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Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM): Flying 3D Printing Drones Inspired by Bees and Wasps
Don’t fret! This swarm is just here to build some structures.Experts from the Imperial College of London have developed a new kind of drone that can actually print 3D materials while flying in mid-air. The flying robots were created with the collective building methods of bees and wasps in mind. These drones make up a system called Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM), where all of them work together to create something. There are two different kinds of robots in the said system.The first is called BuilDrones and is in charge of depositing materials during their flight. The second kind is called ScanDrones which measures the BuilDrones’ output and directs them to what they would do next. The researchers, led by professor Mirko Kovac of the college’s Department of Aeronautics, believe that the Aerial-AM’s in-flight 3D printing capabilities will be of great use for the construction industry. These drones will be perfect for building in difficult-to-access areas, such as tall buildings or even locations that got devastated by natural disasters. “We’ve proved the concept that drones can work autonomously and in tandem to construct and repair buildings, at least in the lab. This scalable solution could help construction and repair in difficult-to-reach areas, like tall buildings,” professor Kovac stated. Image credit: Yusuf Furkan KAYA, Aerial Robotics Laboratory of Imperial College London#robots #drones #3DPrinting #AerialAM #ImperialCollegeLondon #construction #manufacturing #technology #robotics #aeronautics
The Cryptide 3D Printed Shoes Leave Mysterious Footprints
You may have seen shoes that were used by bootleggers during the Prohibition era that were designed to leave a cow's hoof print instead of a footprint, so they couldn't easily be tracked. That idea is back again, with a twist! German designer Stephan Henrich has designed a 3D printed shoe that looks very soft and comfortable, and has a matrix underneath to soften your steps. But the sole is designed to leave a footprint no one can figure out. It's called the Cryptide Sneaker, designed to leave the footprint of a cryptid, a legendary creature like the yeti or chupacabra. Here you can see this shoe from all angles, but they never show us what the footprint looks like!
IKEA is 3D Printing (Plant-Based) Meatballs
IKEA is launching a “Taste The Future” recruitment campaign that invites the best and brightest minds to create a better everyday life for many people.The campaign will incorporate its world-famous Swedish meatballs. IKEA is inviting potential recruits to bring their ideas and try some experimental plant-based meatballs prepared with a food 3D printer. As part of reinventing themselves into a more sustainable future, IKEA is utilizing technology to offer a new, plant-based alternative to their famous menu. The initiative is part of their commitment to offer 50% plant-based main meals in IKEA restaurants by 2025.To achieve this, they are actively looking for data scientists, future architects, cyber guardians, unboxed engineers, and common sense-makers to join their team. The campaign launched with a “Taste The Future” short film, showcasing plant-based meatballs created by 3D printers programmed to replicate the texture, flavor, and appearance of a traditional IKEA meatball.#IKEA #3Dprinting #meatball #swedishmeatball #3DPrinter #vegetarian #plantbasedfood
3D-Printed "Meat Alternative" Made from Plant Cuts Just Like Steak
Does it taste good, though?Meet Redefine Meat, a meat alternative startup from Israel. The company creates a meat alternative for people who avoid meat in their diet with the help of a 3D printer. Redefine Meat’s alternative is a mix of soy and pea protein, chickpeas, beetroot, nutritional yeasts and coconut fat. Where does the 3D printer come in? Well, they employ the device to mold the mixture into steak-like shapes. According to Inside Edition, the startup’s plant steak is designed to act, taste, and cut like the regular meat we all know and love. #meatalternative #plantbasedfood #meat #3dprinting #food
3D Printed SpongeBob SquarePants Sponge Holder
SpongeBob SquarePants has earned the Employee of the Month award at the Krusty Krab for at least 374 consecutive months. Why? Because he is the quintessential professional. He keeps his kitchen so spotlessly clean so that there is no doubt about the healthiness of the Krabby Patties that he serves. Unlike Squidward, SpongeBob believes that if you’ve got time to lean, then you’ve got time to clean.He would no doubt approve of this 3D print design by baekgongbang. Stand it up next to your sink for top-grade supervision by Bikini Bottom’s greatest short-order cook.-via Toxel#SpongeBobSquarePants #3DPrinting #sponges #SpongeBob
Chainmail-Inspired 3D Printed Material Transforms From Flexible to Rigid on Command
In the 2005 movie Batman Begins, Batman's cape is flexible but can be made into a rigid glider. Now, engineers at Caltech and JPL have developed a material that can transform from flexible to rigid on command."We wanted to make materials that can change stiffness on command," said Chiara Daraio of Caltech, "We'd like to create a fabric that goes from soft and foldable to rigid and load-bearing in a controllable way."A material that can transform from flexible to rigid isn't as unusual as one would think. In fact, Daraio added, many people have something that works like that in their pantries: a bag of vacuum-sealed coffee. When coffee grounds are packed, they are solid as the individual particles are jammed against each other. But when the package is opened, then the coffee grounds are no longer jammed and can pour out as if they were liquid.To create a new material that has both flexible and rigid properties, Daraio and colleagues designed various configurations of linked particles, including linking rings, linking cubes and finally linking octahedrons (which look like two pyramids connected at the base).The linked octahedron material is then 3D printed out of plastic polymers and even metal, resulting in a chainmail-like fabric."Granular materials are a beautiful example of complex systems, where simple interactions at a grain scale can lead to complex behavior structurally. In this chain mail application, the ability to carry tensile loads at the grain scale is game changer. It's like having a string that can carry compressive loads. The ability to simulate such complex behavior opens the door to extraordinary structural design and performance," said José E. Andrade of Caltech.When it is compressed, the chainmail material is able to support more than 50 times the fabric's weight."These fabrics have potential applications in smart wearable equipment: when unjammed, they are lightweight, compliant, and comfortable to wear; after the jamming transition, they become a supportive and protective layer on the wearer's body," said the study's co-lead author Yifan Wang now at Nanyang University.Images: Caltech and Nanyang University#chainmail #materialscience #engineering #octahedron #3Dprinting #Caltech #JPL
3D Printing an Entire Rocket
Derek Muller (AKA YouTuber Veritasium) visited a private aerospace startup company called Relativity Space that is 3D printing an entire orbital rocket, including fuel tanks and rocket engines, in just 60 days.To achieve this gargantuan task, Relativity Space built the world's largest metal 3D printer. But why use 3D printing in the first place?According to the company, 3D printed rockets have 100 times fewer parts, 10 times faster production time with no fixed tooling necessary.The 3D printing process sure looks awesome! Take a look at the full clip below:
Modern Meets Old When This 3D Printed Apple Watch Charging Dock Takes the Form of an Old-School Classic Mac
Apple is generally known for its sleek and simple product designs, such as the Apple Watch and by extension, its nondescript wireless charger. While there is obviously nothing wrong with its simplicity, some may find it boring and might want to get a little bit more creative with how they experience their devices. Thingiverse user ‘option 8’ did just that when they posted a project for an Apple Watch charging dock that is designed to look like the old Macintosh Classic, a personal computer sold by Apple back in the 90s. Talk about nostalgia! The charging dock design is made up of two separate components:
The First 3D Printed House Made From Mud
Meet the TECLA house, the first ever 3D-printed house made from raw earth! The structure was printed over several months by large machines with specialised nozzles, for a total construction period of over 200 hours. The house is an elegant dome composed of 60 cubic meters of mud dug up from a nearby riverbed.Italian 3D-printing firm WASP collaborated with architect Mario Cucinella to fully realize the dream of pairing a very old construction material, in this case, mud, with a new technology-- which was 3D printing. As Cucinella said to Wired, the project is “a combination between high tech and local material.” In addition to fulfilling this dream, the project also serves as proof that somehow, we could ship a printer to a remote area and start printing using the nearby materials only.Besides the combination of old and new, Cucinella further explained that one of the motivations behind the construction was to slow down climate change. The house was built to adapt to different climate conditions. From allowing natural light into the different areas of the house to enabling more efficient heating and cooling, the aim was to create a sustainable living area. Further experiments are being conducted in order to analyze how the TECLA house reacts to heating. Image credit: Iago Corazza#3DPrinting #Architecture #mud
3D Printed Robot Typewriter Types Out ASCII Art on an Antique Typewriter
Jay of JBV Creative wanted to create some ASCII art using an antique Remington typewriter from the 1950s. But he didn't want to type it all out manually, so he created a 3D printed robot typewriter that can do it for him.In the video clip below, Jay documented the various design processes (mechanical, electronics, and software engineering) of the build:The mechanical design ended up using rack and pinions for the x-axis, y-axis, typing fingers, and return carriage. I chose to use servo motors as actuators for each segment in an attempt to make the electronics and software development easier. It definitely made organizing the wires much easier, but led to complications down the road. I used the Arduino ide to write the firmware for this robot, and Processing to write the software. It was cobbled together code, but fortunately, the machine ran quite well and I was able to produce some amazing ASCII art in the process!
World’s First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge
Last week, the world’s first 3D-printed steel bridge was unveiled in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.The 40-foot-long (12 meter) bridge was created from 6 tons of stainless steel in just 6 months by four industrial 3D printing robots by Dutch company MX3D. It was created using a 3D printing technique called wire and arc additive manufacturing that combines robotics with welding.In addition to serving as a foot bridge over one of the canals in Amsterdam’s city center, it will also serve as a “living laboratory” as a network of sensors will monitor and analyze its performance as the bridge serves pedestrian traffic. The data collected will enable engineers to measure the bridge’s ‘health’ in real time and understand further how 3D printed steel structures will perform over time.Professor Leroy Gardner of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Imperial College London said in a statement, “D printing presents tremendous opportunities to the construction industry, enabling far greater freedom in terms of material properties and shapes. This freedom also brings a range of challenges and will require structural engineers to think in new ways.”To unveil the new 3D-printed steel bridge, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands pressed a button that prompted a robot to cut a ribbon hanging across the bridge.Images: MX3D#bridge #3DPrinting #MX3D #steel #civilengineering #welding
Robotic Arm Clock
Overengineered? Sure! But this cute little robotic arm sure can keep the time!The 3D printed robo arm was created by software developer Hendrik Ohrdes AKA devdrik and named by the community, "Serwood Michael." Oh, and as if the bot isn't cute enough, it has a googly eye.According to Ohrdes, the robot arm keeps the time by moving the minute hand of the clock one minute at a time, through its position teaching feature. The robot arm has an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board, Raspberry Pi computer, and a Dynamixel XL330 servo.Best of all, you can 3D print one of your own with Ohrdes' open source plan.#robot #SerwoodMichael #3Dprinting #clock #arduino #RaspberryPi #servo
3D Printed Wall Clock Looks Like iOS Settings Icon
Now this is a wall clock that’s perfect for Apple lovers!Washington-based software engineer Lucas Hall created the “Settings Clock,” a real life wall-mounted 3D printed analog clock shaped like the settings icon on Apple’s iOS software. The inner gear tells the hour, whereas the outer gear is the minute (with notches on each to act as the “hand”)Via lucasjhall_#clock #icon #iOS #3DPrinting
World's First Functional 3D Printed Roller Coaster Model
Dan Fritsche of 3D_coasters spent over 6 months to design, 3D print, and assemble the world's first functional 3D printed roller coaster. The 1:35 scale model is controlled via an Arduino with 5 micro servo motors and 1 DC motor.#RollerCoaster #3DPrinting #DanFritsche #ScaleModelView the full YouTube video clip:
The Ohmie Lamp is 3D Printed From Orange Peel
Milan, Italy-based design agency Krill Design took discarded orange peels and used them as base raw material to 3D print a lamp. Called the 'Ohmie Lamp' it has orange-skin pattern and smell reminiscent of the real citrus fruit!#lamp #3DPrinting #orange #KrillDesign #orangepeel
Lightweight LEGO-Like 3D-Printed Alternative to Reinforced Concrete Beams
Reinforced concrete beams, a staple in civil engineering, are strong ... but they are also very, very heavy.Thanks to 3D printing, a team of researchers at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) in Spain has developed a lightweight alternative. The 3D printed plastic pieces are snapped together onsite, just like LEGO pieces. Then the structure is concreted into place, with no metal reinforcement required.The resulting beam is just as strong as reinforced concrete beam, but weighs up to 80% less.How did the researchers achieve the required rigidity from plastic? By studying human bones:"It is an alveolar structure, which makes it possible to decrease the amount of plastic used – and therefore its weight – while maintaining structural rigidity," said Jose Ramon Albiol of the Higher Technical School of Construction Engineering of the UPV, "This is what we have transferred to these revolutionary beams, specifically to their profiles. It is a very intelligent natural system and its reproduction in these beams awards them, with the low structural weight, very high mechanical capabilities."via AlphaGalileo#3DPrinting #concrete #CivilEngineering #LEGO #plastic #materialscience
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