Hasta La Gadget!

A heart attack is a silent killer, but are there ways to be able to figure out a preventative step before it happens? Apparently so, as a 3D printed implant might just be able to predict when a heart attack is going to happen. Biomedical engineers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have come up with a custom-fitted, 3D printed implant that boasts of embedded sensors which could very well lay out a rather accurate prediction of cardiac disorders. This could very well lead to a change in the way that heart attacks are treated.

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Implant Helps To Predict Heart Attacks original content from Ubergizmo.

MakerBot is the company behind one of the most popular 3D printers on the market. The printer is called the MakerBot Replicator 2 and it launched in September of 2012. … Continue reading

It’s not the world’s largest 3D printer, but the BigRep One still dwarfs most of the consumer 3D printers available today. With a build volume of 1.3 cubic meters, it’s big enough to print furniture in one piece.

BigRep One can print using a variety of filaments, including the wood-infused Laywood and the sandstone-like Laybrick. Here’s a side table made with the printer:

And here’s a time-lapse video of the table being printed:

Sadly most of us would have to print a huge stack of money to afford the BigRep One, because each unit will set you back $39,000 (USD). Contact BigRep to order.

[via C|NET]

The 2014 3D Print Show is all set to kick off, and Printrbot intends to show off their very first metal-framed 3D printer there. Printrbot happens to have the reputation of being one of the leading 3D printer manufacturers, where it is famous for its low-cost, open-source, wood-framed machines. Well, this time around, an evolution has happened with the new machine being coming in an aluminum and steel frame, making it a wee bit larger compared to the existing laser-cut plywood Simple, while sporting a fire engine red that is definitely sure to capture anyone’s attention. Not only that, the print bed itself has also grown, where it is now capable of supporting prints up to 6″x 6″x 6″.

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Printrbot Metal Framed 3D Printer Revealed original content from Ubergizmo.

A few years ago we found out about mighty Roombas that were moonlighting as sumo wrestlers. Jose Julio’s RepRap 3D printer also has a sporting spirit. The robotics enthusiast unlocked his gadget’s potential and turned it into an air hockey player.

The robot has three motors: two for moving its mallet across the y-axis and one for movement along the x-axis. Jose Julio wrote the drivers for the motors in Arduino. He then color-coded the mallet and the puck, installed a PlayStation Eye camera and wrote a program in C to make his robot see. Finally he wrote another Arduino program that predicts where the puck will go so that its motors can react appropriately.

Another neat thing about Jose Julio’s setup is that the table uses two old PC fans to create a cushion for the puck to slide on.

Jose Julio knows that his robot still needs a lot of practice – and programming – before it’s ready for primetime. For instance, it doesn’t know where the goal is, though as you saw in the video it can already score even with that handicap. But Jose Julio says he can easily imagine RepRap enthusiasts making air hockey robots of their own, improving and refining its programming so that robots could have different difficulty levels and even different strategies.

Insert a token in your browser and head to Jose Julio’s blog for more on his project.

[via The Next Web]