rules. Its robotic arm draws instantly solid 3D curves rather than 2D slices, shedding the need for direct support or even a horizontal surface. It’s also not bound by traditional approaches to color. As Mataerial injects dye at the last moment, it can switch hues mid-stream and introduce subtle gradients. We’ve reached out for launch and pricing details, but it’s reasonable to presume that such advanced control won’t come cheap — we’d look to the 3Doodler for more affordable in-air artistry.

Filed under: Peripherals

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Via: DVICE, The Verge

Source: Mataerial

We’ve seen the recent fully 3D-printed handgun, the Liberator, make an appearance with the ability to shoot off eight .380 rounds before the barrel needed replacing. As interesting as that sounds, a few folks weren’t impressed. They look things one step further and 3D-printed a shotgun slug that completely works, firing from a shotgun and all.

The slugs were shot from a Mossberg 590 12-gauge shotgun. The first two slugs both hit their intended targets that were set around 30 feet away, and while the slugs’ lightweight form don’t carry as much force as a heavier actual shotgun slug, the 3D-printed slug penetrated completely through a dart board, as well as a water jug sitting behind it. The slug was also able to blast through a 2×12 piece of pine wood.

The slugs used in the video are the larger variants that gun enthusiast Jeff Heeszel has designed, saying that they take about an hour each to print using a Solidoodle 3 3D printer (which costs around $800) using ABS thermoplastic. Heeszel used a non-printed slug as a template to create the 3D files for the printed versions.

Heeszel got the idea from the recently-printed Liberator handgun, but he didn’t like the idea of a plastic gun shooting real bullets, and instead wanted to shoot plastic bullets with a real gun. Heeszel says that the slugs weigh about 0.4 ounces, but only after adding a lead point to add a bit of weight to it. Otherwise, the slug would only weigh a mere 0.1 ounces.

Apparently it took Heeszel hours to set up the 3D printer in order for it to print the slug in the right shape. He also had issues with the printer’s heated bed, which caused the slugs to warp as new layers were added. To remedy that, Heeszel had to paint a slurry mix to the printer’s bed to prevent warping. This alone took around 30 to 40 hours just to come up with the right paint mix.

VIA: Wired

3D-printed shotgun slugs appear, one-ups Liberator handgun is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

I clearly remember how my parents always asked me to steer clear of breakable and fragile items in a particular supermarket, especially near the dinnerware area where fine bone china plates are on display. Not only that, there were also […]

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When Valve‘s first hardware hire, Jeri Ellsworth, tweeted back in February that she was fired from the company, we were disappointed but also intrigued by what she meant by “time for new exciting projects.” Well we finally saw what she’s been up to here at at Maker Faire 2013. It’s called Cast AR, and it’s a pair of 3D augmented-reality glasses that she and former Valve programmer Rick Johnson were working on at Valve before they left.

The model we saw is still in the early prototype stages, but the concepts are already in place. Perched atop a pair of active shutter glasses are a couple of miniature LCD projectors, which bounce images from a connected computer onto a special reflective surface at a 120Hz refresh rate. A camera module sits on the eyewear’s bridge and monitors an array of infrared LEDs embedded in the reflective surface. This allows for quick and accurate head tracking. Join us after the break for our impressions and our video interview with Jeri Ellsworth.

Filed under: Gaming, Wearables

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This week the folks at the development studio known as Instrument have brought a virtual reality demonstration to Google I/O 2013, complete with a multi-display drop from the upper atmosphere down toward the earth in freefall. What this demonstration consisted of was seven 1080p displays, each of them run by their own Ubuntu PC working with a full-screen version of Chrome version 25. A motion tracker works to track the user, their arms, and the angle at which they’re standing – or leaning and falling, as it were.

This system was developed by Instrument to track user input and motion tracking with a custom C++ app built with openNI as well as an ASUS Xtion Pro 3D motion tracking sensor camera. As the motion tracker sees and understands the angle of the human playing the game’s torso and location of each arm, so too will their avatar on the display array move as they fall.

The 3D game content is rendered with WebGL using THREE.js, the WebGL layer being rendered with a totally transparent background. This setup allows the map layer underneath to show through, this map layer being generated by Google Maps.

What the user sees below – the earth they’re plummeting toward – is a completely live HTML Google Map instance. It’s accurate – meaning you could potentially be diving toward your house, a national landmark, or perhaps somewhere that’d be useful for real-world training.

In addition to this setup being live and ready to roll here at Google I/O 2013 as a playable demo, Instrument has created a Dive editor. With this Dive editor, an editor is able to build directly into the control node administrative console, each of these changes reflected instantly – live in the scene.

The editor user interface exists as a Google Map, the person editing it able to use draggable markers that act as game objects. With this interface, developers and savvy users will be able to utilize geocoding to center the map view on locations of their choice – anywhere Google Maps can see. Think of the possibilities!

Google Maps-driven Map Dive 3D-tracking hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.