Wednesday, January 28, 2015

NIGHTHAWK: The First Mass Produced Headphone Component From Sculpteo


AudioQuest and Sculpteo have teamed up to bring us the first mass produced headphones containing a 3D printed component.


Nighthawk, designed by Skylar Gray, is Auidoquest’s first headphone. You may know them for their high quality cables and analog connectors, but soon this California-based company will be making waves in the headphone industry. Skylar Gray explains:


When we decided to build NightHawk, we knew it had to be something special; it had to have a real reason to exist because no one needs another set of ordinary headphones. We worked from the ground up, reexamining everything that headphones should be, while never losing sight of our ultimate goal: to celebrate the truly unique, singularly moving experience of listening to music through high-quality headphones. With NightHawk, and with all of our future headphone designs, I want to share that experience with as many people as possible, constantly challenging and reestablishing the limits to which quality, innovation, and sustainability can be achieved at affordable prices.


Nighthawk headphones owe several of its design features to the work of nature, including a biocellulose diaphragm which more and more high end headphone companies are utilizing, and a biomimetic grille inspired by the structure of butterfly wings. Instead of refracting light waves in the case of the butterfly wing, the lattice work of the diamond cubic diffusion grille (3D printed) will reflect unwanted frequencies that results in song distortion.


The ear cups are purportedly made of a revolutionary new material known as “liquid wood”. It’s a hybrid plastic-wood material that can be injection molded like plastic, but is much more sustainable, while introducing superior acoustic properties and giving each headphone a unique appearance.



Every aspect of Nighthawk took into consideration the sustainability, ergonomics, and sound quality while attaining a very aesthetically pleasing design. It’s no wonder why the Nighthawk headphones won two CES 2015 awards. Audioquest’s Founder and CEO William E. Low added:


We are delighted to have been named 2015 CES Innovation Awards Honoree (Headphones) and 2015 Best of Innovation Winner (Eco-Design and Sustainable Technology) and we're looking forward to bringing to market more exciting headphone products in the years to come.

Via Sculpteo



Fabbaloo correspondent & 3D Printing enthusiast Mike Difronzo - Founder WiZE 3D




by Mike Difronzo via Fabbaloo

Friday, January 16, 2015

3D Printing Bested by "Pop Up" Fabrication?


Researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a simple new fabrication technique to create beautiful and complex 3-D micro- and nanostructures with many advantages over 3-D printing.


The technique mimics the action of a children's pop-up book -- starting as a flat two-dimensional structure and popping up into a more complex 3-D structure. Using a variety of advanced materials, including silicon, the researchers produced more than 40 different geometric designs, including shapes resembling a peacock, flower, starburst, table, basket, tent and starfish.


"In just one shot you get your structure," said Northwestern's Yonggang Huang, one of three co-corresponding authors on the study. "We first fabricate a two-dimensional structure on a stretched elastic material. Then we release the tension, and up pops a 3-D structure. The 2-D structure must have some place to go, so it pops up."


The pop-up assembly technique trumps 3-D printing on many levels and is expected to be useful in building biomedical devices, sensors and electronics.


Details of the technique, which relies on compression buckling, will be published as the cover story Jan. 9 in the journal Science.


The study is a demonstration of a new and innovative approach to creating 3-D structures, Huang said. Determining which designs are needed for specific applications will come in future research.


Huang led the portion of the research focused on theory, design and modeling. He is the Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.


The advantages of the new pop-up method are numerous. The technique is fast and inexpensive, and it can: be used to build many different structures at one time; utilize many different materials, including silicon; incorporate different materials into one hybrid structure; be used to build structures on both micro- and nano-levels (down to a thickness of 100 nanometers); and produce a wide range of different geometries.


Read more at ENGINEERING.com




by ENGINEERING.com via Fabbaloo

Friday, January 2, 2015

Squid Supply the Blueprint for Printable Thermoplastics


Squid, what is it good for? You can eat it and you can make ink or dye from it, and now a Penn State team of researchers is using it to make a thermoplastic that can be used in 3-D printing.


"Most of the companies looking into this type of material have focused on synthetic plastics," said Melik C. Demirel, professor ofengineering science and mechanics. "Synthetic plastics are not rapidly deployable for field applications, and more importantly, they are not eco-friendly."


Demirel and his team looked at the protein complex that exists in the squid ring teeth (SRT). The naturally made material is a thermoplastic, but obtaining it requires a large amount of effort and many squid.


"We have the genetic sequence for six squid collected around the world, but we started with the European common squid," said Demirel, who with his team collected the cephalopods.


The researchers looked at the genetic sequence for the protein complex molecule and tried synthesizing a variety of proteins from the complex. Some were not thermoplastics, but others show stable thermal response, for example, the smallest known molecular weight SRT protein was a thermoplastic. The results of their work were published in the current issue of Advanced Functional Materials and illustrates the cover.


Most plastics are currently manufactured from fossil fuel sources like crude oil. Some high-end plastics are made from synthetic oils. Thermoplastics are polymer materials that can melt, be formed and then solidify as the same material without degrading materials properties.


This particular thermoplastic can be fabricated either as a thermoplastic, heated and extruded or molded, or the plastic can be dissolved in a simple solvent like acetic acid and used in film casting. The material can also be used in 3D printing machines as the source material to create complicated geometric structures.


Read more at ENGINEERING.com




by ENGINEERING.com via Fabbaloo