The £200k ($330k) Objet500 Connex3 Color Mutli-material 3D Printer from Stratasys mixes cyan, magenta and yellow (like traditional 2D printers) to ‘infinitely’ colour base materials of rubber and plastic.
Minneapolis-based Stratasys bought Israeli multi-material specialist Objet in April 2012; last year it bought MakerBot, the consumer 3D printing company
BBC News – Stratasys launches multi-material colour 3D printer.
At The University of Southern California, Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis has built a colossal 3D printer that can build a house in 24 hours…
The Sugar Lab 3D print sugar structures. They use 3D Systems who, funnily enough, have just announced the new ChefJet™ series of 3D printers. Info on their top of the range model:
“The ChefJet Pro 3D printer is a full-color, large format printer with a build volume of 10x14x8”. ChefJet Pro printable materials also come in a variety of recipes, including chocolate, vanilla, mint, sour apple, cherry and watermelon, all of which can be printed in full-color. ChefJet is expected to be available in the second half of 2014 and will be priced in the sub-$10,000 range. To sign up for updates, please visit 3dsystems.com/ces.”
Cold Spray is a 3D printing technique using nano metal particles. Their high velocity creates adiabatic shear instability when it meets the substrate, i.e. it turns into a liquid solid and welds to the surface.
Slow Mo Guys – GE (by General Electric)
Pop-up ‘origami’ microrobotic ‘Monolithic Bee’ is amazing. Uses laser-cut 18 layer laminate of varying materials to create the body, actuators and assembly scaffold that cunningly folds the dragonfly-like robot into shape with the use of tiny printed hinges.
(from 2ne1 via Pop-up dragonfly robot could be the future of business cards – Hack a Day)
Using self-assembly principles to enable 3D printers to create structures that assemble themselves.
Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of “4D printing” – YouTube.
The Photon Laser 3D Scanner is a new startup project founded by Adam Brandejs and Drew Cox.
Compact Laser 3D Scanner For 3D Printing Aficionados.
3D printer from 40 Raspberry PIs with camera modules see to make a pretty good quality cheap (~£1800) 3D scanner.
First 3-D-Printed Metal Gun Shows Tech Maturity – IEEE Spectrum.
Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) (video description) used to print the bulk of this gun and its parts in steel.
The printer required to do this costs $10000 today.
