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3D Printing Release_Candidate

Join EFF’s Efforts to Keep 3D Printing Open

EFF and the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society are working together to use this new process to challenge patent applications that particularly threaten growing 3D printing technologies. As a first step, we are evaluating 3D printing patent applications currently pending before the Patent Office to identify potential target applications. We need your help! If you know of any applications covering 3D printing technology that you think should be challenged, please let us know by emailing 3Dprinting@eff.org (and also point us to any relevant prior art you might know about).

via Join EFF’s Efforts to Keep 3D Printing Open | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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3D Printing FutureTech Open Hardware Release_Candidate

3-D Printer Company says “not with our machine”

The WikiWeapons/Printable Gun project seems to be drawing the ire of not only one of the largest 3D printer manufacturers in the US:

Stratasys’s legal counsel wrote back: “It is the policy of Stratasys not to knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes. Therefore, please be advised that your lease of the Stratasys uPrint SE is cancelled at this time and Stratasys is making arrangements to pick up the printer,” stated the letter, which Wilson posted to Defense Distributed’s website. The next day, contractors hired by the company arrived at Wilson’s apartment in an Enterprise rental van and took the printer.

…but also the ATF:

Wilson visited the ATF field office in Austin on Monday to ask about the legal and regulatory issues surrounding the Wiki Weapons project, he tells Danger Room. Instead, he was brought into a room, questioned and was told the agency was preparing to visit his apartment this afternoon for an “investigation,” he says. He added that the ATF believes he’s not broken any laws, and that the agency believes 3-D printed guns fall into a regulatory gray area, but that he still needs to get licensed if he’s to manufacture a weapon.

This is going to be really, really interesting. Is it illegal to post instructions for a printable weapon? Where do those lines fall? The next 5 years is going to make these sorts of questions very troublesome…and just wait another 10 years until molecular-level printing is happening and see what that does for drug laws.

via 3-D Printer Company Seizes Machine From Desktop Gunsmith | Danger Room | Wired.com.

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3D Printing Release_Candidate

Warren Ellis on 3D printing

Somewhere, in some gilded bunker of the 1 percent, a very old, very rich man is laying plans to print himself a new cock.  Perhaps one with cameras in. And maybe a gun.

3D printing’s been around for a little while now, and it’s improving in leaps and bounds. On one end of the scale, I was talking to someone from a very famous special effects studio the other week, who was telling me they now have the facility to print cars.  One of their wizards took a current-day standard 3D printer (which tend to look like dodgy breadmakers), took it apart to see how it worked, and then used it to print the parts to make a massively larger 3D printer, which he then used to print off a car. Street-furniture set-dressing for movies.

via Print Your Own Penis | VICE.

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3D Printing LibraryBox

Making things

It has been far too long since I posted here, but it’s been a very busy month. I’ve been busy working on an update of LibraryBox, making it fast, more stable, and most importantly, far easier to install. The code for LibraryBox v1.5 is on Github, and the installation instructions are forthcoming. One of the reasons that I’ve not published the current set of installation instructions is that I am working on a feature for Make Magazine on LibraryBox, and I want to ensure that they are as thorough as possible before they go to them, and up on the LibraryBox site.

I’ve also been playing around a bit with a MakerBot Replicator that we purchased at MPOW, figuring out its idiosyncrasies. Part of that process has been finding the easiest way to do simple object creation, so in that attempt, I designed a box to hold your LibraryBox:

You can edit one for yourself, or download and print. It’s also in place over at Thingiverse, if you want to download or comment on it there.

So the silence here isn’t to be taken for inactivity. 🙂 A new version of LibraryBox, an article for Make, and my first object on Thingiverse counts as a pretty good month.

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3D Printing Release_Candidate

National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute

A private/public partnership funded to the tune of $70+ million that is dedicated to 3D printing in manufacturing.

Following through on our We Can’t Wait efforts, the Obama Administration today announced the launch of a new public-private institute for manufacturing innovation in Youngstown, Ohio as part of its ongoing efforts to help revitalize American manufacturing and encourage companies to invest in the United States.  This new partnership, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII), was selected through a competitive process, led by the Department of Defense, to award an initial $30 million in federal funding, matched by $40 million from the winning consortium, which includes manufacturing firms, universities, community colleges, and non-profit organizations from the Ohio-Pennsylvania-West Virginia ‘Tech Belt.’

via We Can’t Wait: Obama Administration Announces New Public-Private Partnership to Support | The White House.

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3D Printing Release_Candidate

Defense Dist. 2) Adapt the design down to cheaper 3D printers

A group called Defense Distributed is attempting to raise money via IndieGoGo in order to produce a printable firearm.

DefDist will build and design a 100% 3D printable gun for the purpose of porting to a RepRap printer. The result will be an easily accessible and replicable design shared with the world. At this point, any person has near-instant access to a firearm through the internet.

via Defense Dist. 2) Adapt the design down to cheaper 3D printers.

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3D Printing Release_Candidate

3D Custom Disney Princess Statues

Customized Disney princess statues with your child’s face on them? Great idea, creepy as heck in reality.

The experience takes around 10-minute while several cameras instantly capture multiple angles of a guest’s face which are then reconstructed and used to make the final figure. The “princess in waiting” can choose one of seven different Disney Princesses including Ariel, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White and Tiana. Hair, skin and eye color of the figurine are customized to match the guest. The guest of honor will also receive a Princess silver link necklace with choice of colored gem charm. The process of finishing the figure takes about five to six weeks at which time the completed figurine is then shipped directly to the guest’s home.

via D-Tech Me Technology Returns to Disney World For Princesses | The Disney Blog.

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3D Printing Release_Candidate

How 3D printing has changed stop-motion animation

How 3D printing changed the face of ‘ParaNorman’

The technology is not too dissimilar from the budget 3D printers making their ways into the homes and garages of hobbyists. Nor, for that matter, is it far-removed from more traditional inkjet printing, spraying down a minute amount of resin (15 microns, according to McLean’s numbers), layer by layer, which is cured by the machine’s built-in UV lights. Laika put the technology to work printing “replacement faces” that could be attached to the head of a character, giving young Coraline a grand total of around 200,000 expressions. It’s an impressive number, particularly when placed up against the 800 or so expressions Jack Skellington was capable of achieving in “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” By “ParaNorman,” however, the studio had rapid prototyping down to a science, with the movie’s fuzzy-haired protagonist (that’s 275 tightly bundled strands) able to express himself a staggering 1.5 million ways, according to Laika’s number crunching

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3D Printing Release_Candidate

Stone Spray Project

Really interesting new take on 3D printing, using natural materials plus a binding agent of some sort. The mechanism is also really clever…a fully articulated robotic arm is significantly more flexible than the traditional desktop XYZ axis printhead. Looking forward to seeing how this evolves.

Stone Spray Project from Stone Spray on Vimeo.

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3D Printing Release_Candidate

3D Printing your fetus?

You aren’t likely to find anyone more enthusiastic about 3d Printing than I am. And you also won’t find anyone more likely to document their child’s development. But this may be a step too far.

New parents have a strong urge to collect everything they can from their child’s early life — from photos and videos to hair and fingernails. Catering to this demand to immortalize infancy is a new product from Japanese firm Fasotec and Hiroo Ladies Clinic — a 3D printed model of your little bundle of joy in utero.

via Japanese company will 3D print your fetus for $1,275 | The Verge.