3D printing is great for building lifeless husks out of plastic, but soon we’ll be able to start printing guts as well. Scientists have figured out how to coax a fully functioning lithium-ion battery out of nothing but some paste, and those small batteries could have big applications.
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As 3D printers become more affordable and easier to use, the prospect of using the technology to simply print whatever we need—instead of having to go to the store and buy it—is becoming tantalizingly real. One day we might even be able to quickly 3D print the ultimate investment on the cheap: a house. Unfortunately, though, as this calculator shows, we’re still a long ways off from that reality.
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Who cares about plastic 3D-printed models of your head when an amazing, ornate room is being 3D printed out of sandstone? Digital Grotesque, as the project is called, looks like it was ripped from the frames of a sci-fi film.
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“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed,” wrote William Gibson. He’s right. Luckily, the future is mostly in my attic workshop.
I’ve been lucky enough to have access to a Form 1 3D printer for the past week and have come away with a better sense of the platform, the way forward of 3D printing in general and Form 1 in particular. In short, the Form 1 is one of the simplest and most usable printers I’ve ever used and, barring a few minor peccadilloes, it is well worth the hype — and price tag.
First, a bit of explanation. The Form 1 is a stereolithography machine and this is an important distinction to make. We are probably all familiar with machines like the Makerbot. These machines use fused deposition modeling to extrude a small bead of metal or plastic to “draw” one slice of the shape you’re building over and over again until the object is built. The Form 1 shines a laser onto a metal surface through a layer of resin. Using a process of photopolymerization, the slices are laid down one after the other creating a solid object that lifts out of the resin as it is built. Think of the Makerbot as a stalagmite maker — the material is laid down on a platform — while the Form 1 is a stalactite maker where the object hangs from the platform that slowly moves up.
The objects that come out of the Form 1 look as if they had been injection molded. The layer height of 25 microns ensures that there are no “jaggies” along the object edge and that items that come out of the machine look as solid as, say, a child’s toy. In fact you can see objects made of the same material in stores around the world — it’s a solid, usable, slightly malleable plastic that holds up to abuse.
But the Form 1 itself isn’t a child’s toy. It is a stable, solid, and very attractive lab-quality machine for prototyping and, while usable as an experimentation platform, it is a bit wonky when it comes to printing, curing, and maintenance. In short I wouldn’t recommend this printer for students under the age of, say, 16 but I would recommend it to almost everyone else over similarly outfitted machines.
To make an object you upload an STL file to the Form 1 using a program called PreForm. The program is Windows-only right now, although the team is hard at work on a very usable OS X port. The PreForm software allows you to position multiple items on the build platform and orient them in a position that allows for ideal quality. You then add automatic supports — essentially struts made of plastic — that will form around the object as it builds. Think of the struts as a self-generating scaffolding for difficult parts.
The Form 1 has a plastic cowling that keeps out UV light and hides the laser at the bottom of the machine. The cowling lifts up to reveal a build plate that hangs over a lucite tank. This tank holds enough resin for a few dozen smaller prints, but prints over a certain size require you to pause the print and refill the tank. Running out of resin results in a truncated print but it won’t harm the printer.
Print times are slow for high-resolution prints. The two-inch-high rook — shown below — took about six hours to complete, and less complex prints like an Indian sculpture of Aspara clocked in at 4 hours and 20 minutes. Luckily the printer is nearly silent. Its only sound is a regular, slow clicking as the laser hits the resin, the tank tilts to peel off a layer, and the platform moves up infinitesimally. It is a slow, soothing trance track when compared to Makerbot’s jagged industrial backbeat. When printing at “lower” resolution the print times can fall drastically.
I want to stress that the photos I took of the finish objects are literally just pulled from the curing vat. I did not cut down the small support suture points so as to show a product that has not been modified in any way. The tiny jagged points can be easily cut off and become invisible when you do so.
Resin costs $149 per liter and is available in only clear right now. I’ve seen grey resin and it works beautifully, creating a solid, highly detailed print out of pure plastic. The company is working on a “burn away” resin that will allow makers to print objects and then create molds by melting away the plastic, but that is still in the works.
At $3,299 the Form 1 isn’t cheap – but it’s not obnoxiously expensive, either. The Makerbot Replicator 2 is about $2,200 and the intrinsic difference in the technology and the difficulty and quality of manufacture add a premium to the Form 1.
First, a few notes regarding the product. The build space is “tall” but it isn’t wide. It has a 4.9 x 4.9 x 6.5 inch build envelope compared with the Makerbot’s 11.2 x 6.0 x 6.1 inch platform. This means you can make smaller objects with ease or, if needed, chop them up into pieces for later assembly. Obviously the level of detail and smoothness is what you’re paying for here and so we can excuse the device for producing smaller-than-average prints.
Second, you usually print objects with scaffold-like supports poking off of nearly every surface. As you see below, these prints of my head required quite a few supports which left little lumps on the print that can be easily cut off. It’s not a deal-breaker by any means — I’d prefer the object to be structurally solid and deal with a bit of clean up — but it is a little bit unnerving at first. Luckily all of the supports usually snap right off.
Finally, the curing process takes about 10 minutes after finishing a print. This is obviously not onerous and it’s an important part of the system, but having a vat of isopropyl alcohol hanging out near potential heat sources, especially when printing in schools or a home, is a bit unnerving. Again, this is not a deal-breaker but an important consideration when looking at this device over any other.
3D printing, in many ways, is in its absolute infancy. What Form Labs has done is leapfrog over traditional home and open source printers with a unique system for high-quality stereolithography that is priced for the average consumer. While the Form 1 won’t replace a factory-grade machine, it’s definitely as close as you can get without sending something off to Shapeways.
In the end, however, you’ll want to know whether to buy this over a less expensive model or whether or not to build yourself a RepRap or other “free” printer. As a fairly experienced printer, I’d say that the Form 1 is absolutely stellar and well worth the investment if you are working in a design lab or engineering environment. The prints, resin cost, and machine cost add up to a perfect storm of printing perfection. If you are at an educational institution, especially teaching young children, I think the multi-step curing process could be a stumbling block. It is important, however, to understand that the curing process is as safe as, say, running a dark room, so with proper supervision I see no reason why this couldn’t be injected into an educational curriculum.
The guys from Form Labs, who, only a few months ago came hat in hand to collect pre-orders for their project, have made an amazing product. It is compact, well-built, and exciting. The prints that come off it are mesmerizingly beautiful and the quality is top-notch. I did have some issues with prints falling off the plate and incomplete jobs but most of those were caused by user error. As printers and the attendant software improve, you begin to get the print you want more and more readily. However, the Form 1 is still in its infancy and so it can be excused a few hiccups.
If you’re looking for something that produces more than acceptable prints using a machine that is a bit less expensive but offers a bit less resolution, by all means look at a fused deposition modeling printer like the Makerbot. The ease of use and inexpensive materials makes them an excellent choice for less mission-critical prints. However, if you’re looking for something that can mimic injection molding and other high-quality manufacturing processes, look no further than this printer. The Form 1 is sent here from the future to show us a new way forward in 3D manufacturing and I’m pleased that I could see it take its first few steps.
Dane Christianson’s X-Cube is not the weirdest, most complex or most sophisticated puzzle cube I’ve ever seen. But Dane didn’t really want to make the world’s most difficult or intimidating take on the Rubik’s cube. His aim with the X-Cube was to make a fun and relatable product to raise people’s awareness about 3D printing.
The X-Cube is made of 52 moving parts and 102 stickers, which Dane says leads to 125 decillion possible permutations.
For me, the most impressive part about the X-Cube is that it’s open source. You have to pledge at least $40 (USD) to its Kickstarter fundraiser to get a finished version as a reward, but you only need to pledge $1 to get the toy’s 3D files, which you can then use to print the toy yourself. Dean says he’s not worried about knockoffs; in fact, he says he’ll welcome them if it means more people will become aware of 3D printing.
Granted, it’s not a 3D printer in every home, but it’s surely a step in the right direction. MakerBot announced today that its Replicator 2 will be joining Amazon’s new 3D Printer Store, a central location on the site for devices, accessories, books and the like. The store features a number of other devices from the competition, though MakerBot seems to be far and away the biggest name involved at the moment. Surely the days of printing up those Amazon orders can’t be too far off, right?
Filed under: Peripherals, Amazon
3D printing tech can be quite amazing, but it’s usually done by melting plastic – or maybe sugar. But this is the first time I’ve heard of 3D printing using bees – or as it’s being called “3-B” printing.
As part of a promotion for its new honey-infused Highlander Honey, Dewars has been putting 80,000 of its highlander honey bees to work, building 3D sculptures.
By having the bees work within custom-shaped forms, they have already made a giant honeycomb shaped like a scotch bottle, and are currently buzzing away on another sculpture – a man’s bust. Or in this case, Dewars’ “Drinking Man.”
Head on over to Dewar’s Facebook page to see the 3-B printing experiment in action, and enter for a chance to win the Drinking Man honeycomb sculpture for yourself.
P.S. That Highlander Honey is pretty tasty stuff too.
MakerBot is building an empire selling printers that make things—but have you ever wondered where the printers themselves are made? On June 7th, the company opened a huge new factory to accommodate the booming demand for Replicators, and we got a first-hand look inside.
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If you thought you and your RepRap were safe from posers, you’re sunk: Amazon has just opened a store for 3D printers and printer accessories that seems to, at the very least, allow smaller manufacturers to get a foothold in an increasingly tight market.
Available on the “pop up web store” or whatever you want to call it are printers from Afinia and Flashforge (which, as you’ll notice, is a literal rip-off of the Makerbot) as well as offers from Makerbot owners who are selling used machines. In short, the store consists of smaller fry attempting to sell directly to a less educated consumer – which is fine.
With Staples selling Cube 3D printers and Toys “R” Us selling personalized ducks in Hong Kong, it’s clear we’re reaching the point when 3D printing is beginning to interface with the culture. It’s still “cool” enough to be cutting edge yet it’s lucrative enough for behemoths like Amazon to throw it a bone with this store.
And what of the folks who want their 3D printers to be the hardware equivalent of underground prog rock? Well, we’re probably out of luck. I’ll know it’s gone mainstream when my Dad asks for one and, the way things are going, that should be some time next week.
“We’re not scanning every object in the collection,” Adam Metallo tells me, offering up the information almost as soon as we set foot in the Smithsonian’s Digitization office. It’s an important piece of information he wants to make sure I have, right off the bat. It seems that, when the story of the department’s 3D-scanning plans first hit the wire, a number of organizations blew the scope of the project out of proportion a bit. And while the team’s project is certainly ambitious, it’s not, you know, crazy. It’s the work of a three-person team, still in its nascent stages, attempting to prove the value of new technologies to a 167-year-old museum affectionately known as “the nation’s attic.”
In the fall of 2011, Metallo and fellow Smithsonian 3D scanner Vince Rossi (a duo the institute has lovingly deemed its “laser cowboys”) unpacked their equipment in Chile’s Atacama Desert. “They were widening the Pan-American Highway, and in doing so, they uncovered about 40 complete whale specimens,” Rossi explains. “But it might take decades for them to remove the fossils from the rock, so we were able to capture this snapshot of what that looked like in 3D.” The tool of choice for the expedition was a laser arm scanner, which utilizes a process the duo compares to painting an object, moving back and forth across its surface as the device records the relative position of its axes.
Filed under: Science
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