Voovo’s 3D Print and Model Service

Canadian operation Voovo hopes to provide a different method of accessing 3D print services.

The startup...

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by General Fabb via Fabbaloo

Design of the Week: Dog’s Game

This week’s selection is the very interesting “Dog’s Game” by Cults 3D designer Empezando Diseño.

The...

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by General Fabb via Fabbaloo

Stratasys Introduces a New 3D Printer to its Dental Line

Stratasys has introduced a new addition to its line of dental printers, the Objet260 Dental Selection. Leveraging Stratasys’ unique triple-jetting technology, the Objet260 Dental Selection raises the bar in 3D printed dental model realism to improve the accuracy and efficacy of digital dentistry.

The versatile new 3D printer is designed to help mid- to large-sized dental and orthodontic labs grow their business by producing realistic models with true-to-life look and feel as part of their end-to-end digital dentistry workflow, including intra-oral scanners.

Its ability to build diverse models with multiple materials on one tray, in one print job, increases productivity which can further improve profitability.

“We are using the Objet260 Dental Selection 3D Printer to produce realistic 3D printed gingiva masks and models we couldn’t do before. We have not had 3D printed dental models that so closely resemble the actual teeth and gums,” said Stefan Remplbauer, general manager of Austria-based 3DMedicalPrint. “The initial reactions from our customers, which include dental technicians, dentists and surgeons, have been extremely positive. This is definitely going to help set 3DMedicalPrint apart from our competitors.”

Unprecedented true-to-life dental model realism

Pivotal to the capabilities of the Objet260 Dental Selection is the ability to enable dental and orthodontic labs to enjoy unprecedented realism of the stone models. This permits the production of life-like gum textures for precise functional testing, as well as a wide range of shades for customized, color matching.

The Objet260 Dental Selection 3D Printer is compatible with all PolyJet dental materials, plus an array of dental-specific material palettes to produce life-like colors and textures for teeth and gums. This allows users to serve a broader range of dental applications with a single system, reducing equipment costs. These usages span implant testing with stone models that mimic the look and feel of real gingiva for accurate functional evaluation, as well as models with rigid features that require gum-like materials. Labs can print surgical guides directly from CBCT scan data, with high-definition tooth, root and nerve-canal anatomy rendered in contrasting materials to help prevent dental nerve injury.

Read more at ENGINEERING.com

by ENGINEERING.com via Fabbaloo

3D Printed Parts Provide Low-Cost Alternative for Lab Equipment

The 3-D printing scene, a growing favorite of do-it-yourselfers, has spread to the study of plasma physics.

With a series of experiments, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found that 3-D printers can be an important tool in laboratory environments.

“The printer is now a crucial piece of our laboratory and used regularly,” said Andrew Zwicker, the head of Science Education at PPPL and lead author of a paper that reports the results in the current issue of the American Journal of Physics. “The versatility of the printer is such that our first reaction to an equipment need is no longer whether we can find or purchase the required piece of equipment, but can we print it?”

Three-dimensional printers create objects by laying down layers of material, whether plastic, metal, ceramic or organic. A computer controls a moveable nozzle that extrudes the hot material according to digital computer-aided design (CAD) files. Each layer is thin, often measuring only several hundred millionths of a meter in height.

Hobbyists have used 3-D printers to build curiosities such as sets of interlocking rings. But researchers have become interested because the printers can build customized parts for experiments, often at very low cost. And because a 3-D printer can produce parts quickly, the time between when a need is recognized and when a part is ready to install can be just a few hours.

During the experiments, Zwicker and his team printed plastic parts, including a cone and a cylinder, to test basic properties such as size, shape, use as an electrical insulator and ability to operate in a vacuum. The researchers also printed parts for an electrode in a plasma physics experiment, and replacement parts, such as a guard for a cooling fan and a handle for a piece of test equipment. Zwicker needed to see if the parts could withstand moderate vacuum environments in some plasma physics experiments and could withstand physical stresses. The team also needed to determine whether the dimensions of the parts matched the specifications of the designs.

Read more at ENGINEERING.com

by ENGINEERING.com via Fabbaloo

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

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

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