Guns and 3-D printer revolution is now

[Opmmur]

Guns and garden gnomes: 3-D printer revolution is now

LANCE ROSENFIELD / Redux Pictures

Cody Wilson, who is in the process of developing a gun that will be printed on a 3-D printer, in Austin, Texas.

Addressing a packed auditorium at Austin’s South by Southwest festival last March, Bre Pettis, keynote speaker and co-founder of MakerBot, one of the leaders in desktop 3-D printers, described the increased interest and affordability of his company’s product as heralding the “the next Industrial Revolution.”

"Revolution" is often used even when the result doesn't match the definition — a complete change from the way things were before. Add "Industrial," and the comparison implies not just a change in manufacturing, but society as well, from improved living standards to changes in social class structure. Whether — and how — desktop 3-D printing can bring such changes is much debated, and remains to be seen.

Thanks to companies such as MakerBot, the bulk, expense and technical inefficiency that kept the 30-year-old technology known as Additive Manufacturing — or 3-D printing — confined to major laboratories and factories, is a thing of the past. Now, for less than $3,000, anyone with basic computer skills and an interest in learning more can download and personalize or create a computer-assisted design (CAD) that a printer will fabricate, layer by layer of filament.

Pettis is not the first to make the “next Industrial Revolution” comparison. For some within the maker community — subculture of tech-based do-it-yourself-ers — the increased accessibility of 3-D printer technology means "the end of consumerism.” Conversely, tech analysis firms Gartner predicts that 3-D printing could create opportunities for new product lines created in-house by local retailers. And Daniel Suarez, who spent a decade developing logistics and production planning software for major multinational corporations (and is also a best-selling novelist who writes about near-future technologies) predicts that "3-D printing will be a disruptive economic force in the next two decades — but I also think this disruption will benefit average Americans by causing a resurgence in local manufacturing."

Fervor over 3-D printing’s potential has only increased since SXSW, when Pettis introduced a prototype for the MakerBot Digitizer, which will scan small objects with the end goal of 3-D fabrication. He illustrated the Digitizer’s potential with a projection of a garden gnome, scanned to create … another garden gnome.

For those who don’t so much see an endless supply of home-printed garden gnomes as “revolution,” so much as a shot at getting on A&E’s “Hoarders,” there’s Cody Wilson, the notorious public face of Defense Distributed. Wilson is a University of Texas law student recently licensed to manufacture guns by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In March, Defense Distributed, much to the consternation of gun control advocates, printed the plastic lower receiver for an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle — the portion of a firearm that carries the serial number — which that can fire more than 600 rounds.

Scary, legal and — as Wilson points out — a 3-D printed result that actually does something.

MakerBot

Wilson latched on to Pettis’s garden gnome to express his frustration with the maker community to make something more than geegaws during his riveting yet sparsely attended SXSW presentation about Defense Distributed and DefCAD, an open-source CAD design website he launched after MakerBot’s Thingiverse CAD site dumped all the gun designs from the site following the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.

A cursory scan on Thingiverse finds a sea of files to create iPhone cases, and myriad holders and stands, but other than clock components, parts to complete a cigar box ukulele, and a theoretical design for a working camera, there isn’t a lot on the open source data base that does stuff.

Wilson is using the platform of 3-D printing to make a political statement about— and push the boundaries of — liberty and the freedom to share information. “I think this isn't a project about firearms, it’s a project about political equality,” Wilson recently told NBC’s Nightly News.

The potential Wilson sees for for 3-D printers isn't just about guns, but prosthetics and other medical devices, even drugs, putting the means of production in the hands of the people.

Pettis and Wilson are often portrayed as polar opposites in the 3-D printer movement, but they both face the inevitable roadblock of all new digital technology — intellectual copyright law.

"When it comes to 3-D printers, groups producing tools, weapons, and reproducing patented or copyrighted objects will be where all the debate and legal fireworks will occur," Suarez told NBC News."Sure, a copyright holder might get upset when individuals reproduce their trademarked cartoon character as little plastic tchotchkes, but I suspect this will follow the same path as digital music and torrented video — namely, there will be several high profile legal cases against perceived infringers until big companies realize technological advances have made this an unstoppable tide."

 

[Opmmur]

Gartner predicts 3D printers will cost less than a PC by 2016

The cost for 3D printers will drop below $2,000 as demand skyrockets.
By Colin Neagle, Network World
March 27, 2013 03:52 PM ET

Network World - Widespread adoption of 3D printing technology may not be that far away, according to a Gartner report predicting that enterprise-class 3D printers will be available for less than $2,000 by 2016.

With the technology set to become less expensive than some modern-day PCs, Gartner research director Pete Basiliere says the futuristic capabilities of 3D printers could be available far sooner than many had thought.

"From descriptions of exciting current uses in medical, manufacturing and other industries to futuristic ideas — such as using 3D printers on asteroids and the moon to create parts for spacecraft and lunar bases — the hype leads many people to think the technology is some years away when it is available now and is affordable to most enterprises," Basiliere said in a Gartner press release.

[RELATED: Wicked 3D printer creations
Would 3D-printed gun really be legal?]

3D printers are already in use among many businesses, from manufacturing to pharmaceuticals to consumers goods, and have generated a diverse set of use cases. As a result, the capabilities of the technology have evolved to meet customer needs, and will continue to develop to target those in additional markets, Gartner says.

"Furthermore, enterprise uses for 3D printers have expanded as capabilities of 3D scanners and design tools have advanced, and as the commercial and open-source development of additional design software tools has made 3D printing more practical," Gartner says. "Gartner believes that the commercial market for 3D print applications will continue expanding into architectural, engineering, geospatial and medical uses, as well as short-run manufacturing."

Comparing the impact of 3D printing to that of ecommerce, Gartner says the technology holds the potential to fundamentally change how business transactions are conducted. Businesses can create physical prototypes and architectural models much easier, and in some cases could enable customers to print the final purchased product from their own 3D printers, Gartner says.

This potential will drive the cost of 3D printers down as businesses look to take advantage of new business models, Gartner says.

3D printing technology has garnered a lot of attention lately, and not all of it has been positive. At South by Southwest Interactive earlier this month, pro-gun nonprofit Defense Distributed discussed its 3D printing capabilities for firearm parts, such as a magazine for an AK-47 assault rifle. Although the organization has faced some legal setbacks, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives granted it a federal firearms license just weeks after its SXSW presentation, prompting concerns from the legal community that has seen the gun control debate heat up in recent months.

"This is a case where the technology could quickly outpace the law," Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA, told IDG News Service.

The Defense Distributed controversy serves as just an example of the rapid pace of development in the 3D printing industry, which will only pick up as more businesses recognize the potential. Wohler's Associates, a 3D printing industry consulting group, estimates that worldwide sales of products and services in the industry will reach $3.7 billion by 2015.

 

[Opmmur]

At SXSW, 3D-printed guns get their turn in the spotlight, too

Defense Distributed's Cody Wilson stands by his group's efforts despite opposition
By Zach Miners, IDG News Service
March 11, 2013 09:51 PM ET

IDG News Service - 3D printing's capabilities in art, sculpture and toys have generated considerable buzz at South by Southwest Interactive over the past few days. But one Austin, Texas-based group has a more controversial application in mind: guns.

"When I read some of the coverage of this event, it's like, 'Look at the amazing things we've done with 3D printing,'" said Cody Wilson [cq], CEO of the pro-gun nonprofit Defense Distributed.

"But people don't know what to do with it. It's all cupcakes and lawn gnomes," he said Monday afternoon during a speech at the tech show.

Defense Distributed manufactures gun parts using 3D printers and posts the blueprints online for anyone to download. Its latest accomplishment is a printable magazine for an AK-47 assault rifle. Defense Distributed envisions a future in which anyone would have easy access to the technology to print gun parts themselves, though Wilson didn't say whether those plans include completely assembled guns.

The group's hope is that the technology will eventually become so advanced and widespread that it will render gun control laws meaningless. "People are going to be able to pass this contraband between one another to the point that 'contraband' won't be a meaningful way of describing it anymore," Wilson said.

The DIY gunsmith group has faced numerous setbacks since its founding last year, which now include possible legislation to shut them down, but those behind the effort remain undeterred, Wilson said.

"I'm not stopping," he told a large audience of SXSW attendees.

So far, Defense Distributed printed gun parts have been fabricated in plastic, Wilson said. The AK-47 magazine tested by the group was able to withstand 60 rounds before the unit began to crack, he said.

Defense Distributed, which maintains a repository of blueprint files at Defcad.org, has seen 50,000 downloads over the last two weeks and 400,000 downloads since the end of December, Wilson said.

3D printing more generally has been a big hit at SXSW this year. During the opening keynote of the show, MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis introduced a prototype of his company's MakerBot Digitizer. That product is designed to let users scan 3D objects about 8 inches around and 8 inches high so they can be replicated.

 

[TimeTravel_00]

The only thing that I don't like about this, and bear with me, is the current strength of the printable synthetics. This will of course be overcome in just a few years, but at the moment, a printed rifle receiver is nothing compared to a forged receiver. Even a stamped or cast poured receiver will never compare to the strength of forging. Perhaps we will see someone take these synthetics to the next step by supplying them with a curable compound that hardens after baking much in the way that clay turns into ceramics.

 

[titorite]

One could make drones. It is feasable... One might even make bullet resistant vests. ... Micron size printing and overlaping... A bullet resistaent vest is also possible..... What is the limit?

 

[titorite]

3D printed guns it may soon be illegal, hopes Rep. Steve Israel


Reinforced AR-15 Lower Receiver (see it fired)

 

[Opmmur]

3-D-printed rocket part passes major NASA test

Miriam Kramer Space.com

NASA Glenn Research Center

Task lead Tyler Hickman, in red shirt, and technicians inspect the 3-D-printed rocket injector assembly as it’s installed in the Rocket Combustion Laboratory at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.

A 3-D-printed rocket engine injector has passed a major NASA test, potentially heralding a new age of propulsion-system manufacturing, space agency officials say.

NASA and Florida-based company Aerojet Rocketdyne put the injector — which was built using 3-D printing (also called "additive manufacturing") technology — through a series of hot-fire trials, agency officials announced last week.

"Hot-fire-testing the injector as part of a rocket engine is a significant accomplishment in maturing additive manufacturing for use in rocket engines," Carol Tolbert, manager of the Manufacturing Innovation Project at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where the tests were conducted, said in a statement. [10 Amazing 3-D-Printed Objects]

"These successful tests let us know that we are ready to move on to demonstrate the feasibility of developing full-size, additively manufactured parts," Tolbert added.

Aerojet Rocketdyne crafted the engine injector using high-powered lasers that liquefied and fused metallic powders into the proper structure.

Rocket engine injectors typically take a year or more to build. Employing 3-D printing technology can reduce this to less than four months while also cutting costs by 70 percent, NASA officials said.

"NASA recognizes that on Earth and potentially in space, additive manufacturing can be game-changing for new mission opportunities, significantly reducing production time and cost by 'printing' tools, engine parts or even entire spacecraft," Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for space technology in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

"3-D manufacturing offers opportunities to optimize the fit, form and delivery systems of materials that will enable our space missions while directly benefiting American businesses here on Earth," he added.

NASA's interest in 3-D printing appears to be strong and growing. For example, the space agency is partnering with California company Made in Space to send a 3-D printer to the International Space Station next year.

And NASA recently funded the development of a prototype "3-D pizza printer" that could help feed astronauts on long space journeys, such as the 500-day trek to Mars.

3-D printing has been used to craft certain rocket parts before, but usually this form of manufacturing is employed to build less critical components of the complex machines, Aerojet Rocketdyne additive manufacturing program manager Jeff Haynes said.

"The injector is the heart of a rocket engine and represents a large portion of the resulting cost of these systems," Haynes said in a statement. "Today, we have the results of a fully additive manufactured rocket injector with a demonstration in a relevant environment."

 

[Opmmur]

Thanksgiving meal of the future: Test tube turkey, bug casserole, 3-D printed pie?
Nidhi Subbaraman NBC News

Photo illustration by John Brecher / NBC News

Photo illustration depicting apple pie in a 3D printer. While 3-D tech can't render a full pastry yet, some say it's well on the way.
Enjoy that turkey while you can — someday, it might be grown in a test tube.

With scientists worried that the world’s increasing population could lead to a food crisis, lab-coated chefs of tomorrow have begun serving up a buffet of alternative food choices, not just for meeting food needs in the hungry developing world, but for healthier, cheaper, more sustainable eating in nations like the U.S.

Lab-grown meat, exotic protein sources, and 3-D printing all have the potential to change the way Americans eat. NBC News checked with experts about what might replace cranberry sauce and stuffing on Thanksgiving tables in just a few decades.

Toby Melville / Reuters

Chef Richard McGeown cooks the world's first lab-grown beef burger during a launch event in west London August 5, 2013.
Test tube turkey?In August, scientists and world-class chefs joined forces to cook and taste a beef patty made from lab-grown tissue. Will we be serving test tube turkey for Thanksgiving one day? "It’s possible to do it," said Mark Post, professor of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who is engineering the tissue.

While it is "easy" to grow the meat in shreds to press together into a patty, the hard part will be fashioning a bird-shaped product that can be stuffed and carved, he said.

The challenge is building plumbing through thick chunks of tissue that can nourish deep-set cells. Bioengineers who are building replacement organs like livers and kidneys in the lab for medical use are trying to clear the same hurdle.

Post says that his technique can be used to grow any kind of meat, from tuna to turkey. But, because of the environmental footprint of rearing farm animals, "the biggest game to be had is beef."

As for whether the final product will ever taste like it grew up on the farm, "I guess it’s a gamble," Post said, after all his beef patty’s flavor "could still be improved." How? "If we keep the cells and let them make the tissue like it is in the animal, it will hopefully create the same taste."

Bug casserole?
In a few years, don’t be too surprised if green bug casserole is a Thanksgiving staple.

Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium


Cricket pumpkin pie, prepared for curious visitors at the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans.
The Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium in New Orleans is serving a limited edition fare of Thanksgiving themed bug snacks: mealworm-filled cornbread stuffing, wax worm cranberry sauce and a dessert of cricket pumpkin pie are on the menu.

Over 1,900 species of insects have been identified as edible, the U.N. said in a report published in May. Popular crunchy munchies include: beetles, caterpillars, wasps and ants, as well as cicadas, termites, and dragonflies.

Though an estimated 80 percent of the world eats bugs, they’re still practically unknown in American cuisine.

That’s changing, slowly. Last summer, Rene Redzepi the Copenhagen restaurant Noma served live ants with crème fraiche at a pop-up event at Claridge’s hotel in London.

A Brooklyn startup called Exo is crafting protein bars with flour milled from slow-roasted crickets. The bars — each containing 25 insects — come in three flavors: cacao nut, PB&J and cashew ginger Moroccan spice. A Kickstarter funding campaign floated by the two co-founders that aimed to raise $20,000 ended up netting more than double that amount. Out west, San Francisco-based Chirp hopes to be "America’s first producer of sustainably grown, edible insects."

3-D printed pie?
In May, NASA funded a project that’s developing 3-D printing technology that can create food during space travel. Pizzas will be first up because their layered design – dough, sauce, cheese — makes it an ideal candidate for printing.

But desserts are likely to be among the printed foods we’ll be eating first. In fact, you can try one today.

Fab@Home, a research group at Cornell University, started out printing layers of gooey chocolate that hardened into shapes, and has now spun off a startup called Seraph Robotics to develop its food printing technology.

At the Sugar Labs in Los Angeles, a duo of confectioners specialize in all-sugar cake decorations that they print out on a device that resembles a Xerox machine. It’s likely that a layered pie, or at least a perfectly woven lattice crust popped fresh from the printer, is just a few years away.

But folks who are familiar with eating trends in the U.S. say that much of America won’t be tempted by 3-D printed dessert, whether the filling is apple, pumpkin or pecan.

“Anything That Moves” author Dana Goodyear has observed that "throwback" concepts like foraging and the paleo diet are gaining ground. American food has come to be known as processed and industrial, and Americans — those that can afford it anyway — are trying to distance themselves from the idea.

"People are more mistrustful than ever of that kind of processing and technology," she told NBC News. "They want to feel closer to their food not removed from it." If technology is being explored in new ways in this country, it tends to be older ideas, like pickling and canning, that are sticking.

“The future of food does not lie in futuristic technology,” she said, “it lies in the technologies of the past.”

Adventurous gourmand Andrew Zimmern, host of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel, told NBC News that he wants the food of the future "to be curated by family farmers."

"I don’t believe that the future of food is done by men in white coats," he said.

Not entirely, anyway — he does think technology has an important role to play, calling Post’s lab-grown burger and the plant-based egg substitute made at Hampton Creek Foods in San Francisco "gigantic first steps.”

Facing the food problems of the future might mean rethinking our relationship with technology, but also tempering our expectations of time-tested table traditions.

Yet, as Zimmern put it, "for some reason we’re hung up on the turkey idea."

 

[Opmmur]

3-D printed brain lets students take a
stab at neurosurgery
Devin Coldewey NBC News

New Scientist / YouTube

The 3-D printed brain fits inside a skull model, where it can be operated on as if it were a real patient.
If you and your brain were going under the knife, wouldn't it be comforting to know that your surgeon had practiced the exact operation, location, procedure and all, just a few hours earlier? Researchers have created a 3-D printed brain that lets doctors and students do just that — and it's disturbingly realistic.

The technique was created by the Center for Biomedical and Technology Integration, which was spun off of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The team is led by Vicknes Waran, a professor and surgeon.

Models exist for training purposes already, even 3-D printed ones. However, this new technique not only builds the model based on scans of a particular brain, it also uses multiple materials to simulate the various layers the real organ would have.

Take a look at the video below. Warning: Although it's just various kinds of plastic and gel, you may nevertheless have a visceral reaction.

Neurosurgeons can also train virtually, but that lacks the tactile quality of a real operation. Knowing how much pressure to exert and what it feels like when a membrane is broken, for instance, are essential to navigating the fragile tissues of the brain. Even brains provided by organ donors aren't the same as a living one.

The printed models aren't quite mass-produced; the data, materials and advanced 3-D printers from Stratasys involved mean each brain takes a while to make, and costs around $600. Still, it's better than going in unprepared.

This post at ComputerWorld Malaysia has more details on the printing technique and other useful applications in the medical field.

 

[Phil Wainwright]

The big advantage of 3d printers is the fact that you can practice. From brain surgery to putting the capabilities of working prototypes into the budget of the average person. I am doing things today that I could I could never have considered even two years ago.