hoe shopping can feel like a series of compromises. “This pinches a little, but maybe that’s okay.” “It’s a little roomy in the toe.” “If only adults could still wear velcro.”
Adidas is working on a solution.
The company on Wednesday unveiled “Futurecraft 3D,” an experimental initiative intended to perfect the midsole — that main, bottom part of your shoe that provides cushioning and support.
Like Lexus’ cardboard car, this is really more of a marketing concept than something that you’ll feasibly be able to enjoy yourself in the near future. But Adidas, which partnered with 3D-printing company Materialise to create the experimental kicks, does appear to hope this is the start of something real.
“Futurecraft 3D is a prototype and a statement of intent,” Eric Liedtke, head of global brands at Adidas, said in the press release.
Take a look at the shoe below:
When we talk about real innovation, some teenagers are already leading the way. There a new teen genius that came out of nowhere recently his name is Thomas Suarez . He claims he has designed a 3D printer that is ten times faster and more reliable than anything we have seen on the market before.
Its a big claim to live up to be we won’t take him for granted. A few years ago he created a Justin Bieber Whack-A-Mole game called Bustin Jieber. He has since hosted talks at TED and he has had interviews on BBC. Now he is turning his attention to 3D printing.
3D printing has the potential to change everything we know about manufacturing objects from the medical industry to everyday objects. There is one major drawback as it can take ages to complete so objects, an object thew size of a baseball can take a whole day to make. We are still a long way from just quickly printing out what we need in a few minutes.
watch the video.URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Clhn9t-u8
Suarez and his company CarrotCorp plan to change that in 2012 he got the chance to tour the MakerBot Bottfarm with his father his father who could not believe his eyes. Suarez was so taken by the technology that he decided to give it a go for himself. He recently applied for a patent on 3D printing. He stated ” I’m trying to make 3D printing faster and more reliable. The key there is speed, and we’re trying to [get] ten times faster than current generation 3D printers.”
The details behind his prototype is top secret but if he is able to produce a 3D printer thats 1ox faster than we have today it will change the industry completely.
The European Space Agency has rolled out a new initiative to refine 3D printing techniques to make space-grade metal parts.
The project, called AMAZE, aims to spur innovations that could one day allow astronauts to print their own metal tools aboard the International Space Station or let engineers on the ground to print entire satellites.
3D printing, or additive manufacturing, builds solid objects from a series of layers, typically by melting powder or wire materials. This technique can produce complex structures with more flexibility and less waste than traditional manufacturing, which could translate into big cost and time savings. . [Photos: ESA’s AMAZE Space Metal 3D Printing Project.
Billed as the world’s largest metal 3D-printing project, ESA’s initiative brings together 28 industrial partners across the continent. AMAZE is short for Additive Manufacturing Aiming Towards Zero Waste and Efficient Production of High-Tech Metal Products.
“We want to build the best quality metal products ever made,” David Jarvis, ESA’s Head of New Materials and Energy Research, said in a statement when the project was unveiled last week at the London Science Museum.
The group is focusing on making space-quality components by using lasers, electron beams and even plasma to melt metal alloys, Jarvis explained. The project also aims to explore the possibility of combining strong and lightweight, but more exotic metals, such as tungsten, niobium and platinum, though these materials are expensive.
As part of the initiative, four pilot 3D printing-factories are being established in Germany, Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom. David wants to help standardize the technique and bring it to the mainstream, connecting key players in the metallic 3D printing business to develop a supply chain.
ESA officials say innovations along the way to make 3D printers more viable for spacecraft could have benefits on Earth, leading to improvements in aircraft wings, jet engines and automotive systems.
ESA is hardly alone in its ambition to perfect metal 3D printing for the final frontier. Among several other NASA endeavors in additive manufacturing, the U.S. space agency recently completed a successful hot-fire test of the biggest 3D-printed rocket part built to date: an engine injector printed with nickel-chromium alloy powder.
There are several private and university-led efforts, too. Earlier this month, a group of students at the University of California, San Diego performed their first test of a 3D-printed engine made from cobalt chromium.
The largest 3-D printed rocket engine component NASA ever has tested blazed to life Aug. 22 during an engine firing that generated a record 20,000 pounds of thrust.
This test is a milestone for one of many important advances the agency is making to reduce the cost of space hardware. Innovations like additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, foster new and more cost-effective capabilities in the U.S. space industry.
The component tested during the engine firing, an injector, delivers propellants to power an engine and provides the thrust necessary to send rockets to space. During the injector test, liquid oxygen and gaseous hydrogen passed through the component into a combustion chamber and produced 10 times more thrust than any injector previously fabricated using 3-D printing.
“This successful test of a 3-D printed rocket injector brings NASA significantly closer to proving this innovative technology can be used to reduce the cost of flight hardware,” said Chris Singer, director of the Engineering Directorate at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Ala.
The component was manufactured using selective laser melting. This method built up layers of nickel-chromium alloy powder to make the complex, subscale injector with its 28 elements for channeling and mixing propellants. The part was similar in size to injectors that power small rocket engines. It was similar in design to injectors for large engines, such as the RS-25 engine that will power NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for deep space human missions to an asteroid and Mars.
“This entire effort helped us learn what it takes to build larger 3-D parts — from design, to manufacturing, to testing,” said Greg Barnett, lead engineer for the project. “This technology can be applied to any of SLS’s engines, or to rocket components being built by private industry.”
One of the keys to reducing the cost of rocket parts is minimizing the number of components. This injector had only two parts, whereas a similar injector tested earlier had 115 parts. Fewer parts require less assembly effort, which means complex parts made with 3-D printing have the potential for significant cost savings.
“We took the design of an existing injector that we already tested and modified the design so the injector could be made with a 3-D printer,” explained Brad Bullard, the propulsion engineer responsible for the injector design. “We will be able to directly compare test data for both the traditionally assembled injector and the 3-D printed injector to see if there’s any difference in performance.”
Early data from the test, conducted at pressures up to 1,400 pounds per square inch in a vacuum and at almost 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit, indicate the injector worked flawlessly. In the days to come, engineers will perform computer scans and other inspections to scrutinize the component more closely.
The injector was made by Directed Manufacturing Inc., of Austin, Texas, but NASA owns the injector design. NASA will make the test and materials data available to all U.S. companies through the Materials and Processes Information System database managed by Marshall’s materials and processes laboratory.
NASA seeks to advance technologies such as 3-D printing to make every aspect of space exploration more cost-effective. This test builds on prior hot-fire tests conducted with smaller injectors at Marshall and at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Marshall engineers recently completed tests with Made in Space, a Moffett Field, Calif., company working with NASA to develop and test a 3-D printer that will soon print tools for the crew of the International Space Station. NASA is even exploring the possibility of printing food for long-duration space missions.
NASA is a leading partner in the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation and the Advanced Manufacturing Initiative, which explores using additive manufacturing and other advanced materials processes to reduce the cost of spaceflight.
Source: NASA
A partnership between scientists at the University of Wollongong and St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne has led to a breakthrough in tissue engineering, with researchers growing cartilage from stem cells to treat cancers, osteoarthritis and traumatic injury.
In work led by Associate Professor Damian Myers of St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne – a node of the UOW-headquartered Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) – scaffolds fabricated on 3D printing equipment were used to grow cartilage over a 28-day period from stem cells that were extracted from tissue under the knee cap.
Professor Myers said this was the first time true cartilage had been grown, as compared to “fibrocartilage”, which does not work long-term.
“We are trying to create a tissue environment that can ‘self-repair’ over many years, meaning the repaired site will not deteriorate,” he said.
“It’s very exciting work, and we’ve done the hard yards to show that what we have cultured is what we want for use in surgery for cartilage repair.”
ACES Director Professor Gordon Wallace and his team developed customised fabrication equipment to deliver live cells inside a printed 3D structure. This cutting edge technology was utilised to deliver 3D printed scaffolds on which the cartilage was grown.
“ACES has established a biomedical 3D printing lab at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne in April this year. This has greatly accelerated progress by bringing clinicians and materials scientists face to face on a daily basis,” Professor Wallace said.
This research, which will soon move to pre-clinical trials to demonstrate repair of cartilage, is part of a wider limb regeneration project, involving Professor Wallace, Professor Mark Cook and Professor Peter Choong through the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery. The aim is to eventually use a patient’s own stem cells to grow muscles, fat, bone and tendons.
Professor Wallace and his team are also working to develop custom-made 3D printed human organs.
“By 2025, it is feasible that we will be able to fabricate complete functional organs, tailored for an individual patient,” he said.
Source: http://www.sciencealert.com.au
Before you buy that amazing desktop 3D printer, know this: that mini-factory-in-a-box could be harmful to your health.
Researchers from the Illinois Institute of Technology have found, for the first time, that commercially available desktop 3D printers — which are now cheaper and easier than ever to purchase for your home or office — are “high emitters” of ultrafine particles.
But while the two different types of 3D printers that were tested can both be considered “high emitters,” as Phys.org points out, one type is expelling more indoor air pollution than the other. It’s the higher temperature 3D printer that uses acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) feedstock that puts out 200 billion particles per minute when in use. The other 3D printer tested used lower temperature polylactic acid (PLA) feedstock and put out about 20 billion particles per minute.
Either way, the elevated levels of ultrafine particles have serious health implications from “cardio-respiratory mortality” to stroke to asthma symptoms.
The problem is that, unlike a factory setting, 3D printers that are sold for homes are standalone devices without ventilation systems or filtration accessories to limit indoor air pollution. As the researchers put it: “These results suggests caution should be used when operating some commercially available 3D printers in unvented or inadequately filtered indoor environments.”
That could at least slow down the idea that 3D printers will soon become a fixture on all our desks. And while it’s been a good year for desktop 3D printers, this news could take the shine out of that newly printed plastic prototype.
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An aircraft with a lace-like structure may not seem like the best way to fly, but it is one of a range of radical ideas about how we may travel in the future.
A model of the aircraft, designed by Airbus, was shown off at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh.
Taking inspiration from the human skeleton, the design is both strong and relatively lightweight.
This means it could, in theory, drastically reduce the fuel costs of flying.
The European company said the aim would be to 3D print the composite material that would make the structure.
The concept aircraft was created by a team of structural engineers at Airbus.
Other ideas for the future plane include an upward curve on the tail to reflect engine noise upwards and reduce noise pollution.
Inside the aircraft, Airbus engineers envisage new “zones” to replace the traditional seating, with “morphing” seats that are able to harvest energy from those sitting in them as well as change shape to fit the size of passengers.
At the front of the plane, the team suggested seating with integrated sensors that would be able to monitor health. And there could even be a gaming zone, where passengers could play virtual sports.
It was also suggested that instead of having small doors into the jet, as is currently the case, the planes of the future would have much wider entrances where people could leave their hand luggage.
The bags would then be automatically delivered to their seats, preventing the problems of blocked aisles, meaning faster boarding.
Airbus engineer Bastian Schaefer said: “Flying in the future must remain affordable for both people and from an environmental perspective.”
However, he acknowledged that design alone would not solve all his industry’s problems.
“We are running out of oil and we have to find other solutions,” he said.
“Some of this can be done via technology, but we are also looking for alternative fuels.”
Alongside its own concept plane, the aircraft manufacturer also challenged students from around the world to develop their own eco-efficient ideas for aviation, with five finalist teams selected this week.
Their ideas include:
Mr Schaefer thinks powering planes by gathering and liquefying cow flatulence would be a great idea if it could be made to work.
“Ten years ago there was the suggestion to use liquid hydrogen, but we are still waiting for someone to deliver good storage methods for this,” he said.
Source: BBC
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has anything bad to say about 3D printing. Besides having the potential to revolutionize the manufacturing industry, the machines seem to spit out one crowd-pleaser after another, objects like musical instruments, candy, toys, trinkets and even cars. But now that someone has figured out how to print out a fully-functional firearm, the technology is about to become a whole lot more controversial.
Photos of the world’s first 3D printed gun were discovered on the AR-15.com, a forum for firearms enthusiasts and supporters of gun rights. The creator, who goes by the username HaveBlue, assembled the weapon by combining the body of a normal .22 caliber pistol with that of a printed plastic version of the lower receiver used in AR-15 assault rifles (similar to the military’s M16). HaveBlue then tested out the creation by successfully firing 200 rounds without any signs of malfunction or complications, according to a post on the web site.
HaveBlue documents his gunsmithing process in such a detailed way, it might be a bit unnerving for some folks. With little more than a Stratasys 3D printer, a $30 batch of plastic resin and printing specifications available on the internet, the user was able to produce several of the necessary working parts. A step-by-step blueprint for making your own AR-15 lower receiver can also be found on Thingiverse.
While only one part of the gun was actually ”printed,” the lower receiver is the critical piece that enables the weapon to fire. It holds the bolt, trigger and the magazine, where ammunition is stored. Thats why under the American Gun Control Act, it’s this lower part that constitutes an operational gun and thus is heavily regulated.
The issue which arises now is that if anyone with a 3D printer can manufacture this part themselves or, as my previous report found, can purchase firearms freely using underground websites, what good would any form of “gun control” be?
Correction: Due to a typing error, I stated that the lower receiver ”includes the bolt, trigger and the magazine, where ammunition is stored.” That sentence has been changed to accurately state that “it holds the trigger and the magazine, where ammunition is stored.”
Source: SmartPlanet.
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