Did your camera just run out of batteries again? Or maybe you lost the USB lead to transfer your photographs onto your PC? Well maybe it’s time for you to use some older technology.
This fun DIY project made by Dippold will have you gluing and snipping away till you end up with your own simple but very affective pinhole camera.
You can print off the template for the camera here, if you do get round to making it, please do send us the results.
Enrico Dini from Pisa in Italy has decided to build whole buildings using sand or even moon-dust. His 3D printer like machine, The D-Shape, sprays a thin layer of sand with a magnesium-based glue from hundreds of nozzles. The glue binds the sands into a solid rock like material, that layer after layer can build up creating anything from furniture to sculptures and hopefully someday full buildings. According to the creator, the d-shape process is four times faster than conventional building, costs a third to a half as much as using Portland cement, creates little waste and is better for the environment.
But Dini has bigger plans than just building houses here on earth. He’s talking with La Scuola Normale Superiore, Alta Space, and Norman Foster to modify D-Shape to build with moon dust. This would make moon-bases much more plausible.
I’ve seen alot of this sort of thing lately, there are loads of videos and articles about science research labs actually printing human cells, sheets of skin, fingers and even organs. This stuff is crazy futuristic stuff, and I’ve had a little dig around and found some great videos of some of the printers and things they’ve created.
This first video is from a U.S. military research lab that have developed an awsome treatment for severe burns by printing new skin straight onto wherever the skin is missing. They grow skin cells from a patients body and insert them into a sterile ink cartridge and then the printer uses a 3d scan of the wound to guide the printing. All this using a modified inkjet printer.
The second video is part of a series of videos on gizmodo. One of the videos showing scientists at the Wake Forest Institute using inkjet technology to print a small two-chamber heart to illustrate the process of creating an organ! Just follow this link.
This last video I think is also from the Wake Foerst Institute and it shows a bladder and a heart valve created using the same technology and it also explains in more detail how the organs are built up in 3d cell by cell.
Some of this is unbelievable, but it’s all happening. If you want to see more just do a youtube search and you will find a load of videos on the subject of printing organs, etc.
If you’ve read the previous post on the HP 3D printer then you should have a rough idea of what these things are capable of. Well hyundai have sponsored the royal college of art in London and the results show just how useful 3D printers could be if they ever reached mainstream. Students of the Vehicle Design programme at the Royal art of college used Mcors’ Matrix 300 3D printer to create vehicle concept models.
The Mcor Matrix 300 builds the models in a different way to HPs’ upcoming model and also can print color and texture. It builds the models using A4 sheets of paper, adhesive and a blade that’s built into the printer, and claims to be more eco-friendly than alternative 3D printers aswell as being “inexpensive”. The printer is currently on sale in Ireland and the UK, but as the price indicates (€29,950 including software) it’s still not something everyone will have in their home.
HP have been one of the leaders in the printer industry for years, and with the help of Stratasy they are taking their products to a whole new level with 3D printers.
HP and Stratasys have made plans to release 3D printers later this year, but don’t get too exited about having your own 3D printer on your desk at home as they are currently only used by large companies and even though the two companies will be introducing the system into the ‘mainstream’, you would still be looking at anything from $15.000 upwards to buy one.
Although HP and Stratasys will be the ones to introduce 3D printers to the mainstream, these devices have been around since around 1986. So the technology is far from new, it just shows you how slow technology can advance sometimes.
This type of printer work by either building up layers of fine powder (usually plaster or resins), feeding liquids through a printhead to build up layers or in this case use fused deposition modeling that uses a nozzle to deposit molten plastic layer by layer eventually forming a 3D model.
Although these machines currently cost a fortune some companies (makerbot.com) will supply a DIY kit so you can build one yourself for under £1000.
