A quartet of houses designed by local firm Logan Architecture and built from 3D-printed concrete by construction tech company ICON has completed in Austin, Texas.
The four dwellings have ground-floor walls built using ICON's Vulcan construction system, which uses a robotic armature to layer Portland-cement-based material Lavacrete into striated surfaces.
"3D-printing technology provides safer, more resilient homes that are designed to withstand fire, flood, wind and other natural disasters better than conventionally built homes," said the company.
Wired discusses some of the experiments planned on the International Space Station as we plan a return to moon and beyond. They were sent on the Grumman CRS-16 mission on August 10.
"Made in Space sent the first 3D printer into orbit aboard the ISS five years ago. Now, Redwire (which acquired Made in Space last year) is sending hardware and ingredients to try printing slabs of building material made from a simulated lunar sediment called JSC-1A. Its printer head is roughly the size of a sourdough loaf, and it attaches to the existing printer, a wide metal box that opens from the front like a futuristic microwave oven. Black cylindrical pellets of fake regolith, made of volcanic basalt, feed the printer, which will extrude (presumably) tough slabs. Redwire engineers know their machine can heat, bind, and squeeze out the simulant on Earth. But they have never tested its performance in microgravity."
and
"There are currently no FDA-approved drugs to treat sarcopenia, but Huang wants to accelerate the process of finding one. Her team developed an experiment that simulates the muscle atrophy seen in sarcopenia faster by using muscle cells that are stunted by microgravity. That speed is key, she says, to more quickly screen drugs for their efficacy treating the condition—it’d be like hitting fast forward on a test of whether a fertilizer helps a tree grow in poor soil. In their experiment, first, they’ll be confirming that microgravity stymies muscle cells. Then, they’ll test whether two chemicals that have been shown to aid muscle formation in previous lab studies can counteract that effect."
Weren't we supposed to be in a paperless society by now? Why have over 80% of my books sold in print versus Kindle format? IDC estimates consumer and office printers still print 3.2 trillion pages a year
Why do so many conferences hand out Moleskins and other journals when we take notes on our iPads and laptops.
BusinessWeek writes about how the device most of us love and hate continues to survive and thrive
By the 1980s, a string of advances in robotics led to HP’s line of inkjet and laser printers, which might as well have been printing money. In the three decades following the company’s introduction of the desktop laser printer, in 1984, the division wrangled in well over a half-trillion dollars of revenue. HP dominated the market by reinvesting billions in printhead physics, color science, and other feats of engineering. Inkjets today are synonymous with frustrating paper jams and empty trays, but their intricate gears and high-precision nozzles were far beyond what many competitors could muster.
The video below summarizes major milestones in the long history of printing on paper
Also is a video by Caroline Weaver who is really passionate about pencils and has written books about their history and their enduring allure
In The New Polymath, a decade ago I talked about how cleantech, biotech, infotech, healthtech were being blended in products. How about plant based meats and using 3D printing to make them?
EIT-Food, headquartered in Belgium, has developed Novameat which is a synthetic, 3D-printed meat that can mimic the texture of beef or chicken.
(Ford's) new Advanced Manufacturing Center in Redford, Mich., just north of its Dearborn, Mich., headquarters. The 100,000-square-foot center was an investment of $45 million, and it brings together engineers and specialists from across the company to collaborate.
You can have a look at some of the gadgets in use in the attached slideshow.
The automaker is using new technology such as virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D printing and small robots (not the giant caged ones it's been using for years) in different ways.
Just eight months later, in March 2018, ICON and New Story completed the first permitted 3D-printed home in Austin, Texas. The 350-square-foot home was printed by a device called the Vulcan I in approximately 48 hours. What’s more, the cost for the printed portion (the roof was not 3D printed) was about $10,000—a sum well below the average cost for a home of similar size and quality.
ICON's founders focused on designing 3D printing technology specifically for the developing world—and after about two years, they arrived at a feasible solution. Because site characteristics, weather, and availability of materials can vary tremendously, the Vulcan I is mobile, weighs approximately 2,000 pounds, and prints on-site in a continuous fashion.
The printing material is a type of cementitious mixture that ICON developed specifically for their needs (they have several patents pending on both the hardware and materials). Although the mortar is proprietary, it is composed of basic materials that are easily accessible throughout the world.
GE Aviation acquired Avio Aero in 2013 and developed the GE9X engine for Boeing’s next-generation 777X jets. The 3D-printed blades spin inside the engine at 2,500 times per minute and face searing heat and titanic forces. “These are big blades,” says Giorgio Abrate, general manager for engineering at Avio Aero. “We ran a lot of experiments to get the job right.”
The 3D printing factory, which looks like a blue and gray jewel box of steel and glass from the outside, holds 20 black, wardrobe-sized 3D printers, made by Arcam. A single machine can simultaneously print six turbine blades directly from a computer file by using a powerful 3-kilowatt electron beam. The beam “grows” the blades, which are 40 centimeters long, by welding together thin layers of titanium aluminide powder, one after another.
In a small factory a couple of miles from Los Angeles International Airport, Ellis and Noone have spent the past two years working to build a rocket using only 3D printers. Their startup, Relativity Space Inc., is betting that removing humans from the manufacturing equation will make rockets way cheaper and faster to produce. The going rate for a rocket launch is about $100 million; Relativity says that in four years its price will be $10 million. “This is the right direction,” says Ellis, the chief executive officer, during the first-ever press tour of the company’s headquarters. “The 3D printing and automation of rockets is inevitable.”
“Due to Poland Syndrome, Dawson only has three fingers on one hand. A team at UNLV Engineering built her a 3D-printed hand, so she can now throw a baseball as well as more easily do everyday tasks that would have otherwise been more difficult. She has a few different types of hands she can wear, including one dedicated to pitching completely.”
Mitsuhashi’s bright idea has been to use the learned skills of his machinists to inform and optimize designs for the 3D printer. By combining the best of both man and machine, he’s solving one of the biggest problems posed by 3D printing in its early years — the need for labor- and time-intensive post-processing work. Surface finishing, for example, is so far proving to be one of the most time-consuming parts of post-processing required by 3D printing, and can lead to damage of, or inconsistencies between, finished parts. Kinda takes the shine off this radical new technology, right? So minimizing, or, better, eliminating post-processing work is absolutely key to making 3D printing function on the grand, game-changing scale it could.
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