Space colonies will be built with 3d printers. We will never see bricklayers and construction workers in space suits.
Technology description:
Bricks have been 3D printed out of simulated moondust using concentrated sunlight. This ESA project took place at the DLR German Aerospace Center facility in Cologne, with a 3D printer table attached to a solar furnace, baking successive 0.1 mm layers of moondust at a temperature of 1000°C. A 20 x 10 x 3 cm brick for building can be completed in around five hours.
DLR Cologne’s solar furnace has two working setups: as a baseline, it uses 147 curved mirror facets to focus either actual sunlight into a high temperature beam, employed to melt together the grains of regolith. But this mode is weather dependent, so a solar simulator was subsequently employed as well – based on an array of xenon lamps more typically found in cinema projectors.
Vulcaman, well known for his previous machines, has released his latest sintering 3d printer you can make for some 500 Euro: the JRLS 1000. It is still far from commercial machines, but this field is progressing forward and that is the most important thing. Vulcaman is only 18 years old, so we can hope much more from him in the future.
Key features:
5x5x5cm build volume
1.8w 445nm laser
80w 12V heated-bed
150w 230V powder heater with IR-Sensor
coater which compresses the powder
adjustable Feed control
overflow container
closed build chamber
low cost
Most prints are currently done in instant tea powder which is 95% sugar, but the powder is used because of its red color which will absorb the 450nm laser well. White sugar will not work, because it will just reflect the laser. The laser is focused to 0.2mm. The power of the laser is set to 1W.
Thor is a fully 3D printable UAV (unmanned aircraft vehicle) developed by Airbus with production price of some 20000 Euro. The cost could probably go even further down, but it is many times cheaper when compared with simillar drones. Thor is made of some 50 3D printed parts, two electric motors, and a remote control with some 4 weeks needed for printing and assembly. It weights 25 kg and has some 4 meters in wingspan. It has some 40 km in range and 18 successful flight missions behind it.
Rene Jurack developed the DICE, a small surprise among all the simillar designs of new machines. It is compact, very rigid and very fast featuring many interesting solutions.
Check out the technical specifications, you will be intrigued:
Mechanical:
casing: 20x20x20cm small
build volume: X90 Y75 Z 80
movable distance: X98 Y75 Z80, so the print head can move beside the print bed, e.g. for anti-ooze-scripts at print start core XY-system
linear movement with high quality linear rails (HIWIN MGN9R) in X, Y, Z full metal hotend E3D-V6 1,75mm in bowdensetup
PEI-coated perma-printbed made out of precision-milled warmcasted aluminium ( EN AW 5083 ) and recessed silicone heater direct-drive-extruder (MK8)
massive enclosure milled out of 4mm thick akuminium, all bores in DXF included
XY-plain is laser cut out of 2mm thick stainless steel sheet, all bores in DXF included
enclosure-sheets are conceived as load-bearing and stiffing parts, but can be dismantled all together without the printer falling apart.
all parts are designed in a way to make adjustings easy and the components inside accessible.
all parts are designed to use only one needed manufacturing technique (lasercutting) and are repeating and symmetrically
Electrical:
AZSMZ-mini 32bit-controllerboard with smoothieware firmware
4x most silent TMC2100 stepperdrivers, passive cooled
despite the small footprint, use of full-fledged NEMA17 steppermotors for sufficient output reserve
heated bed (230V / 60W), with recessed silicone heater
motor supply voltage: 19V
total power input: 230V / 0,65A at max
Miscellaneous:
more silent than 40dB in realistical and normal operation (unadorned measures!)
up to 833mm/s travelspeed
up to 12.000mm/s² acceleration
not until 10.000mm/s² acceleration and 100mm/s, ghosting becomes barely visible
junction deviation up to 0,5mm tested
the complete X-carriage (real print-setup) weighs only 160g
the complete X- and Y-carriages with all mounted parts (real print-setup) weighs only 290g
Hotend mounted with 2 screws, fast interchangeable
bowdenlength is only 35cm (complete from MK8 to the thermal barrier in the hotend)
Here are some basic videos showing the DICE working:
Instructables page with extremely detailed build log including step-by-step videos for each segment (German language with english subtitles):
Linespace is an ingenious device that uses a 3d printing extruder to produce a large tactile interface for the blind. I love this project! This could be extremely useful for the blind people!
Project description:
Linespace is a tactile display system for blind users. The foundation of our system is a large 140x100cm display area, on which the system creates raised tactile lines with the help of a 3D printer. The foot switch allows users to enter text and issue commands by talking to the computer.
We use Linespace to give blind users access to the type of software packages that normally only sighted people can access, namely the type of software that helps them to make sense of complex data. So far, we have created a simple homefinder program, a spreadsheet program that can read and write Microsoft Excel, two simple games, and a simple programming environment.
One might say that Linespace is an interactive "visualization" system for the blind. The key to achieving this is Linespace large display as it allows displaying a lot of contents at once, where smaller display systems need to update screen contents. The use of lines (instead of the more common Braille dots) helps create visualizations.
The vision behind Linespace is to help blind users interact with and make sense of complex spatial data. It thereby intends to pick up the vision behind of Vannevar Bush's memex, Engelbart Online system, and Xerox PARC's personal computer, by investigating how we can recreate this type of interaction for blind users--how to use computers to help people think better.
In the video you see a user using this system to find homes in Berlin:
I'm a strong supporter for space colonization (even if it sounds ridiculous now). 3d printing will certainly be one of the key technologies that will enable us to go there.
Currently there is a small race by several private companies. from start-up to large corporations, to get a foothold in the space by developing tech solutions. Since the Moon is one of the main targets, 3d printing with lunar dust and regolith will be solutions for building Lunar bases or large surface antennae dishes. It will be done by using small robotic 3d printing rovers and some type of laser or microwave sintering of Moon surface material.
If you want to learn much more, here is an excellent and very educational presentation by Karsten Becker from Part Time Scientists. They are a team that is in Goggle Lunar XPrize competition to enable affordable access to space.
Video of the presentation:
PTScientists have a partnership with Audi for their Moon rover technology.
Here is a video with more details of the rover and story behind it. They use a lot of 3d printing with aluminum and titanium to get the properties they need. Wheels are critical for the rover movement so the pattern is specially designed.
BTW: if you are interested in Moon colonization and SF you should read Luna: New Moon by Ian Mcdonald. It is a great space opera that has elements of Dune and Game of Thrones, but is set on the Moon.
Here is a largest fully 3d printed and flying RC model airplane. It has no reinforcements and it reaches almost 2 meters in wingspan. Really pushing the limits of possible there.
Technical Specifications
wing span: 1950 mm
wing chord: 336 mm
aerodynamic center: 80.2 mm
aerodynamic center 8% stability: 61.4 mm
wing profil: Clark YS
wing overall weight: 1520 g
wing area: 65,52 dm²
fuselage overall weight 730 g
wing loading: 34,3 g/dm²
longitudinal stability (Thies) STFs: 65,0
motor: Robbe Roxxy BL Outrunner 2834-08
propeller: Aeronaut CAM 10 x 6”
static thrust: 1100 g (3S Lipo)
print time wing: 120 h
print time fuselage: 35 h
used PLA: 1.8 kg
Here are take-off, flight and lending in a video:
You can find all the files and instructions at Thingiverse:
Kühling&Kühling, the makers of mighty RepRap Industrial, present new advancements in support materials that are soluble and breakable and give very clean and precise prints. They also perfected the Slic3r settings for support printing.
Here is the video presenting the clean break-away support structures for ABS models.
Here is a more detailed blogposts on their homepage:
CloudDDM is a company that operates like most 3D printing services where you can order parts through a web interface, but they're able to produce any part at high volumes and speed. They've recently opened a 3D printing factory inside UPS international hub in Louisville USA with one hundred 3D printers and plans to increase to a thousand. The machines run 24/7 and all the logistics are handled by UPS. They print in several materials like: ABS, Polycarbonate (PC), Polycarbonate-ABS (PC-ABS) and ULTEM 1010 with several color options.
CloudDDM 3D printers. DDM stands for "Direct Digital Manufacturing". Image source: CNN
Now the truly amazing (or frightening) thing about this factory is that it is highly automatized and operated by only THREE WORKERS! 3 people! 3! One per eight hour shift! Is this a new trend? Factories without ANY workers?
Lots of 3d printers and robots producing and only a few people designing and carrying furniture. They look out of place and almost like decoration. I'll write about future of design work in future post about this topic ... but don't think machines can not design stuff also ...
Materialise has a 3D printing "factory" facilities with what looks like more people working:
But this is not a pure "factory" but more diverse design and production center with design, product development and engineering personnel. Another point is that they probably displace many "traditional" workers as they use cutting edge technology and logistics. Maybe even several orders of magnitude more then they employ. If you look closely you will find that even some of the workplaces showed in this video could be automated now or replaced by machines in couple of years.
Are we seeing a start of 3D printing factories replacing industrial workers? In the '90ties during the first dot-com bubble people predicted that the postal services will disappear because of email communication but they were wrong since they took over the much increased package shipments due to rise of e-commerce. Could this happen again with increased volume of 3D printed products? Probably not.
Why?
Because the whole transport logistic sector is getting automatized! Deimler just presented their autonomous truck and the state of Nevada is supporting it with new autonomous vehicle legislation. Even the company said it will take some 10 years to have fully autonomous trucks on the roads with major regulatory obstacles but they are moving in that direction with most of the other tech companies like Tesla and Google. Do keep in mind that "truck driver" is most common profession in the USA with more than 9 million employed in the trucking industry or 1 in every 13 employed Americans.
Is this onset of technological unemployment unfolding in real life?Technological unemployment (or desourcing) is defined as a process of unemployment being caused mainly by technological advances. It is a controversial theory that has yet to be confirmed or disproved.
In 2014 Pew Research surveyed 1,896 technology professionals and economists and found a split in opinions: 48 percent of them believed that new technologies would displace more jobs than they would create by the year 2025, while 52 percent maintained that they would not. The implications of it being a reality would have HUGE societal impact on a global scale. What jobs are future proof?
Future will be interesting. Stay smart and think about all the possible scenarios!
As I live in a country with very high unemployment I have very personal interest in this topic and I think it is very important to investigate it and stay informed about it.
Do you think your job could be done by a machine or software? Share your opinions in comment section
Update (07.02.2016.):
Siemens opened first European 3d printing factory in Sweden. The €21.4 million facility, located in Siemen’s industrial plant in Finspång, Sweden will have 20 employees and multiple industrial grade metal 3d printers. The factory will produce prototypes, end-product parts and replacement parts for repair focused on gas turbines. Thorbjorn Fors, global business director for Distributed Generation at Siemens, said of the facility:
“With this investment, we can develop new and improved components and repairs, for example burner tips to serve our industrial gas turbine SGT-800, significantly faster. Using this innovative approach, we will shorten repair times from months to weeks. It is an important step in our ability to respond to the needs of our customers.”
As we see there are more 3d printing factories being build with very small number of workers. This is also a start of the change in the Europe.
Siemens 3d printing factory in Sweden. Looks very clean. And empty of people.
Update (15.04.2016.):
There are more 3D printing factories and production / prototyping centers being opened all over the world:
Airbus opened one in the Ludwig Bolköw Campus near Munich.
From the source:
The Aerospace Factory, as the new 3D printing center at the facility is being called, will be based out of the Ludwig Bolköw Campus, an industry and university collaborative venture located on-site. The location will be used to research the 3D printing of endparts for use in aerospace through work performed by a number of important players including: Airbus Safran Launchers; metal 3D printer manufacturer EOS; engine maker MTU Aero Engines; the Technical University of Munich and its Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management; Airbus Group Innovations; the Fraunhofer Development Center for X-ray Technology (EZRT); Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH (IABG); Airbus subsidiary APWorks; virtual prototyping firm the ESI Group; and the Airbus Endowed Chair for Integrative Simulation and Engineering of Materials and Processes (ISEMP) of the University of Bremen.
GE opened 200 M USD advanced manufacturing centre in Pune, India.
From the source:
In 2015, GE unveiled its $200 million, Multi-Modal advanced manufacturing facility in Chakan, Pune, part of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Dubbed a “brilliant factory” by its creators, the facility was established to produce jet engine parts, locomotive components, wind turbines, and a host of other additively and traditionally manufactured components for a number of GE companies. The facility now employs around 1,500 workers, responsible for operating 3D printers and other machinery. "The idea is to service a multitude of businesses—from oil and gas, to aviation, transportation, and distributed power—all under the same roof," said GE's Amit Kumar, overseer of the Multi-Modal facility, via TechRepublic.
The Multi-Modal facility provides GE with several advantages. By bringing a number of interconnected operations under one roof, the company will allegedly save up to ten times as much money than if it had established individual facilities for separate business lines. The facility is also helping to bring plastic and metal additive manufacturing technology to its India operations, an advancement which offers the company huge flexibility and cost-saving potential.
Eventually, the Pune facility will produce critical end-use components such as the jet engine fuel nozzle, but it will first service a more urgent need: 3D printing replacement parts for broken machinery—parts that would otherwise have to be made in bulk and stored, or sourced from an external supplier. Replacement parts, especially for older appliances, can be incredibly difficult to source when those appliances are discontinued or simply made in small quantities. 3D printing these replacement parts is much faster than producing them using traditional manufacturing techniques, with previous timescales of three to five months reduced to around one week when additive manufacturing is implemented
GE Oil & Gas is opening new 3D printing factory line with advanced robotics in Talamona, Italy. It is investing some 10 million USD in new production lines to 3D print burners for gas turbine combustion chambers and other advanced components such as nozzles. These new advanced manufacturing lines establishes this site as a center of excellence for the oil and gas industry. It also used advanced production software to manage the factory.
“The use of automated production and new techniques like additive manufacturing allow us to develop parts and products more efficiently, precisely and cost-effectively, accelerating the speed at which we can bring product to market,” said Davide Marrani, general manager for manufacturing for GE Oil & Gas’ Turbomachinery Solutions business line.
“The opportunities for the application of additive manufacturing and 3D printing in the oil and gas industry are only just starting to be explored, and it will require an ongoing rethink of component design and production approach,” said Massimiliano Cecconi, GE Oil & Gas Materials & Manufacturing Technologies Executive.
As factories as growing so is the software ecosystem that connects them B2B and B2C. Fast Radius has developed "virtual inventory" software for their 3d printing factory. It enables companies to deliver parts "on demand" and "just in time". Rick Smith from Fast Radius said:
“On average, the rule of thumb for the cost of holding physical inventory is about 25 percent the cost of the part per year,” he explained. “There is a significant cost in terms of cost of capital, warehousing space, security and damage. The other major problem with physical inventory is that you’ve got to produce in large volumes to get the unit costs low. This works great when you’re producing iPhones and you know you’re going to sell 10 million of them. But, when all of a sudden you’ve got an essential part and you know you’re only going to need 15 of them per year—maybe it’s a critical part to a machine in a manufacturing operation that doesn’t break very often, but is extremely important when it does break—then it doesn’t make sense to go through the setup and all of the costs related to doing a larger-scale production.”
The centralized manufacturing model of the 20th century may not be done away with soon, but the shift is already under way. To introduce its 3D printing services to potential OEMs, Fast Radius has partnered with about a dozen companies that are looking to make the shift to a virtual inventory. “To start,” Smith explained, “the companies that we’re working with are identifying 1,000 or 1,500 parts that are excellent candidates for on demand production. This may be a small percentage of their overall inventory, but as costs drop precipitously and quality continues to rise over time, these companies know that a larger and larger percentage of physical inventory will be moved to a virtual inventory model.”
If you thought that 3d printed robots are just toys, think again! Here is a strong and powerful 3d printed robotic arm with gripper that is based on well-known (I'm not sure which :-)) industrial version. It is well documented and constantly updated. It comes in "blue" and "orange" version, the blue uses stepper motors, the orange DC-motors. Encoders provide 12 bit resolution with an arm length of some 500mm. That results in less than 1mm accuracy (more realistic is 2mm).
Since the design is publicly available and looks relatively easy to make, I can see it as a part of future home manufacturing cells. Or as a personal assistant. You choose ...
Update:
Here is the latest development of this arm with many improvements.
Update 2:
Here is a new design of the robotic arm: the Mantis arm.
Here is the video of the robotic gripper:
Here is the parts list, more information and files for download:
I was approached by Melanie Kern to help her out with her survey for her master thesis. It deals with Open Source Hardware and 3d printing.
If you have spare 10 minutes go and help someone doing valuable research! Remember people: sharing is caring!
Dear Survey Participant,
Open Source Hardware (OSH) development is a fascinating phenomenon that recently gained momentum. Given the potential of 3D printing and OSH to disrupt entire industries and revolutionize the way we design, produce, recycle, manufacture, distribute and commercialize physical products in the future, this is worth in-depth inquiry. To begin with, this survey, conducted at the Universities of Hamburg and Osnabrück, Germany, shall provide insight about 3D printing communities and their motivations and drivers.
It shall also give developers the possibility to provide feedback on community services and to name key features that would help to improve their favorite platforms. The anonymous and aggregated data will be used for research at the Chair of Management and Digital Markets and be provided to platform managers.
The survey will only take about 10 minutes. Your contribution is crucial to the project and is very much appreciated. Many thanks.
Here is another 3d printable watch from 3D proto. It is controlled by MSP430 microcontroller and has a circular display that shows time / date with 12 bi-colored LEDs around the face with one status LED for p.m. - a.m. time.Watch strap is printed in felxible PLA and 3d printer is used to drill watchface holes. Hopefully designers will publish the electronics schematics, but it should be easy to recreate if you have some experience with electronics.
Here is a video of the watch and development process:
Here is a dual extruder solution from 3D Proto where a non-printing extruder is parked outside the print area to prevent oozing which gives better print quality. When a idle extruder is parked outside print area it also gives higher speeds and movement precision to working extruder. It also prevents possible scratching of one extruder on the printed object. Very interesting solution. There are some possible limitations on x-axis due to the width of assembly but it is maybe a minor inconvenience.
Project homepage where more information will be published (with build instructions hopefully):
German RepRap just released their stand-alone 3d print server control unit. It can be used from web interface from any computer or smartphone, it connects to the internet via WiFi or LAN cable and with three USB ports to the controlled 3d printer. Web camera monitoring is also available via USB ports.
It is priced at 149 euro.
Is it too much? Maybe ... you can make something similar with Raspberry Pi and other similar devices from less money. I would like to see more test to see if there are any advantages like in stability, processing or reliability.
BioFila is new 3d printing filament based on lignin, a complex polymer of aromatic alcohols known as monolignols. It is a completely new material and not just PLA+filler, 100% biodegradable and made from renewable raw materials. It comes in silk (silky texture) and linen (linear texture) variants.
BioFila was developed by TwoBEars company from Germany and it is priced at 49,90€ / 750g (VAT included).
This new hybrid is developed and sold by "R & B rapid production UG". The German start up spun off from bbw college that has been in 3D printing business for some time.
This machine is combination of 3D printer, cnc mill and 3d scanner in one device. It is marketed as "universal machine". The toolheads can be exchanged very quickly in two minutes. 3d printing volume is 775 x 420 x 140 mm.
Full kit with all the toolheads is in higher price range of some 4000 euro, but it is more aimed at small and medium companies or high end prosumers.
German RepRap is selling new 1mm hot end nozzle which can cut in half the printing time. The trade-off is rougher surface finish and more visible layers. So, the target audience is someone who needs more speed and less detail. The ideal setup would be some kind of dual extruder with extra fine nozzle for details and larger diameter nozzle for infills. It's compatible with X400, the X400 CE and PRotos V2, but could probably adapted for other extruders.
Lukas Hoppe made this tutorial and designed components that can be 3d printed or lasercut to make cheap DIY linear actuators. It is a set of brackets and endblocks to mount NEMA 17 (or other motors with adapters) motors on linear rails. The result look good. You can always rely on that German engineering. Gut gemacht Lukas! Danke fur dieses projekt.
Getting stuff to stick on the printbed is sometimes like voodoo magic. And it doesn't always work. You can count on Germans to solve this problem: GermanRepRap developed carbon printbed. It is attached it to the heat bed with provided clamps and after printing and removing the object you can attache it right back and continue printing. No more glue, juice, tape or bubbles.
It's made from carbon and you can use it and re-use it until it's mechanically broken. Carbon is THE future kids!
There are no videos or independent reviews / tests, but hopefully there will be some in the future.
The price for a 460 x 400 x 0,8 mm size plate is 99.95 EUR and 29.95 EUR for the 230 x 230 x 0,8 mm version. Plates are made to fit x400 / Protos series of 3d printers, I wish they made them in 200 X 200 mm version also.
Carbon sheets can be found on ebay with varying prices and specifications and they can be cut with simple power tools. I wander if they could be used as DIY carbon print bed ... I don't see any special technology in this ... maybe I'm wrong. Does anyone have any experiance with this?
You can also check out BuildTak that also improves sticking of models with thin advanced plastic sheet:
New and powerful BeagleBone 3d printing and CNCing cape from Germany.
From T-Bone crowdfunding campaign:
The T-Bone is a cape for the BeagleBone Black, dedicated for motion control. These are 3D printers, laser cutters, milling machines, and other applications using stepper motors. The T-Bone will come preprogrammed for Reprap Mendel 3D Printer. Best kown in the Prusa Mendel or Prusa i3 variant. The Software will include low level drivers, the printer application and a high level Web Interface for control. Just connect your steppers, heaters and sensors, configure the software and you are ready to print.
To join highest performance with flexibility and easy programming, we use a very powerful concept: Hard- and software abstraction layers! User interface, configuration, G-Code interpreter, and path planner are running on the BeagleBone. This makes it easy to use existing open source software components, using the existing toolchain on the Linux operating systems of the BeagleBone. Real-time communication with the BeagleBone is handled by a small microcontroller, placed on the T-Bone. The microcontroller is fully compatible with the Arduino toolchain, so everybody can easily modify it. Complex acceleration and velocity calculations for the stepper motors are done by dedicated motion controllers. These are dedicated hardware components, developed to get the maximum performance out of a given stepper motor without putting any workload to the host system.
The low level drivers for the motion controllers and realtime applications are written with the Arduino IDE in C. The higher level applications for G-Code analysis, motion control and web interface are written in Python. There are no special hardware drivers involved. Most of the hardware can be used on the built in Arduino or BeagleBone Black. All software will be released as open source software on github.
Here are the main features of the basic board:
5 stepper motor driver (run syncronized, 3 x up to 4 A, 2 x up to 1.5 A)
1-wire interface for digital temp and other sensors
2 high power outputs (for extruder and heatbed, up to 12 A)
1 mid power output (for fans, LEDs, ..., also expandable)
Power supply for BeagleBone (5 V, 1.2A)
Input voltage 12 - 24 V
For more detailed description of the hardware features see here (to be continued...).
But that's not all. We are planning to create some additional expansion boards with special features. Here are some of the feature we are planning:
Support for rotary axis like driller, miller, ...
Support for laser cutters
External touch panel display
Support for other hardware platforms
And you can do even more! The software is easily adaptable to most CNC applications. If you want to connect your CNC mill you do not have to develop it from ground up, just adapt the printing logic a bit.
