By Zach Walton — WebProNews

In 2013, we saw the rise of the 3D printed robot. Now students are looking to complete the cycle by making a 3D printed robot that can double as a 3D printer.

A group of students in San Francisco have created a new robot that they call Geoweaver. It’s a hexapod robot that rolls around on wheels and is equipped with a glue gun extruder. When fed instructions, it can roll around on a large surface and print structures that would not be possible on a regular 3D printer.

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By Lucas Mearian — Computerworld

Computerworld - Approximately 18 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant. But that may change someday sooner than you think — thanks to 3D printing.

Advances in the 3D printing of human tissue have moved fast enough that San Diego-based bio-printing company Organovo now expects to unveil the world’s first printed organ — a human liver — next year.

Like other forms of 3D printing, bio-printing lays down layer after layer of material — in this case, live cells — to form a solid physical entity — in this case, human tissue. The major stumbling block in creating tissue continues to be manufacturing the vascular system needed to provide it with life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients.

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“One day, millions of car parts could be printed as quickly as newspapers and as easily as pushing a button on theoffice copy machine, saving months of development time and millions of dollars,” so starts a media statement Emirates 24|7 just received from Ford.

Continue reading “Mustang 3D-prints engine… Wait, what?” »

by Paul Strauss — Technabob

Two of the biggest challenges with today’s desktop 3D printers are that they 1) don’t print very large objects and 2) are painfully slow. The Solidator 3D printer aims to change both of those things, in a printer that costs less than $5,000.

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Solid Concepts Inc.

By AOL Real Estate Editors

Thinking about building a home on Mars, but having trouble finding a contractor? That might no longer be such a problem, thanks to a new technology that one day could make it much faster to build one there than it takes us now on Earth. A professor at the University of Southern California has designed an automated 3D printer that, he says, would make it “possible to build an entire home within a day.” “You press a button and it will be built,” says Behrokh Khoshnevis, who teaches industrial and systems engineering at USC.

The process, called “Contour Crafting,” was conceived as a way to quickly construct emergency housing on this planet out of concrete. But NASA sees other applications for Khoshnevis’ homebuilding innovation — for starters, projects such as an airport on the moon. “Behrokh’s work is one of the most creative and far reaching concepts I’ve seen,” said Jason Derleth, the program manager for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, in a news release this past summer. “He really has a chance to change the world by robotically printing buildings here, and he may even change the next human world by doing the same on the moon and Mars.”

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The printer will be available to the public in early 2014 for about $1,400. CEL CEO Chris Elsworthy said the machine could someday be used to 3D scan an object or ice a cake.

In 1999, my elementary school got every single kid to love computer class with a single move: It replaced a fleet of Macintosh Classic IIs with iMac G3s. The candy-colored shells, bright graphics and whimsical shape made it feel like you were spending time with some hip, space-age machine. Computing was so in that year.

The G3 bas been discontinued for a decade, but it is still an icon of the optimism of the computing industry in the 1990s. 3D printers are going through a similar phase right now, as machine after machine hits the market. While they haven’t quite hit the ease-of-use of a 1990s era computer, they’re certainly getting there.

Continue reading “Gorgeous Robox 3D printer hopes it can do for 3D printing what the iMac did for personal computing” »

Technology for pain-free healing:

“Your threshold for pain is near zero”, said my dentist, as she deftly moved the extremely thin fiber optic laser head away.

“That’s why I chose to fly in here. Gum filet carving doesn’t appeal to me”, I mumbled, my lips feeling leathery from the anesthetic spray.

Continue reading “Minimally Invasive Medical Technology – For the betterment of the human condition.” »

Roberto A. Ferdman

Researchers at Cornell University have managed to 3D print a loudspeaker, according to the University’s newspaper. Using two customizable 3D printers originally developed at Cornell, a team of graduate mechanical engineering students managed to almost seamlessly print the loudspeaker’s plastic, cond

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