A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience
The future of rocket manufacturing has touched down in Mississippi.
At NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center, nestled in Hancock County, Miss., right on the border of Louisiana, the Los Angeles-based 3D-printed spacecraft manufacturer, Relativity Space, is planning a massive $59 million expansion to make a permanent manufacturing hub in this bucolic corner of the southeast.
Continue reading… “Relativity is building a 3D-printing rocket manufacturing hub in Mississippi”
First Breaths
Scientists just took a major step forward towards 3D printed organs — with a new lung-like system full of air sacs can expand and contract, filling the same biological role as our lungs do by pumping oxygen into blood.
Bioprinted organs could someday help people who are waiting and sometimes dying on the organ transplant waitlist. In research published in the journal Science last week, the team behind the new printing technique made a similar device and successfully grafted it into mice with injured livers.
Continue reading… “New video shows 3D printed lung “breathing””
We’ve already seen a 3D printer construct a house. Now we can watch one build a whole neighborhood.
On Thursday, housing nonprofit New Story shared a video that shows how it plans to build what it calls the “world’s first 3D-printed community” — a futuristic application of 3D-printing technology that could bring affordable housing to the places that need it most.
Continue reading… “Watch a 3D printed neighborhood spring up from nothing”
They’ll be essential to 3D-printed organs and replacement tissues.
Bioengineers are one step closer to 3D printing organs and tissues. A team led by Rice University and the University of Washington have developed a tool to 3D print complex and “exquisitely entangled” vascular networks. These mimic the body’s natural passageways for blood, air, lymph and other fluids, and they will be essential for artificial organs.
For decades, one of the challenges in replicating human tissues has been figuring out a way to get nutrients and oxygen into the tissue and how to remove waste. Our bodies use vascular networks to do this, but it’s been hard to recreate those in soft, artificial materials.
Continue reading… “Bioengineers 3D print complex vascular networks”
A lightweight concrete ceiling with formwork 3D-printed from sand is among the innovations to feature in an experimental robot-made house built by university ETH Zurich.
The DFAB House, currently under construction in Dübendorf, Switzerland, showcases five digital building methods that have never before been seen in architecture, and the concrete Smart Slab is the latest addition.
The structure has been computationally designed to use only the minimal amount of material necessary to make it load-bearing, and is less than half the weight of usual concrete slabs.
Continue reading… “ETH Zurich makes lightweight concrete ceiling using 3D sand-printing”
Mayor Steve Adler with ICON Cofounder Evan Loomis at ICON’s headquarters for an event to unveil its newest large-scale 3D printer, Vulcan II which can be used to create affordable homes
Austin-based ICON on Monday unveiled its new “Vulcan II” 3D printer that can print up to a 2,000 square foot house quickly at half the cost.
“It’s four times as big, it’s twice as fast, and it’s going to start shipping to customers next month,” said Jason Ballard, CEO and Co-founder of ICON. “This is not science fiction, it’s science fact. The world you all have been waiting for is about to arrive.”
ICON has also created proprietary concrete/mortar material which it calls “Lavacrete” that has passed every structural test and is safe for people and resilient to the varieties of conditions it may encounter, according to the company.
Continue reading… “ICON unveils a new large scale 3D printer to build affordable homes”
LIKE SO MANY women, Meghan Litchfield dreaded shopping for jeans. There were the garden-variety complaints: inconsistent sizing between brands, the way back pockets stretched or sagged, the humiliation of walking into a dressing room with half a dozen options only to walk out empty-handed. Even the best candidates were ill-fitting. Most of the time, she’d buy jeans one size up to fit her hips, then ask a tailor take them in at the waist.
Litchfield, formerly a vice president at GoPro, figured there must be a way to shop that wasn’t so demoralizing. Instead of taking off-the-rack clothes to the tailor, what if she could buy her clothes tailor-made? And what if she could make that happen for other women, too?
A solution arrived late last year with Redthread, the startup Litchfield created to make bespoke clothing for anyone with a smartphone. Customers choose an item from Redthread’s website, fill out a “fit quiz,” and capture a series of full-body photos with their phone. Redthread pulls 3D measurement data from those photos and, combined with a customer’s fit preferences, creates a made-to-order item.
Continue reading… “The perfect pair of pants is just a 3D body scan away”
Autonomous 3D-printed vehicles start driving around college campus
They’re self-driving shuttles that just rolled up to Sacramento State.
They can fit up to eight people on board, and there’s a special spot reserved for the safety steward. He can pull a hand-brake to stop the Olli if absolutely needed, but otherwise it will operate on its own.
According to the company, they’re the first of their kind – electric and 3D-printed.
Continue reading… “Driverless, 3D-printed vehicles debut on California college campus”
And yes, you can also play games with it.
In the early-to-mid 1960s, sci-fi television shows like The Jetsons and Lost In Space introduced America to the idea of personal, at-home robots (Rosey and “the Robot,” respectively) that also served a practical purpose. Rosey was primarily used for domestic chores, while “the Robot” helped the Robinson family with travel and security. And as the years went on, countless other science fiction series and movies further cemented the idea that it was only a matter of time before we’d all be using robots at home to solve real problems.
Fifty years later, an extraordinary amount of technological progress has been made. But we still seem to be lacking the personal, at-home robots we were promised. Sure, AI-assistants like Alexa are common, but they lack the physical presence we’ve come to expect. And while there are plenty of amazing toy robots and robot companions available, most lack any practical value. But a new Kickstarter campaign hopes to introduce the public to a robot that is both intelligent and practical.
Continue reading… “The ‘Hexbot’ transforms your desk into a 3D printer and high-tech assembly line”
Today, we are no longer confined to what nature or natural intelligence must offer. From the steam engine to electricity and digital transformations to artificial intelligence, molecular manufacturing and bioengineering, each new transformative innovation has brought us a new (man-made) way of doing things in ways that nature did not provide for.
As new ways of manufacturing and production are emerging, they are taking away an ever-increasing number of tasks and roles previously performed by a human labor force. Furthermore, the automation, self-improvement, self-replication and distributed nature of the manufacturing processes are producing products and goods at a minimal cost. As a result, each of these existing and emerging technologies, individually and collectively, will likely one day eliminate the need for human labor for production of goods and services—shaking the very fundamentals of economics as we know today.
Continue reading… “The end of work: The consequences of an economic singularity”
3D printing in one piece avoids the weaknesses of welding.
It’s a long way from taking on Blue Origin or SpaceX, but UK startup Orbex is confident enough to show off its Prime Rocket’s second stage. Inside the engineering prototype’s shell is what it claims is the “world’s largest” 3D printed rocket engine, which is also designed to run on bio-propane, a renewable fuel source. The rocket itself is made of a carbon fiber and aluminum composite that’s supposed to be 30 percent lighter than any other vehicle in its category.
Continue reading… “Take a look at the world’s largest 3D-printed rocket engine”
