Lifeboat Foundation

KITCHENER — Big jumps in life expectancy will begin in as little as 10 years thanks to advances in nanotechnology and 3D printing that will also enable wireless connections among human brains and cloud computers, a leading futurist said Thursday.

“In 10 or 15 years from now we will be adding more than a year, every year, to your life expectancy,” Ray Kurzweil told an audience of 800 people at Communtech’s annual Tech Leadership conference.

Kurzweil, a futurist, inventor and author, as well as a director of engineering at Google, calls this “radical life extension.”

Continue reading “‘Radical life extension’ coming, futurist says” »

Disney Research has designed a new 3D printer that utilizes light on photosensitive resin so that models can be printed out as whole objects instead of by the layer, cutting down 3D printing from hours down to just minutes.

Disney Research has patented its design for “a nearly instantaneous” 3D printer that uses light to cure resin selectively to produce an entire model out of a stereolithography (STL) file all at once. Notably, this significantly cuts down printing time. Or at least, it will if it makes it to market.

“Presently, 3D printing is extremely slow and time consuming. For example, it may take several hours to print a single 3D object even if the 3D object is relatively small (e.g., several inches in diameter and four to 12 inches tall),” the patent stated. It continues, “the 3D printing process that uses conventional 3D printers such as an FFF-based 3D printer is limited in its speed by the speed of the mechanism moving the print head to each new position on a print layer.”

Continue reading “Disney’s 3D Printer Produces Models Almost Instantaneously Using Light” »

Impressive; and this is only what we know about the commercial market. Think about what this means to the black market and dark web’s trading sites.

Another question; how good are the forgeries? One that will be even more tricky with 3D. How do you know for sure you’re carrying a Hermes or wearing Chanel glasses or not. Not to mention art, etc.

The 3D printing industry is expected to triple its revenue mainly through the consumer electronics and automotive industries, each of which will contribute 20% of total revenue.

Continue reading “3D printing industry to triple in four years to $21B” »

I do love and believe in the benefits of 3D printing; however, as a technologist and concerned informed citizen I do worry about this technology getting the hands of drug lords, terrorists, and other criminals. With Medical 3D printing; illegal drug manufacturing can change overnight and expanded to new levels of mass production. Also, illegal weapon production can be enhanced as well with 3D printing.

At this point, law enforcement in 1st and 2nd world countries are going to face harder times than they ever have in the recent past and before. 3D Printing and AI are truly going to take an already difficult situation for government and their law enforcement teams extremely tough in the coming 3 to 5 years; and hope they and tech come together to figure out a good go forward plan to ensure right benefits are received and progress not slowed down while keeping everyone safe.

Materialise incorporates more than 25 years of 3D printing experience into a range of software solutions and 3D printing services, which together form the backbone of the 3D printing industry. Materialise’s open and flexible solutions enable players in a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, automotive, aerospace, art and design, and consumer goods, to build innovative 3D printing applications that aim to make the world a better and healthier place.

Continue reading “Materialise CEO on medical 3D Printing” »

Weird

Nothing says “I love you” like dumping an obscene amount of money on a Groupon so you don’t actually have to spend any real time with your mother.

Don’t tell Forbes; but I believe it is too late given that 3D Printing has already been available to be purchased for some time now. In 2012, for $15K or even $32K you could get a 3D Printer why several jewelry houses had them to mass produce custom jewelry, etc. based on your online order request.

I am just amazing that we haven’t seen mass production of drugs, and other weapons and black market items developed by Cartels, and other criminals.

It’s only a matter of time until 3D printing begins to revolutionize how things are made — the technology, for example, is already being used to produce airplane parts and medical devices. The 3D printing market is projected to jump from $1.6 billion in 2015 to $13.4 billion 2018, per research firm Gartner.

Continue reading “When 3D Printing Gets Into The Wrong Hands” »

How could global economic inequality survive the onslaught of synthetic organisms, micromanufacturing devices, additive manufacturing machines, nano-factories?
(http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/lordre/2016/04/obsessed-…L36KMDo.99)

Narrated by Harry J. Bentham, author of Catalyst: A Techno-Liberation Thesis (2013), using the introduction from that book as a taster of the audio version of the book in production. (http://www.clubof.info/2016/04/liberation-technologies-to-come.html)

Continue reading “"Liberation technologies" and the ones who will gain” »

These aren’t spiders—they’re 3D printers that can walk.

The Illinois-based Northwestern University has utilized 3D printing technology to research a variety of vital applications, from 3D printing fuel cells to 4D printing materials on the nanoscale. Now, researchers from the prestigious institution are looking at 3D printing technology through a unique lens—a terahertz lens, to be exact. Generally unknown within the electromagnetic spectrum, hidden in between the more commonly known wavelengths of microwaves and infrared, lies the information-packed terahertz spectrum. The terahertz is not only a forgotten frequency, it’s also rarely studied, let alone well understood, yet it has high value in applications regarding imaging and communications.

One research group, led by Northwestern University’s Cheng Sun, has used metamaterials and a unique style of SLA technology called projection micro-stereolithography to manufacture a novel lens capable of working with terahertz frequencies. The 3D printed terahertz gradient-refractive index lens has better imaging capabilities than other commonly used lenses, and also enables researchers to make more advances with the relatively unknown world of the terahertz.