Arduino Is Building A Sub-\$1000 3D Printer
There is by no means a shortage of teams working on low-cost 3D printers. Kickstarter is absolutely overflowing with them. But, as many of those teams quickly realize, shipping hardware is hard.
A challenger approaches! Arduino, the company best known for building and shipping the absurd number of microcontrollers that power many a DIY electronics project, is about to enter the 3D printing market.
Arduino made the news official today, announcing a partnership with Italy’s up-and-coming printer manufacturer, Sharebot. Their first printer will be called the Materia 101, and is built to print in PLA.
While they’re holding off on announcing the exact price for now, they’ve ballparked two different models: a pre-built package that will sell for “less than 1000 USD”, and a DIY kit that will go for “less than 800 USD”.
Is it the prettiest printer in all the lands? Nah — it looks a bit like the super early MakerBot Cupcake machines, albeit white. Does it have the biggest print bed? Nah — see below for the specs there. But it’s exciting to see a company like Arduino, with its damned impressive ability to scale and its tendency to opensource everything it does, get into the space.
Qualcomm uses 3D Printing to turn a Smartphone into a Robot
American telecommunications company Qualcomm has unveiled a cool little combination of 3D printing technology and smartphones: the fully printable Snapdragon Micro Rover. This little robot was developed to experiment with the capabilities of a smartphone. What would happen when you harness a smartphone's computing power in a movable contraption? And, as the Qualcomm team noted, 'After spending many hours in the lab and testing an array of prototypes, the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ Micro Rover was born.'
This Micro Rover is powered through the smartphone's Snapdragon processor and mounted on a little 3D vehicle. It uses a IOIO board as an I/O break-out and can be connected to the android phone using either Bluetooth or the Android Accessory Development Kit. The Micro Rover runs on five AAA batteries.
Recreating Mont St Michel in 3D
The Cité de L’Architecture, Paris’ premier architecture museum located just across from the Eiffel Tower, recently announced a revolutionary project that connects medieval architectural modeling methods with the most cutting edge 3D modeling techniques. Sculpteo offering their 3D viewer and an updated mock-up of the object, teamed with the Cité in hopes to Restore the Merveille of Mont St Michel.
Mont St Michel gives name to an island commune and architecturally brilliant Abbey that lie about 220 miles west of Paris off of the Atlantic coast of France. Each day rising and setting tides surround the island, offering views that few pictures can do justice.
The Merveille is where monks once lived in the Abbey. A model of the The Merveille was created around 1880 to explain and support Jules-Edouard Corroyer, the architect in charge of the Mont St Michel’s restauration. The model stands about 8.5 feet (2,60m) tall and was made from a single block of stone. Unfortunately, time and voyages (at one point the top portion of the model needed to be removed to fit through a doorway) have weathered the model.
Architects Create a 3-D Printed Column That Survives Earthquakes
In the last half decade there’s been a Cambrian Explosion of 3-D printers, filling every axis of competition from price to size to print resolution. Most engineers and designers have been fixated on tuning up the machines, but a California-based architecture firm called Emerging Objects is focused on pushing the limits of 3-D printer materials. The result is a structural column designed to withstand earthquakes.
The aptly named Quake Column is a knurled pillar of 3-D printed concrete that combines an ancient Incan masonry technique with state-of-the-art manufacturing tools to create a structure that can withstand seismic shocks without mortar or rebar. In this system, bricks are designed in CAD tools to fit together like a 3-D puzzle and then printed in cement. Once assembled, interlocking features make the column resistant to earthquakes by preventing horizontal movement.
3D Printing With Sand Using The Power Of The Sun
“So what are you doing this weekend, Markus?”
“Oh, you know. Heading out to the desert and harnessing the power of the sun to make a 3D printer that can print objects out of sand. You?”
“… catching up on Breaking Bad.”
You know the kid in your old neighborhood that spent his spare time frying ants with a magnifying glass? This is like that — except instead of a magnifying glass, he’s using an big ol’ fresnel lens. And instead of roasting insects, he’s melting freaking sand into stuff.
Built by artist Markus Kayser, the “SolarSinter” concept isn’t too disimmilar from laser sintering printers used by operations like SpaceX to print otherwise impossible objects out of metal. A focused sun beam is a whole lot less precise than a finely-honed laser, of course — but the core concepts are the same.
I bet this guy could make a mean sand castle.
